IMO, it lost its effectiveness once a way to defeat it was discovered.
Klingon Cloak... Without Honor?
- Thread starter Mojochi
- Start date
It wasn't really a perfect cloak, since as I mentioned, all it took was modifications to one torpedo to track the ships energy emissions and it was done for.
But anyway, General Chang had the only one of that cloaking device in the ship with him, which then got blown up. And presumably over the years sensor technology got better thereby neutralizing that particular device's effectiveness.
Hey, it wasn't a particularly good cloak even without Kirk's sniffer torp - the ship became visible every time it fired a torpedo!
You don't need better sensors against that sort of thing. You need faster targeting systems, so that you can fire on the ship during the short time it is visible. We don't know whether TNG systems are faster than TOS ones; Kirk never had to put up with an enemy as swift as the EP-607 drone from "Arsenal of Freedom", the only known case where the targeting systems of the E-D could not cope. But this just means we can make that assumption if we wish.
Every Klingon skipper in TNG/DS9 seems to agree that they can only get off one shot after decloaking before the enemy responds and blows them out of the sky. There isn't time to recloak. Chang's ship, which decloaks its bow for firing for a second or so and the recloaks, could be toast by the same token.
Timo Saloniemi
You don't need better sensors against that sort of thing. You need faster targeting systems, so that you can fire on the ship during the short time it is visible. We don't know whether TNG systems are faster than TOS ones; Kirk never had to put up with an enemy as swift as the EP-607 drone from "Arsenal of Freedom", the only known case where the targeting systems of the E-D could not cope. But this just means we can make that assumption if we wish.
Every Klingon skipper in TNG/DS9 seems to agree that they can only get off one shot after decloaking before the enemy responds and blows them out of the sky. There isn't time to recloak. Chang's ship, which decloaks its bow for firing for a second or so and the recloaks, could be toast by the same token.
Timo Saloniemi
I remember that once i greated or at least thought of creating a thread called "How honorable are Klingons, really?" Perhaps in "everyday life" they might be, but what we've seen on TV is not honorable, more like the opposite of that. Perhaps honor is something they want to accomplish in the eyes of other Klingons, no matter how dishonourable the way to get it might be. A Klingon warrior shouths: "I slayed the evil monster of Tagatanuga!" Honorable yes... but does he tell anyone how he did it? Probably not and no one asks because this hero did something very honorable. If he would tell everyone how he did what he did, the way he accomplished his goal might've not been honorable. "I plowed my way through 100 defenseless orphans with a sharp Bat'leth and found the monster!"
How can we judge Klingons on their honor when it is, well, theirs? There is no universal definition of honor even among today's human cultures; indeed, what we have is wildly contradictory.
Slaying a hundred defenseless people is probably heroic in Klingon terms (c.f. their saying about a thousand slit throats) - it's the victims' own damn fault for being so defenseless!
Timo Saloniemi
Slaying a hundred defenseless people is probably heroic in Klingon terms (c.f. their saying about a thousand slit throats) - it's the victims' own damn fault for being so defenseless!
Timo Saloniemi
Might as well ask if a disruptor is as honorable as a Bat'leth. You can kill from quite a distance with a disruptor compared to a Bat'leth; why is shortening the distance and never grappling hand to hand or fighting steel to steel any less of a reduction of honor than an ambush compared to a head-on frontal attack? You make war with the tools you have, that has nothing to do with honor. Ambushes are part of any warfare.
This. I think people who say that Klingons are not honorable have very limited idea of honour.
That particular saying ("A thousand throats may be slit in a single night -- by a running man") dates back on Earth to the time of Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. The Klingon version of the axiom may read a little different when translated rather than interpreted*, but the main thrust behind its use is that honor, and what is practical or permissible in warfare, is much more universal than some people believe.
*The words as opposed to the meaning, respectively.
Just the fact that there is a Klingon Empire, of planets conquered to service Klingons, means that whatever "honor" means to them, it 's got little to do with decency or fairness.
I think the idea of pushing the Klingons so far toward becoming good guys was interesting, and necessary. It stretches the imagination to see beings like that, devoted to war, as more three-dimensional. Let's not buy it completely, though. They kill people less strong , and take what's theirs. Their society will at least be as hypocritical as ours. So the buzzword "honor" will be used or mis-used freely.
I think the idea of pushing the Klingons so far toward becoming good guys was interesting, and necessary. It stretches the imagination to see beings like that, devoted to war, as more three-dimensional. Let's not buy it completely, though. They kill people less strong , and take what's theirs. Their society will at least be as hypocritical as ours. So the buzzword "honor" will be used or mis-used freely.
Because they're constantly talking about it, letting us know exactly what they consider dishonorable. Since, you know, they also constantly act dishonorably by their own standards.
I find this amusing as Bashir as part of a Section 31 covert strike force wears a stealth suit (cloaked) to approach and kill Breen Spetskar and civilian engineers alike!
~ "Section 31 Disavowed" David Mack
I disagree with that, every episode involving Klingon politics in TNG/DS9 showed us Klingons who did not live up to their own idea of honor. Sins of the Father, discommendating an honorable Klingon to cover up the dishonor of another Klingon. House of Quark, a Klingon who used subtle business maneuvers to bankrupt a rival house. Gowron, trying to assign Martok to missions he would get killed so he can get credit for winning the war.
Ezri was right in her assessment of the Klingon Empire.
I agree that hiding from your enemy, is not very honorable.
Those didn't match Worf's idea of Klingon honor, but supposedly he was in a minority of one there.
What specific honor rule would have been broken in each case? We seldom heard honor rules quoted, and the ones we did ("no hostages", "no resigning to imprisonment") don't apply above.
Timo Saloniemi
The Klngon seem to easily circumvent their so called "honor code". When Bashir asked General Martok if he wasn't supposed to die rather than let himself be captured, Worf answered in his place "Not as long as theyre still hope of escape." or something to that effect. It's not an exact quote.
So it would seem that as a Klingon you can't break a rule of the code of honor but you can bend them... a lot.
I think an awful lot of what we are fed as the Klingon "code of honour" throughout TNG is based in no small part on Worf's idealised version of Klingon culture, the way many Westerners today are fascinated by a fairly unrealistic view of the Samurai and the Bushido code. Most Klingons in practice will behave much as suits them at the time and then find ways to call it honourable after the fact, much like people in real life will tell stories in such a way as to present themselves as moral, heroic and in some manner better than others involved.
In DS9 we see a Worf with much more actual experience of real Klingons and less preconceptions. By this point he is far more realistic in his world view and less inclined to believe they will, I don't know, honour the soul of their Bat'leth, never drawing it without drawing blood, write a bard for each defeated opponent, die before dishonour, go on a penance if they tell a lie, never eat chocolate, that sort of thing.
In DS9 we see a Worf with much more actual experience of real Klingons and less preconceptions. By this point he is far more realistic in his world view and less inclined to believe they will, I don't know, honour the soul of their Bat'leth, never drawing it without drawing blood, write a bard for each defeated opponent, die before dishonour, go on a penance if they tell a lie, never eat chocolate, that sort of thing.
This, to be honest I've often wondered at just how limited the effectiveness of the E's weapons in Nemesis could really be justified as Picard specifically orders such a tactic.
Given the ridiculously capable computers on the E and the sheer size of the target presented by the Scimitar, crucially at quite short range (hence a wide angular window to select) it would seem that quite a lot of the return fire they offer should be effective and that by using sequential angular spreads they could quite feasibly track her once they got an initial trace from her shields. Of course that would not allow them to be very specific with their shots, merely settling for hitting the Scimitar at all without any concerted targeting at specific systems, but then again neither would Troi's psychic ping.
That Klingon at Quark's Bar and Grill (Las Vegas), found our choice of chocolate to be most honorable.
You also have to account for the fact that phasers are -- quite inexplicably -- slow as fuck. You shouldn't even be able to see them traveling to their target; at best, it should just be a single beam that appears out of nowhere at those ranges. (Let alone hand-to-hand.)
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