ADM Hanson: "The Klingons are sending warships"

[Unnamed Caitian]

To Wolf 359.

Have we ever heard anything else about Klingonaction at W359? Was it glorious? Did they "missed the party" like the Enterprise? Has the Federation minimize their role in history books?

 

[Relayer1]

They shot up the wreckage of the Federation fleet for fun and flew off on a month long bender...

 

[penguin44]

Ooh that would make a great story. People picked up by the Klinks at w359 in their escape pods and taken back to the homeworld

 

[somebuddyX]

I just assumed they arrived too late. "Unity" might suggest they did in fact fight at Wolf 359 or else Klingons fought their own Borg invasion at some point.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

I just assumed they arrived too late. "Unity" might suggest they did in fact fight at Wolf 359 or else Klingons fought their own Borg invasion at some point.

It's likely that Klingons have had their own interactions with the Borg. They're located in the Beta Quadrant, which is closer to Borg space than the Federation. Plus, Klingons and Romulans share borders, and we know Romulans have had their own Borg issues before, too.

 

[Mojochi]

I seem to recall me seeing an assimilated Klingon or two somewhere out & about, footloose & fancy free.

 

[Christopher]

Have we ever heard anything else about Klingonaction at W359? Was it glorious? Did they "missed the party" like the Enterprise?

The only thing I've ever seen that acknowledged a Klingon presence at Wolf 359 was an issue of Marvel's Voyager comic where the ship encountered a space-time warp connecting to the battle.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I seem to recall me seeing an assimilated Klingon or two somewhere out & about, footloose & fancy free.

The Borg who assimilates Hawk in ST:FC was Klingon.

And there's also General Korok from "Unimatrix Zero".

 

[JesterFace]

Has anyone noticed any Klingon ships in the wreckage seen on screen after the battle when Enterprise arrives?
I have assumed that Klingons sent ships but they didn't make it on time.

 

[Christopher]

Has anyone noticed any Klingon ships in the wreckage seen on screen after the battle when Enterprise arrives?
I have assumed that Klingons sent ships but they didn't make it on time.

Apparently the FX artists didn't include any. https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359.htm

 

[Unnamed Caitian]

from the same site, a screen cap of the Spock episode: a Klingship in a Fed garbage dump:

It could have been at the battle. If not, why would they have a K-ship there?

 

[Christopher]

It could have been at the battle. If not, why would they have a K-ship there?

Surplus Depot Z15 was a general starship scrapyard; there's no narrative mention of any connection to Wolf 359. I think the only reason EAS connects them is because some of the same miniatures were used to create both shots.

Since the Klingons and the UFP are allies, it's possible that the Klingons donate their old ships to UFP scrapyards. They probably don't care what happens to their dead ships any more than their dead bodies, whereas the UFP would be all about recycling and keeping the galaxy green. So maybe the Klingons let the UFP clean up their discarded ships.

 

[Ragitsu]

"Better than cupcakes."

 

[Dukhat]

There is one object in the Wolf 359 graveyard from BoBW that hasn’t been definitively identified. It is a small object in the far distance that resembles the back end of a K’Tinga Klingon battlecruiser (which was available as an AMT/ERTL model kit back then.) Unfortunately it’s too far in the background to specifically make out what it is, unlike every other object. But if it is a damaged battlecruiser model, that might have covered Hanson’s line about the Klingons sending ships.

 

[Oddish]

The armada at Wolf 359 seemed pretty hastily thrown together... they weren't able to evacuate nonessential personnel from the ships. Remember that Jake, who was 11 then, was onboard.

Given that, the Klingons may not have been able to get many ships there in time. Possibly, none made it. The Borg who were Klingons might have been from other encounters.

 

[Christopher]

Given that, the Klingons may not have been able to get many ships there in time. Possibly, none made it. The Borg who were Klingons might have been from other encounters.

Quite possibly. The reason Wolf 359 is significant (the reason the writers chose it) is that it's the third-closest star system to Earth (fifth-closest if you count known brown dwarfs). It's in the heart of the Federation, so it stands to reason it would be a bit of a hike for Klingons (disregarding how "Broken Bow" retconned it to a 4-day trip at below warp 5, and how modern Trek seems to treat all interstellar journeys as a matter of hours).

 

[Oddish]

modern Trek seems to treat all interstellar journeys as a matter of hours).

The Federation is said to be 8000 light years across, low estimate. That means that it would take eight years at Warp 8 (1024c) to cross it.

 

[Christopher]

The Federation is said to be 8000 light years across, low estimate. That means that it would take eight years at Warp 8 (1024c) to cross it.

That was stated once in First Contact, IIRC, but it doesn't fit other references. DS9 effectively shrank the Federation by depicting the travel time from Bajor to Earth, or from Cardassia to Qo'noS, as a matter of days instead of weeks or months. As such, the maps in Star Trek Star Charts, and the subsequent onscreen maps based on them, have depicted the UFP as only a few hundred light years across.

Also, the published warp scales were always far, far slower than what was actually depicted onscreen, so they were effectively meaningless. For instance, "That Which Survives" claimed that the Enterprise could travel nearly 1000 light years in less than 12 hours at warp 8.4. That's about 730,000 times the speed of light, while the published "warp factor cubed" formula would make it only 593 times. Not to mention that at that speed, Voyager could've made it home in just over a month.

Most stated numbers in Trek are basically nonsense, because they're just space-fillers generated by different writers who have made no attempt to coordinate with each other. They're just numerical lorem ipsum to convey a rough impression of scale or duration to the audience.

 

[JesterFace]

What if....
We focus on the stories rather than distances and how long it takes to travel them.
However, there's a certain fascination in interpreting warp speeds and how fast ships travel, I get that.
But, those things shouldn't stand in the way of enjoying certain stories.
First example that came to mind: Enterprise-D is somewhere far away on the edge of the Federation exploring the unknown but apparenly it doesn't take that long to travel to Earth to celebrate Wesley's graduation from Starfleet academy.
(STNG - The First Duty) Well, perhaps it wasn't the only reason to visit Earth....

 

[Christopher]

What if....
We focus on the stories rather than distances and how long it takes to travel them.

I think that's a false dichotomy. The limitations of a setting can be important to a story -- for instance, if a character is too far away for help to arrive in time. Naturally you want the audience to pay more attention to the immediate emotion of a story, but the storytellers should keep the realities of the setting in mind when plotting the story.

Besides, the whole reason it's called Star Trek is because Roddenberry wanted to convey that star travel is a trek, a long and arduous journey whose achievement is an impressive feat. He wanted to do a story about people far out on the frontier, removed from any support and having to solve their own problems, as well as the problems of whoever else they encountered. The trend in modern shows to allow ships to make interstellar journeys in a matter of a few hours or less, even to assemble whole fleets of far-flung ships like flash crowds as in the Lower Decks season 3 finale or the Prodigy season 1 climax, makes for a radically different kind of storytelling. Setting is part of story, not a separate thing from it.

First example that came to mind: Enterprise-D is somewhere far away on the edge of the Federation exploring the unknown but apparenly it doesn't take that long to travel to Earth to celebrate Wesley's graduation from Starfleet academy.

Yeah, but there you've implicitly got weeks passing between stories. It's not like the examples I cited where ships that might be scattered all over space are magically able to converge on the same place on very short notice within a single episode.

And of course, TOS avoided doing stories set on future Earth for precisely that reason -- the ship was just too far away. (Also to avoid revealing too much about future Earth and making predictions that might prove implausible in retrospect.) TNG is a century later when ships are faster. Also, the original intent of TNG to have the E-D probe into the unknown far beyond Federation space was abandoned pretty much immediately after the pilot (given that episode 2 involved rescuing another Starfleet ship and episode 3 involved a medical relief mission to a Federation world). The D spent a great deal of time in known space on diplomatic missions, rather than primarily operating on the frontier like Kirk's ship.