Trek 11 news that isn't new

Back to the Future disagrees!

Couldn't it be that, instead of preventing him from ever becoming Captain Kirk in the first place, they'd want to discredit him on his first mission, THEN kill him? What better revenge than to know you turned the golden boy of Starfleet into an example of failure?

Right. Some special reason why they go to a specific time.

The trouble with this is that there have already been so many ways that the crew of the Enterprise discovered to time-travel either by accident or design.

In TOS, there's the Guardian of Forever, the slingshot method, the cold restart of engines, the method used in Tomorrow is Yesterday, when the big E went back to do historical research. I think the method in ST IV is different from these. There's the device that was in that third season episode "All Our Yesterdays" or whatever that's called.

It just seems hard to buy that someone on a deliberate mission to change the past wouldn't be able to manage enough control to smother Kirk in his crib, or kill his grandparents, or nuke Riverside, Iowa or whatever.

STIV used the slingshot.

Such revenge would be more effective if one could arrange for Kirk to become a failure after he had already built an illustrious career.

The slingshot was in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (first accidentally then on purpose) and also in the "historical research (Assignment: Earth) and again in STIV.

The alien tech in "All Our Yesterdays" was destroyed.

Kirk already had a number of accomplishments to his name before he ever touched a Captain's uniform.

-Wikipedia

Destroying such a potential as his, especially if they manipulate him into doing himself in, could be much more gratifying than to defeat/discredit him after he becomes the Captain Kirk we knew.

Given Kirk's propensity for whipping a rabbit out of his ass at the last moment, and saving the day, why take the chance? Better to go back to some time period like the 20th/21st Century (or earlier) and whack a remote ancestor that no one's ever heard of.

Our Romulan-of-the-week wouldn't be a damn villain with that kind of attitude. There's no fun in it if the hero can't have a small chance of escape.

If he ain't read Peter's Evil Overlord List, particularly items 6 & 7:

He ain't worth the latex appliances he's wearing.

Dude, its science fiction. In my mind time control works according to how it was made. Who's to say that the Romulan time machine works the same as a Federation time shift?

And as you stated, those are 5 different ways to time travel. 3 being made by aliens.

You are right.

My main point was that as of TOS's time, there were various means of time travel known to the Federation that could allow with a fair degree of accuracy when you would end up.

I assume that at least some of those would be known beyond the Federation, such as the slingshot method.

Moreover, it's not unreasonable to assume that the Romulans have encountered their own time-travel devices in their explorations. I mean, all of them can't have been littered in Federation-controlled space.

And that is of course only as of Kirk's time. From what we were told, the Romulator is from the TNG/DS9/VOY era.

The TNG crew time travelled using a few diffferent means as well. (Borg tech in First Contact, the Ophidian cave-thingy when they went back to the old West, and I'm sure there are other examples I'm blanking on.) And VOY was all about time travel.

It seems a stretch to think that the Romulator, having decided to go and eliminate Kirk specifically, wouldn't have been able to develop a method to go to a specific point in time. Or at least, to a moment before Kirk was able to defend himself as a Starfleet officer in training.

I suppose there's some validity to the notion that the Romulator wanted to do more than just kill him; he wanted to humiliate his memory or something. But that is kinda lame in my book.

The slingshot method would have been around for 100 years prior to a TNG-era Romulan wanting to go back in time.

It seems like some basic research would have uncovered it.

I'd also anticipate the Romulans would do their own research, and would likely have come across some time-travel devices in their own space.

IMO, it would take KIRK, SPOCK and SCOTTY to make it work. I see them as the only ones who did it in TOS time.

I see the Enterprise as the only ship in Starfleet that time traveled in TOS time.

I want Romuloogle.

I farted.

We need a Richard Belzer to appear as Detective Munch. It's a universal rule in hollywood to have a munch appearance.

Only when there's a rug in the room.