What we know about Star Trek’s biggest invisible war

As much as it presents itself as a vision of a utopian and ideal society, much of it is Star Trek It remains defined by its relationship to conflict. there The lingering question on the values ​​of Starfleet as a military organization or scientific expeditionary force, Or define conflicts Such as those who oppose the Klingons, Borg, and Dominions who form the main pillars of Star Trek traditions. But this has always been the case, for about 60 years, Star TrekThe early days of were marked by one conflict above all else: a conflict that continues to shape and fascinate the series to this day, even though it has never been captured on screen.

The Earth-Romulan War became one of these wars Star TrekThe mysteries are by far the most enduring for one reason only: that their very existence was introduced in what would later become one of the mysteries The most respected episodes to Star Trek As ever, “Balance of Horror.” Original episode 14 a tripIn the first season of “Balance”, “Balance” introduced both the audience and its protagonists to the Romulan people, as well as detailing the deadly conflict between them and Earth. But it also laid the groundwork for why the conflict endured nearly six decades off-screen Star Trek With the revelation that the Romulans were extremely secretive, no human had actually made eye contact with a member of their species until the events of the episode, which takes place more than a century after the war ended.

This unique choice determined the location of the conflict Star Trek Telling stories ever since. The series came close, the apocryphal books filled in their own versions of the war in broad strokes, and both projects were scrapped, as were the initial plans for Star Trek: The Beginning Or even, as we learned last week, Scott Bakula and Michael Sussman are planning a potential afterthought.project spin off, Star Trek: UnitedHe wanted to lift the lid on him. But even now, part of what makes it so enticing to fans is that we know so little about it.

This doesn’t mean we know nothingbut.

Introduction to conflict

Romulan frustration with United Earth began to reach fever pitch in the early 2050s, with the exploratory and diplomatic mission of NX-01 project It effectively turned humanity into a diplomatic superpower. By the middle of the decade, the war-torn Alpha Quadrant had largely resolved into a tense but peaceful diplomatic sphere between the most prominent species in the interstellar community (the Vulcans, the Andorians, and the Tellurites) due largely to the negotiating efforts of Captain Archer and his crew.

This greatly displeased the Star Empire, which relied on a volatile galaxy to keep its operations secret. The Romulans increased their attempts to reopen wedges between the major powers of the Quadrant, but they also faced an internal reckoning within their borders: a growing desire to see the Romulans and Vulcans united as one community. While we know that the Romulans and Vulcans eventually achieved reunification sometime before the 32nd Century, the version viewed in the 2150s was quite different: Romulan agents working for the head of the Vulcan High Command, Vlas, attempted to surreptitiously support the Administrator’s plans for a Vulcan invasion of Andoria, which would in turn lead to Vulcan surrendering to the reunification at the behest of Romulus. But once again, Flass’s attempts to bring Vulcan and Andoria into conflict are revealed through the efforts of Archer and the gang. projecthindering the Romulan influence on their ancestral world.

The Star Empire escalated its plans with the Babel Crisis in 2155, launching drone ships that were remotely piloted by telepathy. Targeting Tellarite and Andorian ships on the border of the two powers At the height of trade negotiations between the worlds on the planet Babylon, Romulan drone ships were able to use multispectral emitters to visually disguise their appearance, allowing Romulan agents to sow discord between Tellarite and Andorians by posing as each other to attack trade routes.

However, the Romulan plans backfired: the Babel Crisis was thwarted by the combined efforts of United Earth, Telar, Andoria, and Vulcan, who formed a joint operation to bring together a fleet of ships of all four types to track and locate the drone warships, and ultimately defeat them. Rather than inciting renewed conflict throughout Quadrants Alpha and Beta, the Romulan efforts ultimately succeeded in stabilizing the entire region. Shortly after the Crisis ended, representatives of humanity, the Tellarites, Andorians, and Vulcans held a conference that would ultimately lay the foundation for the Planetary Alliance, an unprecedented interstellar alliance, later that same year.

The Four Years’ War

It was the emergence of the Planetary Alliance that eventually thrust the Romulan Star Empire into open conflict, with the Earth-Romulan War beginning in earnest in 2156. Little is known about the exact nature of the war, other than that it was apparently waged largely between the Romulan forces and the United Earth forces. Just over a century after its end, when tensions arose between Starfleet and Romulus, Spock described the conflict as primitive by contemporary standards: the ships on both sides of the war were far below the standards and size of those used by the galactic powers of the 22nd century and incapable of holding prisoners of war, and the majority of weapons used were still of an atomic nature.

This mass devastation also meant that both the Romulans and the Allied forces never made visible contact with either side over the four years that the conflict lasted, keeping the general identity of the Romulans – and their ancestral ties to the Vulcans – kept secret throughout the war.

What is known about the Earth-Romulan War is that it ended four years later in the year 2160 after the Battle of Chiron. Again, the circumstances of that battle are largely unknown except for two factors: that it was fought between the Romulans and the Human/Vulcan/Andorian/Tellarite alliance (presumably under the banner of the Planetary Alliance), and that the battle was an absolute disaster for the Romulan forces. The defeat was almost complete, and the memory of how bad the battle for the Star Empire was would continue to have military and political repercussions for centuries.

Centuries of consequences

The end of the war will have massive repercussions for the Alpha and Beta quadrants for generations to come. The peace treaty, agreed over subspace radio between Starfleet and the Romulans, created a no-man’s-land between the borders of Allied space and the Star Empire, a region of space into or through which neither side could move ships without being viewed as an act of war. Little is known about how the Romulans policed ​​their side of the region, as the Star Empire retreated from astropolitics for the better part of a century following the war’s end. However, Starfleet policed ​​its side of the region by establishing external observation stations located on asteroids.

A year after the end of the conflict, the Planetary Alliance was disbanded to make way for the formal founding of the United Federation of Planets in 2161. Now led by President Jonathan Archer, the Federation began a new era of galactic politics, as more and more member worlds joined the four founding planets of Earth, Telar, Andoria, and Vulcan, and Starfleet became the primary interstellar task force.

It would not be another 100 years until the Romulans would test the constraints of their peace treaty with the existing Federation, when an unnamed Romulan commander attacked and destroyed four Starfleet observation stations along the edge of the Neutral Zone. It was eventually destroyed by the USS projectthe Federation’s flagship, the incident marked the first known visual contact between humanity and the Star Empire, revealing the visual similarity between the Romulans and the Vulcans.

This waxing and waning of Romulan involvement beyond the borders of the Star Empire will continue even further Collapse of the empire in 2387 After the star of the Romulus system went supernova, destroying both Romulus and its sister world Remus. For a brief period in the 22nd century, the Romulans established diplomatic relations and trade agreements with their Beta Quadrant counterparts in the Klingon Empire, and in 2311, conflict between the Federation and the Star Empire briefly erupted in the Tomed Incident, which ended with a new treaty that strengthened the borders of the Neutral Zone and prevented the Federation from researching ship-based cloaking technology, a key technological advantage that had existed since long time. By the Romulans, as well as the return of the Star Empire to isolation.

Only one major incident reflected a diplomatic alliance between the Federation and the Romulans across those centuries of general distrust: in the year 2374, at the height of the Federation’s war against the Dominion based on the Gamma Quadrant, the Romulans were pushed into the conflict on the Federation’s side after years of neutrality when a high-ranking member of the Romulan Senate, Vrenak, He was apparently assassinated By Dominion forces in an attempt to cover up evidence of Dominion and Cardassian plans to invade the Star Empire. The Romulans would continue to play a pivotal role in the alliance with the Federation and the Klingon Empire for the remainder of the war, even providing cloaking devices for Starfleet ships such as USS Defiant In limited capacity.

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