What Word of God?
Still, tbf, we never see Klingon wreckage at the Battle of Wolf 359 either, and they did send ships. Likely never arrived due to travel time issues, but still... wish they could have shown it. Or asked the Romulans. That would be setup to what DS9 did.
TNG - Best of Both Worlds
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Yukaphile
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Re: TNG - Best of Both Worlds
"A culture's teachings - and more importantly, the nature of its people - achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
Re: TNG - Best of Both Worlds
And then we finally got Nemesis. After more than a decade of waiting for the Romulans to finally get their day in the spotlight as the big antagonists for TNG...
...We got a film about a cloned human and a bunch of dracula-knockoffs.
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Yukaphile
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Re: TNG - Best of Both Worlds
They were hardly underplayed in stuff like "Unification" and elsewhere.
"A culture's teachings - and more importantly, the nature of its people - achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
Re: TNG - Best of Both Worlds
The big problem with the Romulans is that they were a bit too complex a villain with too much history for the big screen. What do I mean by that? Okay, say you want the Romulans as villains for your big theatrical TNG film. How do you do that without either A) making continuity lockout for Joe sixpack off the street, and B) not invalidating the continuity you've built up for years.
Khan was the great returning villain for TOS, but he only appeared in one episode, and was rather moldable storywise, and could be shaped in almost anyway they wanted. With the Romulans, you have to keep them true to their characters as chessmasters, while also choosing who your big bad is going to be. If it's someone from the series, like Tomalak, do we dive into who he really is, and what drives him, and how do you make it personal for him? How much of the film becomes about the life of Tomalak?
Same with Sela. Sela is pretty much a LOT of backstory from the TV show. Good luck getting anyone who has never watched the show to understand who she is.
"So wait, she's the daughter of a temporal clone of a crew member who doesn't really exist?" Yeah, try getting the casual viewer to understand that one.
But, it could be done. If the writers were pushed to do so, and Sela's drive for revenge against Data was made the focus, as pushing both her drive for power and to prove something for herself. She could be the Shylock of Star Trek TNG, a person who is pitiable and understandable, but utterly contemptible for their behavior.
And, if Shinzon is REALLY required, make it to where he is her parallel. He's the cast off from the TNG family who gets to defect, while Sela doesn't, because she can't let go of her past, but Shinzon can.
Khan was the great returning villain for TOS, but he only appeared in one episode, and was rather moldable storywise, and could be shaped in almost anyway they wanted. With the Romulans, you have to keep them true to their characters as chessmasters, while also choosing who your big bad is going to be. If it's someone from the series, like Tomalak, do we dive into who he really is, and what drives him, and how do you make it personal for him? How much of the film becomes about the life of Tomalak?
Same with Sela. Sela is pretty much a LOT of backstory from the TV show. Good luck getting anyone who has never watched the show to understand who she is.
"So wait, she's the daughter of a temporal clone of a crew member who doesn't really exist?" Yeah, try getting the casual viewer to understand that one.
But, it could be done. If the writers were pushed to do so, and Sela's drive for revenge against Data was made the focus, as pushing both her drive for power and to prove something for herself. She could be the Shylock of Star Trek TNG, a person who is pitiable and understandable, but utterly contemptible for their behavior.
And, if Shinzon is REALLY required, make it to where he is her parallel. He's the cast off from the TNG family who gets to defect, while Sela doesn't, because she can't let go of her past, but Shinzon can.
Re: TNG - Best of Both Worlds
To be fair already during TOS Romulans played second fiddle as bad guys to Klingons but at least back then they got spotlight in some of best episodes of TOS so there is that silver lining. Considering that back in TOS both Romulans and Klingons were pretty much bad guy races without any nuances and both have went long way from that in both TNG and DS9 it's clear that they did become so much more it's shame that focus of Nemesis was that Picard's clone (I don't even bother try to remember his name) and race that we hadn't seen before that and haven't seen ever since.
"In the embrace of the great Nurgle, I am no longer afraid, for with His pestilential favour I have become that which I once most feared: Death.."
- Kulvain Hestarius of the Death Guard
- Kulvain Hestarius of the Death Guard
Re: TNG - Best of Both Worlds
I really want to see the Unification storyline continue. It's the one big major plot thread that TNG had which never got any real follow-up, and the biggest reason I was upset at the "kicking over the furniture and burning the place to the ground on the way out" that JJ Abrams did when setting up his new timeline. Equally so, I'm worried that Kurtzman gets to have his hands on the Picard show, because there's a good chance he's going to actually deal with what I've been hoping to see for decades, and I don't have confidence he understands it well enough to guide the people making the show into doing something thematically appropriate for that long build-up.
