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Into Darkness - Away Mission to Klingon Homeworld: Why Did Kirk not use stun on the Klingons?

Cadet49

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
In Into Darkness, Kirk decides to go down to the Klingon home world to apprehend Harrison, but is rightly very worried of provoking a war with the Klingons, if discovered trespassing, so he has the landing party disguise their clothing as arms dealers (but no facial disguise??!). Yet, when an incident does happen, Kirk and his landing party shoot with lethal weapons (if you play the action on slo-mo, you see blood coming out of the Klingons when they are shot by Kirk, with holes burned in the wounds. If Kirk was trying to avoid an incident, shouldn't they have brought weapons in set on stun, not kill, so those Klingon soldiers, who were guarding from intruders, could go home to their families after they woke up from a stun? You would think they would try to keep the carnage to a minimum ... Though Harrison ultimately came in and dealt with the rest of the Klingons... The Klingons were essentially just trying to stop intruders on their world and do their job ...
 
I wonder if simply being Klingon and the fact they did seem to be wearing some basic kind of armour, that he felt stun would not work. These TOS era phasers are weaker than the sustained phaser beams we see in TNG/DS9/VOY era.
 
In Into Darkness, Kirk decides to go down to the Klingon home world to apprehend Harrison, but is rightly very worried of provoking a war with the Klingons, if discovered trespassing, so he has the landing party disguise their clothing as arms dealers (but no facial disguise??!). Yet, when an incident does happen, Kirk and his landing party shoot with lethal weapons (if you play the action on slo-mo, you see blood coming out of the Klingons when they are shot by Kirk, with holes burned in the wounds. If Kirk was trying to avoid an incident, shouldn't they have brought weapons in set on stun, not kill, so those Klingon soldiers, who were guarding from intruders, could go home to their families after they woke up from a stun? You would think they would try to keep the carnage to a minimum ... Though Harrison ultimately came in and dealt with the rest of the Klingons... The Klingons were essentially just trying to stop intruders on their world and do their job ...

I don't believe they were Starfleet phasers. They may have been weapons that came equipped on Mudd's ship. There may have been no stun setting.
 
Those are definitely non-Starfleet weapons all; Kirk appears to have taken great care not to pack any hardware recognizable as Starfleet.

Might be Kirk didn't even realize his team was carrying lethal weapons! The mission was launched in great hurry...

Timo Saloniemi
 
I doubt switching to stun would have stopped an incident from taking place. Hell the Klingons might even have been more humiliated if he defeated them and let them live.
 
Yeah, it was a bit weird. I cannot blame anyone to use lethal force to defend themselves. But it's strange considering:

1.) They made a big deal beforehand how "Starfleet doesn't kill" when it's about Khan, but klingon mooks are somehow exempt of that, and

2.) The klingons were simply on patrol. Security guards. They were looking threatening, but they probably would have only arrested the heroes for tresspassing - which would be their right. And then someone shot at them first! They were simple low-ranking security officers doing their jobs, trying to defend themselves, and then got slaughtered because they stood in the way of our heroes...

Strangely you are the first one I see to bring up this point.
 
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