We aren’t really shown anything to contradict it though.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Kirk's statement is certainly not meant to be one-sided opinion/propaganda but exposition. If they wanted to make the Klingons nuanced they would have gone the Romulan route and actually let us accompany the characters on their own. I get what you are saying but at the time the writer's intention was clear.
The way you go it's back to questioning every character's motivation and essentially make up our own headstory alongside or on top of what is actually shown to us. This is not a choose your own adventure kind of thing 😉
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
The crewmen's comment in VI was supposed to be a biased racist remark because the movie tackled the very topic and ended on a note of hope as both sides learned from each other. TOS wasn't there yet. As fond as I am of it, Star Trek's writing wasn't very subtle. It was at times progressive, but era appropriate. With "Romulan approach" I meant showing us the commander, their thoughts and thus humanizing them for tthe audience. That didn't happen with Klingons for a long time.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
That’s because IMO TOS Klingons behave vastly different than any other Klingons we’ve seen. I believe they were supposed to be a dark reflection of the federation, what they’d be if they didn’t try to live up to their high ideals. In ways I prefer this interpretation over the space-Viking-samurai-bikers they became later on.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
The Klingons were supposed to be the other guys in the Cold War, a war which in 1967 looked all too likely to become a radioactively hot one. They were not supposed to be a sympathetic adversary whose motivations we could learn to understand, they were supposed to be the bad guys in a Why We Fight propaganda piece.
Maybe the Klingons found a way to perfect slavery. You may not be able to effectively assemble a warp drive with a gun to your head but may be you will if the gun is pointed at a loved one.
And who says they use slave labor for high tech equipment. They could have a population mine all the raw materials on their planet and transport it to Kronos to be refined.
Also, most of the cited reasons why slavery "doesn't work" are ignoring situations where people are raised to be slaves. If you grow up knowing disobedience means being painfully punished or worse and obedience means being not getting punished and allowed to live in something that's more comfortable than a prison cell....
You need to read up properly on the history of the American South, because that's exactly how slaveowners tried to raise their slaves down here. Right down to selective interpretation of the Bible to say that slavery was God's will. You'll notice it didn't work out too well: they still required a huge infrastructure to keep their slaves in check (not running away, not revolting like Nat Turner) and it kept a significant proportion of manpower that could've fought the Union on the front lines tied up in home territory.
where do you think I got the idea from? Some of them did in fact partially succeed at this. Children don't automatically realize their social status is abnormal. IE slave children get raised by the slaves that aren't obviously rebellious, and thus get taught to behave like good little workers.
And yeah, that IS the sort of thing Klingons have been shown to do. Give it a few centuries and the result will end up like in the Cloud Minders.
Oh, come on, Targ. We're nerds on the Internet, arguing passionately about ridiculous topics is what we do.
Oh I agree. But pulling RL into these things is never fun, it's just irrelevant rambling. Discussing the fine print of the treaty of algeron by using screen evidence, that's nerding out. Saying it's like some real life treaty is not
I disagree. In the absence of canonical information (or where the canonical information is contradictory or consists mostly of jokes by the production crew), equivalent scenarios from real life can be a useful baseline for argument. Or in this case, show how the canonical information was made up by the writers as they went along without any regard for either realism or in-universe rules at all. Like 99% of technobabble, for instance: in TOS, James Doohan actually put together a guide for what the various bits of BS (fictional particles and so forth) he had to spout actually meant and how they fit together, but when he tried to do the same thing for TNG, he couldn't because the writers were now just writing stuff like "if we could [tech] the [tech tech], it will [tech] the [tech tech tech] because [tech]" into the script and filling in the gaps with contradictory nonsense later.
Or another example: the Federation and most neighboring states have matter replicators (which at their most basic should just be rearrangers of protons, neutrons, and electrons) and effectively unlimited clean energy on the one hand, but on the other hand there's still enough of a traditional economy that people can make a living as space truckers (Ferengi, Kasidy Yates). It's a contradiction, and contradictions spark curiosity (in some of us).
So yes, I choose to substitute real science (whether physics and economics in the examples, or history and sociology in the topic) based on observation and inference for the [tech tech], because at least that is self-consistent. Because it doesn't matter if you're traveling by warp, transwarp, sidewarp, or because Q finger-flicked you, v still equals d/t, just like it's a basic observable fact that chattel slavery drags down the slavers' society on many practical levels (quite apart from its abominable immorality).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that brought down the Klingon Empire. This is from Day of the Dove: Mara: “We have always fought. We must. We are hunters, Captain, tracking and taking what we need. There are poor planets in the Klingon systems. We must push outward if we are to survive.”
So conquering and enslaving whole planets is taking a toll but one that traps them in a vicious circle of more conquering and enslaving. Like a person living paycheck to paycheck until they need to repair the car... Praxis happens and taxed the Klingon Empire beyond whatnit can handle.
So yes the Klingons did use slave labor and yes it could have contributed to the downfall of the Empire.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
@starswordc but that only works to a degree. Continuity/consistency is one thing, and I would love it if reverting the polaron flow would throughout Trek do the same thing. But in the end nothing of it is real. They did go with [tech] because it's not important and if [tech] was invalidated by real science (it happened), [tech] still did what it did in Trekverse. Likewise, if a fictional concept explained to us in the show doesn't conform to a comparable concept in RL and you have to start to make up alternative plots of characters lying or erring when they were not supposed to, RL does not trump Trekverse logic.
It is of course always legitimate to include these on the sideline or debating, but we can't rewrite already written fiction on the fly. The story is told the way it was intended to. TOS klingons did use slave labour of the "whip and chain, pull a rock" kind because that was the intention at the time. There is no intricate subplot of colliding propaganda in there, it was not written that way. And one can tell, because watching Trek is not watching real people, it is a play following rules of a craft. If characters lie or err it is made clear to us, the viewer. RL reasoning like "XY could have been wrong" often falls short, because if that was the case it becomes clear at some point of revelation.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
@starswordc but that only works to a degree. Continuity/consistency is one thing, and I would love it if reverting the polaron flow would throughout Trek do the same thing. But in the end nothing of it is real. They did go with [tech] because it's not important and if [tech] was invalidated by real science (it happened), [tech] still did what it did in Trekverse. Likewise, if a fictional concept explained to us in the show doesn't conform to a comparable concept in RL and you have to start to make up alternative plots of characters lying or erring when they were not supposed to, RL does not trump Trekverse logic.
It is of course always legitimate to include these on the sideline or debating, but we can't rewrite already written fiction on the fly. The story is told the way it was intended to. TOS klingons did use slave labour of the "whip and chain, pull a rock" kind because that was the intention at the time. There is no intricate subplot of colliding propaganda in there, it was not written that way. And one can tell, because watching Trek is not watching real people, it is a play following rules of a craft. If characters lie or err it is made clear to us, the viewer. RL reasoning like "XY could have been wrong" often falls short, because if that was the case it becomes clear at some point of revelation.
This. What Kirk said was sincere and truthful, because that's what the writers intended for it to be. No canon contradicts what Kirk said, and a fair bit (such as ENT 'Judgement') supports it. The Klingons were slavers in Star Trek Canon.
This isn't like the 'Starfleet isn't a military' thing, because in that case Picard is contradicted by various other canon characters (and himself) in later or earlier stories inferring (if not outright saying) the opposite. No such canon contradiction exists in this case.
Aside from that, it doesn't match the character of Kirk presented to us, the viewer. Kirk is the manifestation of the heroic Cold War American: Maverick, loyal to the cause of freedom, noble, a gentleman, etc. What isn't included in that characterisation is 'slavish adherence to state propaganda and hatred of the enemy based on said propaganda'. Cold War America (ironically enough) believed that was the Soviets' schtick. We also hav the fact that it is not canonically consist that the Federation does 'propaganda'. It's a Utopian society - why would it need to lie to assure loyalty?
Kirk's statement is sincere and truthful from his perspective as a servant of the Federation. He's not omniscient, we have many examples of Starfleet officers lying to Starfleet officers and Admirals manipulating information here.
This is not the case here. It is never shown nor implied this is the case, it's serving as exposition. If Kirk was proven wrong in the episode and redeemed himself you would have a point (like in ST VI).
Otherwise you basically treat your fan theory as fact.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
@starswordc but that only works to a degree. Continuity/consistency is one thing, and I would love it if reverting the polaron flow would throughout Trek do the same thing. But in the end nothing of it is real. They did go with [tech] because it's not important and if [tech] was invalidated by real science (it happened), [tech] still did what it did in Trekverse. Likewise, if a fictional concept explained to us in the show doesn't conform to a comparable concept in RL and you have to start to make up alternative plots of characters lying or erring when they were not supposed to, RL does not trump Trekverse logic.
It is of course always legitimate to include these on the sideline or debating, but we can't rewrite already written fiction on the fly. The story is told the way it was intended to. TOS klingons did use slave labour of the "whip and chain, pull a rock" kind because that was the intention at the time. There is no intricate subplot of colliding propaganda in there, it was not written that way. And one can tell, because watching Trek is not watching real people, it is a play following rules of a craft. If characters lie or err it is made clear to us, the viewer. RL reasoning like "XY could have been wrong" often falls short, because if that was the case it becomes clear at some point of revelation.
This. What Kirk said was sincere and truthful, because that's what the writers intended for it to be. No canon contradicts what Kirk said, and a fair bit (such as ENT 'Judgement') supports it. The Klingons were slavers in Star Trek Canon.
This isn't like the 'Starfleet isn't a military' thing, because in that case Picard is contradicted by various other canon characters (and himself) in later or earlier stories inferring (if not outright saying) the opposite. No such canon contradiction exists in this case.
Aside from that, it doesn't match the character of Kirk presented to us, the viewer. Kirk is the manifestation of the heroic Cold War American: Maverick, loyal to the cause of freedom, noble, a gentleman, etc. What isn't included in that characterisation is 'slavish adherence to state propaganda and hatred of the enemy based on said propaganda'. Cold War America (ironically enough) believed that was the Soviets' schtick. We also hav the fact that it is not canonically consist that the Federation does 'propaganda'. It's a Utopian society - why would it need to lie to assure loyalty?
Kirk's statement is sincere and truthful from his perspective as a servant of the Federation. He's not omniscient, we have many examples of Starfleet officers lying to Starfleet officers and Admirals manipulating information here.
Not in TOS, and there is no canon evidence that Kirk is being lied to (note: He says he has seen it himself). That is not the same thing as being told it happens. He is saying he has witnessed Klingon slavery on planets they conquer firsthand, and everything in that episode corroborates what he says.
So, new clearer pictures of the updated klingon look in S2:
I approve, mostly. She actually appears to be something in the ballpark of a Klingon now. A chubby, burn-scarred, deformed albino Klingon, but almost a Klingon nonetheless.
And before anyone starts, that is not a dig at the actress, because Mary Chieffo's face does not look like that without the 3 inches of latex padding slapped on for no reason other than Glenn Hetrick doesn't want to entirely give up his garbage Klingon design.
and that is DEFINITELY a second pair of nostrils, not a damn ridge...of course, considering who that particular bit of sheer TRIBBLE idiocy came from, i shouldn't have been surprised he was wrong about yet another thing
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I agree it looks much better (her garment is even very sixties spacey 😄) but it's still needlessly stylized. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Klingons we had since TMP/TNG. Who knows why all this nonsense was necessary.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
I agree it looks much better (her garment is even very sixties spacey 😄) but it's still needlessly stylized. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Klingons we had since TMP/TNG. Who knows why all this nonsense was necessary.
Necessary is the wrong word. It wasn't necessary. They did it because they could.
They wanted to be original while plagiarizing the work of others: to demonstrate their talent and creativity. They wanted to set themselves apart from all the other guys who did Trek by being different, by being avant-garde.
Nobody wins fame and awards in Hollywood by copying what has already been done, (except producers, directors, and actors in bad remakes of other people's films.) In order to be recognized as the artistic geniuses they are, they have to do their own thing.
To get the awards they have to be creative and new, and they couldn't do that by using the DS9 Klingon stuff. Go to any Trek convention and you'll see stoners and losers in home-made Klingon costumes. It's no technical challenge at all once someone else shows you how to do it.
I agree it looks much better (her garment is even very sixties spacey 😄) but it's still needlessly stylized. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Klingons we had since TMP/TNG. Who knows why all this nonsense was necessary.
It's fiction, the concept of necessary is inapplicable. If you're going that route, the TMP rework was even more unnecessary.
Yeah but the show is real 😜 I get polishing things (other than a often repeated lie I do not want them to shoot a show today on 60s equipment 🐽) but thpse radical changes completely undermine the purpose. But @brian334 explained it well, the Trek with much of the same people at the helm looked and felt somewhat familiar. New people need to reinvent it to make a name in the industry, albeit while using the old name lying around. It soert of was doomed from the start.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Conversely, the absolute smartest thing she could do to secure her position and achieve her goals is to lead the Houses in the final conquest of the Federation under the banner of a united Klingon Empire.
Except that is the exact opposite of smart as the Federation being around to be "the enemy" is the only reason why the Kligon houses are untied in the first place, and allowing the Federation to be destroyed would only mean that the Klingons would go back to warring among each other as they were before.
Yeah, no. The whole 'external threat to create internal unity' thing only works when there's an actual threat, or people at least believe there is one.
Only the war actually happened...and the Klingons beat the Federations face in.
Your suggestion is that after, against all Klingon tradition and culture, L'Rell orders the Great Houses to abandon the war they're overwhelmingly winning against the Federation, she then convinces them that they have to set aside their differences and unite because otherwise the big bad Federation might get them? The Federation that only continues to exist because she wouldn't let them finish annihilating it? Even if they still do believe that the Federation is a threat, they would 100% rightly place the blame for that entirely on L'Rell.
L'Rell surviving and successfully uniting the Empire will be a pure act of writer fiat, not any logical or rational story progression.
Babylon 5 had the Minbari religious caste pull the exact same stunt as the Klingon leaders in their war with the Earth Alliance, ordering a ceasefire with their fleet literally on Earth's doorstep. They had a good reason for it but it ticked off basically the entire warrior caste, which eventually brought on a civil war. And that was with Earth Alliance having performed considerably better against the Minbari than the Feds did against the Klinks in DSC (they lost every battle, but they made the Minbari pay for it and used scorched Earth tactics to slow them to the point where Minbar was on the verge of economic collapse by the time they reached Sol).
I agree with Patrick on this one. The war arc was extremely poorly plotted and the resolution is stupid: all L'Rell really did was make herself a target for any Klingon with a blade.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
She certainly hasn't obtained for herself the most secure of positions: she has the other Houses at gunpoint. The second that gun stops working, well...
But, she might maintain power long enough to actually win some of the Houses over to her unification strategy. If the writers actually acknowledge how precarious L'rell's position is, that is (not holding my breath).
Babylon 5 had the Minbari religious caste pull the exact same stunt as the Klingon leaders in their war with the Earth Alliance, ordering a ceasefire with their fleet literally on Earth's doorstep. They had a good reason for it but it ticked off basically the entire warrior caste, which eventually brought on a civil war. And that was with Earth Alliance having performed considerably better against the Minbari than the Feds did against the Klinks in DSC (they lost every battle, but they made the Minbari pay for it and used scorched Earth tactics to slow them to the point where Minbar was on the verge of economic collapse by the time they reached Sol).
I agree with Patrick on this one. The war arc was extremely poorly plotted and the resolution is stupid: all L'Rell really did was make herself a target for any Klingon with a blade.
From what I've read about season 2 mention this is what happens
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Babylon 5 had the Minbari religious caste pull the exact same stunt as the Klingon leaders in their war with the Earth Alliance, ordering a ceasefire with their fleet literally on Earth's doorstep. They had a good reason for it but it ticked off basically the entire warrior caste, which eventually brought on a civil war. And that was with Earth Alliance having performed considerably better against the Minbari than the Feds did against the Klinks in DSC (they lost every battle, but they made the Minbari pay for it and used scorched Earth tactics to slow them to the point where Minbar was on the verge of economic collapse by the time they reached Sol).
I agree with Patrick on this one. The war arc was extremely poorly plotted and the resolution is stupid: all L'Rell really did was make herself a target for any Klingon with a blade.
I though the end was also not well plotted and was way too rushed.
The thing to consider is that Starfleet was losing because the Klingons had cloak and they had no way to deal with that
If the war had continued, they probably would have lost Earth, and that might be enough to break the Federation apart - but it could also be that the loss of cloak actually mean the tide would turn against the Klingons again. But it would have cost the Federation more than they'd be willing to accept.
And we really don't know how much it cost the Klingons to wage this war so far - they certainly lost a lot of ships, too. They weren't even able to hold Starbase One (possibly because Kol's death also meant they lacked a unified leadership that could coordinate them effectively, and while they could take the station, they had no one to supply and defend them anymore.)
L'Rell is certainly not in a stable position. But breaking off this one attack might really be all that Starfleet needs to regroup and bolster its defenses. That this actually worked seems plausible to me, as long as she had a way to communicate her threat effectively to the Klingon House leaders. The loss of Q'onos is not worth a win over the Federation. But of course she is making herself a target in the not-even-every-long-run.
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Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
The way you go it's back to questioning every character's motivation and essentially make up our own headstory alongside or on top of what is actually shown to us. This is not a choose your own adventure kind of thing 😉
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Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
And yeah, that IS the sort of thing Klingons have been shown to do. Give it a few centuries and the result will end up like in the Cloud Minders.
My character Tsin'xing
I disagree. In the absence of canonical information (or where the canonical information is contradictory or consists mostly of jokes by the production crew), equivalent scenarios from real life can be a useful baseline for argument. Or in this case, show how the canonical information was made up by the writers as they went along without any regard for either realism or in-universe rules at all. Like 99% of technobabble, for instance: in TOS, James Doohan actually put together a guide for what the various bits of BS (fictional particles and so forth) he had to spout actually meant and how they fit together, but when he tried to do the same thing for TNG, he couldn't because the writers were now just writing stuff like "if we could [tech] the [tech tech], it will [tech] the [tech tech tech] because [tech]" into the script and filling in the gaps with contradictory nonsense later.
Or another example: the Federation and most neighboring states have matter replicators (which at their most basic should just be rearrangers of protons, neutrons, and electrons) and effectively unlimited clean energy on the one hand, but on the other hand there's still enough of a traditional economy that people can make a living as space truckers (Ferengi, Kasidy Yates). It's a contradiction, and contradictions spark curiosity (in some of us).
So yes, I choose to substitute real science (whether physics and economics in the examples, or history and sociology in the topic) based on observation and inference for the [tech tech], because at least that is self-consistent. Because it doesn't matter if you're traveling by warp, transwarp, sidewarp, or because Q finger-flicked you, v still equals d/t, just like it's a basic observable fact that chattel slavery drags down the slavers' society on many practical levels (quite apart from its abominable immorality).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Mara: “We have always fought. We must. We are hunters, Captain, tracking and taking what we need. There are poor planets in the Klingon systems. We must push outward if we are to survive.”
So conquering and enslaving whole planets is taking a toll but one that traps them in a vicious circle of more conquering and enslaving. Like a person living paycheck to paycheck until they need to repair the car... Praxis happens and taxed the Klingon Empire beyond whatnit can handle.
So yes the Klingons did use slave labor and yes it could have contributed to the downfall of the Empire.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
It is of course always legitimate to include these on the sideline or debating, but we can't rewrite already written fiction on the fly. The story is told the way it was intended to. TOS klingons did use slave labour of the "whip and chain, pull a rock" kind because that was the intention at the time. There is no intricate subplot of colliding propaganda in there, it was not written that way. And one can tell, because watching Trek is not watching real people, it is a play following rules of a craft. If characters lie or err it is made clear to us, the viewer. RL reasoning like "XY could have been wrong" often falls short, because if that was the case it becomes clear at some point of revelation.
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This. What Kirk said was sincere and truthful, because that's what the writers intended for it to be. No canon contradicts what Kirk said, and a fair bit (such as ENT 'Judgement') supports it. The Klingons were slavers in Star Trek Canon.
This isn't like the 'Starfleet isn't a military' thing, because in that case Picard is contradicted by various other canon characters (and himself) in later or earlier stories inferring (if not outright saying) the opposite. No such canon contradiction exists in this case.
Aside from that, it doesn't match the character of Kirk presented to us, the viewer. Kirk is the manifestation of the heroic Cold War American: Maverick, loyal to the cause of freedom, noble, a gentleman, etc. What isn't included in that characterisation is 'slavish adherence to state propaganda and hatred of the enemy based on said propaganda'. Cold War America (ironically enough) believed that was the Soviets' schtick. We also hav the fact that it is not canonically consist that the Federation does 'propaganda'. It's a Utopian society - why would it need to lie to assure loyalty?
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
This is not the case here. It is never shown nor implied this is the case, it's serving as exposition. If Kirk was proven wrong in the episode and redeemed himself you would have a point (like in ST VI).
Otherwise you basically treat your fan theory as fact.
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Not in TOS, and there is no canon evidence that Kirk is being lied to (note: He says he has seen it himself). That is not the same thing as being told it happens. He is saying he has witnessed Klingon slavery on planets they conquer firsthand, and everything in that episode corroborates what he says.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
I approve, mostly. She actually appears to be something in the ballpark of a Klingon now. A chubby, burn-scarred, deformed albino Klingon, but almost a Klingon nonetheless.
And before anyone starts, that is not a dig at the actress, because Mary Chieffo's face does not look like that without the 3 inches of latex padding slapped on for no reason other than Glenn Hetrick doesn't want to entirely give up his garbage Klingon design.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
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Necessary is the wrong word. It wasn't necessary. They did it because they could.
They wanted to be original while plagiarizing the work of others: to demonstrate their talent and creativity. They wanted to set themselves apart from all the other guys who did Trek by being different, by being avant-garde.
Nobody wins fame and awards in Hollywood by copying what has already been done, (except producers, directors, and actors in bad remakes of other people's films.) In order to be recognized as the artistic geniuses they are, they have to do their own thing.
To get the awards they have to be creative and new, and they couldn't do that by using the DS9 Klingon stuff. Go to any Trek convention and you'll see stoners and losers in home-made Klingon costumes. It's no technical challenge at all once someone else shows you how to do it.
My character Tsin'xing
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Yeah, no. The whole 'external threat to create internal unity' thing only works when there's an actual threat, or people at least believe there is one.
Only the war actually happened...and the Klingons beat the Federations face in.
Your suggestion is that after, against all Klingon tradition and culture, L'Rell orders the Great Houses to abandon the war they're overwhelmingly winning against the Federation, she then convinces them that they have to set aside their differences and unite because otherwise the big bad Federation might get them? The Federation that only continues to exist because she wouldn't let them finish annihilating it? Even if they still do believe that the Federation is a threat, they would 100% rightly place the blame for that entirely on L'Rell.
L'Rell surviving and successfully uniting the Empire will be a pure act of writer fiat, not any logical or rational story progression.
I agree with Patrick on this one. The war arc was extremely poorly plotted and the resolution is stupid: all L'Rell really did was make herself a target for any Klingon with a blade.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
But, she might maintain power long enough to actually win some of the Houses over to her unification strategy. If the writers actually acknowledge how precarious L'rell's position is, that is (not holding my breath).
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
From what I've read about season 2 mention this is what happens
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
The thing to consider is that Starfleet was losing because the Klingons had cloak and they had no way to deal with that
If the war had continued, they probably would have lost Earth, and that might be enough to break the Federation apart - but it could also be that the loss of cloak actually mean the tide would turn against the Klingons again. But it would have cost the Federation more than they'd be willing to accept.
And we really don't know how much it cost the Klingons to wage this war so far - they certainly lost a lot of ships, too. They weren't even able to hold Starbase One (possibly because Kol's death also meant they lacked a unified leadership that could coordinate them effectively, and while they could take the station, they had no one to supply and defend them anymore.)
L'Rell is certainly not in a stable position. But breaking off this one attack might really be all that Starfleet needs to regroup and bolster its defenses. That this actually worked seems plausible to me, as long as she had a way to communicate her threat effectively to the Klingon House leaders. The loss of Q'onos is not worth a win over the Federation. But of course she is making herself a target in the not-even-every-long-run.