"The Slaver Weapon"

[Christopher]

I just think it's a poor fit into the Trek universe as we now know it. Not only is there no other mention of Kzinti, but none of Slavers or stasis boxes. It stands to reason that they would've left artifacts all over the Trek universe and their impact would be felt, as is the case in Known Space. Sure, there are plenty of ancient races we only ever hear about once, but the Slavers were supposed to be this vast galaxy-spanning power, and it's stated outright in the episode that their boxes are highly important, sought-after treasures. If they were part of the Trek universe, it's hard to believe they would've gone so totally unmentioned outside this episode. That makes it hard enough to reconcile even with what came before TAS, let alone everything that's come after. The story just works better in Known Space, because it was meant to happen there and was an outgrowth of ideas already established there (in World of Ptavvs and "A Relic of the Empire"). It's a much more awkward fit in the context of Star Trek.

[RPJOB]

What else did we hear on the shows about the Talosians? Or the Organians? Or the Metron? Does that mean that they don't exist either? Other than a mention of the Organian Treaty in Trouble with Tribbles you could make a case that Errand of Mercy never happened since Klingons and the Federation seemed to be able to attack each other with ease (Day of the Dove, More Tribbles, More Troubles, all of TNG/DS9/VOY). Never saw any sign of the Organians stepping in to stop things. I'd say the Slavers and the Kzinti are just as valid in the Trek universe as the Organians are.

[Timo]

And interstellar war was something they had no experience with; NX-01 was launched as a pure research vessel

...Which fits perfectly! Apparently, "pure research vessels" were an utter novelty in a Starfleet that had existed for at least half a century already, in one form or another. What had its ships been doing until then? Why, making war, of course!

The major issue would be that before warp five engines, the wars would have been fought with enemies who came all the way to Earth. Archer extended the wars to enemies who did not.

"The Slaver Weapon" eliminates many aspects of "The Soft Weapon" that would have been in major conflict with the Trek universe. Essentially, we only need to deal with a handful that weren't previously mentioned in Trek:

- The Slavers existed as shown. Since this happened a billion years ago, it has virtually no effect on anything elsewhere in Star Trek. The Slavers were said to have had subject species, which died along with them in a past war, but nothing is mentioned of the "pancidal" nature of that war, of the essentially telepathic weapon that necessarily terminated all intelligent life everywhere. Just the Slavers and their subject races died, is all. (And then "intelligent life had to evolve all over again", but this probably happens all the time everywhere anyway, and the remark in its Star Trek isolation carries none of its original Known Space significance.)

- Stasis Boxes exist as shown. It's a weird alien technology, standard fare for Star Trek. It is furthermore portrayed as truly indecipherable, thus with no applications whatsoever, which is better than with most alien tech in Trek. It has yielded artificial gravity, but Spock never says for whom and when, so that's not a continuity complication. That's all Spock mentions as a benefit, along with one small-scale drawback that probably cost a dozen lives at most, so it's not really all that grandiose in scale, not in the Trek version.

- The Kzinti exist as shown. Nothing wrong with three-meter kittycats who bear a grudge, have telepaths and nonsapient females, and despise herbivores and pacifists, not in the Trek context. We've seen weirder, and it has never had any cross-connectivity to other Trek biological or cultural weirdness. Our heroes just aren't into cross-connecting, save for very rare occasions such as the "Wolf In the Fold" bit about things similar to Redjac.

- The Kzinti fought four wars with humankind and lost all of them. The last one was two hundred years ago from the viewpoint of the late 2260s or early 2270s. Conveniently, the scope of those wars would have to be really modest if the early mankind triumphed in them; automatically, then, these would leave no mark in the general history of the Federation, or even that of Earth, and Sulu would only bring up the insignificant scuffles to humiliate the Kzinti. For all we know, Earth only triumphed thanks to Vulcan help (that is, Vulcans did all the fighting), but Sulu would of course omit that bit - for two reasons: to emphasize that two of the captives of the Kzinti are fearsome, superior warriors, and to downplay that one of them is an even more fearsome one.

The only real problem there is the one of timing. But since Sulu is dribbling a lazy insult at the ratcats from one corner of his mouth anyway, this is the perfect time and place not to take him completely literally. "Two hundred years ago" from the 2260s perspective could be more like 2100 or even 2150 than 2060 - that is, anything more than 100 years ago would do, really. Starfleet in Archer's time could be full of "veterans of the Kzinti wars" who'd go "Huh? We fought those, too?" when reminded of the fact, as the fight really was nothing to write home about. Archer probably had a comparable war or two during his televised mission...

Timo Saloniemi

[Christopher]

RAMA wrote:

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Still distressed at season 5 of Enterprise not having the the Kzinti in it.

Umm... don't you mean at season 5 of ENT not existing?

[RAMA]

Still distressed at season 5 of Enterprise not having the the Kzinti in it.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Kzinti

Kobi's KzintiEdit

Beside this article I also created some original work regarding the Kzinti. Most recently I made fourth place in the TrekArt Contest at TrekBBS with my entry The Slaver Weapon. I also came up with the following timeline about Kzinti in Star Trek the outline was first created in the late 1990s. I plan to change a few facts in the months to come using several of the above mentioned informations from various sources:

2056
A Kzinti scout discovers Earth with its pouplation decimated and sick of war.
2065
Kzinti invade the Sol System.
2069/70
Kzinti invade the Sol System for a second time.
2074
Third attempt to conquer the Sol System.
2080
Fourth and last attempt to invade the Sol System, the Kzinti fleet is destroyed in the Battle of Ceres.
2085
A fifth Kzinti fleet is destroyed by the Earth vessel Yamamoto.
2065-2085 will be known as the First Man-Kzin War.
2111-2124 will be known as the Second Man-Kzin War.
2144-2162 will be known as the Third Man-Kzin War.
2191-2198 will be known as the Fourth Man-Kzin War.
2223-2232 will be known as the Fifth Man-Kzin War.

Lots of probs with the timeline...I think we'd have to reduce it down to ONE or maybe TWO wars at max if they were ever used again.

[RPJOB]

I forgot that the Kzinti also had a mention in The Infinite Vulcan so that's one appearance and one mention for them versus one for the Organians and one mention of a treaty with their name on it.

As far as fitting into the Trek Universe let's see what D.C Fontana and Larry Niven have to say about it, shall we?

From Memory Alpha:

Following D.C. Fontana's invite to write for the animated Star Trek, Larry Niven proposed two plot ideas that went undeveloped, as both had content that was deemed to be too problematic for the series. Shortly thereafter, Niven and Fontana were spending part of an afternoon at Gene Roddenberry's residence when Roddenberry suggested that Niven rewrite "The Soft Weapon" as an episode. (Playgrounds of the Mind) Fontana reflected, "We told Larry, 'Just write it, but put in our characters. You can put in the Kzin and all that.'" (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 16, p. 67) In retrospect, Niven remarked of the adaptation idea, "That worked." However, he was initially not entirely sold on the prospect of including in the episode the Kzinti, who feature in the original short story as well as elsewhere in the Known Space universe. "I thought hard before giving the Kzinti to the Star Trek universe," Niven acknowledged. "I did it because I thought it would be fun to see what others would do with them."

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_...apon_(episode)

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

^A Kzinti also appeared on the Elysian Council in TAS: "The Time Trap"

The Next Generation novel The Captain's Honor had a Kzinto sub-plot, although they had their name changed at the last minute to "M'dok". IIRC (and it has been a long time since I read it), they retconned the Man/M'dok wars down to two wars, one pre-Federation and one post.

I find the idea that the Federation may be occupying Kzin, forcing these natural predators to live peacefully (as was going on with their Ringworld equivalents), quite fascinating. If Kzinti territory is/was in the heart of the Federation, they would have to be controlled to some degree to ensure the safety of the core Federation worlds.

[Timo]

When Larry Niven opened his sandbox to fellow kittycat enthusiasts, the Man-Ktzin Wars novels soon spawned their own curious micro-continuity wherein the first of the four wars consisted of four mini-wars of its own: four separate fleets launched to subdue Earth, each failing in an interesting scifi manner.

In the Trek context, these Four Fleets could quite nicely equate to the four wars Sulu mentions. Nothing in "Slaver Weapon" suggests the Kzinti of Star Trek would have been lacking FTL drives like their Known Space counterparts. But if they did, each Fleet would indeed have to wage its own war. The timeline might be quite compact, the four engagements put together spanning just a decade, and only a particularly spiteful person such as Sulu in the episode would insist on referring to four defeats, rather than just one general failure.

Timo Saloniemi

[Warped9]

Timo wrote:

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When Larry Niven opened his sandbox to fellow kittycat enthusiasts, the Man-Ktzin Wars novels soon spawned their own curious micro-continuity wherein the first of the four wars consisted of four mini-wars of its own: four separate fleets launched to subdue Earth, each failing in an interesting scifi manner.

In the Trek context, these Four Fleets could quite nicely equate to the four wars Sulu mentions. Nothing in "Slaver Weapon" suggests the Kzinti of Star Trek would have been lacking FTL drives like their Known Space counterparts. But if they did, each Fleet would indeed have to wage its own war. The timeline might be quite compact, the four engagements put together spanning just a decade, and only a particularly spiteful person such as Sulu in the episode would insist on referring to four defeats, rather than just one general failure.

Timo Saloniemi

This idea works quite well for me.

[RPJOB]

If we tossed out every piece of backstory that didn't fit precisely with each other we'd hardly know anything that wasn't shown on screen. Trek doesn't have to make sense in our world, it just has to work in it's own.

[RAMA]

Christopher wrote:

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Umm... don't you mean at season 5 of ENT not existing?

'

Yes that as well, but specifically the Kzinti.

Also, I'm thinking forget Niven history, create a new one. Maybe call them the Mirak.

RAMA

[Redfern]

Isn't that kinda' why Star Trek Online now has the Ferasa, a "bad guy" equivalent to the Caitians, savage, adversarial felinoids that don't present copyright issues with Niven's concepts? (I assume the females are fully sapient to avoid too close a parallel with the Kzin.)

Sincerely,

Bill

[Christopher]

RAMA wrote:

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Also, I'm thinking forget Niven history, create a new one. Maybe call them the Mirak.

Well, then, why not just create a separate felinoid warrior race? It's not like the Kzinti are the only such species in SF by a long shot. So if you're going to separate them from their Nivenian elements, they're not Kzinti at all, just Felinoid Warrior Alien Race #47.

[GSchnitzer]

Christopher wrote:

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Well, then, why not just create a separate felinoid warrior race? It's not like the Kzinti are the only such species in SF by a long shot. So if you're going to separate them from their Nivenian elements, they're not Kzinti at all, just Felinoid Warrior Alien Race #47.

Folks may recall that we at Star Trek Phase II had started pre-production on Jimmy Diggs' Kzinti script--adapted to a Kirk-era story. We were stymied by not being able to secure the production rights to the Kzinti from the gentleman to whom Larry Niven sold them years ago. We started to forge ahead with the felinoid race being called the "Kytheri." Ultimately, there were just too many obstacles to overcome and we had to backburner (way backburner) to episode.

[Christopher]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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Folks may recall that we at Star Trek Phase II had started pre-production on Jimmy Diggs' Kzinti script--adapted to a Kirk-era story. We were stymied by not being able to secure the production rights to the Kzinti from the gentleman to whom Larry Niven sold them years ago. We started to forge ahead with the felinoid race being called the "Kytheri." Ultimately, there were just too many obstacles to overcome and we had to backburner (way backburner) to episode.

Forgive me, but I find that a bit paradoxical, considering that technically you don't have the rights to shoot productions based on Star Trek in the first place. It's tolerated as long as you don't try to make a profit from it, but it's not actually authorized or licensed. So why would lack of rights be an impediment where the Kzinti are concerned but not where Star Trek is concerned?