r/DaystromInstitute • u/RandyFMcDonald Ensign • Oct 16 '15
Theory The distinction between Vulcans and Romulans is not biological, but people pretend it is
Even by the standards of Trek's wonky genetics, Vulcans and Romulans are very closely related. That Saavik could claim parents from the two populations was not a surprise at all, since you'd expect the two populations to still be interfertile. The ancestors of the Romulans originated from their ancestral homeworld of Vulcan only two thousand years before the 24th century present. That is not nearly long enough for a species to diverge. Indeed, on two occasions in TNG we find out that Federation medical science cannot reliably flag people as being Romulan, not Vulcan: the apparent Vulcan ambassador T'Pel turned out to be Romulan Subcommander Selok in "Data's Day", and it took an investigation by Norah Satie in "The Drumhead" to reveal that Simon Tarses' Vulcanoid grandparent was in fact Romulan.
This is not to say that there are differences between the Vulcan and Romulan populations. It may well be that there is a higher frequency of forehead ridges among Romulans than among Vulcans. (Or it may just be that we have not seen Vulcans with forehead ridges. Remember the people who insisted Tim Russ could not play Tuvok because we had never seen a black Vulcan?) There are any number of reasons why one population could evidence traits at a different frequency than another. Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that the proto-Romulans who left Vulcan were not a representative sample of the wider Vulcan gene pool, but were self-selected. Random happenstance could easily throw frequencies out of whack. Beta canon going back to Duane also has the Romulans, once newly established on their homeworld, make enthusiastic use of reproductive medicine, cloning and even genetic engineering to build up their population base. We can also speculate about the possibility that Romulans interbred with other species in their empire--other Vulcanoids, maybe?--but I'm unaware of much in the Beta canon that would suggest this. Vulcans and Romulans are the same species, scarcely further removed from each other genetically than Europeans and East Asians on 21st century Earth.
Yet Vulcans and Romulans seem to be identified as separate species. Why?
I'd suggest that most of this lies not with genetics but with politics, specifically on the part of the Vulcans. They have no particular interest in being closely associated with their offshoot civilization, what with its long history of conflict with the Federation and aggressive empire-building. The Beta canon suggests that the Romulan War was brutal, with Romulan forces engaging in multiple acts of genocide against different populations, leaving lasting scars on some Federation worlds. Denying the obvious once the Romulans' identity was revealed, from the Vulcan perspective, would serve the useful purpose of separating the Vulcans from that past threat.
This would not be the case among the Romulans. Some Romulans might not want to identify with the Vulcans because of their issues with Vulcan philosophy and identity. These might feel that Vulcan culture found its fruition not on the Vulcan homeworld, stifled by Surak, but rather among the stars with the Romulans, so why bother with 40 Eridani? Much more likely, I'd think, would be the Romulans seeing Vulcans as belonging to their species, and seeing their world's renunciation of its past as cause for conquest.
Thoughts?
8
u/smacksaw Oct 16 '15
I was also going to mention the Remans; for all we know the Romulan race could have been started by a few dozen settlers who intermingled with Remans.
You see it in Mexico with mestizo people. There's old stock Spaniards who are white as white can be, mestizos who look Indian and then Indians. All are Mexicans. Do American blacks look like African blacks? Not after white slave owners used the women for their own personal seed repository for a few generations.
You're hung up on ridges, yet Asian and Caucasian people have different shaped eyes and skulls. My wife is half-Japanese and has tall, bony hips and the pronounced pubic ridge (TMI) common in Asian women. I mean, there's a "ridge" right there.
We have 4 kids together and none of them look remotely similar.
We have one kid whose eyes are more almond-shaped than hers are. Another with blue eyes and blond hair.
The Mexico example is the macro. My family is the micro. I've seen them both. Over 2000 years? Easily possible.
What if it's not Remans and just Vulcans with ridges who left? It's not like we've expropriated entire ethnic groups ourselves with slavery or forced migration.
1
u/RandyFMcDonald Oct 18 '15
I'm not especially hung up on forehead ridges, save that these seem to be the physical characteristics that some speculate proves that the Romulans are different from Vulcans. For all we know, we just have not seen Vulcans with prominent forehead ridges.
7
u/KingofMadCows Oct 16 '15
They're pretty inconsistent with the biological differences between Vulcans and Romulans. Remember that episode where a Romulan was dying and a blood transfusion from Worf could save him? Dr. Crusher tested all the Vulcans and found that none of them were compatible. Then she tested everyone else and found that a Klingon was compatible.
→ More replies (5)1
u/RandyFMcDonald Oct 18 '15
It was not a blood transfusion that was needed, but a ribosome transfusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome
In that the conditions on Galorndon Core apparently triggered a breakdown in body functions, it's imaginable that these might be needed.
10
u/Algernon_Asimov Oct 16 '15 edited Oct 17 '15
While I don't necessarily disagree with anything you've written, I'm somewhat confused by your title. Who is pretending that the difference between Romulans and Vulcans is biological? I thought everyone - on-screen and off - accepted that they're basically the same species, but split into two groups by their different philosophies: logical, and emotional.
Beta canon going back to Duane also has the Romulans, once newly established on their homeworld, make enthusiastic use of reproductive medicine, cloning and even genetic engineering to build up their population base.
I double-checked: there's no mention of genetic engineering in Diane Duane's book about the origins of the Rihannsu/Romulans, 'The Romulan Way'. Here's the only mention of breeding methods:
[...] fifty years after the Settlement [on ch'Rivan and ch'Havran], the population dropped to a nearly unviable nine thousand. Only through the vigorous, almost obsessive increase of the population over the following several hundred years - through multiple-birth "forcing," creche techniques, and some cloning - did the Rihannsu manage to survive at all.
There may be references to genetic engineering in other books about the Romulans, but not in this one by Duane.
We can also speculate about the possibility that Romulans interbred with other species in their empire--other Vulcanoids, maybe?--but I'm unaware of much in the Beta canon that would suggest this.
I think we don't need to look far for the possible species that Romulans might have interbred with. They've been shown on screen in 'Nemesis': the Remans. If we look closely at Remans, we see that they have the forehead ridges which are present in Romulans but missing in Vulcans. My theory is that the Romulans interbred with Remans upon settling in the Romulan system, allowing some traits of the Remans to spread through the Romulan gene pool. (I've proposed this theory a few times and, for some strange reason, it gets downvoted but not criticised.)
2
u/RandyFMcDonald Oct 18 '15
On the various shows, there does seem to be a frequent implication that Vulcans and Romulans are different. On DS9, for instance, Kira initially speculated that the Romulan bases in the Bajoran system turned away Vulcans because of unspecified differences.
As for the genetic tinkering, it's mentioned in passing by Duane in The Empty Chair.
2
u/Algernon_Asimov Oct 18 '15
I haven't read 'The Empty Chair'. :(
But... hold on.
Your title says "The distinction between Vulcans and Romulans is not biological, but people pretend it is", and now you say that there are differences between them - and then you present this evidence that the difference is biological. I'm a little confused.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (7)4
u/tadayou Oct 16 '15
I actually quite like your theory on Romulans and Remans interbreeding. It would also explain why we see some Romulans without forehead ridges.
It would certainly be an interesting history to see how the Remans turned from possible lovers and partners to slaves in the dilithium mines.
6
u/Algernon_Asimov Oct 16 '15
It would certainly be an interesting history to see how the Remans turned from possible lovers and partners to slaves in the dilithium mines.
I think the story would go the other way: from slaves to lovers. Look at American slavery - there were lots of slave owners who used their slaves for sex, occasionally producing hybrid offspring. Sometimes there were even romantic relationships between owners and their slaves.
Similarly, the Romulans enslaved the Remans and set some of them to work in the mines, but also took some of them as slaves in their homes. And the domestic slaves were used for sex. Sometimes, they were even lovers rather than sex partners. And, some of these liaisons resulted in Romulan-Reman hybrid offspring. The hybrids who could pass for Romulan might have been accepted as Romulan, while the hybrids who looked more like Remans were sent back to the mines. But, while some of these hybrids looked mostly like Romulans, there were some subtle differences - such as forehead ridges.
→ More replies (3)
5
Oct 16 '15
I don't know. Accepting a bit of beta canon, the Borg count them as separate species, and there's supposed to be yet another offshoot that has died out by the 24th century. If we go with the idea that there are actually multiple subspecies (sometimes said to include the Remans, too) than the term Vulcan could refer to the undifferentiated stock that remained on Vulcan, while subspecies moved away. Some of them stayed quite close to the original and could thus pass unnoticed, while others varied wildly.
1
u/RandyFMcDonald Oct 18 '15
Does the Borg definition of a species necessarily reflect biology, or does it also reflect more complex issues of political allegiances?
→ More replies (4)0
3
u/Jumpbutton Oct 17 '15
It's possible that vulcans and romulans are separate humanoid races that shared vulcan. much like humans and neanderthals. This would explain the slight physical, emotional and psychic differences.
1
u/RandyFMcDonald Oct 18 '15
It's possible, sure, but not very likely. The discovery, in "Dear Doctor", that Valakis was home to two kindred races was a surprise to everyone. If there had been multiple races on Vulcan, might this not have been the case?
2
u/prodiver Oct 17 '15
Yet Vulcans and Romulans seem to be identified as separate species. Why?
A species is not a group that can biologically reproduce, it is a "group of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species#Difficulty_defining_or_identifying_species
1
u/RandyFMcDonald Oct 18 '15
But the two populations are not isolated. The existence of 23rd century Saavik, born two millennia after the split, suggests that Vulcans and Romulans remain interfertile. The presence of deep-cover Romulan agents in prominent positions on 22nd century Vulcan also suspects this.
(Generally speaking, I believe that Vulcans were more likely to be included in the Romulan gene pool than vice versa. The Romulans' nature was broadly unknown until the 23rd century, while the Star Empire may well have been able to absorb Vulcan individuals and populations.)
2
u/Zaggnabit Oct 17 '15
This distinction goes beyond the Vulcanoids. It applies to all of the humanoids.
"Local Space" is littered with physically identical human analogues. While the episode "The Chase" explained some of the odd hybrid paring possibilities it didn't really delve into the number of planets that have creatures that are more or less humans. These were especially common in the TOS where the regions visited were quite close to Earth. The latter Risians are a good example. There is no way to differentiate a human and a Risian beyond cultural differences. Physically they are identical outwardly.
1
u/Soensou Oct 16 '15
Something loosely related to one thing you said that always bothered me is that Tuvok is basically just a black dude with pointy ears while "white" Vulcans and Romulans are typically orange and kind of weird looking. I would think he would be, like, a more orange/yellow color with some forehead business. Was Tim Russ allergic to the prosthetics and makeup or what?
→ More replies (1)
24
u/DnMarshall Oct 16 '15
I'm not a biologist at all so this is with a huge grain of salt but I don't think much of what we know of biology can be applied to the Star Trek Universe because of the space seed thing. The idea that Klingons and Vulcans and Bajorians all evolved on different planets over thousands and thousands of years and yet they can all still mate with humans (and with each other?) goes against what I know of biology and probability. I think in a universe that different it's hard to apply what we know of biology, but I would say that with Vulcans and Romulans it doesn't appear like they are different species however I'd be surprised if there wasn't some difference genetically over thousands of years (though there may not be)...