Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Romulans

10. Do As The Romans

"Patrolling outposts guarding the neutral zone between planets Romulus and Remus and the rest of the galaxy," Kirk states in his Captain's log at the start of Act One of Balance of Terror. By now considered one of Star Trek's best, the episode that introduced us to the Romulans was written by Paul Schneider who, despite some apparent confusion over the years, gets the credit for inventing the species in the first place.

In Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, Schneider confirmed his thought process behind the creation: "I came up with the concept of the Romulans which was an extension of the Roman civilisation to the point of space travel." Indeed, it's all there: the mythical twin founders, centurions, the Praetor, Commander Decius… the helmets, and, as shown later, the Senate, assassinations, and slavery (of the Remans). And if the Western Roman Empire fell (in part) to the hubris and political machinations of its leaders, as well as to outside forces, the Romulan Empire owes its demise to much the same reasons.

In The Making of Star Trek (1968), Stephen E. Whitfield and co-credit Gene Roddenberry added further parallels between Romulan society and the latter days of Rome, stating: "Romulans are highly militaristic […]. The Star Empire is a dictatorship, with some similarities to the warrior-stoic philosophies of Earth's ancient Roman Empire." Roddenberry was equally fond of a Cold War parallel so, just as the Klingons were Soviet Russia, "the Romulans [also] represented the 1960s Chinese Communists," according to John Logan in the introduction to the novelisation of Star Trek: Nemesis.