Hiya all, Ric here continuing our look into the early Starfleet tales from around the time of
the formation of the United Federation of Planets. From where we left off, Starfleet was pretty much
alone in confronting the Romulan expansion, however, the Star Empire had been fighting
another war against the Haakonans, a war which they had just finished and as such,
they could focus all their attention on Earth and the Coalition of Planets.
This apocryphal lore is drawn from the Enterprise
sequel books that cover the Romulan War of 2155-2160 and we pick up at the tail end of 2159.
Fresh off their recent victories against the Empire, Starfleet had managed to seize back
multiple systems from their elusive adversary including Altair VI, Deneva, Delta Pavoinis and
Beta Virginis. On top of this, they had managed to establish two new starbases, one at Beta Virginis
and one in orbit of Calder II. These bases were originally meant to be Starfleet operated research
outposts, or at least with a civilian presence. Instead, with the war on, they were basically
forwards operating bases for the fleets. This bolstering however did little to detract from
the Romulan aggression as they hit Andorian supply lines and a single bird of prey, the Aoi’fvienn
was encountered by the Starfleet SS Intrepid after completing such a raid. The Enterprise NX-01,
the Intrepid and the Daedalus class Republic approached the battle worn Star Empire vessel,
only to have it activate its shields, expand them around two of the Starfleet ships
and vent their warp plasma. The Romulan ship then went to impulse and detonated the plasma bubble,
crippling the ships and making its escape. In earnest, Starfleet had caught the vessel unawares,
but the ship still managed to emerge the victor, in so far as it got away.
The Enterprise, chose not to pursue as they also received word that while these attacks
had been unfolding, the Star Empire had taken back Altair and were now en route to Deneva. It
seems the harrying of supply lines had been done to divert Starfleet resources to protect these
vulnerable routes while the Empire attacked major outposts in earnest. Over the next three months,
Starfleet lost most of its retaken territory including one of their new Starbases.
On top of this, the Draylaxians, a species that Starfleet had managed to convince
of the Romulan threat were taken off the board when a Romulan vessel collides with
Draylax at superluminal speeds, devastating the world, a tactic they’ve employed twice before.
In early 2160, the Romulans began their push for Earth. In February, Enterprise had been returned
to Earth McKinley Station for repairs, so was on hand to help intercept the stealth attack.
Evading the Vulcan Detection grid was something that the Romulans had become
very adept at and they made it all the way to the Kuiper Belt before their shadow loomed.
Asteroids and comets from Sol’s orbiting rock and ice fields, around 50 AU from the Sun, were often
used as materials for terraforming. They were launched from the belt towards the needed planet
where they would coast across the intersystem distance until received by fellow waiting ships.
For example, on Mars, they could simply bring a ball of ice into its orbit and drop measured
chunks to the surface to add water, this is all before terraforming tech such as Genesis and
weather control devices. Communications with Iceberg 15 in the Kuiper Belt had been lost
and the ship sent to investigate also vanished. So the NX-01 moved in to take a look and discovered
the debris of the SS Franklin as well as several escape pods. They moved into recover a pod,
only to have it explode as they closed in, with and Atomic Blast.
As mentioned in a previous episode, nukes were pretty much outdated by the 22nd century,
even one detonating against a ship’s duranium hull
probably wouldn’t do much and spaceships are, by necessity, radiation proofed. Nevertheless,
the tactic was obvious, rescuing escape pods was now a danger as a bomb going off inside a Starship
would still cripple it. Not to mention, you can still drop a nuke on a planet.
It was Lieutenant Mayweather, currently not on the Enterprise who realised that a small Romulan
fleet was coasting along on low power, following the trajectory of the terraforming-bound comets,
a similar tactic that he had used to approach Mars undetected in 2155 to fight Terra Prime.
Once discovered, the Star Empire’s sneak attack was easily defeated by Earth defence,
but they had gotten close enough to the planet to land several blows.
Tunis and Madrid were subject to brief but devastating orbital bombardment
before the Romulan vessels were destroyed. Now it became clear that Earth had the Star
Empire’s near-complete attention, they had been forced back all the way to their homeworld.
Near-complete attention. One looming issue had been diverting Admiral Valdore of the Star
Empire’s attention. The warp 7 program that the Romulans had been working on, was in fact being
run by splinter faction of Romulans called the Ejhoi Ormiin. It seems that this group,
reverse engineering captured Vulcan tech wanted to use their breakthroughs to seize political
favour in the Empire, while Valdore wished to bring the rogue warp-7 program under his wing,
under his control. As such, the project was not yet completed,
although nearing breakthrough at the facility in the Cheron system. Agents of Valdore managed
to infiltrate and take control of the Cheron base and its seven warp seven prototypes, to find them
incomplete. This is where Tucker, still undercover renters the picture with his experience in Vulcan,
Romulan and Warp tech. Tucker had been uncovered as a spy by the Romualns,
but thanks to his biology altering drugs he had been taking to maintain his false identity,
they mistook him for a Vulcan agent pretending to be a Tal Shiar Romulan. When in reality he
was a human section 31 plant, pretending to be a Vulcan who was pretending to be a Romulan.
I can’t tell anymore if he’s making a fantastic secret agent or an awful one.
But they basically co-opted his skill in repairing the warp 7 ships through
mind probes, logical manipulations and constant vigilance when he was working. He was not
able to sabotage the project as he had no doubt been hoping, but he still had a critical role
to play in the upcoming Battle of Cheron which I’ll cover in the next video of this series as
it marks the climax of the Earth-Romulan war and the beginnings of the UFP proper.
The fact that this tale of ensuring Tucker’s survival is so complex is actually made fun of
in at the book during its epilogue, so it’s very self-aware about the craziness it’s weaving. But
as we move into the final chapter of Earths first interstellar war, we can see that Starfleet has
been forced right back to protect Earth, which itself is no longer safe. Their resources are
being drained, but so too are the Romulans. However its mostly due to the split war with
the Haakonans and the Romulan’s own political scheming that has handicapped the Star Empire,
giving Earth time to continue to argue the necessity of intervention towards its Coalition
allies, which is finally about to pay off. There is no doubt however, that the Coalition’s
view, humans in particular, of Romulans is deeply altered by these events. Booby-trapping
escape pods, ambushes that turn out to be busts against the ambushers, ship hijacking weapons and
warp-ramming runs on civilian worlds all breed a lot of resentment against the Star Empire
and it would persist for generations. Reading events such as this and being privy to the
thoughts of characters such as Archer during this war make the mistrust of Romulus far more weighty
when we are confronted with fearful reactions that the Star Empire produces
in the numerous Trek series. Bias breeds bias and xenophobia comes around full circle if you let it.
So thank you for watching this video concerning the Romulan War and I look forwards to recapping
the battle of Cheron as portrayed in these books. After this, I want to continue looking into the
early challenges faced by the fledgling UFP from a myriad of other sources and I’m also
planning to collate other interpretations of the Earth-Romulan war, as this is far
from the only one, simply a beta canon tale that incorporates the setup of Star Trek Enterprise.
I’ve been Ric, thanks again for watching and I’ll see you later, goodbye!