By Chris Snellgrove | Published
What happens if the best moments of Star Trek Villain never really happened? That may sound like a paradox, but let’s be honest, paradoxes are what this long -term science fiction franchise makes better. And “Paradox” certainly describes commander Romulano Tomalak, whose most memorable appearances in The next generation They were like a false hologram in “Future Imperfect” and in an alternative timeline of the final of the series “All good things”.
In case you need a manual in the character, Tomalak is a Romulano commander who first appeared in “the enemy” trying to rescue the crew of a star explorer. Basically it is the romulano equivalent to Captain Picard … someone who is not afraid to undress his teeth when necessary, but finally prefers diplomatic solutions. The character was interpreted perfectly by Babylon 5 The Andreas Katsulas icon in four TNG episodes, but in a notable turn, we only saw the “real” tomalok in half or those episodes.
What does “real” mean in this case? We saw Tomalak for the first time in “The Enemy”, and appeared again in “The Dedector”, one of the best Romulan Episodes of TNG. The character then appeared in the “Future Imperfect” episode, but we discovered that it was just a hologram through the wild turn of that episode.
“Future Imperfect” was the episode in which Riker woke up in Sickbay after the cold to discover that they are 16 years later and now he is captain of the company. Conveniently suffering memory loss, navigate his duties as captain of the flagship, including the negotiation of a Treaty of the Romulana Federation/Peace with Tomalak. Possible, he realizes that a lonely alien child kicked him in a simulation and that nothing he experienced (including multiple interactions with Tomalak) was real.
After that, Tomalak only made one more appearance on the screen, but it was a doubtful. He appeared in the final of the TNG series “All Good Things”, where he and Picard agree to send a ship each to investigate a mysterious space phenomenon in the Devron system (this plan has never been tickled in that picard). At the end of the episode, Picard has saved the galaxy and restored reality, but that means that all his deals with Tomalak Tok Place in an alternative reality that was soon erased.
As for us, we love to see Tomalak on the screen and not lose too much if these appearances were “real” or not. Thanks to the stellar action (Inter) of Andreas Katsulas, Tomalak easily became the most memorable romulano of all The next generation. And the very fact that his character was so reception to diplomacy at the end of the series helped to dissipate any persistent notion of the romulans as villains from a single note.
However, there are few things that Star Trek fans love to discuss more than the canon, and it is likely that some of them will be obsessed with which the seizures of Tomalak hit the program’s timeline (although, Ash Strange new worlds Confirmed, that timeline is always in flow). These fans would be well served when remembering the lyrics of the iconic opening song of another iconic science fiction program: “If you ask how you eat and breathe, and facts of the science of Eather … just repeat yourself, ‘it is just a program”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,”. “
