The best moments of the iconic Star Trek villain never really happened
Chris Snellgrove | publishing
What if the best moments of the greatest Star Trek villain never really happened? It sounds like a paradox, but honestly, this long-running sci-fi franchise is the paradox that you do best. The “paradox” of course describes the Roman commander Tomalak, who is The next generation is a fake hologram in “The Future Imperfection” and in the alternative timeline of the series finale “All the Good Things”.
If you need a primer about the character, Tomalak is a Romulan commander who first appears in the “Enemy” trying to rescue the crew of a crashed reconnaissance ship. Basically, he was Captain Picard’s Basil…the one who wasn’t afraid to show his teeth when necessary, but ended up preferring diplomatic solutions. Perfect role-playing Babylon 5 Icon Andreas Katsulas in four episodes of TNG, but in a notable twist we see only the “real” Thomaroc in half of the plot.
In this case, what does “real” mean? We first see Tomalak in “Enemy” who reappears in “Defector” in one of TNG's best Romulan plots. The next character appears in the “The Future Imperfect” plot, but we find that he's just the wild twists of that episode are holograms.
“The Future Imperfect” is an episode where Riker wakes up at Sickbay after the cold opens and discovers it's 16 years later, and he's now the captain of the business. He suffered a memory loss conveniently, and he served as the flagship captain, including negotiating a federal/Rolu peace treaty with Tomalak. Eventually, he realizes that he is trapped in the simulation by a lonely alien boy, and that everything he goes through (including multiple interactions with Tomalak) is not real.
After that, Tomalak only had another on-screen look on the screen, but it was a stupid person. He appears in the TNG series finale, “All Good Things”, and he and Picard agree to send each ship to investigate the mysterious space phenomenon in the Devron system (he is particularly picky, and Picard never used the Starfleet command to clear the program). At the end of the episode, Picard saves the galaxy and resets reality, but that means all his interactions with Tomalak happen in another reality that is quickly erased.
For us, we just like to see Tomalak on screen without losing too much sleep because of whether these looks are “real” or not. Thanks to Andreas Katsulas' (Inter) excellent performance, Tomalak easily becomes the most memorable Romulan of all The next generation. The fact that his character so accepts diplomacy at the end of the series helped to eliminate any lingering notion of the lingering ideas of the rosy bone.
However, there are few things that Star Trek fans prefer debate than Canon, and some of them may be obsessed with Thomalak's appearance actually affecting the show's schedule (even if, because A strange new world Confirm that the schedule is always in flux status). By remembering the lyrics of another iconic sci-fi show, these fans are well served: “If you want to know how he eats and breathes and other scientific facts…just repeat to yourself, ‘It’s just a show, I really should relax!’’’’
