Klingon Bat'leth useful or useless?

[Ithekro]

In a way, to use the Japanese analogy, you have the Imperialistic Klingons of the 23rd century that use modern weaponry and sometimes are considered the terrors of space. Then you have the post-Praxis Klingons that have a Defense Force and go on about their honor and use weapons from their more honorable past more often than their modern weapons. What you have is an 1980s/90s interpritation of modern Japan, or at least the nationalist element that romanticizes their per-industrial period.

 

[C.E. Evans]

In 'The Way of the Warrior' the Klingons beamed aboard DS9 with Bat'leths instead of Disruptors which to me was a bit odd since if you want to take control sweeping a beam weapon across a crowd of people would make more sense that hand-to-hand.

I remember that. I remember thinking WTF, as I saw all those Klingons materializing carrying just Bat'leth as weapons.

Were the Klingons that stupid?

Or they might have wanted to take DS9 intact instead of damaging it with disruptor fire. In a real sense, firing phasers or disruptors around control panels is kind of stupid, especially given their tendency to explode from overloads.

 

[RAMA]

According to Dan Curry, the designer:

My studies of martial arts lead to the development of the Klingon weapons such as the bat’leth and the mek’leth. We had an episode in which Worf was to inherit an ancestral bladed weapon. The art department came up with something thar resembled a pirate’s cutlass. I felt that the Klingons should have something unique and original and I wanted to create something ergonomically sound. I have never liked movie weapons that just look coll but can’t be used. I am proud of the fact that the Korean Martial Arts Association recognized it as the first new bladed weapon of the last century that is practical.

 

[Timo]

Or they might have wanted to take DS9 intact instead of damaging it with disruptor fire.

That's the (unintentionally) cool thing about phaser-type weapons, though - they don't damage things they aren't meant to damage.

ST6:TUC shows this the best. Valeris wants to divert attention from the ongoing investigation by performing a reckless stunt, so she fires a phaser at a steel kettle full of... something. The kettle is vaporized, but the innards remain intact! That's consistent with just about every instance of phaser use: the effect of "making disappear" propagates along one type of material (say, a bad guy), and then abruptly stops when meeting a new type of material (say, the air around the bad guy, or the floor below the bad guy, or sometimes his gun).

It may be a matter of the effect propagating in the material it first meets. But it may also be a matter of setting. And indeed when a beam intended at one of our heroes or villains misses and hits a wall instead, there is nary a mark on that wall. See for example "Conspiracy": a possessed admiral fires at Picard and Riker, who duck, and the beam hits the wall behind them, smack in the middle of a decorative painting. When the sparkles die out, the painting is intact!

In fact, a stray shot has damaged equipment in one instance of all Star Trek only, AFAIK. That is when the Evil Kirk misses his chance to kill his Good half in "The Enemy Within", and severs the transporter power cables instead. An indication of his Evilness getting the better of his tactical skills, and him choosing the wrong setting?

That in mind, I sure wouldn't want to leave my disruptor ashore when beaming in to take over an enemy installation!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

ST6:TUC shows this the best. Valeris wants to divert attention from the ongoing investigation by performing a reckless stunt, so she fires a phaser at a steel kettle full of... something. The kettle is vaporized, but the innards remain intact!

I believe it was bread dough or batter.

But that is a great point. Imagine the incredible energies needed to vaporize something, but having those energies in such precise control that only the thing that was targeted gets vaporized!

Kor

 

[Triskelion]

One may ask whether the outer arch is sharpened into a blade at all... Do we ever see it cutting anything? We see that part of the weapon being used for pushing the opponent away on several occasions, and there are no cuts in evidence as the result. The modern bat'leth might simply be a warhammer with four pointed ends for piercing the enemy armor, and the front curve would be but a dull shield for blocking enemy attacks by catching his blade.

Timo Saloniemi

I like your overall take on this, Timo. And in the above paragraph, I think there's a great validity to this idea overall; for the most part you only see the inner arc of the blade being used for parrying and torquing opposing blades - and you never see any Klingon sharpening this section that no doubt would continually absorb damage.

However there is a scene - I believe it is when Worf is demonstrating the use of the bat'leth to Alexander, but I can't quite place it in memory - when he wields the blade using his Tai-Chi-esque Klingon fighting art, Mok'bara. Worf being Worf, and a cut above your average Qo'noS-born warrior, is the only one we see to wield the bat'leth flowing through numerous kata-style stances.

Most other Klingons swing the blade, flick it or brute force it. Worf's forms, though, involve cutting arcs that very much do imply using the inner blade to slice. Though we never see anyone actually do that, we do see plenty of missed bat'leth swings throughout the franchise, even Tom Paris and Quark dodged a few.

For the punishment it's fated to take as a parrying weapon, though, I would not want to spend my energy repairing any sharp inner edge. Besides - you can do plenty of damage with a dull piece of wood, let alone a meter-long dull steel edge whipping at you.

Verdict: I dunno if it's sharp or not. The bat'leth, as much as a fighting weapon, is also a parrier to test the brute force of friends and enemies alike. The point of Klingon combat is not to kill and die - it is to honor yourself in battle. To this end, they don't always take the shortest path to killing. They want to parry and test each other's power. See the headbutt test of Data as a measure of his mettle.

Hence the constant clashing. (Well, that and weekend warrior actor training). (Don't get me started).


So yeah, a dull blade makes perfect sense, but - so would a sharp one, if it were previously a farming implement. So...either way?

 

[Memory Alpha]

It's basically a two-handed weapon with four (4) edges or "beaks." It has the potential to be very, very lethal and practical. The question to me is how heavy is it? Poleaxes were very heavy and were also basically two-handed weapons. If you are armored or protected, a Bat'leth I would think could be very useful. It could act as a partial shield as well as an offensive weapon at the same time (a lot of armor basically negated the need for a shield in battle). The thing is, a lot of bladed weapons were very, very basic or were derivatives of farm tools. So, to me it boils down to whether or not one's preference would be for a two-handed weapon. I don't see anything in the design, though, that screams ineffective. If you get swinging that thing in close quarters, you'll do damage.

 

[Timo]

The "gripping a sheet of metal at the edge means your hands are but hinges" thing that people often complain about doesn't appear a serious drawback to me. A swordsman's wrist is always a hinge, forced to endure great forces as the enemy imparts lesser force at a point of the weapon a foot or more away from the hinge point. But a hit at the far end of a longsword always twists the holder's wrists a lot, while a hit against the front curve of a bat'leth may in fact have zero momentum arm!

Even if the hit twists the bat'leth sideways, so what? The wrists were not harmed by that (the grips just rotated inside the clenched fists, and Klingons tend to wear biker gloves anyway), and there's little chance of the sword harming its user even when flipping like that (the forearms block extreme rotation). Yet a conventional sword, if turned aside by impact, may well cut its user as the result, especially if it's a two-edged one. A weapon for which even a failed parry is a successful one is IMHO preferable to one for which a failed parry results in "double fault" of the weapon literally turning against its user.

Timo Saloniemi