According to a recent spoiler report from TrekWebs Robnhud, the entire Romulan Senate will be brutally murdered in the upcoming Star Trek movie in a mass assassination plot by Shinzon, the Picard clone originally created by the Romulans to kill the infamous Starfleet captain. With the aid of the Remans, a slave race used to mine dilithium on Romuluss sister world, Remus, Shinzon manages to pull off this coup on the Romulan government and move forward with his plans to crush the Federation.



Appealing as this movie-opener may be to those Star Trek fans who have long since advocated the use of gratuitous onscreen violence, it is wholly impractical. At the start of his writing the new film, John Logan, co-writer of the Oscar-winning Gladiator, said he was reviewing recent episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to make sure Trek X would fit seamlessly into the established Star Trek universe. This mass assassination attempt, however, leaves quite a few seams in continuity.



The most glaringly obvious of these problems is the absence of the Tal Shiar, the ubiquitous Romulan intelligence agency that constantly monitors the Romulan people for disloyalty and frequently acts outside of government authority, much like Earths KGB or Gestapo. Now, some would say the Tal Shiar is no longer active because of the crippling defeat it suffered when it attempted to destroy the Foundershomeworld in DS9. Yet a later episode of DS9 showed the Tal Shiar -- or at least its internal affairs division -- to be very much a force to be reckoned with in Romulan politics. How could a banished alien slave realistically assassinate the highest legislative body of an interstellar empire without being caught by the vigilant Tal Shiar, which is responsible for state security?



The series also have shown Romulan senators to be very powerful people. Theres Pardek from Star Trek: The Next Generations Unification, Cretak from Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, and Vreenak from In The Pale Moonlight, to name a few. When Vreenak was assassinated by what appeared to be Dominion agents, the Romulan Empire went so far as to declare war on the Dominion in revenge. How could the entire Senate be murdered without repercussions running so deep within the imperium that Shinzon would be inevitably forced from power?



The same episode that established the Tal Shiar as a still-dominant force also featured the ambitious Neral, who held the position of proconsul back in TNGs Unification, as praetor of the Romulan government, the chief executive office of the empire. Where is he during all of this? Even if he were assassinated, the series have shown the Romulans as so politically opportunistic that another would doubtless be waiting in the wings to seize power.



Then, of course, theres the Romulan Imperial family, mentioned in the Star Trek: Voyager episode The Q and the Grey. Though the Imperial family has yet to be fleshed out onscreen, they would surely represent yet another of the many forces that would block Shinzons coup in a more well-conceived scenario.



There are ways of getting around the gaping plot holes created by the assassination of the Senate, but their complexity would weigh the plot down considerably. Unless Shinzons political maneuvering is shown onscreen or at the very least discussed, it will weaken Trek X considerably, and a weak storyline is unworthy of the quality viewers have come to expect from a writer of Gladiator.



Kevin Saponaro is Airlock Alpha's resident Romulan (Rihannsu) expert and an occasional contributor to the site.