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It's billions upon billions of people. The Romulans clearly moved many with their own ships, but had way too many people to move.

Starfleet likely does have access to the biggest fleet of ships in the quadrant, especially at short notice. Plus don't forget with the Federation you'd likely get a lot of allied factions join in as well to swell the numbers.
They likely would have made a vast difference in the number of people saved. Sure they might still not get everyone, but they'd likely have made a massive dent in the numbers compared to the Romulans doing it on their own.


Plus there's the fact that the Romulans were mostly left to do it on their own. So at a time of great need this faction that has been looking down on the Romulans from their high moral seat - in the end - was more bluster than action. A huge humanitarian (Romulatarian?) event and the Federation got scared off and backed off.

Not only more ships, but non-military specific vessels, better able to fulfil humanitarian missions than warships.

Very true. Heck when you think of it the civilian market often has access to not just more ships, but often bigger ships. Just think of the modern world and all the tankers, transports and even cruise liners that dwarf warships until you get to carriers - of which there are generally far fewer. Plus many of those civilian ships would either be ideally suited to holding large numbers of people (cruise liners) or could be easily adapted to hold large numbers - eg a massive refit of containers on a container ship to provide space for basic prefab stacked survival shelters and the like.

The Federation likely has very similar elements in their civilian fleet. Transports, holiday ships, containers. Chances are a major part of the Mars base of operations wasn't just organisation, but also refitting and training and preparation.
The only curious thing is that they'd got the whole fleet in one single place for this, however logistically it might have made the most sense - esp since the Federation started from Earth, its likely a major hub so most ships would pass through.

Would it not have been easier to move the planet ? I would have thought either the Federation or the Empire would be able to do that in extremis.

Apparently they were building a fleet of special ships designed to evacuate a planet’s worth of people and that’s what was destroyed on Mars.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Would it not have been easier to move the planet ? I would have thought either the Federation or the Empire would be able to do that in extremis.

Whilst there are creatures that could do that in Startrek - most of them wouldn't. Many of the "I'm a god no really I am" in the Original series have fallen to one side of the lore in all that followed. Plus most were restricted to their world of origin. Vger and similarly other vast powers are often defeated or otherwise removed from the story so they won't be around to lend a hand. Meanwhile the most present force that could save the Romulans, The Q, would have no interest. Barring the Q we meet regularly in the series, and he'd be more likely to have created the situation to test Picard/humanity and would then resolve it at the end and all would move on to next weeks episode.

Otherwise "mega" engineering like that just isn't present in Startrek. There's a few - V'ger, The Bork Collective, The Dyson Sphere (where Scotty crash landed and was saved from, but by and large they are either not under the control of the Federation or they just aren't around any more (I forget if anything happened with the Dyson Sphere structure beyond saving Scotty).

There's a few exotics we know little about that display great power, like the Probe from the second film, however we know so little about such races that they'd hardly be there to call on to move a world.


So nope, beyond finding some means to stop the supernova happening (likely using the deflector shield/array), the only effective solution is to evacuate the population.

They could have shifted the planet a bit with tractor beams and warp bubbles, but nowhere near far enough to save it.

In the old new Trek lore, the Hobus Star went supernova and its subspace shockwave is what destroyed Romulus/Romulus’ Star (The Wolf Star?). Presumably some illegal subspace weapons or an omega particle or two could have stopped the shockwaves’ propagation... but the new new Trek lore has the Romulan sun exploding instead. Not much anyone could really do about that.


If only they had some sort of interstellar beaming capability, they wouldn’t need so many transports.

Even if they could move a planet, once its moved even a tiny distance from a sun the resulting temperature shifts would fast make it inhospitable. Moving it far enough to survive a supernova and the planet would be ICE cold very quickly. So you'd hav frozen Romulans

Transporter beams can't travel (normally) across space. Even on planets I believe its setup with multiple relays to allow transporting over large areas of the surface. To move people worlds away they'd have to setup a huge network of relay stations and the fact that its not been done already suggests that the resources for it are insanely huge and the increased risks very high. They might all get corrupted en-rout.

Corruption in Transporters tends to be an earlier issue. I think Original Series dealt with it once or twice and in the movies also tackled it (McCoy hated them as, being medical, he'd had to deal with the fallout of accidents/mistakes). It was also mentioned in the Enterprise series (their ship being one of the first to make extensive use of organic transporting).

By TNG and beyond its pretty safe provided nothing goes wrong. If anything does it can result in all kinds of problems.



Physical ships is a whole lot safer.

Not sure how long they had to do it but quite some time as they had to build a entire fleet of new ships.

Still not sure that the same massive engineering project to build that number of ships could not have built a big warp engine and artifical heat source to move the planet? It already would have a decent planetary shield.

But then maybe they don't want warp capable planets

Well this is Startrek not BATTLE PLANETS (which I never saw the TV series of but it had freaking cool toys back in the day - always annoyed that I never got the full collection of them)

If only they’d kept the Iconian gateways...

The latest RLM review seems to confirm all my misgivings about the show.

I love RLM. They make me feel like I am not suffering alone.

I strongly suspect their outrage is more entertaining than the show itself.

So, episode 5 -

How are you watching Episode 5? It's not Friday yet!!!

beast_gts wrote:
I'm kind of assuming the synth ban only applies to deliberately created entities, with things like the Exocomp which 'evolved' being excluded.

I'm wondering what authority...

Spoiler:

the Not-So-Secretly-Evil-Boss had to interview the civilian Dr. Jurati? Is it because Dr Jurati is ex-Starfleet, is the Daystrom Institute now run by Starfleet, or do Starfleet just police everyone now?

Starfleet has always carried out law enforcement for Federation civilians - at least since just before the Dominion war. It was Starfleet, after all, who prosecuted Bashir’s parents for illegal genetic modification. I’d also argue that the tribunal in Measure of a Man should have been in a civilian court rather than a military one, if they had civilian courts.

beast_gts wrote:
So, episode 5 -

Spoiler:

They brought back the original actor for Hugh, but not Icheb or Maddox?
I briefly thought Bjayzl was Deanna Troi
And I wonder if Jurati is a synth...

Anyway, things have been kicked into gear with this latest episode, and the preview at the end looks to keep the ball rolling. I do still think this show would certainly benefit from being able to watch it all at once, rather than a week in between episodes.

beast_gts wrote:So, episode 5 -

Spoiler:

They brought back the original actor for Hugh, but not Icheb or Maddox?
I briefly thought Bjayzl was Deanna Troi
And I wonder if Jurati is a synth...

I absolutely thought that was Troi at first as well.

Overread wrote:How are you watching Episode 5? It's not Friday yet!!!

The episodes release on Thursday? They have from the start.

Thursday in the USA, Friday in the U.K.

Rather a lot packed into episode 5. And s9me glorious scenery chewing by Sir Patrick.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Starfleet has always carried out law enforcement for Federation civilians - at least since just before the Dominion war. It was Starfleet, after all, who prosecuted Bashir’s parents for illegal genetic modification. I’d also argue that the tribunal in Measure of a Man should have been in a civilian court rather than a military one, if they had civilian courts.

I keep thinking we've seen civilian police, but the only example I can find is from the start of the first reboot movie.

The issue i've been having with this series is when I finish the episode I usually don't feel satisfied. It's more of a shrug and that's it moment, the show is taking it's time to get somewhere but that time being spent doesn't feel well spent. Which is super odd for me cause I was able to sit through an almost two hour episode of totdy at a glacial pace. Maybe the artistry and direction here is just too run of the mill. I feel pretty entertained while watching it. But looking back at the episodes i've seen, i've thought would I ever want to rewatch all this? The answer is probably not.

I know what you mean. Much as I’m enjoying it, could do with a little more oomph?

However, judgement is reserved until I can sit down and binge the lot.

Overall I really enjoyed this episode.



Yes there was a bit of the silly element to the whole crime mission in the middle; but overall this episode really delivered. I really liked that they took the doctors betrayal in the last part, it tied up her appearance at Picards manor a few episodes back very nicely. I think leaving that open would have weakened the writing for the series in general.



We see a side of Seven that's very "Ripley/Rambo" style. A bit of a divide from her more serious Voyager days, but it seems that, in her way, she's finding her humanity. Plus if she's been a combat heavy ranger for a decade or more then that would certainly fit. She also slips in and out of her more boisterous ranger and her more serious borg/voyager aspects of her personality. Perhaps some part of her is "acting" the rough and tumble part as a means to her humanity and identity. Picard sending her back I think was fine, he's getting to grips with the fact that he can't save everyone and that he's not got a huge crew to work for him to achieve that end goal.



We also learned a bit more about the fall of the Romulans and that now we get a sense that Romulan and Federation space was ok, but that its the boundary neutral zone that has suffered more so in terms of being left to its own devices. Clearly the Romulans don't have the resources to devote to invading and taking over; nor does the Federation want to push too far in in case they get bitten by a hostile Romulan force - esp when Romulan peoples are scattered through their population as well.



As for Freeport don't forget its not Federation; its what Quarks would have been if he'd had more money and wasn't Federation controlled.





Moving forward we've now got the doctors betrayal on the ship to contend with, though that all hinges on the EMH program. Being as she worked in cybernetics we might see her use that to her advantage, however its also very clear that she's way out of her depth. So its 50/50 on if she manages to cover her tracks or not. That she didn't try to cover them medically is very interesting, its again showing that she's reacting rather than thinking things through. Her panic at the transporter is also more apparent since she was taking an overt step in bringing herself in contact with someone she loves, but whom she doesn't want Picard to meet. Because if he does he will learn things she doesn't want him to learn. It answers why someone who is clearly technically and scientifically minded would be scared at operating a transporter. She didn't want to save him; to confront him; because then she had to kill him. All that rising panic explains her attitude through most of the episode.







I can understand some not liking it because its not the same Trek it was in TNG, but honestly I'm finding the writers and characters well put together. We are seeing demons and they are also doing very well for filling in a 10-15 year gap for most of the old-cast and setting for the viewer. That's not a small thing to achieve and they could have tried getting away with hand waving explaining things. Instead we are getting the links which bring things forward. It also bodes well because each of those links brought forward is clearly helping us establish things moving forward. Seven surviving her near suicide attack is clearly something we might expect now that we know she's been basically a phaser slinging law enforcer for a long period of time. We see the doctor continuing to break down; we see Raffi dealing with more fall out in her life from the attack on Mars and we even see Picard getting used to being in a second position not a first in several situations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I know what you mean. Much as I’m enjoying it, could do with a little more oomph?

However, judgement is reserved until I can sit down and binge the lot.

Agreed, however I get the feeling that the way the episodes back right onto each other the feeling we are getting is partly intentional. Instead of big events each week, its a steady boil toward major events. Its' like watching a film split into parts rather than a traditional episodic TV series. Chances are binging the whole thing in one go you'd not get the same feelings. That slow second and third episodes would blend into one without any break or pause etc...

I think the lack of oomph is ok so long as we leave each episode wanting more. Which I certainly am at this stage.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The latest RLM review seems to confirm all my misgivings about the show.

I can't wait for them to see the latest episode with the death of hope/optimism/federation/other things that I can't name because spoilers. From the sound of it, this latest episode was more Altered Carbon meets Saw (both of which I like individually) than Star Trek.

Episode 5 was a helluva episode.

I loved the hint a certain old musical theme at the end of the episode, keep an ear out for it.


I'm kind of weirdly ok with it being quite dark right now, story-wise (Some of this one reminds me of 'In the pale Moonlight'), but I hope at the seasons end, they find the Star Trek optimism again.

Is the musical theme a call back to The Inner Light? I bet it was from The Inner Light.

It’s never the Algolian ceremonial rhythms. :(

Regarding whatever the Great Mind-Breaking Secret is, I suspect we, the audience, will be somewhat let down by it. After all of the various stories we've experienced through TV, movies, books, video games, etc., how can it live up to the expectations the show is setting it up for? I hope the Secret will still be interesting, or, at least, handled in an interesting way once revealed.

I think the trick is for the audience to not necessarily be surprised by the secret, but for them to feel empathy with the characters surprise.

I think, ultimately, it's got to end up involving the origin of the Borg, probably crossing over with Transhumanism style things.

So I finished reading the Picard Prequal novel and it hints (unsuprisingly) that the Romulan super nova may not have been natural. this isn't a suprise, and the question is if they'll go anywhere with it. Now we know Soji has been called "the destroyer" but we dunno what that means. I've got two theories on it.

One: she does indeed "destroy" everything in a metaphorical sense in that she leads to such a dramatic change in the status quo that nothing is the same.
Theory 2: She is, or will be, through timey whimy shinnagens responsable for the Romulan Sun's super nova. if so this could put Picard in a bit of a "Baby Hitler" position. where he's confronted with someone whose basicly innocent, but at the same time, someone he is told will cause countless deaths, and screw up the life of pretty much the entire crew. (the only person in the crew who we don't know was screwed up as a result of the fallout over romulas was Rios and I'd be willing to bet we'll discover he was too)