Did the Romulans use Remans during the Earth-Romulan Wars?

[Cadet49]

I haven't read the Enterprise relaunch novels, but is there any indications in those novels that the Romulans used the Remans as their foot soldiers? That could explain Spock's line in Balance of Terror that Earthmen and Romulans had never seen each other during the war.

The idea that two sides could fight a whole conflict only in space with no visuals of each other is a bit unrealistic. Surely, there would have been boarding of ships, encounters on planet surfaces, etc... the whole drone ship idea from Season 4 and some of the books just doesn't jive in my mind for a large scale conflict, if the Romulan objective was to expand their empire, and not merely destroy their perceived enemy...

Any explanations provided in the books...

 

[Saul]

Spoilers follow for the Enterprise Books.






No not yet. No Remans have been shown fighting Starfleet Troops. I also like the idea that the Romulans used Remans as ground troops. The Romulans used Remans in the Domain war so why not. I hope it's shown in the future novels as it gets a lot of the "never saw a romulan" problems out of the way.

 

[Christopher]

I had the same thought about the Remans, but what Spock actually said in "Balance of Terror" was that "no human, Romulan, or ally" ever saw the other. So that pretty much rules out the Remans showing up as footsoldiers in direct combat with Earth forces.

 

[David cgc]

Didn't he say it, "Romulan, human, or ally"? He could've just meant human allies (like Vulcans, which is probably the dramaturgical reason for allies to be mentioned in the line at all).

 

[Christopher]

No, it was "no human, Romulan, or ally." And that clearly implies allies of either power, regardless of word order.

 

[Ronald Held]

Did Romulans even use Remans outside their Empire before the 24th century?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Don't the Remans pose the same problems as the Romulans? They're Vulcan offshoots as well.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

The earth-romulan war books were in a perfect position to prove the maxim 'in an interstellar war, all ground battles are skirmishes'.

Warships are all that's needed to conquer a planet or...anything else.

Infantry is only needed if one wants an occupation/police force to keep the natives under control.
If the attacker doesn't care about that and just kills most/all of the conquered inhabitants, the other side will never see the face of the ones who are killing them.


Of course, in the books there are a lot of ground battles and a poor excuse for how no one saw a romulan or figured out the enemy's relation to the vulcans (apparently, the romulans wore helmets).

 

[BrotherBenny]

No one figured out Clark Kent was superman and he just wore glasses. Helmets make much more sense

 

[srs1701]

Don't the Remans pose the same problems as the Romulans? They're Vulcan offshoots as well.

Are they? I assumed this right up until they finally showed up in Nemesis, but once we saw them I started to assume they were a separate species, perhaps native to the star system later occupied by the Romulans. I mean, a thousand years is a short time to see such a major change in a species, or any significant change really. I have trouble accepting that the Vulcans and Romulans have been separated for long enough to produce the pronounced Romuland brow ridge seen in TNG forward, let alone something as drastically different physically as a Reman.

Has this ever actually been stated, either canonically or in the expanded universe, or is it just a general fan-assumption?

 

[MNM]

No, it was "no human, Romulan, or ally." And that clearly implies allies of either power, regardless of word order.

Can you really class Remans as "allies" though?

 

[ProtoAvatar]

No one figured out Clark Kent was superman and he just wore glasses. Helmets make much more sense

Actually, none of the examples makes any sense whatsoever.

I'll rate the helmeted romulans as being the greatest offender, though.
During battles in which thousands died, no one managed to get a romulan corpse - or scan romulan DNA, which, according to trek lore, is still present even after the body is disintegrated?

 

[Christopher]

No, it was "no human, Romulan, or ally." And that clearly implies allies of either power, regardless of word order.

Can you really class Remans as "allies" though?

An ally is a person or entity who cooperates with or supports another in a common cause. While it tends to refer to equal or voluntary partnerships based on treaties, it doesn't overtly exclude more unequal partnerships.

I think the intent of Spock's statement was clear: that nobody on either side saw the other face-to-face. It would require a rather artificially narrowed definition of the word "ally" to claim that his statement excluded Remans.

Besides, if the Federation didn't even know what Romulans looked like, how would they know enough about their politics to know that the Remans, had they been encountered directly, should be classified as a servant race rather than an ally? Just because the UFP knew that as of 2379 doesn't mean Spock would've had any inkling of such a distinction back in 2266, when the Romulans had been absent from the interstellar stage for over a century and had been a mystery even before then.

 

[21Spike65]

Don't the Remans pose the same problems as the Romulans? They're Vulcan offshoots as well.

Are they? I assumed this right up until they finally showed up in Nemesis, but once we saw them I started to assume they were a separate species, perhaps native to the star system later occupied by the Romulans. I mean, a thousand years is a short time to see such a major change in a species, or any significant change really. I have trouble accepting that the Vulcans and Romulans have been separated for long enough to produce the pronounced Romuland brow ridge seen in TNG forward, let alone something as drastically different physically as a Reman.

Has this ever actually been stated, either canonically or in the expanded universe, or is it just a general fan-assumption?

The Vulcan's Soul trilogy provided a history of the division between the Romulans and Remans after their sundering from Vulcan. Sherman and Shwartz didn't attribute the appearance differences of the Remans to just evolution, but also a bit of genetic engineering and mutations, both in reaction to the environment of Remus and to cope with it.

 

[Therin of Andor]

(apparently, the romulans wore helmets).

Exactly. Canonically, we saw that. The in-house reason was so that Fred Phillips didn't have to bake so many additional one-use customized latex ear tips every night.

I have trouble accepting that the Vulcans and Romulans have been separated for long enough to produce the pronounced Romuland brow ridge seen in TNG forward

The proto-Vulcans of "Who Watches the Watchers?" also have brow ridges, therefore I'd say that it was Vulcans who lost their ridges over time, not that Romulans suddenly gained them.

More ridged Vulcans happened to leave during the Sundering and went to Romulus, and less stayed behind. The fact that Spock was able to wander about Romulus all those years leading up to the "Unification" two-parter means that Romulans without ridges are still known on Romulus in the 24th century.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Did Romulans even use Remans outside their Empire before the 24th century?

We saw a Reman slave in the Orion slave auction in ENT.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Did the Romulns use Remans during the Earth-Romulan wars?

Not in Diane Duane's version!

 

[Timo]

Could we really tell? Duane's Remans aren't explicitly said to be physiologically different from Romulans, and Remus isn't said to be a hellhole in comparison with Romulus (just "more arid") - but the difference could exist implicitly. Remans might have been an important underclass in Duane's world as well, only their position was described in more circumspect terms because Duane's Romulan heroes were a polite and tradition-minded lot...

It could also be that the position of Remans in the society fluctuates. They never get the very top positions, but they might get a few influential senators in Duane's days and then fall in disfavor for the 2370s again. Remus might be something more than just a giant prison camp - there might be a complex society there, with the prisons and prisoners only forming a remarkable minority. Even the idea of Remus as the "wheat basket" of the twin-world setup could be literally true: something edible might grow there, in large quantities because of the thoroughly industrial approach taken to growing it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[srs1701]

The Vulcan's Soul trilogy provided a history of the division between the Romulans and Remans after their sundering from Vulcan. Sherman and Shwartz didn't attribute the appearance differences of the Remans to just evolution, but also a bit of genetic engineering and mutations, both in reaction to the environment of Remus and to cope with it.[/QUOTE]

Huh, I haven't gotten to those books yet, but they're on my list. A ways down, but they're there.

The idea that all the Vulcans with the pronounced brows left and the ones without stayed behind puts a bad taste in my mouth, like the Vulcan/Romulan division was about more than just ideology, like there was a racial component to it too.

I've also heard the explanation (which I believe is entirely a fan assumption) that the pronounced Romulan brows are a result of several generations of heavy interbreeding. I guess that's about as likely as never seeing a smooth-headed Romulan on camera after TOS, and never seeing one with a pronounced brow afterward even though the two type apparently coexist (same goes for Klingons).

 

[Christopher]

The idea that all the Vulcans with the pronounced brows left and the ones without stayed behind puts a bad taste in my mouth, like the Vulcan/Romulan division was about more than just ideology, like there was a racial component to it too.

It doesn't have to be so blatant. It could be that the population that went on the colony ships just happened to have a greater genetic predisposition in that direction. Any two divergent populations will undergo genetic drift in different directions, which is how humans ended up with different ethnic types. It wasn't that the populations started out looking different, but that they ended up looking different over time.

Yes, two thousand years doesn't seem like much time in evolutionary terms, but when we're dealing with populations living in different environmental conditions, the process of adaptation can happen rather quickly. For instance, Tibetans diverged from Han Chinese only about 3000 years ago but have already experienced massive divergence in a number of genes that improve their ability to survive in oxygen-poor conditions.

There's also sexual selection to consider. People choose mates based on attractiveness, and different populations will have different aesthetic standards. Maybe the leader of the Sundered, or some particularly heroic captain of the colony ships, happened to have a heavy brow ridge, and thus the colonists deemed that trait more attractive than a smooth brow.

Another possibility is that the expression of the gene that produces a heavy brow is triggered by some environmental factor, some mineral or nutrient that's more abundant on Romulus than on Vulcan.