By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
What if the best moments of Star Trek villain never really happened? This may look like a paradox, but let’s be honest, paradoxes are what this long-term science fiction franchise is best. And “paradox” certainly describes the Romulian commander Tomalak, whose most memorable appearances in The next generation were like a false hologram in “Imperfect future” and in an alternative chronology of the “All Good Things” series.
In the event that you need an introduction to the character, Tomalak is a Romulian commander who appeared for the first time in “The Enemy” trying to save the crew from a crushed scout ship. He is essentially the Romulian equivalent to Captain Picard … someone who is not afraid to bother his teeth if necessary but who ultimately prefers diplomatic solutions. The character was played perfection by Babylon 5 Andreas Katsulas icon in four episodes of TngBut in a notable turn, we only saw the “real” Tomalok in half of these episodes.
What does “real” mean, in this case? We first saw Tomalak in “The Enemy”, and he is reappeared in “The Defector”, one of the best Romulian episodes in TNG. The character then appeared in the “future imperfect” episode, but we discovered that he was only a hologram via the wild torsion of this episode.
“Future Imperfect” was the episode where Riker woke up in Sickbay after the open cold to discover that it is 16 years later and he is now captain of the Enterprise. Benefiting from memory loss, he sails in his duties as captain of the flagship, in particular by negotiating a treaty of the Federation / Romulian Peace with Tomalak. Finally, he realizes that he is trapped in a simulation by a single stranger Boy and that none of what he experienced (including multiple interactions with Tomalak) was real.
After that, Tomalak only appeared on the screen, but it was a Doozy. 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 spatial phenomenon in the Devron system (he particularly tickled that Picard never erased this plan with Starfleet Command). At the end of the episode, Picard saved the galaxy and reset reality, but that means that all his relationships with Tomalak took place in an alternative reality that was quickly erased.
As for us, we love to see Tomalak on the screen and do not lose too much sleep on the question of whether these appearances were “real” or not. Thanks to the Stellar performance (Inter) of Andreas Katsulas, Tomalak has easily become the most memorable Romulan of all The next generation. And the very fact that his character was so receptive to diplomacy at the end of the series helped to dispel all the persistent notions of the Romules as bad guys from a note.
However, there is little Star Trek Fans love to debate more than canon, and some of them are likely to be obsessed with the apparitions of Tomalak had an impact on the chronology of the program (even if, as Strange new worlds confirmed that the chronology is still in flow). These fans would be well served by remembering the words of another emblematic science fiction The emblematic opening song of show: “If you wonder how he eats and breathes, and other scientific facts … Repeat yourself:” It’s just a show, I should really relax! “”
