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1 Planet, 2 Opposing Warp-Capable Nations

I just reread my original post and noticed a mistake. The question is "Were the Klingons warp-capable before the Norman*, er, Hur'q invasion?"

*My inner historian's attempt to be funny.
 
^ Probably, although with all the wacky historical revisionism that goes on in their Empire, Gowron probably changed the history books so that his ancestor Lord Khaless single handedly chased them off the planet with his batleth.
 
I think the Klingons got their warp-level tech from the Hurq, which explains why they took so long to advance over the centuries. They didn't invent their tech and didn't fully understand it or make it their own for centuries.
 
^ Which is yet another example of warp capability not exactly being the gold standard for determining a culture's level of development. Heck, the Pakleds were warp-capable and had alot of other technology too. But they were culturally far less developed than many non-warp-capable species we saw.
 
I seem to remember something about "The Pakleds are a shining example of what happens when the Prime Directive is ignored", implying they were the result of someone giving them Warp tech instead of them developing it.

This is also why the Feds do their best to observe cultures they feel are on the verge of warp travel, to get a better understanding of them and know what to expect. The Malcorians were a great example.
 
^ Right, but the Federation is the only one with the prime directive. The Romulans, Klingons, Ferengi, Cardassians, and how many others may choose to give or sell technology to a species at any time. So there's got to be alot of races running around out there with warp technology that they did not invent on their own.

Anyway, my point was that I don't understand why achieving faster than light space travel is somehow a measure of a culture's development. Sure, that happened to be a driving force in Earth's transformation into a peaceful world, but only because it happened to be noticed by the Vulcans who then made first contact. It's not like the technology itself is somehow a magical device that will make everyone on a planet forget their grievances with one another.

Frankly, I think simply saying "we contact those who are warp capable and leave alone those who aren't" is way oversimplifying matters and leaves alot out of the equation. There's alot more to how developed a society is than whether or not they've figured out how to make a warp engine. The TNG interpretation of the prime directive seems to say that interaction with a pre-warp culture will contaminate their natural development, but contacting a culture with warp will not, which I just don't get. There are great differences in warp cultures. Look at the Enterprise era vs. the TOS era vs. the TNG era. Totally different worlds. Imagine how a replicator or a photon torpedo could affect a culture that had achieved warp but not those other things.
 
I dunno, ever seen the Outer Limits episode "Trial by Fire"? The US and Russia end up getting themselves obliterated.

Every episode of TOL ends up with the team/country/person/world getting obliterated due to our own incompetence and arrogance, deliberate or otherwise. That show was very predictable in the way it brow beat the hell out of any lesson it was trying to teach. The arc of the show seems to be "humanity is destined to fuck itself".
 
Not really, I've be rewatching the series and only 1/3 of the episodes end darkly. The other 1/3 are happy and the last 1/3 just have somewhat bittersweet endings. It's just that the dark ones stand out more.

Anywho, it's not that being warp capable makes you more socially advanced it just means they're at a point where it doesn't matter how advanced they are they'll be encountering aliens no matter what. So the Feds do their best to make sure the experience is as good as it can get.
 
Anywho, it's not that being warp capable makes you more socially advanced it just means they're at a point where it doesn't matter how advanced they are they'll be encountering aliens no matter what. So the Feds do their best to make sure the experience is as good as it can get.

*nods* The sense I get is not so much that the Feds think having warp drive will have the same effect as giving everyone magic happy pills as that they have limited time and resources and don't want to deal with contacting cultures that are not going to encounter the UFP by their own efforts.
 
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