Zhat Vash and the Romulan Diaspora, Picard s1e2 Rewatch.
The timeline of the Romulan separation from Vulcan becomes even more murky and shrouded in legend and propaganda. Continuity complaints abound but "canon violation" often really just means "I don't like this, it is silly and dumb."
This is part of a series of essays reevaluating Star Trek Picard and interrogating the widely held fandom criticism that Picard made the Federation into a Dystopia.
This is the episode where we learn the name Zhat Vash in an info dump by Laris and Zhabon. Intriguingly and perhaps problematically they are described as having been active for thousands upon thousands of years.
This doesn’t line up very neatly with the hazy info we have on Romulan history. The exodus of Vulcans who rejected Surak’s teachings was only supposed to have taken place circa 470 CE when “those who marched beneath the Raptor’s wings” lost a struggle for domination of Vulcan society and left for the stars.
However, if the people who would become the Debrune and the Romulans could leave Vulcan in the first place and feasibly make an interstellar journey, that implies that Vulcan had had at least rudimentary interstellar travel prior which does not preclude a group of explorers who would become Zhat Vash stumbling across the Admonition and bringing its anti-Synth warning back with them.
Scrutiny of Memory Alpha to refresh my memory of what has been canonically established about Romulan and Vulcan history also brought up an interesting detail: Vulcans may not actually be from Vulcan.
In a TOS episode Spock actually speculates that a powerful telepathic species they encounter may actually have been ancestors of the Vulcans. Thus there is another possible vector for Zhat Vash to have been introduced into Vulcan and Romulan societies in that Zhat Vash may actually predate both civilizations.
At the risk of deviating into fan theory territory, I do have to wonder if this all adds extra texture to the Romulan / Vulcan split wherein Zhat Vash may have played a role in heightening tensions between the two over concerns that a rejection of emotion and the embrace of pure reason would lead the Vulcans to ultimately dismiss concerns over artificial intelligence as illogical products of anxiety over AI being hostile, uncontrollable, or a moral hazard of some sort.
It's also possible that tales of Zhat Vash have grown across multiple retellings and they were only founded after the schism.
I take a stance that we ought to be open to the idea that not all exposition is created equally and not all narrators are reliable. Zhabon and Laris may be our Herodotus in this scene: they’re relating what they were told, and believe up to a point, but we the audience ought not to assume their rumors about a cult operating inside or alongside the Tal’Shiar are completely accurate in every little detail.
It's worth reminding ourselves that even Picard himself does not seem to be a wholly reliable narrator either! In just the first two episodes, he repeatedly demonstrates lack of self awareness and other errors in judgment or lack of knowledge. Thus I think we ought to entertain the idea that even characters who are providing detailed exposition are stating what they believe but not necessarily providing 100% definitive facts about the setting.
At any rate, we find out that Commodore Oh, who has an ambiguous role in ensuring security from clandestine Romulan assassins operating on Earth, is herself a member of Zhat Vash. From what I can recall, even in private Oh does not “break character” which suggests to me that while it's assumed she’s Romulan, it's possible she is culturally Vulcan at least in her decision to abstain from overt displays of emotion.
Seeing as she’s not the first deep cover Romulan impersonating a Vulcan who presumably would have to pass as Vulcan to other Vulcans, I find myself wondering if some Romulans actually did go on to develop an ascetic tradition that mirrors Surak’s teachings but is either dogmatically different enough from Surak’s tradition to be tolerated by other Romulans or is merely tolerated for its usefulness in grooming deep cover agents.
Thematically, I find that I’m kind of over the trope of secret societies with seemingly omnipotent capabilities to hide and manipulate their host civilization. The X-Files is my own personal touchstone for this trope becoming popular and the longer the show ran, the more the trope became its own problem because the more you tug on the strings of that storyline, the more answers you have to cough up as to how they do what they do and why, and the explanations often become a bit hard to believe, if not contradictory.
Zhat Vash hiding inside of the Tal’Shiar, creating a situation where you have nesting dolls of memetically ultra effective, conspiratorial organizations just takes this to another level.
Having said that, the trope is subverted a bit in that while Zhat Vash is feared, they’re clearly not as good as they’re mythologized as being. First off Laris and Zhabon are able to pretty accurately lay out their agenda based on scraps of hearsay. Just off of memory, while Zhat Vash’s motives will be expanded upon as the season progresses, Laris and Zhabon already have at least the broad outline completely dead on.
This represents a level of operational security that falls well below Section 31 who had managed to erase almost all evidence of their having existed sometime after the events of Discovery’s second season and most people who seemed to have had personal knowledge of Section 31 kept it quiet enough that not even the likes of Captain Picard ever apparently heard so much as a scrap of a rumor.
Also this is a rant for another time, but I absolutely, positively despise Section 31. Absolutely nothing Star Trek Picard does corrupts the Federation thematically more than Section 31. It reeks of a refusal by the inventors of the organization to accept the core premise of the setting that a civilization that devotes itself to fairness both in equity and equality could ever endure or prosper.
Returning to Zhat Vash, as individuals Oh, Narek, and Narissa are far from perfect superspies. I remember Narissa in particular being a real problem for Oh and Narek who are far more cautious and plotting than the impulsive and rather sadistic Narissa.
Given my biases against conspiracy within a conspiracy storylines, I do look forward to trying to rejudge Zhat Vash and whether I think it holds together better than the Syndicate of the X-Files. For now I don’t exactly hate it, but I don’t love it.
I have to admit, one of my favorite things about Commodore Oh is that she deepens use of the Murder, She Wrote holodeck program to at least one adventure with either Tom Paris or Nick Locarno.
