In-Universe Explantion For the Change in Tone Between TMP and TWOK

[Christopher]

Neither the uniforms, nor the general tone, seemed "more militaristic" to me, going from TMP to TWOK. I'm kind of inclined to view the TMP-era uniforms as simply having been discarded after a few years as impractical and/or uncomfortable, and the TWOK-era uniforms enduring almost to the TNG era (albeit losing the turtlenecks at some point) because they proved to be both practical and comfortable.

Seriously? I'd say it's the other way around. The TMP uniforms look quite practical and comfortable. They come in a wide range of variants for every possible use. They have one-piece and two-piece versions, long-sleeved and short-sleeved versions, field jackets and other variations as needed -- immensely practical and believable as everyday duty wear. The TWOK uniforms were Horatio Hornblower cosplay that might be plausible as full-dress uniforms but look far too heavy and cumbersome to be practical as everyday fatigues. Ditch the heavy jackets and just go with the turtlenecks, like the pilot-era uniforms, and you might have something. But as they are, those uniforms don't look at all comfortable.

The novelization of Star Trek VI states that the reason for increased Federation/Klingon tensions is that the Organians had seemingly disappeared.

Yes, of course I'm aware that multiple tie-ins have concocted various versions of "the Organians went away," as I already said. My point is that I think that's misunderstanding what was implicit in "Errand of Mercy" itself. They don't need to go away, because they made it crystal-clear that they don't want to interact with us at all if they can possibly avoid it. As long as the Federation and Klingons left Organia itself unmolested, the Organians wouldn't intervene in anything they did. After all, TV episodes back then had to be self-contained and standalone, so Gene Coon had to build in a reason why we shouldn't expect to see the Organians ever again. The explanation was already there without the need to contrive "mysterious disappearances" or whatever.

 

[Stevil2001]

I disagree with your reading of the evidence, Christopher-- I think "The Trouble with Tribbles" indicates some continued refereeing by the Organians. Who else is judging the development of the disputed planets? Who would even be enforcing the treaty full stop, given that the Klingons have no incentive to abide by it otherwise?

 

[Christopher]

I disagree with your reading of the evidence, Christopher-- I think "The Trouble with Tribbles" indicates some continued refereeing by the Organians. Who else is judging the development of the disputed planets? Who would even be enforcing the treaty full stop, given that the Klingons have no incentive to abide by it otherwise?

That's a popular assumption, but I believe the treaty did exist between the governments. Maybe for the first few years, they believed the Organians would enforce/referee the treaty and thus abided by it out of fear; but once it became clear that the Organians had no interest in doing so, the Klingons would've probably begun to violate it more. I think that's the simplest answer by Occam's Razor. The Organians' distaste at interaction with corporeal beings is perfectly adequate to explain their lack of involvement in our affairs, without the need for concocting reasons why they had to disappear.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^That's always been my take. "The Trouble With Tribbles" was only about a year after "Errand of Mercy," so it's not surprising that both parties would abide by the treaty in order to avoid incurring the Organians' wrath. By the time TWOK rolled around, it would have been obvious to both sides that the Oragnians weren't interested in supervising Federation/Klingon relations.

--Sran

 

[2278]

Neither the uniforms, nor the general tone, seemed "more militaristic" to me, going from TMP to TWOK. I'm kind of inclined to view the TMP-era uniforms as simply having been discarded after a few years as impractical and/or uncomfortable, and the TWOK-era uniforms enduring almost to the TNG era (albeit losing the turtlenecks at some point) because they proved to be both practical and comfortable.

I like this take on the uniforms as I've never cared for the PJ look. Always liked to think they were just a test uniform that didn't work out. (Kinda like the US air forces tiger stripe uniform they tested at a few major bases that went nowhere.) Much rather have the TOS uniform stay in service longer and give way to the TWOK in 2278 at the latest.
The uniform was in service for at least 70 years.

 

[Stevil2001]

I disagree with your reading of the evidence, Christopher-- I think "The Trouble with Tribbles" indicates some continued refereeing by the Organians. Who else is judging the development of the disputed planets? Who would even be enforcing the treaty full stop, given that the Klingons have no incentive to abide by it otherwise?

That's a popular assumption, but I believe the treaty did exist between the governments. Maybe for the first few years, they believed the Organians would enforce/referee the treaty and thus abided by it out of fear; but once it became clear that the Organians had no interest in doing so, the Klingons would've probably begun to violate it more. I think that's the simplest answer by Occam's Razor. The Organians' distaste at interaction with corporeal beings is perfectly adequate to explain their lack of involvement in our affairs, without the need for concocting reasons why they had to disappear.

^That's always been my take. "The Trouble With Tribbles" was only about a year after "Errand of Mercy," so it's not surprising that both parties would abide by the treaty in order to avoid incurring the Organians' wrath. By the time TWOK rolled around, it would have been obvious to both sides that the Oragnians weren't interested in supervising Federation/Klingon relations.

Yeah, but... who's the neutral arbiter?

 

[CGren123]

I disagree with your reading of the evidence, Christopher-- I think "The Trouble with Tribbles" indicates some continued refereeing by the Organians. Who else is judging the development of the disputed planets? Who would even be enforcing the treaty full stop, given that the Klingons have no incentive to abide by it otherwise?

That's a popular assumption, but I believe the treaty did exist between the governments. Maybe for the first few years, they believed the Organians would enforce/referee the treaty and thus abided by it out of fear; but once it became clear that the Organians had no interest in doing so, the Klingons would've probably begun to violate it more. I think that's the simplest answer by Occam's Razor. The Organians' distaste at interaction with corporeal beings is perfectly adequate to explain their lack of involvement in our affairs, without the need for concocting reasons why they had to disappear.

^That's always been my take. "The Trouble With Tribbles" was only about a year after "Errand of Mercy," so it's not surprising that both parties would abide by the treaty in order to avoid incurring the Organians' wrath. By the time TWOK rolled around, it would have been obvious to both sides that the Oragnians weren't interested in supervising Federation/Klingon relations.

Yeah, but... who's the neutral arbiter?

The Time Lords!

 

[Enterprise1701]

On the other hand, IDW, in the Year Four miniseries IIRC, had the Organians intervening to impose the Organian Peace Treaty on the Romulans after they tried to take advantage of the Federation-Klingon situation and nearly caused all-out war in 2269~2270.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, we've already established that such stories do exist. But I disagree with that interpretation of the Organians. They weren't anti-war activists; they just wanted to be left alone. I just don't find it plausible that they'd intervene in a conflict that didn't involve Organia directly. That's a retcon of what "Errand of Mercy" actually established about them, although it's one that crops up repeatedly in the literature over the decades.

 

[TheAlmanac]

They weren't anti-war activists; they just wanted to be left alone. I just don't find it plausible that they'd intervene in a conflict that didn't involve Organia directly.

If that were true, why bother "stand(ing) upon the home planet of the Klingon Empire and the home planet of (the) Federation" and "putting a stop to this insane war?" Why not stop at disabling their ability to fight on or around Organia? It doesn't seem like a group as isolationist as what you're describing would go to the trouble of dictating the behaviour of "all (their) armed forces, wherever they may be."

Beyond that, I agree with Stevil2001's general take on this era. If anything, this period seems to show a "domestication" of the Federation--increased diplomatic relations, even with hostile powers, and a peace treaty being negotiated with the Klingons (according to both ST III and IV), with very few tie-in stories being about pure exploration and an admiral in ST VI who thinks peace with the Klingons means "mothballing the Starfleet."

 

[Idran]

^Yes, we've already established that such stories do exist. But I disagree with that interpretation of the Organians. They weren't anti-war activists; they just wanted to be left alone. I just don't find it plausible that they'd intervene in a conflict that didn't involve Organia directly. That's a retcon of what "Errand of Mercy" actually established about them, although it's one that crops up repeatedly in the literature over the decades.

Stevil has a point, though, in that the events of Trouble with Tribbles make no sense unless you posit some neutral organization judging whether the Federation or the Klingons can develop a planet more efficiently with the capability of enforcing that judgment. It's not enough for them to just mistakenly believe that the Organians might interfere if they don't abide by the treaty; there is an explicit assumption that someone will actually tell them who can develop Sherman's Planet more efficiently, as there is no reason to think either side would agree with the other's assessment should the judgment be made amongst the two - I can't see either side not judging themselves capable of developing it more efficiently under the circumstances, regardless of which way the events of the episode had ended up going, whether or not Darvin's sabotage had succeeded. And given the time elapsed between Errand of Mercy and Trouble with Tribbles, if there was absolutely no communication between the two governments and the Organians over that timeframe, and no lines of communication open between them and the Organians, they would have no reason to believe such. And this isn't a minor detail that can be ignored for the sake of smoothing continuity, it's the cornerstone of the episode's entire dilemma. Trouble with Tribbles itself might be a retcon for Errand of Mercy, yeah, but it's a significant enough one that it has to be taken into consideration.

If not the Organians, then there must be some other neutral party on equal or greater footing with both governments and with open diplomatic channels with both governments. But as far as I remember, there is no other such government or organization in that timeframe.

 

[Christopher]

If that were true, why bother "stand(ing) upon the home planet of the Klingon Empire and the home planet of (the) Federation" and "putting a stop to this insane war?" Why not stop at disabling their ability to fight on or around Organia? It doesn't seem like a group as isolationist as what you're describing would go to the trouble of dictating the behaviour of "all (their) armed forces, wherever they may be."

Because that was the best way to put a final stop to it and make sure the noisy kids stayed off their lawn. They're ultra-powerful, godlike beings -- once they unleashed their power, naturally it was on what we'd consider a cosmic scale. But that doesn't mean they'd want to continue riding herd on us, watching every single thing the Federation and the Klingons did from then on -- not when they'd explicitly told us that interacting with our kind of being is intensely painful to them. It's just not logical to believe they'd subject themselves to that pain more than they absolutely had to.

If anything, this period seems to show a "domestication" of the Federation--increased diplomatic relations, even with hostile powers, and a peace treaty being negotiated with the Klingons (according to both ST III and IV), with very few tie-in stories being about pure exploration and an admiral in ST VI who thinks peace with the Klingons means "mothballing the Starfleet."

However you explain it, the need for peace talks does indicate that Organian influence was no longer a factor by the 2280s. But the suggestion that Starfleet is serving primarily as a defense force at that point does make me wonder if something happened in the preceding years to put it on more of a military footing. Hmm... ST VI is about 8 years after TWOK, so maybe there were ongoing tensions in the wake of the Genesis affair.

Stevil has a point, though, in that the events of Trouble with Tribbles make no sense unless you posit some neutral organization judging whether the Federation or the Klingons can develop a planet more efficiently with the capability of enforcing that judgment. ...

If not the Organians, then there must be some other neutral party on equal or greater footing with both governments and with open diplomatic channels with both governments. But as far as I remember, there is no other such government or organization in that timeframe.

That's a fair point. But couldn't it have been that both governments felt it necessary to abide by the terms of the treaty voluntarily just in case they provoked the Organians again? So the enforcement would've been mutual? I'm just trying to explain it in a way that's consistent with the Organians' professed aversion to contact with corporeal beings.

 

[Idran]

Stevil has a point, though, in that the events of Trouble with Tribbles make no sense unless you posit some neutral organization judging whether the Federation or the Klingons can develop a planet more efficiently with the capability of enforcing that judgment. ...

If not the Organians, then there must be some other neutral party on equal or greater footing with both governments and with open diplomatic channels with both governments. But as far as I remember, there is no other such government or organization in that timeframe.

That's a fair point. But couldn't it have been that both governments felt it necessary to abide by the terms of the treaty voluntarily just in case they provoked the Organians again? So the enforcement would've been mutual? I'm just trying to explain it in a way that's consistent with the Organians' professed aversion to contact with corporeal beings.

I suppose that it's true that the episode doesn't explictly state that they have to prove their capability to a third party, merely that they have to prove it full stop. And Kirk himself does say that the Klingons are more efficient.

Still, it would be an awfully weird clause to include if the treaty was wholly developed by the Federation and the Klingons alone with no Organian involvement in the drafting. Its existence itself suggests a far more involved document than just "we won't shoot at each other anymore", when some sort of "first-come-first-serve" agreement when it comes to colonization would be far simpler, achieve the same goal of ending battle between the two sides, and likely as not would be acceptable to both sides. And if the document was that involved, that suggests that they had reason to make it that involved, which suggests that they were trying to meet some standard. And given the context, that suggests that they were trying to draft a treaty that was acceptable to the Organians, which means that they must have had some interactions with the Organians after Errand of Mercy in order to figure out what was acceptable to them.

You make a good point about what exactly it is that Errand of Mercy establishes, though. The more I think about it, the more I think it comes down to core elements of both Errand of Mercy and Trouble with Tribbles being somewhat contradictory, and having to choose one or the other in terms of how involved the Organians are. Though I suppose Enterprise offers an out in that they might have called upon one of the freaky corporeal-lover Organians to sit down and draft the treaty, and then they just flitted off before the corporeals realized it was all a big scam.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

^ Maybe the original display of power and the imposing of a treaty even bit the Organians in the non-existent arse a little.

"Those corporeals are outside again".

"What? Why?! What on Organia do they want now?"

"Something about points of arbitration or the like".

"Can't they do that themselves?"

"We imposed the original treaty. They seem rather lost without our clarifications and judgements".

"Oh for... Look, how long has it been? Haven't their societies found something better or wiped each other out by now?"

"Actually it's been less than a single revolution of the capital world around its star for both sides".

"Oh, I can't keep track of time on their scale anymore. I thought their current civilizations would be long gone by the time I remembered them".

"So what do we do? They're tapping on the metaphorical windows here".

"Oh, fine, look, work out a program of competitive development on disputed worlds or something, have them transmit all the data to us, put Bob in charge of it and let him make decisions, he's odd and rather perverse like that".

"Also, they're seeking our blessing on twelve points of -"

"Just say yes to all of them and then tell them to go away".

 

[Enterprise1701]

Y'know, I wonder if the traveling Organians featured in ENT - "Observer Effect" were monitoring the corporeal front after the imposition of the treaty.

 

[Markonian]

Y'know, I wonder if the traveling Organians featured in ENT - "Observer Effect" were monitoring the corporeal front after the imposition of the treaty.

A good idea. According to TLE: The Buried Age, those were from a more adventurous breed anyway.

Does anyone remember what Federation: The First 150 Years and Myriad Universes: Honor in the Night postulate about further Organian involvement?

 

[TheAlmanac]

If that were true, why bother "stand(ing) upon the home planet of the Klingon Empire and the home planet of (the) Federation" and "putting a stop to this insane war?" Why not stop at disabling their ability to fight on or around Organia? It doesn't seem like a group as isolationist as what you're describing would go to the trouble of dictating the behaviour of "all (their) armed forces, wherever they may be."

Because that was the best way to put a final stop to it and make sure the noisy kids stayed off their lawn. They're ultra-powerful, godlike beings -- once they unleashed their power, naturally it was on what we'd consider a cosmic scale. But that doesn't mean they'd want to continue riding herd on us, watching every single thing the Federation and the Klingons did from then on -- not when they'd explicitly told us that interacting with our kind of being is intensely painful to them. It's just not logical to believe they'd subject themselves to that pain more than they absolutely had to.

When we've seen other powerful-but-isolationist species--the Aldeans, say, or the Paxans--they haven't acted anything like this, content to exert their power to keep their immediate sphere of influence free of outside interference without going any further.

Even though the Organians are (arguably) more powerful than that, there isn't any "natural" reason for them to extend it all the way to Earth/Kronos--and it would be counterproductive to do so, inviting all sorts of future scrutiny, if their only goal is to have their own planet/system left alone.

It sounds like you're reading a lot into their stated distaste for interacting with corporeal beings, at the expense of...well, everything else they do and say in "Errand of Mercy." (The Founders hated interacting with solids, too, but they still had plenty of motivation to do so.)

If anything, this period seems to show a "domestication" of the Federation--increased diplomatic relations, even with hostile powers, and a peace treaty being negotiated with the Klingons (according to both ST III and IV), with very few tie-in stories being about pure exploration and an admiral in ST VI who thinks peace with the Klingons means "mothballing the Starfleet."

However you explain it, the need for peace talks does indicate that Organian influence was no longer a factor by the 2280s.

I'm not even sure I'd go that far--just because there is a UN peacekeeping force (for example) in a disputed part of the world doesn't mean other peace negotiations can't be ongoing. There is talk of such negotiations with the Klingons at least as late as 2344, so it remains an issue for a long time.

But the suggestion that Starfleet is serving primarily as a defense force at that point does make me wonder if something happened in the preceding years to put it on more of a military footing. Hmm... ST VI is about 8 years after TWOK, so maybe there were ongoing tensions in the wake of the Genesis affair.

Much of our exposure to this era and its Klingons is through their perception of Kirk, "renegade and terrorist," so it's hard to know how they feel about the Federation as a whole...then again, Kruge seemed less than fond of the UFP in general.

 

[Christopher]

When we've seen other powerful-but-isolationist species--the Aldeans, say, or the Paxans--they haven't acted anything like this, content to exert their power to keep their immediate sphere of influence free of outside interference without going any further.

Why does that matter? Different civilizations can't be expected to behave identically. Besides, neither of those species had an interstellar war descend on their doorstep, so it's not an equivalent situation.

Even though the Organians are (arguably) more powerful than that, there isn't any "natural" reason for them to extend it all the way to Earth/Kronos--and it would be counterproductive to do so, inviting all sorts of future scrutiny, if their only goal is to have their own planet/system left alone.

Unlike the Aldeans and Paxans, they have the power to enforce their world's isolation. They effortlessly shut down entire battle fleets throughout the quadrant and translocated themselves on multiple planets at once. That's an extraordinary show of force that would be more than sufficient to make others want to give them a wide berth.

It sounds like you're reading a lot into their stated distaste for interacting with corporeal beings, at the expense of...well, everything else they do and say in "Errand of Mercy." (The Founders hated interacting with solids, too, but they still had plenty of motivation to do so.)

I'm just following Occam's Razor, looking for the simplest explanation for the Organians' later absence, the one that requires the fewest additional assumptions. I feel that Gene Coon's script had a built-in explanation for why the Organians would want to leave the Federation and Klingons mostly alone. After all, he wasn't writing in an era of continuity in television. He knew going in that the Organians would probably never be seen again. So naturally, when he had them intervene to stop the war, he built in a reason why we shouldn't expect to see them constantly butting their noses into Starfleet affairs in subsequent stories. Since that rationale for their absence was seeded in the original work, I feel that the most elegant answer (in the scientific sense) is to use that rationale rather than inventing others.

However you explain it, the need for peace talks does indicate that Organian influence was no longer a factor by the 2280s.

I'm not even sure I'd go that far--just because there is a UN peacekeeping force (for example) in a disputed part of the world doesn't mean other peace negotiations can't be ongoing. There is talk of such negotiations with the Klingons at least as late as 2344, so it remains an issue for a long time.

But that's not the only piece of evidence, of course. The Klingons and Federation were on the brink of war after the Genesis affair, and again after Praxis and Gorkon's assassination, but not one single character expressed the expectation that the Organians would intervene or wondered about their absence. It's been widely accepted by Trek fandom for decades that the Organians were off the stage by that point. That's why both Mike Barr and D.C. Fontana wrote comic-book stories that got rid of the Organians. I'm just saying there's a simpler explanation.


Maybe the Organians were directly involved for the first year or two of the process, long enough to encompass "Tribbles." But they wouldn't have wanted to intervene any more than they had to. Maybe, once they were confident that their intervention was no longer needed, they finally pulled back to Organia with a sigh of relief that they didn't have to mess with those pesky corporeals anymore.

 

[Lance]

I suspect the greater Starfleet militarism was in response to worsening relations with the Klingons. There's no mention of the Organian Peace Treaty after TOS, and there appears to be open hostility between the UFP and the Klingons by TSFS.

Yeah, Christopher has nailed it here. I always felt that TWOK through TUC perhaps saw Federation/Empire relations at their lowest ebb, with the powers increasingly paranoid of what the other's intentions were (paralleling the height of Cold War tensions in the 1980s). As to what the incident actually was that led to this chilling of relations between TMP and TWOK is anyone's guess, but it's long been my personal theory as well, that *something* happened.

Canonically, even after Khitomer there are still tensions between the two powers as late as 2362, the last hostile Klingon raid on Federation space having been established as being a mere two years before TNG's first season (see also the crew's uneasy reaction to the Klingons on-board ship in "Heart of Glory", emphatically not the reaction of a people who are working from a position of trust). And of course, the 'war' with Cardassia was apparently ongoing (off-screen) throughout TNG's first three seasons until a Detente was finally reached in "The Wounded". But it seems clear to me that the change 'back' to a less formal uniform, firstly by dropping the undershirt from the movie uniforms, and then by adopting the TNG jumpsuit, was an acknowledgement in-universe that Starfleet's priorities were increasingly less about militaristic concerns than they had been a century before.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There is direct evidence in TWOK that relations with the Klingons aren't good: the Kobayashi Maru scenario itself, pitting a Starfleet captain against Klingon adversaries. In TMP, all we knew, or what we could readily surmise, was that the Federation was spying on the Klingons with stations such as Epsilon IX. TMP also gave us reason to believe that Klingon practice was to fire on intruders, at least those they couldn't identify that were within their territory. But in TWOK, we learn that Starfleet is training its cadets regarding battle specifically against the Klingons, just as they were when Kirk was a cadet, assuming Kirk's scenario was the same as Saavik's.