Talk:Romulan

Ridges not removed in Picard

The article currently states that Romulan appearance was changed again in Picard to remove Romulan ridges. This is not true. First, it was established in TNG that although most Romulans we see in that time have ridges, not all did. For example, a Romulan woman posed as a Vulcan diplomat, and Spock was able to pass as a Romulan on Romulus without the ridges. There were also many Romulans in the "Star Trek: Enterprise" series who could pass as Vulcans. In Star Trek: Picard, the male housekeeper of Picard on earth (and former Tal'Shiar), Zhaban, has some ridges. The female housekeeper, Laris, did not. When they had captured one of the Romulans that tried to kill him, that Romulan had ridges. Laris said something about him being a stubborn northerner like Zhaban. This seems to indicate that the presence or absence of ridges depends on which area the Romulans come from. --Daniel (talk) 06:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Daniel - This is a good point; I had not noticed Zhaban's ridges until now. However, in Star Trek Picard, the overall tone and depiction of the Romulans changes somewhat as well (for instance, the behavior of Narek and Narissa is uncharacteristic, I believe, of the behavior exhibited by the Romulans of the TNG/DS9 era). Do you think this is notable or substantial enough to mention in the article as well, though? Mocl125 (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Mental Resonance

It was implicitly stated several times (by "Spock")in the original TV series that Vulcans had full, intense telepathic and meantal "projective" abilities, that eventually drove them to the edge of madness, as they were able to read each other minds, and were also able to mentally attack each other! Spock also stated only the "discipline" of "Logic" was able to "regulate", and therefore adequately suppress their extra-mental powers as well a their emotions, one being of factor to the other! Vulcans can variably "read" both 'emotions' (which implies that they can efficiently interpret them,) as well as "surface" and sublime thoughts,) except that full-on telepathy requires willfully-and with great personal effort and cost-a lowering of inherent "flattened" emotions...or, rather, "heightening" them; but it also seems that they must necessarily employ tactile, physical contact at the temples of the cranium closet to the frontal lobes of the brain. this implies that not all mental defenses are "exposed" (lowered) in this manner; The Vulcan's Telepathic veracity is linked to their emotions! It would seem that since the Romulans haven't exhibited explicitly any telepathic ability, they may have found themselves to do the exact opposite of the Vulcans: Either they evolved to discard their telepathy, or their base emotions serves to "numb", or suppress this ability; (or, found a way of discarding this "power" altogether). They may even be impervious to "outside" telepathy altogether, and therefore become "inscrutable" to other aliens in this regard, especially Vulcnas!!! --184.248.4.182 (talk) 06:29, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Veryverser

Biology

The Biology section has a tag from 2009 that much of the material is original reasearch, other citation needed tags, and alot of info that is simply trivial (such as the section on the appearance of the Romulans in the recent reboot movie). Looking at objectively, it appears that most of it is based upon material from various episodes/movies, but is not cited as such and should really be chopped down. I hate those people who come on the Talk section and say This Sucks! with no suggestion of a fix, but I'm new to the page and don't want to step on any toes so I'm wondering about opinions. I'd be happy to offer up a suggested edit, but as I've said above, I'm not sure people will be too please because I'm betting it'll be pretty slim. Thanks - Ckruschke (talk) 19:22, 22 February 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke

Less detail

Really, this article has way too many details. It needs cutting down. It also might be a good idea to expand this into several other articles. I can't do that much right now. I took out the Romulan military lecture on rank, which was boring and irrevelant, and cuisine, which really was irrelevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.50.233.28 (talk) 12:51, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate you finally utilizing the talk page - though it took no less than two other editors reverting you to get that to happen. As you appear to be new to Wikipedia, you will find that if you are reverted, its best to bring your concerns regarding that revert to here, the talk page. If you don't, we have no way to understand what's going on with your edit.

I agree that the article has too many uncited details. As this is an encyclopedia, we operate with the premise that the information found here can always be found elsewhere. If there are sources on subjects like Romulan military rankings or cuisine, it should stay. If not, it should go after a reasonable time of being tagged as needing citation; that usually means for about a month (unless it is a BLP, in which case it cannot go in at all without being reliably cited).

As for boring, I have found that what is boring to one editor might be of particular interest to another editor. One never knows, which is why its an encyclopedia, and not a website about a specific subject, right? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 16:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Alternate Reality section

Should we move or remove the section "Romulans in the Alternate Reality"? After all, Star Trek only features Romulans who were from the Prime Reality. Little to nothing was seen about the actual Romulans of the Alternate Reality. Transphasic (talk) 01:57, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Article blanking

I note that there is an essay WP:Blanking sections sometimes violates policies. I would think that the arguments it contains would be even more applicable when its an entire article that is being blanked. What's the point of AFD if any editor is free to blank an article? This article exists on Wikipedia in 23 other languages, which seems like a lot of consensus to be going against. The mighty pig (talk) 01:39, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Agree - this should have been talked about so I restored the original full page. No other "Star Trek Race" page has been similarly deleted or had reduction in content, so why are we doing it on this page? Needs to be brought to Talk. Ckruschke (talk) 14:48, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke

....A Bit of Fresh Air Required...

Wow! there's an awful lot of discussion here, and an awful lot of content in the actual article.

Now, I'm going to do something a bit unkind and controversial: I'm going to suggest that "Romulans" and the "Romulan Star Empire" are not real. I realise that some of the more ardent Trekkies will be sharpening their bat'leths and baying for my blood for saying so, but the fact remains that I'm right.

This whole article should - if I'm brutally honest - be scrapped, or at least SEVERELY pared back and merged into some kind of all-encompassing article about "Star Trek". It really does not reflect credit on Wikipedia as a ( - supposed - ) organ of serious factual content that there should be such an "in-depth" article about what is ( - essentially - ) nonsense. Leave it to "Memory Alpha" and other such Wikis.

I'm sorry if I've made anyone cry by shattering any delusions, but I suspect I've done you a favour in a way you probably don't yet appreciate. 81.99.236.225 (talk) 22:43, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Romulan language

How come there's no section regarding Romulan language? It seems there is a rich set of Romulan words mentioned both in & out of the Star Trek franchise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pintogrunt (talk • contribs) 12:37, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Missing information on Romulan starships and spacecraft

A page titled List of Star Trek spacecraft (see link: Lists_of_Star_Trek_spacecraft) shows a section with a listing of links to various group of starships belonging to major races. The listing shows something like Borg starships, Cardassian starships, Ferengi starships, etc., and the list includes "Romulan starships (includes the Romulan Warbird of TNG)"

When clicking on that link, it only leads to the page about Romulans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulan), with no detailed mention of any starships.

What happened to the page about Romulan starships? Did someone decided to delete it? It would be considered important to have this page still active, and give detailed information about the Romulan starships, specially when needing to know class names, and names of any starships. Something similar to Klingon_starships

As far as I know, the purpose of Wikipedia is not to force people to find information somewhere else. I came here to find information on Romulan starships, find the page missing, and had to go find the details somewhere else. It is like tearing out a page from a book, and expect you to go to another bookshop and look for another book for the information you seek.

Would someone please restore the page related to Romulan starships, or if it is deleted forever, then would someone with website experience please set up a new one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:4880:B01:80C9:8151:70E:D4E (talk) 14:16, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't wish to be unkind, but please remember that Star Trek is fiction. The Romulans aren't real. The article previously was structured in such a way as to constantly imply that they were (and was also almost totally unreferenced). If Reliable Sources can be found that discuss how TV set and model designers actually created Romulan vessels for use in the show and films, then that can certainly be included in the article, but we really must not present Romulan vessels as if they are somehow real. There is already Memory Alpha for that. Midnightblueowl (talk) 22:16, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Romulans in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Where??

144.50.51.60 (talk) 16:45, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Openning scene, Kobayashi Maru training simulator. Enterprise enters Romulan Neutral Zone, is attacked by three Romulan vessels. StarHOG (Talk) 15:24, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Those are Klingon ships, and the simulation is in the Klingon neutral zone. The ship’s computer voice says so (“Alert! Three Klingon cruisers bearing...”). Also, that’s why when it’s over Kirk says to Saavik “Klingons don’t take prisoners.”Ww adh77 (talk) 02:28, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

You're right! StarHOG (Talk) 14:45, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal

{{merge from}}

The Romulan language page has almost no content and no sourcing. It could easily be moved to this article. StarHOG (Talk) 13:10, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

• Agree. Make it so. Eric ^talk 13:46, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
• Agree. Really it is just restoring the redirect that was there previously. -- 109.79.82.194 (talk) 14:27, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Reception

This article should include a Reception section. This article is not improved by removing the section entirely.[1] A weak Reception section is still infinitely better than no Reception section at all.

Den of Geek rated the Romulans the 7th best aliens out of a list of 50 species.[2] That's not nothing. It might not be a weighty academic source but it is still a an adequate source nonetheless. The article is very heavy on in-universe description of the Romulans but lacking the kind of critical commentary of outside analysis that would make it a much better article (one of the things that IMHO Wikipedia frequently does better that Memory Alpha and goes a long way to making these kinds of articles worthwhile). It might seem obvious to anyone interested in Star Trek that the Romulans have a certain level of popularity but an encyclopedia article should be trying to explain and provide context for people who might not already know what seems obvious. There's always someone out there who is coming to the series for the first time, who wont know that the Vulcans and the Klingons are by far the most popular aliens and the Romulans much less so. (Even as someone interested in Star Trek I wouldn't necessarily have guessed that the Cardassians would be more highly rated than the Romulans). If there are other sources that better show the popularity (or un-popularity) of the Romulans, or otherwise analyse how they were received by critics or audiences or academics then it would be reasonable to be more selective about which sources are included but it is counter-productive to let the future best be enemy of the present good enough now.

Romulus wasn't built in a day. Blanking the section is not a good way to improve the article, and ultimately does not make the Encyclopedia better. If you have suggestions or actions to make things better then by all means please go right ahead but please restore the Reception section. -- 109.79.82.194 (talk) 14:52, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Well put re Romulus! I'm buried with non-wp stuff today, but wanted to quickly point you to this discussion, which I neglected to do yesterday: Talk:Balance_of_Terror#Reception; there might be others I'm forgetting. I agree that nixing the whole section is not ideal. Eric ^talk 17:15, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

If you agree why haven't you restored some or all of the section? Would have taken even less time than adding a comment.

That discussion you pointed me to was also started by me and also pointed out how unhelpful it was to delete poorly written but properly sourced content like that. A big part of the reason I stopped using an account or editing regularly was that people kept deleting things for no good reason (the deletionists have been running the asylum for so long most people probably dont know it didn't used to be like that) and most of the time not even bothering to explain themselves. It is a systemic problem, deleting is too damned easy. I absolutely don't have time to fix everything myself but the least I can do is to make it very clear when a whole lot of sources have been deleted from an article so that other editors have a better chance of noticing and restoring them later. (The "Rome wasn't built" essay was more about not worrying about deadlines, the essay Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built is probably more applicable to this case.)

Deleting list cruft is easy, turning a list into meaningful prose is hard, but it is not impossible. For example take an episode article like Balance of Terror, instead of a long list of miscellaneous praise, you would try to turn it into a concise paragraph saying something alone the lines of: A, B, and C said it was one of the best episodes of the series. X, Y, Z said it was one of the best episodes of the entire franchise. That's very different from deleting sources ABC and XYZ. One example of my own mediocre attempt to do this, to turn lists into a hopefully coherent paragraph, can be seen in the article for the Enterprise episode Unexpected, in the last paragraph of the Reception section and I'm not claiming I did a great job but it is better than the list that was there before.

Return to first principles, the whole point here is make a better Encyclopedia, large deletes frequently miss that fundamental point. If you'll allow me a flowery metaphor: The best editors can spin and weave the thread (of list cruft) into golden cloth. The mess that some editors feel the need to clear away is work in progress, and someone will get around to improving it eventually, probably. -- 109.79.176.128 (talk) 14:31, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, it's not the kind of content I get inspired to work on, as I find it to be mostly fluff--yes, my opinion--no offense meant. Hence the blunt-instrument deletion. To tell the truth, I'd be more likely to make the effort when stuck inside on short, cold days, but it's summer here now. Anyway, I'm not that passionate about it, and I won't quibble if you really think it adds value and want to restore it. I suspect wp is going down a much darker path with real-world events, so the risk of credibility loss from having an excess of reviews of fictional spacecraft is negligible by comparison. Eric ^talk 17:53, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I'll add: When the scorecard of us Star Trek nerds is written, you will certainly win more points for "Romulus was not built in a day" than you might lose for going too deep into Warbird reviews! Eric ^talk 18:00, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

What I have been doing with my extra indoor time is rewatching Enterprise and trying to improve related episode articles, but allowing myself to wander off the path into other parts of Star Trek in the hope that I'll find more references I might be able to reuse. If I stumble across a good article about Romulans while looking for other things I might add it here, but too often I end up finding a source about something else other than what I was actually looking for.[3] The Reception section is weak and I'd certainly prefer stronger sources and more in depth analysis in these articles but I'm not making any promises to do the work either. I'm trying to avoid slapping big {{In-universe}} warning banners or other drive-by tags that people will just ignore, I just want to make sure there are at least some bits of scaffolding to encourage growth and maybe I can come back around and try to rewrite the lists into something better.

Hopefully someone will rewrite it eventually (once in a while I'm lucky enough to be able to easily fix some really old out of date requests) but there's always the risk that someone will come along and deprecate it, or deplatform it out of existence, or just plain old delete it but thanks for taking the time to reconsider. Enjoy your summer, don't forget to use suncreen. -- 109.79.168.149 (talk) 22:36, 27 June 2021 (UTC)