Star Trek Quietly Confirms Genocide Of Entire Species?

Before you can process this bonkers idea, we need to review Star Trek: Nemesis and what that film taught us about the Remans. We discover they are lower-hierarchy laborers used by the Romulans to mine dilithium, construct weapons, and serve as disposable shock troops. Some Remans have telepathic abilities and can use them to psychically invade others’ minds–notably, the film never reveals whether the Remans are a genetic offshoot of Romulans or an entirely different race.

Interestingly, future Star Trek shows revealed very little about the Remans: Enterprise explicitly confirmed they were slaves to the Romulans and sometimes served (thanks to their great strength) as bodyguards to high-ranking officials such as senators. Picard, meanwhile, confirmed that at least some Remans had survived the supernova (more on this later) and served as intergalactic assassins. With its usual tongue-in-cheek humor, Star Trek: Lower Decks helped us discover that Remans have dark purple blood and that Romulans consider them “the worst.”

With that Star Trek context out of the way, let’s get back to the grim subject of Reman genocide. At the end of the second season, Discovery jumped forward in time to the 32nd century, allowing us to learn more about what various alien races have been up to for the last few centuries. Notably, we learn that the Vulcans and Romulans have re-unified (nice work, Spock!), with members of both races living in harmony on the planet Vulcan, which has since been renamed to Ni’var.

For all that Star Trek: Discovery tells us about the Romulans and the Vulcans, the show has (so far, at least) not mentioned anything about the Remans. One of the reasons this is notable is that the Reman homeworld, like the Romulan homeworld, would have been destroyed by the supernova we first hear about in Star Trek (2009). The existence of Reman assassins in Picard confirms at least some of them are still around in the 25th century, but if those are part of only a handful of survivors, it’s possible the whole race has been wiped out (thanks to their various enemies) by the 32nd century.

Another reason these Star Trek aliens could be gone is that the Romulans got all of the Remans killed before mellowing out and reunifying with their Vulcan cousins. We know that Romulus relied on Reman slave labor in dangerous occupations like dilithium mining and fighting in conflicts such as the Dominion War. Between this potentially heavy loss of life and the deaths caused by the supernova, it’s possible there just weren’t enough Remans to sustain their population into the 32nd century.

Of course, it’s possible that Star Trek gave the Remans a happy ending without drawing our attention to it. If these outcast aliens were distant Romulan cousins in the 25th century, it’s possible they would have just been integrated into Romulan society in the later centuries, especially because supernova survivors would want to stick together.

If you’re hoping Discovery confirms the status of the Remans, it’s entirely possible Captain Burnham and crew will get an answer from the Preservers. In a season filled with Romulan secrets, such a revelation wouldn’t surprise me in the least.  When the smoke clears, here’s hoping we’ll get a chance to buy a Reman figure and put him right next to our favorite piece of plastic on the shelf: Action Saru, now with a kung-fu grip.