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Romulan War - past or present?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Timo: [QB] [QUOTE] Someone should conduct a more thorough inspection of statements regarding the Romulan War and the Founding to determine whether or not a post-UFP RW is workable within the Canon. [/QUOTE]It's not all that difficult. TOS has only a single monologue relevant to this: "...a line of Earth outpost stations. Constructed on asteroids, they monitor the Neutral Zone established by treaty after the Earth-Romulan conflict a century ago. As you may recall, this conflict was fought, by standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives, nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication. Therefore, no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other. Earth believes the Romulans to be warlike, cruel, treacherous, and only the Romulans know what they think of Earth. The treaty, set by sub-space radio, established this Neutral Zone, entry into which by either side would constitute an act of war. The treaty has been unbroken since that time." "A century ago" is vague for something spoken by Spock. If we accept the coincidence that this means exactly 36,500 days (perhaps the Romulans deliberately chose to attack on the centennial?), then the war ended in 2165 at the very earliest, in 2167 at the very latest. A ten percent fudge factor would allow it to take place before 2161, though. Also, the treaty may have come several years after the war, fudging things further. "Earth" is used to indicate one of the historical combatants, but "Earth" also clearly denotes the Kirk/Spock/[i]Enterprise[/i] side as of the 2260s when Spock speaks of how that side sees the Romulans. UFP founding is nailed down as 2161 by Troi's comment in "The Outcast": "The Federation was founded in twenty-one-sixty-one." No two ways about it. Earth-alien alliances preceding that date are possible, however. Connection between the Romulan War and the UFP Founding is vague. In "Homefront", Sisko says "They'll wage the kind of war Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation". So a big war may have IMMEDIATELY followed the founding, or then preceded it by an unknown amount of time. Judging by lack of references in ENT, there was no such war prior to 2155. However, Sisko could be referring to the exceptional Xindi style of warfare, that is, merciless planeticide. Thus, no "actual", conventional war need have accompanied the UFP founding. And even if there was such war, it need not have been the Romulan one. Was the Romulan war a big one? People of Kirk's time need to be reminded of the details - would this be true of members of today's Russian or Japanese military if queried on the Russo-Japanese war that ended a century ago? We never get overall casualty figures or mention of conquered or devastated planets. Only military casualties are ever mentioned, namely the Stiles family. It seems to me that canon doesn't constrain us much when inserting the Romulan War into the timeline. Dates between 2155 and the late 2170s are all plausible; length and scale of conflict can be chosen rather freely; participating players may include "black horses" on both sides, implicit in Spock's reference to allies. Weapons used need to be "atomic" and "primitive" by 2260s standards, but we did see in "IaMD" that there actually is a quantum difference between ENT and TOS weaponry, so at least the latter requirement is met. All we need to do is classify photonic torps and/or phase cannon as "atomic weapons" (a term that no longer is synonymous with fission or fusion bombs in the 2000s, and thus need not be in the 2260s, either) and we're done. Timo Saloniemi [/QB][/QUOTE]
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