There are some interesting seeds in general, but I feel like the series would have done a lot better if they kept Romulans as the original villain. It would have even worked after Florida 9/11 had humanity try to find out who attacked them.
The whole timey whimey with the people manipulating the Xindi only muddied things further. A cautious Romulan senate executing a preemptive strike, if somewhat bold, still works within what we know of them.
If I were to give sci-fi writers or anyone in that creative space some advice, it’d be this: Don’t fuck with time. Just stay away. There’s very few shows/books/whatever that can pull it off without “going back and fixing it” becoming like literally every episode. or like Voyager’s Year of Hell arc, where that entire arc literally does not matter to the overall story, it didn’t really develop the characters, and everything at the start of it was reset.
Quantum Leap and Dr. Who are the only two examples I can think of where it works.
In Star Trek, though, it became a form of lazy writing.
I think the only time I didn’t hate it so much was in the whale movie and then the DS9 episode with the bell riots.
But for everyone of those, there’s the arc or movie or episode that’s like “yeah we went back in time and fixed it and… uh…. What was I talking about? Hello nice alien, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
It even works with how the Enterprise was acting pre-Xindi attack. Humanity was actively interfering in the Vulcan-Andorian Cold War in ways that the Romulans couldn’t predict and even acted far above their power in brokering various peace deals. It isn’t that far out of line to attribute most forms of chaos happening in the area to be the Romulans trying to sow chaos as a way to control the region of space.
Eventually humanity becomes too disruptive that the Romulans have to actively attack humanity in order to regain control of the region, sparking the Earth-Romulan War. Hell, the human assistance in the revelation of Surak’s teachings and the subsequent Vulcan revolution be both the trigger that gets the Romulans to go to war and the reason why they don’t reveal themselves, since they were hoping to use a Vulcan-Andorian War to weaken Vulcan and open them up to annexation/incorporation with their cousin species’s empire.
There are some interesting seeds in general, but I feel like the series would have done a lot better if they kept Romulans as the original villain. It would have even worked after Florida 9/11 had humanity try to find out who attacked them.
The whole timey whimey with the people manipulating the Xindi only muddied things further. A cautious Romulan senate executing a preemptive strike, if somewhat bold, still works within what we know of them.
It’s funny.
If I were to give sci-fi writers or anyone in that creative space some advice, it’d be this: Don’t fuck with time. Just stay away. There’s very few shows/books/whatever that can pull it off without “going back and fixing it” becoming like literally every episode. or like Voyager’s Year of Hell arc, where that entire arc literally does not matter to the overall story, it didn’t really develop the characters, and everything at the start of it was reset.
Quantum Leap and Dr. Who are the only two examples I can think of where it works.
Perhaps they work because time travel is the core of the story
That’s definitely part of it.
In Star Trek, though, it became a form of lazy writing.
I think the only time I didn’t hate it so much was in the whale movie and then the DS9 episode with the bell riots.
But for everyone of those, there’s the arc or movie or episode that’s like “yeah we went back in time and fixed it and… uh…. What was I talking about? Hello nice alien, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
It even works with how the Enterprise was acting pre-Xindi attack. Humanity was actively interfering in the Vulcan-Andorian Cold War in ways that the Romulans couldn’t predict and even acted far above their power in brokering various peace deals. It isn’t that far out of line to attribute most forms of chaos happening in the area to be the Romulans trying to sow chaos as a way to control the region of space.
Eventually humanity becomes too disruptive that the Romulans have to actively attack humanity in order to regain control of the region, sparking the Earth-Romulan War. Hell, the human assistance in the revelation of Surak’s teachings and the subsequent Vulcan revolution be both the trigger that gets the Romulans to go to war and the reason why they don’t reveal themselves, since they were hoping to use a Vulcan-Andorian War to weaken Vulcan and open them up to annexation/incorporation with their cousin species’s empire.