Easy Weapon-Target life support!

But that opens up a whole other can of worms, doesn't it? Chang's plan hinges on Kirk launching an unprovoked attack on a defenceless Klingon vessel. He can probably explain the BoP being close - "extra security, can't trust Starfleet" and whatnot - but it'll only make the situation more confused, and that's the last thing he wants since the attack won't hold up to a scrutinous investigation anyway. What he needs is a simple story that people won't bother to investigate too closely, not a convoluted plot with ships popping up out of nowhere.

Even so, how does he explain being on the BoP? Leaving the flagship unannounced while in enemy territory would be gross dereliction of duty at the best of times, but to do so right after the ship is attacked and with the Chancellor dying in a meeting room? Chang's career wouldn't just be over, he'd be lucky not to get executed on the spot.

Would that really be a problem? Chang's sole goal at the point where he challenges Kirk is to get out alive with enough evidence or witnesses to corroborate his story, which means there are three possible scenarios at that point:

- Kirk surrenders, Chang arrests him..
- Kirk runs. Chang goes back home and watches as the diplomatic row escalates into war. Functionally the same as the above
- Kirk attacks. Then we'd just have a repeat of the battle at the end of the movie, except it's slanted even further in Chang's favour - Kirk would have no way of knowing where the extra torpedoes hitting him come from, there's a saboteur still on board, there's no Excelsior to take the heat, and he also has to deal with a scorched-but-functional Kronos One. Considering the beating the Enterprise took at Khitomer, I'd say the odds are in Chang's favour.

 

Oh, Enterprise would perish all right - but Chang's main worry would be about whether Kronos 1 would survive the battle. He'd still be safer aboard the BoP...

And if it really came to Kirk attacking, Chang would probably aim for one of two outcomes: either Kirk is allowed to destroy the cruiser, making him even more of a villain, and then sneakily stabbed in the back by the cloakship - or then Kirk is blown to bits by the cloakship right at the beginning. Either way, the cloakship has to intervene, and the Starfleet vessel is gone at the end of the engagement, so the Klingons are completely free to fabricate whatever "course of events" they want to present, out of the very real (if censored) footage of the battle.

Just letting the cruiser and Kirk's ship slug it out would be quite risky. If Chang were aboard the cruiser, he'd risk dying. And if the cruiser were allowed to lose, he'd also risk Kirk sweeping everything under the floor, since if there wasn't a third ship present, how could the Klingons press their case if Kirk decided to fabricate a story about a reactor accident or a hungry space amoeba?

Sure, it gets pretty muddy, and it would never have stood up to scrutiny. But Chang must have planned it that way. There'd be no time for a proper investigation before the war broke out anyway, so Chang could and should do whatever it took to make the Feds look bad initially...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I guess it comes down to how bad the damage aboard Kronos One was, and how big a risk Chang was willing to take. The ship took a hit, yes, but its weapons and shield systems were undamaged, and would still be a significant threat to the Enterprise even without the BoP providing assistance.

Third scenario: the beauty of the cloakship is that it can assist Kronos One undetected. What if Kirk attacks, Chang leads the valiant defence of the "crippled" Kronos One - leaving the question of how crippled it is in the middle - and he wins? It'd be a terrific propaganda coup for him, and nobody needs to know half the shots fired came from a cloaked BoP. And while it's a risky move, it'll certainly look better than Chang abandoning his dying leader's ship for a cloaked BoP. PR is Chang's true weapon in this battle.

Remember, nobody knows the cloakship is there - not Kirk, not the Federation, not the Klingons, not Chang's own men aboard Kronos One. Why expose it?

 

I guess the question is, how can the BoP contribute to the battle without being exposed? Above Khitomer, she clearly wasn't a first-shot-kills threat to a starship... So some degree of exposure would have to accompany a tactically decisive use of the cloakship.

But I gather the Klingons could trust that no transmissions were outgoing from the battle at the time of the battle. At least no such thing is indicated in the dialogue after the battle: Spock had the evidence, but he was withholding it from Starfleet as long as it remained incriminating of Kirk.

Also, it might be good for the character of Chang if he risked his life aboard the battle cruiser for his bold plan. He may be an out-and-out villain, but he need not be a cowardly one - that would rather go against the Klingon stereotype, both in TOS and TNG, and Chang tried to be the best of both those worlds. But if the battle he was planning was indeed to include some sort of coup de grace from the cloakship, he could just as well have been aboard that ship ("his" ship), and then hidden the evidence of both that ship's existence and his absence from the bridge of the battle cruiser. He'd be as much at the valiant forefront of his plan that way as if he stayed on the cruiser.

...Still, yeah, I do like the idea of him staying aboard Kronos 1 for the thrill, and for the "real" propaganda value of his men seeing him lead the battle.

(Incidentally, why would he lead the battle? Neither he nor Gorkon were part of the ship's crew as fas as we know - merely VIP passengers. Surely the battle cruiser had a captain of its own? Unless it was a Klingon thing for, say, Gorkon to be the CO of his own "ship of state"...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

It was Chang who called Kirk with the threat, so it looks like he at least informally took command. As a general and chief of staff he was probably the highest-ranking surviving member of the Klingon military on board, and I imagine if a man like Chang walks (floats?) onto the bridge angry, you follow his orders. Even if he wasn't technically in command, he'll still be the face of the battle to the people back home.

But no more than the exposure from firing the two initial torpedoes. If all goes to plan, after the battle, the only solid evidence for the BoP's existence would be in Kronos One's sensor logs which are easy enough to edit; after all, Chang managed to hide the logs that would have shown the torpedo coming from somewhere below the Enterprise.

And yes, Kronos One's crew may notice a discrepancy in the number of weapon hits, but if this happens in the thick of battle - who would care to report it? And to whom? I don't see a lowly tactical officer disagreeing with the report filed by Chang by claiming there were "phantom torpedoes" flying about.

It's my opinion that Chang would be able to sweep the BoP under the rug if it stays cloaked and "assists" Kronos One with a few well-timed shots; that gives him an decisive tactical advantage while still keeping the situation simple and avoiding uncomfortable questions.

 

Agreed on the latter - with two caveats. I'd still think Chang would want to be aboard his BoP for placing the few tactically and politically crucial shots. And I can't help but wonder whether the BoP carried any torpedoes that were not imitations of Starfleet technology.

After all, the first two red torps had to match Starfleet signature to withstand early scrutiny. And it was those same red balls that the BoP spat out above Khitomer... I'd like to believe that Cartwright sold Chang some Starfleet tech secrets or even actual torps in order to make the masquerade convincing - and that he used a sales pitch where he emphasized that Chang wanted torps that would knock out the gravity, but wouldn't destroy the unshielded battle cruiser outright.

Thus, what Chang would have at Khitomer would be faux Starfleet torpedoes stuck on "light annoy" mode, explaining why he took his sweet time with destroying Kirk's ship even when things began to look grim for him. He wasn't a stereotypical sadist (although he was smart enough to make Kirk think he was, rather than reveal the dangerous truth) - he was a desperate man fighting a field battle with an assassin's weapons.

...No doubt the BoP retained the usually lethal wingtip disruptor cannon. But if those didn't allow for the nifty fire-when-cloaked trick, then using them would not have improved Chang's odds.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Where the torpedoes that different from the standard Klingon ones? It's an interesting idea.

But why? If he wants to be seen dealing the final blow to the Enterprise, there's no reason he can't do it from the bridge of Kronos One, where he is supposed to be and expected to be. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that, during the initial attack, Chang would rush to a transporter pad, beam out into what looks like empty space, then use a vessel which you yourself just said is a very specialised "assassin's weapon" weapon to attack Kirk. I can see how it is possible, I just don't see the great advantage to Chang that would warrant having to explain both what the BoP was doing there and why he ran from Kronos One at the first sign of trouble. Unless, fo course, Kronos One was in far worse shape than I thought.

 

Hard to tell. All other torpedoes ever fired by BoPs have been very conspicuously green. Interestingly, they have consistently scored only disabling damage (ST3, ST5, ST:GEN), or then surprise and disappointment has been expressed when destructive damage occurred (ST3) - perhaps optimal weaponry for a cloaked raider designed to prey on enemy commerce rather than directly confront enemy combat forces?

The torpedoes fired by the battle cruisers in ST:TMP looked a bit more like Chang's weapons. They were perhaps a bit more yellowish, though - a trend that is taken further in VOY "Flashback".

The general point would be, though, that the Trek folks can consistently tell weapon signatures apart - even on battle sites where nothing but fine debris remains. So some careful fakery might be necessary.

Quite true. I'd just think that the secret weapon would be very much Chang's secret weapon, and he might take Klingon pride in personally operating it - and perhaps would also plan for the contingency of losing Kronos 1.

But yes, him staying aboard the cruiser would also be a good way to go. You've got me about 96% convinced now...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Just a nitpick neutrons and neutrinos are two different things, the terms are not interchangeable.

 

That is rather interesting, and adds a little bit to the mystery, IMO.

I've personally always thought Chang stayed aboard Kronos One the whole time and knew that the BoP would not severely damage it and that if worse came to worse he could always order the BoP to intervene to help destroy the Enterprise. I think the idea of them using Starfleet torpedoes is plausible and even likely, but even standard BoP torpedoes seem to pack a small punch. I imagine Chang could have had the ship fitted with more powerful torps if he wanted to, but the average BoP only gets a complement of weak torpedoes for economic reasons. I also presume Chang's disruptors were incompatible with the cloak, perhaps because they were energetic rather than a projectile.

Perhaps Chang was missing from the Chancellor's briefing room so as to not have to explain why, post-assassination, he was the only one not shot? Perhaps also he was off sabotaging the gravity system. I think Chang expected to wrangle the Chancellorship away from Azetbur if things had gone according to plan and they had ended up in full scale war, and the High Council would have probably gone along with it. Indeed, one might wonder if one of the other candidates considered in the intervening time between the assassination and Azetbur's appointment was Chang.

I think the Enterprise's destruction was a key part of his plan, although I wonder if Starfleet expected her to lose? It makes it rather interesting psychologically on Valeris's part, especially since she seemed smart enough to realize it if this was part of the plan, and logical enough not to say anything if it was. I'm sure she would have been prepared to die for the cause. If I were Cartwright, I would probably see the Enterprise more valuable as a martyr than a loose end.

Back to the topic of subsystem targeting, I tend to think that the average system on the average ship has so many redundancies that it's rather difficult to score a hit that achieves the objective desired without some 'side effects.' See the Grissom in TSFS. It's possible, just difficult, and there would be so many variables involved - the type of weapon, the ship's design, the skill of the gunner, and so on. In a nutshell, it's surely easy enough to shoot off a nacelle if you want to cripple a ship's warp drive, but then you risk a core overload. I'm sure the same type of logic applies to almost all systems.

By extension, I would think the reason that we haven't really seen anyone specifically target antimatter pods is that area of a ship is one that is so well protected that you're probably better off to, for example, shoot off a nacelle and try to overload the core that way.

 

I think that's almost a given. If Chang had been inside the conference room, he would have been expected to defend Gorkon, which would only make the assassination attempt more complicating. And it would require the attackers to know they couldn't fire on Chang, thus confirming him as the mole on the Klingon side should Valeris fail in neutralizing them. It was easiest for him to conveniently disappear.

I'm not sure Chang would be the man to be put forward. He struck me as a follower, not a leader; a good soldier, but not one who is happy sitting in an office making decisions. My guess would be the conspirators had groomed their own replacement and, failing that, were counting on Azetbur being sufficiently overcome with grief that they could play her like a fiddle (as is shown, to an extent, in the briefing right after she contacts the Federation president). Unfortunately for them, Azetbur was at least as professional and passionate a politician as her father. Underestimating her is what lead the plot to unravel; with no immediate war, Chang had to think on his feet, and while he had the right idea with Kirk's staged escape he became sloppy at Khitomer.

I don't think the conspirators were taking the loss of the Enterprise as a given. At the very least they considered her survival likely enough to place an agent on-board with orders to both forge the ship's records and tie up the loose end of the assassins.

Still, it sheds a whole new light on Valeris pushing Kirk to take an aggressive posture against Chang when he brough Kronos One around for the counter-attack. Even if she wasn't expecting to die, you're 100% correct she was evidently ready to risk it.

 

Completely agreed on that logic.

That scene was actually why I thought he was annoyed at not being made Chancellor. I suppose I envisioned him as more like Gowron during the Klingon Civil War on TNG than sitting behind a desk. You do have a valid point about his personality though, I don't think political power was the goal for him at all. Glory, yes, in the truest Klingon sense, but not power. The 'Klingon Academy' game with Plummer and Warner playing their respective characters has some interesting insights in this regard but I wouldn't call it really conclusive.

Agreed there. Her leadership was defintely something they didn't expect or count on, and is probably what caused them to plot the assassination of the Federation President, combined with (on the Federation conspirators' part) the President's reluctance to commit to hostilies. Basically, I see there being these two (well, three) leaders who are committed to the idea of peace, being poked and prodded by these two separate cabals of war hawks who have the same goal but different reasons, and neither politician was able to be overcome, hence the plot failing.

Maybe not a given. I think the Klingons expected it, though, and I think Cartwright was prepared for it. In either case, it's my belief that the loss of the Enterprise would have served the cause of war better - the Klingons have a martyr to fight for (Gorkon) and the Federation have a martyr to fight for (Enterprise.)

Of course, I'm sure both sides expected to win the war too.

I still have a hard time fully reconciling Romulan Ambassador Nanclus's participation in this. We know the Klingons and Romulans had their recent alliance that ended badly (probably with the Battle of the Klach d'kel Bracht) but it's always struck me as odd that the Romulan Ambassador would be so chummy with the Federation President, unless the situation with the Klingons really was that dire that the Federation wanted all the help it could get? Further, even though we know Nanclus was in on the plan, I can't help but wonder how many other Romulans were in on it?

 

The only thing I can bring up against that is the fact the Enterprise wasn't destroyed. Chang had the ship dead-to-rights; she was sitting unshielded after launching an unprovoked attack. If Chang had pulled the trigger, nobody on the Klingon side would have dreamed of complaining. But he didn't - he stood down and allowed Kirk and McCoy to beam on-board. This, to me, suggests the Enterprise' destruction wasn't a key point of either the Klingon or Federation end of the plot. I do agree it's a possible outcome both Cartwright and Chang had expected and accepted.

Cartwright was mad enough to sacrifice Kirk, but I have a hard time seeing him as mad enough to deliberately sacrifice the Enterprise. It would make a sick sort of sense to do so - like you say, "Remember the Enterprise!" - but the combination of the Cartwright we saw in ST IV and Chang's mercy make me think it wasn't an outcome anyone was hoping for. I could be wrong, though; it's not easy dissecting a plot with multiple backup plots where half the plotters have goals opposite to the other half.

I wouldn't be surprised if it had full, albeit off-the-record, backing from the Romulan government. It's too good an opportunity to miss out on, no? Here you have your two arch-enemies joining in an effort to utterly wreck each other. You'd be mad not to prod them on a little.

As for Nanclus; I don't think there's any reasonable way to explain how he was so chummy, except perhaps by saying he was literally chummy. The Federation president may have blurred the line between Nanclus-the-ambassador and, perhaps, Nanclus-the-close-friend to the point where he got too close. Complete conjecture, of course.

 

Those are very good points. The only thing I can suggest is that perhaps Chang wanted and expected to goad Kirk into actually firing on Kronos One after the initial fake attack. If the BoP's shots damage was staged or limited to life support, then under nominal battle conditions Kronos One could probably handle taking a hit from the Enterprise. Kirk's surprise surrender (even Uhura seemed shocked) probably derailed this and so Chang decided to let them beam over. I guess it all depends just how much you want to attirbute to planning and how much you want to say Chang was just winging it.

Regarding Cartwright, I guess I was thinking of those WWII conspiracy theories that say FDR and the higher-ups knew that Pearl Harbor was going to happen and wanted to use it to justify going to war. I don't really believe that either, but I think that's where I was basing my extrapolation of the whole scenario from.

That makes sense. Nanclus schmoozed up to the President (perhaps having known him when he was just a Councillor) and used this to get into his inner circle when he was elected President.

I'm sure the Star Empire was keen to let the Klingons and Federation duke it out and then mop up when they were done, and it's possibly Nanclus's personal knowledge that allowed them to plan for such an event. I guess more to the point is I wonder just why Nanclus would be in on it - what could he offer to the conspirators? Support on the Federation side, or merely a pledge not to interfere on behalf of the Klingons?

 

I don't think he started winging it until after Azetbur restarted the peace process. The assassination is too neat to be even partly improvised; if you think about it, virtually every contingency was covered by the original plan. It's only after Kirk's trial that the conspiracy came apart at the seams, and it think that's because it's the point where Chang gets cut off from the more politically-minded plotters and finds himself forced to think like the cloak-and-dagger spook he obviously isn't. The machinations after this point are almost amateuristic: the warden on Rura Penthe knowing way more details of the plot than he could possibly need, Chang trying to intercept Kirk himself and toying with him, West trying to kill the President himself; these are actions of people who have lost sight of the overall picture and are falling back on what they do best, wether it makes sense or not.

In any case, I think Chang had prepared himself for a wide range of scenarios. It's the political side of the plot that failed him by miscalculating the force needed to derail the peace process.

He was certainly willing to risk the Enterprise, no doubt about that, and he was just as certainly willing to sacrifice however many Federation citizens would die in the war he was trying to start. Thing is, I can see a man like Cartwright rationalize risking all those lives by telling himself he isn't condemning them. He strikes me as the person who, for himself, would need to make a mental disconnect between placing people in a potentially lethal situation and ensuring their death outright, with that being a line he won't cross. If Kirk and the Enterprise are destroyed because Kirk will not surrender, so be it, the blood won't be on his hands since they were not in an inescapable situation. If he signs off on Chang destroying the Enterprise as part of the plot, he's a murderer. The distinction may be technical but for a man who needs to convince himself he's doing the right thing, that very distinction is vital.

Non-interference sounds right. Apart perhaps from the cloak that's the only part of the plot they could contribute, and I doubt they're going to give the Klingons military technology.

That of course begs the question why any of the conspirators didn't hear the loud alarm bell of a Romulan backing the plan. I think an enthusiastic Romulan co-conspirator is just about the clearest indicator that your plan involves stabbing yourself in the back...

 

Agreed. Broad plan, lots of room for contingency, ultimately unhinged by the political machinations which Chang, as a warrior, and his other militaristic co-conspirators on both sides could not grasp or predict.

I agree with that too. They had a fighting chance, but there was a good chance they wouldn't come back, and Cartwright could probably live with it.

Agreed. Personally, I've always seen the 2290s Romulan Star Empire as a lot of talk with only enough ability and unpredictability to barely be a threat. (Think North Korea.)

Exactly, as many as my friends will attest.

(Just kidding. )

 

But he obviously wasn't, since Chang hailed Kirk from Kronos-1, not the Bird of Prey (I kinda think Uhura would have noticed something weird like that, in addition to the fact that Chang is clearly hanging in zero gravity during the conversation).

Not for Chang's purposes. Since Gorkon is already dead, there are no cool heads left on the ship to be the voice of restraint. Regardless of who actually wins the battle, any shooting match between the Chancelor's flagship and a Federation starship results in full-scale war between the Klingons and the Federation. Chang probably figured that the worst case scenario was an exchange of torpedo fire, both ships take damage, Kronos-1 retreats into Klingon space as Enterprise runs home to tell Starfleet what happened... assuming, of course, that he wasn't counting on Burke and Samuel having sabotaged Enterprise' phaser banks or some crap like that.

Then there's a war, and Chang gets to sit in one of Starfleet's club-med prison cells while waiting for his comrades to come rescue him. Humans, unlike Klingons, DO take prisoners.

 

Maybe not... at this time, the Klingons appear to have a more or less intact government that actually follows its own laws, possibly Gorkon's attempts to route out corruption in the ranks. Otherwise the conspiracy wouldn't even be necessary; Chang would simply have assassinated Gorkon himself and lead the Empire to war (he can't, because at this point in history you can't even challenge him to a boxing match without being brought up on charges). So Chang knows that if the record of Enterprise' surrender is in Kronos-1's databanks, then he's the one who gets sent to Rurapenthe for violating interstellar law.

No, I actually think Chang and Cartwright were both counting on Kirk hating Klingons enough to stonewall and insist the Klingons started it, or possibly even take credit for the attack saying "Well, long as we're at war anyway, might as well kick ass." Both probably assumed that their side would win the battle, so Kirk surrendering was a big derail for the plan since it meant a diplomatic incident instead of a war. Likewise, Cartwright and Nonclus probably didn't expect the President to be such a pussy about their big bold rescue plan (that, if attempted, would definitely have started a war) hence the need to assassinate him as well and even implicate the Klingons in the killing.

That or there was some kind of peace agreement with the Romulans at that point, kind of like the Germans and the Soviets in the early stages of World War-II.