The one element of Kruge that is often overlooked is that he's got an internally logical motivation to do what he sets out to do. It's one of the things that perplexed me about Saavik's pleas to him that "Genesis is a failure." Kruge wasn't interested in making planets. He openly mocked that point in the discussion with his men. He wanted Genesis, the weapon. The planet devourer. He saw Genesis as a game changer. A weapon that could break the balance of power between the Federation and the Klingons. From a Klingon perspective, at that time, and the way they likely viewed the Federation. Kruge was a hero acting in the defense of his people. I always liked that the Klingons called the Enterprise a "Federation Battlecruiser" too. Perspective is so important, isn't it?
Haw! It says plainly on the readouts on ship that it's a Heavy Cruiser. What jerks. Going back to TOS, the normal Klingon D7 was a Battlecruiser, but it was the equal of a federation Heavy Cruiser. It's sort of the way that the British would call German Battlecruisers "Pocket Battleships" to dress it up when they sunk one. I never saw anything wrong with Kruge's motivation. He naturally assumed the Federation had malicious intent, and even if he wasn't sure, he recognized its use as a weapon and decided to go after it. Khan was trying to do the same thing.
He is easily one of my favourites along with Gorkon, Chang and Martok, even if the latter did display many of the dumbed down TNG onward Klingon traits.
If push comes to shove I'd say he is my overall favourite, but a lot of it is down to my fondness of Lloyd
...Except that the Germans had no battlecruisers (not after 1919 anyway). Their own word for the likes of Graf Spee was "armor ship", and their own word for the likes of Scharnhorst was "battleship". Just goes to show that a lot can be lost in even the most innocent translation - perhaps "battlecruiser" is the only possible Klingonaase term for a ship like Kirk's, there being no available or acceptable Klingon practice of adding an adjective that specifies the size of the guns ("heavy"/"light"). After all, it's not as if any English-speaking naval historian anywhere would have agreed to using the term "armor ship"... Timo Saloniemi
The Feds sent out a class of starship that could level the habitable surface of a planet. If I'm on the opposite side, I'm classifying it as a battlecruiser.
Well, "battlecruiser" could also historically be taken as an insult, as in "thinks it's a battleship, but blows up when you tap it". Perhaps that's why the Feds insist on calling the Klingon warbirds "battlecruisers" as well? Timo Saloniemi
Battlecruiser definitely fits from a Klingon POV then because they essentially take out the Enterprise with one shot.
I just think it was a nice little bit of subtlety from the Klingons. As a kid I never thought of the Enterprise as a "battle" anything. I totally bought into the Federation side of the story. Thinking "She's got weapons for protecting the Federation only, and is primarily a ship of peaceful exploration." To hear the Klingons, without any sense of narrative irony, classify the E in the same way we would classify their counterpart ship was just a nice touch I thought. Oh, of course! I've just noticed that some people have made remarks about Kruge as being as "typical bad guy" which i've always found odd. Sure, he kills a lot of people, but his badness is actually rationally motivated by a perceived threat. Indeed, given the severity of the threat Genesis poses, I can see how Kruge justifies his actions. The probe noises always scared me as a kid. I have to be honest. Something immensely unsettling about that sound coming from the TV screen. Years later when I found out it was Leonard Nimoy... Pointy eared bastard.
Well, who did you think built the probe? And the scheme almost worked, if it weren't for Kirk's time-travelling escapades which, thanks to the probe scheme, the Klingons now know about, and just have to work out how to do …