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If I could watch the series from start to finish, including all the movies, I'd do it. I just never wanted to jump in in the middle of it because I didn't think I'd understand it.
------------------ "You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. You don't pull the mask off the ole' Lone Ranger And you don't mess around with Jim." Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com
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Surely RSE traveling around in, not only the neutral zone, but the UFP using cloaking devices was a major oversight, and one that I find hard to believe hasn't been rectified in some amendment to the treaty. I realize that borders aren't necessarily closed absolutely, either, but (assuming cloaking technology doesn't porevent the following) during a time of war do you really think that somebody is going to let slip a RSE vessel through DEEP UFP space?
A three-dimensional map would be the second thing to go on my Trek Wish List (the first being absolute consistency, but as we all know or have observed, that is impossible), and it would help clear up distance issues.
If anybody knows of even a crude three dimensional map that I could take a gander at, I would be greatful. Thanks.
[This message has been edited by The Antagonist (edited February 07, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by The Antagonist (edited February 07, 2001).]
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Timo: I had read or heard something before about the Romulan homeworlds being around 128 Trianguli, but this star isn't listed in the internet stellar database. I think that the assigning of Trianguli to the Romulans is from fairly early fandom (early 1970s), probably from when stars were assigned for Andor and Tellar. This was a time when the Romulans and Klingon Empires were believed to lie to the south of the Federation (as shown in Franz Joseph's SFTM). Anyway Beta Trianguli Australis is only about 40 light years from earth and is consistent with non-warp capable Romulans, but also fits in with slow-warp Romulans. On the other hand, Delta and Alpha Trianguli are southwest of earth, where I think the SFTM puts the Romulans. Do Diane Duane's books mention specifically that Trianguli Australis is the Romulan home system or just "Trianguli"? Also, do her books date from during or after TNG was on the air (when the Klingons and Romulans were shown to be to the East of the Federation) or before?
One more comment: I think your attempt to use the neutral zone map of Balance of Terror is leading you astray. That map does not necessarily have the same orientation as the galaxy map (looking down on the galactic plane with the galactic core towards the top). Accepting another orientation would allow you to put that section of the NZ almost anywhere on the border. The way you have it now, the NZ is pretty far away from anyplace of interest and faces away from the heart of the Federation. I wouldn't think that the war took place all the way up there.
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Yeah, 128 Tri is bound to be a fictional star - I believe Diane Duane is often intentionally avoiding using real star names, even though she uses real constellation names.
Her books place the Romulans solidly in Triangulum, not Triangulum Australe - neigboring stars are sometimes listed as XXX Arietis, and Aries certainly lies next to the Northern Triangle, not the Southern one. This I believe was reflected in the old Mandel starmaps, too - and it sort of makes sense, since Vulcan is in that direction as well. But it doesn't jibe with later map conceptions where Romulans almost always are to the "northeast" of Earth - so I did the little move to Australe, against the spirit but not the letter of the Duane books.
(I completely ignored the SFTM map in this context, since it was based on different premises of warp speeds and Trek history - I only took the parts novelists and other fans have perpetuated of it.)
I chose to keep the "BoT" map in the same orientation as in the episode, interpreting "up" as corewards, because that actually made it very simple to fit in a Duanesque-ST2'esque ovoid in the orientation shown in the DS9 TM (see how they all fit together despite being completely unrelated? ).
If I place Romulus and Remus smack in the middle of the asterism known as Tri Australe, and at a reasonable distance from Earth at that, then the entirety of a 100-ly ovoid (as Duane sez) fitted to match the curve of the "BoT" map segment fits just the way the DS9 TM map shows - half "above" and half "below" Earth's "latitude". It even fits into the gap reserved for Romulan space in the famous TNG map seen in "Conspiracy" and other episodes (assuming I fiddle with the intended scale)... And Gamma Hydra then is roughly at the spot from which the Enterprise viewer started zooming in wrt the ovoid NZ seen in ST2!
I sense divine inspiration here. None of the sources contributing to this conclusion could have been aware of the compatibility with the other sources...
As for why most of the RNZ is facing away from Earth... I'd guess that's exactly the area of space the Earthlings would be willing to cede to the Romulans. They would want the majority of Rommie territory pointing into space that is even less accessible to Earth than Romulus/Remus were at the time. And if the Romulans at the onset of the war were starfaring (sublight or low-warp), it would actually require a major coincidence for their homeworlds to be the worlds closest to Earth, so the RNZ would be shaped to reflect the fact that there were other Rom planets closer to Earth than the twinworlds.
Why not a southwest-northeast ovoid, then? Why a northwest-southeast major axis which doesn't point completely away from Earth? Uh, because the DS9 TM sez so . Or more seriously: if the Romulans came from Vulcan along a big looping course that circled Earth counterclockwise, the space known to them would be in this direction, and there might be Romulan planets there they wouldn't want to cede to Earth... That's why I placed Debrune and other "Gambit" early-Romulan locations in that region as well, to suggest the course of the exodus did this sort of a dogleg.
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Oops, not yet for quite everything. For the felines among us:
No, I don't think the Talos star group was described specifically as the Pleiades in "The Cage". It would make some sense for Talos to be in roughly that location, since it has to be between Rigel and Vega - but I wanted to put Talos right next to starbase 11 so that the travel times in "The Menagerie" would make sense, and I didn't want to put any of the TOS starbases very far away from Earth. So I just moved Talos along the Rigel-Vega axis until it got close enough for tango.
The Pleiades featured explicitly in TNG "Home Soil", where a group of terraformers was transforming Velara III located in that cluster.
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I know this map is the interpretation of Timo's, but I just now realized the size of Tholian space. Why the hell haven't we seen more of them? There must be a reason and I just haven't recognized it.
------------------ "Evil takes many forms, but my favorite is a jelly donut."
------------------ "One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking" Nugget Star Trek: Gamma Quadrant Star Trek: Legacy Read them, rate them, got money, film them
"...and I remain on the far side of crazy, I remain the mortal enemy of man, no hundred dollar cure will save me..." WoV
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I've never gotten the impression that the Tholians are particularly isolationist in their outlook. K'Ehleyr was worried that the Tholians would get involved in a Klingon civil war, and they seemed rather interested in the wormhole and the politics surrounding it. Aloof, yes, but not isolationist.
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Yeah, the Tholians are that big for two reasons:
1) The bigger they are, the more likely they are to appear all over the map and to carry political weight. If they were small, they would have to be close to where the action is to be politically significant, and that would mean placing them close to at least four things implied in dialogue: the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Feds, and DS9. That would make the center of the map even more crowded than it is now. By making them big, I can give them some stand-off distance (and justify their seat in the super-secret Antwerp negotiations of "Homefront").
2) The left side of the map was looking annoyingly empty
Yes, TSN, I know the ST2 zone probably wasn't intended to be the Romulan one (the writers of the movie probably had their references all mixed up, and thought that it would be the Klingons with the Neutral Zone and the Gamma Hydra connection). But I couldn't very well put the Klingons at Gamma Hydra, since that star is in a fixed location "up north" and thus clashes with so many other references to the preferred Klingon/Romulan ordering.
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Timo: Is this an update over your earlier map?
And another thing, with the positioning of the Gorn. Some references I've seen would put it rim/spin of Sol and that the Tholians would be roughly were the gorn are now!
). 
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