Telek R'Mor
Doctor Telek R'Mor was a low-ranking Romulan scientist and minor functionary attached to the Romulan Astrophysical Academy during the mid-24th century.

Talvath research mission 
In early 2350, Dr. R'Mor began a three-year mission, conducting "secret research" aboard the science vessel Talvath. According to a claim he later made, R'Mor had a wife and daughter who lived on Romulus. His daughter was born several months into his mission. He knew, when he accepted his assignment, that he would pay the price of missing his family. After a year away from his family, he began to realize how high that price was.

Voyager encounter 
In mid-2351, while traversing Sector 1385 of the Alpha Quadrant, the Talvath discovered a microprobe lodged in an eddy of a micro-wormhole. The Talvath made repeated scans of the probe and R'Mor soon received a vocal transmission from the other side of the wormhole, which identified itself as originating from "the Federation starship ," stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Introducing himself only as the captain of a cargo vessel, he was unconvinced that Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant but instead believed it must really be from the Alpha Quadrant. He terminated communications, in fear that he had been discovered by Starfleet spies on a covert surveillance mission.

After analyzing Voyagers hailing frequency for several hours, R'Mor was able to confirm that it had originated in the Delta Quadrant. Upon re-establishing contact with Voyager, he at first skeptically asked Captain Kathryn Janeway if Voyager was a Starfleet ship and if she was actually a Federation spy, to which Janeway replied that she wasn't and that her ship couldn't pose much threat to him while stuck in the Delta Quadrant. Janeway also used this opportunity to ask him if he might be willing to deliver a series of personal messages from her crew back to the Federation. He countered that, to ease his apprehension, they should "proceed one step at a time" and attempt to establish a visual link first.

Once visual contact was established with Voyager, R'Mor was unable to immediately recognize the configuration of the  vessel. This surprised Captain Janeway, who noted it was new but not classified. In the meantime, R'Mor had communicated with the Romulan Senate with respect to sending Voyagers messages. The Senate had promised to take the matter "under advisement." Following a sympathetic plea from Janeway, R'Mor once again contacted the Senate, in an attempt to persuade his superiors to make their decision quickly and favorably.

Upon further analysis of R'Mor's comm signal aboard Voyager, its crew was able to determine a way to match the phase amplitude of his data transmission to their transporter frequency. This announcement startled R'Mor, who noted that the operatives of Romulan Intelligence must have not been doing their job, as such a technological capability would be an incredible breakthrough in subspace field mechanics. He offered to have himself transported to Voyager and back again, as opposed to having a member of Voyagers crew beam aboard his ship. If his journey was successful, he would subsequently arrange for a troop transport to join him for Voyagers crew. He successfully participated in a series of test transports of a Starfleet test cylinder to and from his ship, and then transported aboard Voyager.

Upon R'Mor's arrival, he and the Starfleet crew quickly realized that, due to a temporal displacement in the wormhole, he had transported through a temporal shift twenty years into the future, to 2371. After further discussing the situation – including consideration of having the Starfleet crew beam over despite the temporal displacement or warning Starfleet of Voyagers ill-fated mission, offers Captain Janeway turned down because of the temporal implications – R'Mor agreed to take the messages from Voyagers crew back with him to his ship and transmit them at the appropriate time: after Voyager became lost in the Delta Quadrant. ()

Later life 
R'Mor's scheduled time of return to Romulus was in 2353, when he would be able to see his daughter – who would be over two years old – for the first time. He died in 2367, four years before he could deliver the Voyager crew's letters to their families. It was speculated by B'Elanna Torres that he may have either included instructions in a will for someone else to pass on their messages or handed over the computer chip to the Romulan government. ()

While the messages were apparently not transmitted to the Federation, the Romulans were interested in Voyager for years, according to Reginald Barclay. ()

Appendices

Background information 
In the series run of , Dr. R'Mor was the first contact that the starship Voyager was shown as having with the Alpha Quadrant since becoming stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Had R'Mor communicated with Starfleet in 2351 – or any time before the events in  – it would have preceded the contact made with the Romulans by Captain Jean-Luc Picard by up to thirteen years and ended Romulan isolation much sooner (assuming his government would have allowed such communication at that time). Regardless, his contact with the Voyager crew represented the first known, non-hostile contact between the two factions since 2311, the year the Federation and Romulan Star Empire signed the Algeron Treaty.

Dr. R'Mor was played by Star Trek veteran Vaughn Armstrong. The character proved to be extremely popular, not only generally but also with Armstrong himself. He remarked, "That was a very nice character to portray because of the conflicts he had within himself [...] I love that character." (Lost Transmissions from the Delta Quadrant, VOY Season 1 DVD special feature) The actor further commented, "[R'Mor] holds a soft spot in my heart because he was from a kind of mean race that still had great family values. He loved his children [...] That was a binding factor that I enjoyed about the character." () In addition, the actor cited R'Mor as "probably the most interesting character to do," of all the alien characters Armstrong played on Star Trek. He went on to say about the Romulan, "He's more subtle than the rest. There's sort of a heartfelt truth about all of us in any quadrant being connected by the love of our children. That was kind of a touching thing to play."

Apocrypha 
R'Mor is featured in the Voyager  trilogy Dark Matters. As such, he appears on the covers of the first two volumes in that series – Cloak and Dagger and Ghost Dance. The trilogy depicts him going to Voyager a second time, to once again collaborate with Captain Janeway and her crew. On this occasion, R'Mor tries to help prevent an alien from destroying every universe in existence through altering the balance of dark matter present in each universe. He and the Voyager crew are successful, and he returns to his own timeline in the Alpha Quadrant, where he dies in 2367 (per canon history).

External links 
 
 

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