Why is Earth not a subjugated colony of the Klingon Empire?
- Thread starter Deimos Anomaly
- Start date
Easy, reoccuring Klingon infighting. Perhaps there was less than perfect stability after the elimination of the position of Emperor two centuries prior to TNG.
As soon as I "learned" on ENT that the Klingons were, oh, as close as Los Angeles by car, I left. Ditto JJ's Vulcan, which now is just a few minutes away by warp speed.
Whatever happened to space being a cold and lonely place? It used to be that we were out of communication with earth, and we treated each new contact as a marvel.
As it stands, Trek destinations in ENT and JJ are as surprising and distant as the Holiday Inn. Yawn.
Whatever happened to space being a cold and lonely place? It used to be that we were out of communication with earth, and we treated each new contact as a marvel.
As it stands, Trek destinations in ENT and JJ are as surprising and distant as the Holiday Inn. Yawn.
And how is that any worse than Qo'noS and most of Klingon space being a hop, skip, and a jump away in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country?
Klingon space seems pretty close in TMP.
The turn around for that info would be pretty quick. Klingons destroyed. Starfleet notified. Kirk gets command. Epsilon XI destroyed. The Enterprise is launched. Maybe a day or two in all.
Just saying.
Star Trek The Motion Picture said:
Star Trek The Motion Picture said:
.Star Trek the Motion Picture said:
The turn around for that info would be pretty quick. Klingons destroyed. Starfleet notified. Kirk gets command. Epsilon XI destroyed. The Enterprise is launched. Maybe a day or two in all.
Just saying.
^ Couple of things- V'Ger could have been(and probably was) going at high warp and whole lot higher then any ship from the 2150s. Also, I can easily ignore one line versus ignoring the whole pilot episode and subsquent Klingon episodes in that series.
There was only one line in the ENT pilot mentioning that it would take just a few days to reach Qo'noS. Why ignore one line and not the other?
Oh, must be that good old double standard again.
The entire premise of Enterprise makes no sense, in the context of the rest of Star Trek. The Original Series has an excuse: it was the pioneer show of the franchise and truly didn't have anything to get "wrong." The show was just starting to feel out the full vast Star Trek universe we know today.
When a franchise is making it's fourth spin-off television series to profit off of a well-loved expansive universe, there is NO excuse to ignore continuity at every turn. And to do so in a prequel? It's clear they were not willing or capable of putting in the amount of extra effort required to make a prequel without destroying hundreds of hours of established cannon.
Star Trek has been known to trip over its own feet sometimes but Enterprise pulls the rug out from under all of established Trek. Yes, it matters a lot that Captain Archer should never have met the Klingons, Borg, and Ferengi. Changing the history of the Federation has much more rippling effects than something like "Threshold" in Voyager, which can be laughed at and ignored.
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There was only one line in the ENT pilot mentioning that it would take just a few days to reach Qo'noS. Why ignore one line and not the other?
Oh, must be that good old double standard again.
So if I were to ignore that one line in Enterprise, then I can just believe the pilot episode took many years to get to Klingon space. Interesting....
In TMP era, I would believe it would take less time to get to Klingon space compared to, lets say, 100 years earlier. I find it extremely odd Earth and Qo'nos would be so damn close. Easy to ignore one line that has no effect on the plot or story then one line which is backed up by story.
Just wanted to quote this.There was only one line in the ENT pilot mentioning that it would take just a few days to reach Qo'noS. Why ignore one line and not the other?
Oh, must be that good old double standard again.
Why would it be odd that two sworn enemies happen to live next door to each other? That's far more common than two well-separated peoples becoming sworn enemies!
We have no real evidence that Klingons subjugate primitive worlds. They may occupy one if it holds strategic value in an upcoming war by virtue of its location, as per "Errand of Mercy", or they may have designs on one if it holds valuable resources, as per a couple of other TOS episodes. But Earth isn't known for its resources - indeed, TOS stands testimony to Earth being an absolute wasteland in that respect, so that Starfleet has to fight tooth and nail for the resources of distant worlds. And Earth has never been suggested to stand at an important crossroads or anything like that (apart from its later position as the hub of the UFP, of course).
It wouldn't be difficult to see Klingons ignoring this piss-poor world that stands inconveniently close to the powerful Vulcans. Heck, even Vulcans ignored it, despite being quite interested in playing the imperialism game over places like Coridan.
Trek is quite consistent on Earth and the Klingon Empire (and perhaps their respective homeworlds) being very close to each other - save for that single reference in ST6 to Kirk and Gorkon meeting "a thousand lightyears from the Federation HQ". Statistically speaking, if we start ignoring lines, the single one about a great separation is the one that should go.
Although of course it's possible that Gorkon wasn't taking the direct route; few leaders at the crosshairs of assassins from all sides do that.
Timo Saloniemi
No doubt it was, but it still means The Klingon Empire is very close to Earth. The TMP Enterprise managed to rendezvous with V'ger when it was slightly more than a day away from Earth. ( when the ship launched V'Ger was less two days and four hours away) At best V'Ger was traveling at Warp 7 like the Enterprise.
Star Trek the Motion Picture said:
Still possible that under the right conditions, one can reach the Klingon Homeworld in four days.
Its more than a line its several scenes in TMP, that taken as a whole mean the Klingon Empire is very close to Earth.
Exactly. Like in the bar fight in "The Trouble with Tribbles."
The real problem, of course, is that we're all pretending that the scheming, swarthy bad guys in TOS are indistinguishable from the blustering space Vikings seen in the spin-offs. In reality, trying to argue why the Klingons didn't attack Earth depends on whether you're talking classic or modern Klingons.
Soon to be superceded by the nuKlingons, of course!
Just wanted to quote this.There was only one line in the ENT pilot mentioning that it would take just a few days to reach Qo'noS. Why ignore one line and not the other?
Oh, must be that good old double standard again.
Why? There becomes a point when the amount of rationalization you're putting in for someone else's continuity errors ruins the watchablity and therefore the enjoyability of the show.
Star Trek should be more about inspiring the viewer to consider moral and philosophical questions, as well as the consider the wonderful possibilities that the future and space exploration hold. Star Trek does this in many ways, but one of the ways that is very important to some of us is immersion. If Enterprise wants to be part of the Star Trek universe, the only thing they're inspiring in the viewer is to invent complicated rationalizations for lazy or uncreative plots.
A rather simple explanation for how quickly one can reach Earth from Qo'nos is this: that's just how fast TOS era ships can go. And during the time that Enterprise is set... no ships could go warp five. And all of Enterprise never happened. That explains it perfectly.
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