Friday's Child Klingon scout ship

[Dukhat]

Then again, this is how the Klingons always fight a Constitution class ship.

Except, as has been proven multiple times in this conversation, there has never been any onscreen evidence of this. Here are the only times we've seen three D7s on screen at at time:

1. "The Enterprise Incident" - D7s used by Romulans.
2. "Practical Joker" - D7s used by Romulans.

And K'T'ingas:

3. TMP - K'T'ingas intercepting an alien cloud.
4. TWOK - footage of the above used as a training simulation.

As far as "Time Trap" is concerned, there's no proof that three D7s were preparing to attack Kirk's ship. We only know that one D7 disappeared while engaging the Enterprise in battle, and two more came looking for it later.

Constantly repeating a fallacy will not eventually make it true.

 

[Timo]

So you give a nice list of the ample onscreen evidence. Counterevidence does not exist, save for the caveat of using a saboteur in "Elaan of Troyius"; otherwise, lone ships flee or are immediately defeated. As said, a mathematician would not find this statistically satisfactory yet, but nobody else should have reason to distrust the concept.

As regards "Time Trap", the three ships operate in concert as observed (they are timewise extremely close to each other - the two can't have arrived for the purpose of searching for the one, because there's no time for that) and as speculated by the heroes (they specifically believe the first ship was bait in a three-ship trap). Should we accept the speculation of the heroes? Perhaps not. But in this case, we have no particular reason to think they would be in error.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Counterevidence does not exist

Yes it does. In literally every instance we see of the Enterprise and the Klingons, in TOS, TAS, and the TOS films (“Time Trap” debatable), there’s always been only one Klingon ship engaging it, other than “Errand of Mercy” where we see an entire Klingon fleet in TOS-R.

 

[Shawnster]

Except, as has been proven multiple times in this conversation, there has never been any onscreen evidence of this. Here are the only times we've seen three D7s on screen at at time:

1. "The Enterprise Incident" - D7s used by Romulans.
2. "Practical Joker" - D7s used by Romulans.

Neither of which really matter in this discussion. Both incidents involve Romulan ships, not Klingon. The fact the Romulans are using Klingon design is irrelevant in this case. The discussion is about Klingon tactics (well, the discussion is about the scout ship in Friday's Child, but it's gotten derailed into Klingon tactics).

Using 3 ships in an attack squadron is a tactic. It's not a prerequisite for using the particular design. Any 3 ship Romulan squadrons should either not be counted or that should be considered a Romulan tactic.

Back on topic... Star Fleet Battles had multiple Klingon designs that looked similar. FASA did the same, I believe. Even The Starfleet Museum depicted multiple but similar Klingon designs. http://www.starfleet-museum.org/klingon-fedcruisers.jpg The fuzzy image in TOS-R is just fuzzy enough that it could have been a smaller Klingon ship that had similar design lines and features to the D7 (yes, we know it's the same model, but we're talking Star Trek). I've got no problem with the Friday's Child ship being an E3 or F4 or any other letter/number combination and the ship just looks similar to the larger D7.

 

[Dukhat]

Actually, I would have preferred that TOS-R “Friday’s Child” showed something that was analogous to what we originally saw: a glowing, pulsating object with a somewhat definable inner structure. Just like how they showed the Orion ship to be based on the original swirling reddish light.

 

[johnnybear]

I always considered the attack upon the enterprise in Errand of Mercy to be by a Klingon patrol rather than the large fleet as seen in the updated version! Why would said fleet back off from retaliation from one lone Starship anyway?
JB

 

[Kor]

It's been a while since I watched the TOS-R version, and Trekcore seems to be missing screenshots of that scene. I thought they showed more Starfleet ships coming back with the Enterprise? Maybe my mind made that up.

Kor

 

[Timo]

Yup, the initial sneak attack still remains the work of a lone suicidal ship, as carefully specified in the dialogue. I gather this could have been a cloaked BoP, for its ability to catch the heroes with their pants down... But TOS-R makes it an explicit D7, IMHO a bigger mistake than the "Friday's Child" thing.

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The originally unseen fleet that drives the hero ship away from Organia is the one now seen, and consisting of course entirely of D7s. The opposing Starfleet force is not seen IIRC, and the above video skips showing it as well.

As for "only one Klingon ship engaging the Enterprise", none (but the one from "Elaan") do - it's vice versa, the Enterprise engaging Koloth in "More Tribbles" or Kang in "Dove" and driving away the scout titular to this thread. Which is sort of the point. We could argue Kirk is brave and the Klingons are cowardly, but in light of the rest of Trek, we really should argue the opposite, with Kirk minding the risks and the true capabilities of his ship, and with the Klingons going for bravado beyond the means of their ships. The pattern is one of the Klingons making safe choices, though: retreat or rely on numbers. Which is fine for villains, but sorta calls for extra reasons when we know the villains use personal bravery as currency. And those reasons could well boil down to the simple "the smaller D7 is not the match of the bigger Constitution", no complications required.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Constitutions and D7s are of comparable size. TOS gives every indication that the Federation and the Klingon Empire are on equal technological terms. And quite frankly, I’m not sure what we’re even arguing about anymore.

 

[johnnybear]

Yeah as one day in the future they're gonna be friends anyway and then enemies again and then allies and friends and then...
JB

 

[Maurice]

Ok, fine. Please post a screencap from TAS which shows three D7s attacking the Enterprise (or three D7s doing anything at all), because I sure couldn't find any when I looked.

You mustn't have looked very hard. (link to image in question) (link to another image in question). Romulan D7s, but D7s nevertheless.

 

[Dukhat]

You mustn't have looked very hard. (link to image in question) (link to another image in question). Romulan D7s, but D7s nevertheless.

The conversation Timo and I were having was about how he thought the three-formation D7 tactic was inherent to Klingon battle tactics against a Constitution class ship. Any shots showing D7s being used by Romulans was moot. So no, it wasn’t a matter of me not looking hard enough.

 

[Maurice]

Well, TImo's opinions are Timo's opinions and that's all. Your challenge didn't specify Klingon D7s and I didn't backtrack through the thread to see if you'd qualified it earlier.

 

[Dukhat]

...and I didn't backtrack through the thread to see if you'd qualified it earlier.

Well, that’s not my problem if you didn’t bother to do that.

 

[Prax]

Well, you can't have a D7 unless you got 3 of them. It'd be like a tricycle with only 1 wheel!

 

[Maurice]

Well, that’s not my problem if you didn’t bother to do that.

I was explaining, not apologizing. Next time I won't bother.

 

[Dukhat]

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

trio just stumbled upon the wandering-star-system-with-an-attitude while engaged in some other type of mission. Another tailormade ambush for Kirk? Or another generic example of Klingons sending three ships to do jobs that Starfleet always handles with just one?

Timo Saloniemi

That's a hilarious interpretation: are wa suggesting that the Klingongs only send three ships when they are looking for Kirk, lol!

I gather this could have been a cloaked BoP, for its ability to catch the heroes with their pants down... But TOS-R makes it an explicit D7, IMHO a bigger mistake than the "Friday's Child" thing.

Agreed, it would have made more sense to put a Bird-of-Prey in TOS-R than have a D7 again.

We could argue Kirk is brave and the Klingons are cowardly, but in light of the rest of Trek, we really should argue the opposite, with Kirk minding the risks and the true capabilities of his ship, and with the Klingons going for bravado beyond the means of their ships. The pattern is one of the Klingons making safe choices, though: retreat or rely on numbers. Which is fine for villains, but sorta calls for extra reasons when we know the villains use personal bravery as currency. And those reasons could well boil down to the simple "the smaller D7 is not the match of the bigger Constitution", no complications required.

I'm going to throw this out there: On other threads, you have suggested that that in TOS, you feel the Enterprise could be a small scouting ship due to the kind of missions its crew ends up taking. I disagree with this, but nonetheless, you've presented at least a collection of valid evidence in support of it of it. Are you suggesting that, in your theory, the D7 is sufficiently small/weak that it takes three as a standard attack formation against a supposedly small Federation vessel that qualifies as some type of scout itself?

 

[johnnybear]

The Romulans only attack using three ships anywhere in the series! In BOT they attack undetected by the bases along the perimeter of the Neutral Zone, in TDY they attack once the Enterprise crosses the NZ and in TEI! But where were they in TWTE??
JB

 

[Timo]

I'm going to throw this out there: On other threads, you have suggested that that in TOS, you feel the Enterprise could be a small scouting ship due to the kind of missions its crew ends up taking. I disagree with this, but nonetheless, you've presented at least a collection of valid evidence in support of it of it. Are you suggesting that, in your theory, the D7 is sufficiently small/weak that it takes three as a standard attack formation against a supposedly small Federation vessel that qualifies as some type of scout itself?

Well, this works on quite a few levels:

1) The TOS-R Klingon ship they call a "scout" really is a "scout", then.
2) The other, official onscreen term for the Klingon ship is "battle cruiser". And cruiser is a synonym for scout right up to that point in Earth naval history where they come up with the bright idea of actually sending one of them to do "battle", with oversized guns to go with the unprotected hull.
3) The DSC Klingon ship of this description is in relative terms very much a "cruiser", possibly even a "war cruiser" - a solution to a problem, a cheap mass-produced attrition ship to do the job the bigger, better and more expensive prewar ships failed.

The real battlewagons of the Empire, the ones slugging Starfleet to pulp in DSC, can't be bothered to run frontier errands. The small scouts in turn are of little use in big fights. But they are fine for inserting of operatives, hunting down of fugitives in small ships, and harassing of (slightly) bigger ships when operated in sufficiently ovewhelming formations.

Youngsters like Kor, Koloth and Kang get commands of these, so that they can either prove their mettle or be lost to nobody's loss. A century later, they can still be going strong, perhaps even be Dahar Masters. Or then subspace dust like their classmate Kras.

Timo Saloniemi