A History of the Klingon People

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

Survival of the Fittest and Klingon Society

by James Singh-Li, Professor of Political & Xeno History, University of Leeds, and author of "The Crying Ice: Andorian Medieval Monasticism"


People are in two minds about Klingon Society.

Read a about the empire from other cultures, and you will find two broad views:

• Some people describe Klingon society as a cutthroat world where eugenics and survival of the fittest is government policy. Klingons advance in rank through assassination. They must constantly remain vigilant, cynical and politically aware. They build personal fortune on the backs of other's downfall.

• Other people describe Klingon society as honor-bound, obsessed with social propriety, ritualised challenges, and defence of law and justice. Klingons consider courage in combat, death before dishonor, fairness and lawfulness to be their guiding principles. They ascribe to a code to the point of fanaticism.

So which is true?

The low born have little chance of advancing in rank, as those with power inevitably create systems to retain that power. The honor code of Kahless is used to limit the carnage of a ambition-encouraging system, by imposing legalistic rules on the general populace, who take psychological succor from these values.

But many Klingons in the military can see through this charade, and merely use the popular values and rituals as another tool in their arsenal.

The Federation's contacts with the empire, are littered with Klingon Commanders who paid lip service to honor, but unofficially admitted to their Starfleet rivals that they had little or no care for social custom; it was a tool to them - Kahless was an anachronistic joke.

Sometimes the social policies of the Empire become more or less prominent; after the Klingon Revolution of the 23rd Century, the Empire appeared governed by a fascist system that didn't even attempt to hide it's nature in traditional rhetoric - the revolution was secular, rejecting the rhetoric of honor entirely - officers were monitored constantly, and the eugenic policy of social advancement was blatant. After the Gorkon Reforms, the Empire has slipped back into a medieval atavism, where the religion of Kahless has again become popular with the masses.

This is why there will be no lasting understanding between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire as long as Klingon society does not come to terms with the real causes of conflict between the two - Klingon citizens today argue that they have returned to the true teachings of Kahless - when in fact they have merely returned to the same system of social control that the empire possessed before the Klingon Revolution - it is a re-entrenchment of the same ideas - the bravado of the young - blind respect for tradition - imperialism camouflaged as good vs evil.

That is my opinion, at least.

Klingon dissidents have always existed - millions of Klingons are irreligious and pay no heed to traditional social expectations - dissidents find the philosophy of Kahless as little more than justification for their oppression; with stifling notions of nobility. Non-conformists can either join the military for advancement, or live at the fringes of society.

 

[Mistral]

Logical-else, why multiple hearts? Redundancy in an ocean environment is a survival trait-and allows survival for proto-Klingons underwater.

 

[Tracy Trek]

On the first page of this post, you mentioned how the first Empire was overthrown (the Tong, was it?) and how it came about became something of a myth. Was that intended to be the myth of how the Klingons overthrew their gods?

And I've often thought myself, there had to be Klingons who did something else besides be warriors. You just never hear about them.

 

[velour]

Thats the thing I dont like about TNG/DS9/VOY's portrayal of Klingons. In another thread we managed to pin down the exact moment when this problem first arose, and it was after the episode 'Heart of Glory'. In Heart of Glory, the narrow minded Klingons were portrayed as obsessive anarchonisms - they were never meant to be mainstream Klingons, but rather atavistic reactionaries. But afterwards, they were taken by some of the writers as a sort of template for the more one-dimensional portrayals of later eras.

I refuse to think they are all inept - I choose to think we came across a string of bad examples. This fits better with the more intellectual TOS Klingons (including those from The Undiscovered Country).

I don't accept the barbarian portrayal, as it makes little sense. No culture could survive in space if it didn't even understand the technology it was using; and if it understood the technology, it could develop said technology. We don't see alien engineers on Klingon ships or anything. Tribute might make sense in an ancient context, but not in an era when concepts as complex as state espionage are a regular feature of war.

I don't know if the change in the physical appearance of the Klingons had an influence on how the TNG writers chose to portray the Klingons. By appearance, I mean the cranial ridges, among other things.

With the cranial ridges, the Klingons looked more like brutes and savages. The ridges gave the Klingons a sort of Neanderthal-ish quality.

It would only seem natural that with that look, the TNG writers would give the Klingons a more barbarian portrayal, as opposed to the more intellectual, cunning and sinister portrayal of the non-ridged TOS Klingons.

Although the ridge look started during the TOS movies, the one dimensional fanatically honor obsessed warrior portrayal didn't seem to start with the TOS movies.

-------

About the history of the ridged
and non-ridged Klingons, were there non-ridged Klingons who refused, for whatever reason, to be cured of the augment virus? Were they systematically wiped out, i.e. genocide, by the authorities?

If an offspring of a ridged Klingon still carried the virus gene and was born without a ridge, was that offspring systematically snuffed out, sent to concentration camps or orphanages?

The Klingons seem to be a very brutal xenophobic society that wouldn't deal kindly with differences. They seemed ashamed of the non-ridged look, as Worf's comments in DS9 would indicate. It seems like it is in the Klingon's character to whitewash history and wipe away any remnants of that shameful time.

Were there still populations of non-ridged Klingons left, in isolated pockets or remote frontier planets, during TNG times? Were they hunted down by the imperial Klingons?

I am curious as to what the canon, or non-canon, history of the Klingon says about this matter.

By the way, USS Einstein, I enjoyed reading your history of the Klingons.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

Yeah I've always been uncomfortable with how the Klingons suddenly became more barbarous the more they looked diferent from us - it resembles ethnic prejudice - so I instead choose to believe that Klingons are capable of the same sinister and calculating stuff in all eras.

I think probably, after the ridge thing was cured, social pressure induced 99.9% of the Klingon population to go back to their original appearance - maybe it was even compulsory - but maybe there are a few un-ridged Klingons remaining.

On the first page of this post, you mentioned how the first Empire was overthrown (the Tong, was it?) and how it came about became something of a myth. Was that intended to be the myth of how the Klingons overthrew their gods?

No, I chose not to, because in real-life-history, mythology never develops this way (all those psuedo-scientific ideas you find in populist books for example, posit that people like the ancient Indians might have derived their gods from something that happened to them in ancient times - whereas in reality, mythology develops purely as metaphor, based on literary utility - based on how dramatic or symbolic it is) - I believe the Klingon myth of killing their own gods instead comes from elders simply wishing to convey a metaphorical message - perhaps about self-reliance and making your own fate; or as a rejection of dogma.

Fundamentally the Klingons are quite rationally materialistic in my view, and don't care for theism - they are an orthopraxic civilization, rather than an orthodoxic one - i.e. values are more important to them than a creed.

 

[Steve Willis]

OK, with regards to the ridges, James Doohan joked shortly after TMP that the ridges were the result of the tribbles he gave them. Then in "Trials and Tribblations" Worf shows great dislike for tribbles and states that The Great Tribble War was a time of great dishonor for the Klingons. He implies that forehead ridges were not in existence till then. Then comes the Enterprise story arc about the augments and the release of a disease that removes the ridges from Klingons. Which one is it?

 

[SpaceLama]

Only on-screen stuff is canon in Star Trek.

TOS, TAS, the movies, TNG, the other movies, DS9, and VOY.

At one time even TAS wasn't regarded as canon.