clearspira wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 12:56 pm
Beastro wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:50 pm
No, they would if they weren't a square peg rammed into a round hole that is the mixed metaphors of Picard. What happened to the Roms wouldn't destroy their empire, but it would be a sting powerful enough to weaken them, but most importantly, infuriate them setting them ardently against the Federation and not pleading for their aid.
The opperunity there was to make a continuation story following the threads DS9 and Voyager left open decades after the Dominion War where the Roms could finally be the primary antagonists, but no, we have to shove in more refugee and AI as abused slaves messages as if there's a dearth of them in modern Sci-Fi.
All I think that Stewart has proven with his Space Brexit analogy is that Brexiteers were right. Letting the Romulans into the Federation seems to have caused nothing but hardship for everyone.
Except that's not what happened at all, the Federation didn't let the Romulans in, in-fact they didn't want to help the Romulans when the Supernova happened to begin with, and the only reason an evacuation fleet was created was because Admiral Picard twisted their arms into helping them, even at the risk of destabilising the Federation, after all, billions of lives were at risk and Picard felt the Federation was moral obligated to help, even if they were the enemy, which is a very Picard thing to do, and only gave up because of the Mars incident and being sacked from Starfleet and no other way to help, which in the end he deeply regretted.
And personally what we see of the Romulans in Star Trek Picard makes a lot for sense, with he destruction of Romulus and Remus (their Homeworld and primary source of Dilithium) they would focus on maintaining their military rather than helping their civilians, so while we do see a well maintained Fleet, we also see refugees having to fend for themselves, even Star Trek Online (which came out ten years before Star Trek Picard) depicted this state for the Romulans after the Supernova.
And it makes sense that there was this divide in the Federation to begin with, after all the Romulans are long time enemies of the Federation (in-fact the longest) that on multiple occasions have been deceitful and show not to be trusted, much like in The Undiscovered Country and (being it back to) The Search for Spock, the Federation and Klingons didn't trust each other to the point they would conspire together to continue the conflict rather than embrace peace, and even though the Genesis Devise was created for peaceful purposes was see as a Federation weapon of mass destruction in the eyes of the Klingons.
And overall, I don't get this complaint with Star Trek Picard, Picard actions of wanting to help the Romulans are very in character, and Star Trek has always commented on the times in the most unsubtle of ways, after all, the Klingons were an allegory to Communist Russia and the Cold War, and the Genesis Devise can easily be seen as a Nuclear Weapon, and with it is breaking the stalemate between the two factions that would start an arms race, and I'd say that even with he allegory what we see in Star Trek Picard has a broader message of not giving into fear and prejudice, much like what we see in both The Undiscovered Country and The Search for Spock.
"I think, when one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable like…like old leather. And finally… it becomes so familiar that one can't remember feeling any other way."
- Jean-Luc Picard