10 Best Ever Romulan Stories In Star Trek

The Romulans turned up a few more times in The Original Series' run (notably in The Enterprise Incident) but it would take The Next Generation to deliver the definitive version of the species.

In the season one finale of TNG, 'The Neutral Zone', the Enterprise discovers an old Earth satellite floating out near the Romulan neutral zone. It is established that no one has heard from the Romulans in almost 70 years (presumably they retired behind their borders after the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country). However, disturbing reports of colonies disappearing reach Starfleet Command and the Romulans are immediately the prime suspects.

At the episode's climax, Andrew Probert's beautiful D'deridex class Romulan Warbird de-cloaks directly in front of the Enterprise, its formidable size reaching almost twice the size of the Galaxy Class ship. A tense stand-off begins and the first shot of the new-look Romulans occurs. Gone are the smooth foreheads (although they would return in both the JJ Abrams reboot series and Star Trek: Picard), replaced now with the distinctive raised V.

The great Mark Alaimo, better known for his performance as Gul Dukat in Deep Space Nine, lends his slow, precise voice to the new Romulan soliders. He makes it clear that, while the Romulans have indeed been away, they have now returned. After the ship re-cloaks, Captain Picard realizes that life has just become a lot more complicated.

Ironically, this was initially meant to be their only appearance in TNG. They had been brought back to remind the audience of one of the great players in TOS with the intention of having them wiped out by the Borg to hammer home the size of the threat that the mechanical species presented. Thankfully, this idea was scrapped and paved the way for some of the best episodes to follow.