Are there 2 Klingon Homeworlds post-Undiscovered Country?

[Dryson]

But that's just the problem. It's harder for them to "go out" without dilithium to power their ships. I mean, you might as well say that people in Mad Max's dystopia could solve their gasoline shortage by driving to find new gasoline sources. There's quite an obvious problem with that premise.

(Although technically dilithium just channels engine power rather than creating it, so maybe spark plugs are a better analogy.)

Dilithium lasts a lot longer than gasoline does. At first I thought Praxis had been a terror attack, but after realizing that dilithium crystals, although the main focusing factor for warp drive, the actual fuel of the starship would have made a better terrorist target.

I'm not certain what the actual standard length of mission duration a Klingon ship is fueled up for, but the length of mission duration would probably be in years.

 

[Christopher]

Dilithium lasts a lot longer than gasoline does.

Depends on how much stress the crystal is subjected to. We've seen many instances of crystals being burned out when the ship's power systems were taxed by combat or heavy exertion. We've seen that 23rd-century starships carry supplies of replacement crystals (Discovery had a whole wall-sized rack of them), and that those supplies can run out and leave a ship in need of resupply at the nearest mining colony. Dilithium is a precious resource in great demand, and the ability to recrystallize and reuse dilithium was a major breakthrough.

So dilithium has consistently been portrayed as an expendable resource rather than an enduring component. It lasts longer than a gallon of gas, but shorter than a spark plug (unless spark plugs get burned out faster by heavy use in race cars or whatever, I dunno). Maybe the better automotive analogy is tires -- they wear out faster than most components, can blow out if overstrained, and have to be replaced periodically.

I'm not certain what the actual standard length of mission duration a Klingon ship is fueled up for, but the length of mission duration would probably be in years.

I doubt that very much. The Enterprise's mission was 5 years because it was a general frontier patrol tour encompassing exploration, diplomacy, colony support, and defense as needed. Military ships would probably be assigned to more specific short-term missions -- bombard this planet, deliver relief troops to that occupation force, put down the rebellion on this subject world, defend the border against that enemy's attack, etc. True, you'd probably have ships just generally patrolling the border to watch for enemy incursions, but you'd probably want to rotate ships and crews every few months at most, because if a Klingon crew got too bored with a long, tedious border patrol, they'd probably end up killing each other. So it probably wouldn't be necessary to equip a battleship to be able to operate for years in the field without returning to port for repair or resupply.

Not to mention that Klingons would find it dishonorable for a ship to go any great length of time without engaging in battle, and battles are tough on dilithium crystals and other components. So if anything, Klingon ships would probably burn out their crystals much faster than Starfleet ships. Especially since they probably don't take as good care of them. Praxis happened because the Klingons were reckless in overmining the moon and ignored safety precautions. They're probably just as careless about engine maintenance, so their crystals wouldn't last as long as they ideally should.

 

[Dryson]

Military ships will have robust crystals as well as supplementary systems that would shield the crystals from excessive damage due to combat, while science and medical ships would have less robust crystal shielding.

TOS era Enterprise had a 40 year tour of mission lifetime.
https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/constitution/constitution-01.jpg

 

[Christopher]

Military ships will have robust crystals as well as supplementary systems that would shield the crystals from excessive damage due to combat, while science and medical ships would have less robust crystal shielding.

The Enterprise, particularly in TOS, was a multipurpose ship designed for combat as much as anything else, yet its crystals were overloaded and burned out on a number of occasions.

It's fiction. No matter how robust the defenses are said to be, they'll fail whenever it's convenient for the story. TNG: "Contagion" said there were something like 13 levels of safeguards that would have to fail before a warp core breach happened, and the incredible unlikelihood of it was a key story point, but once the phrase "warp core breach" was introduced, later writers got lazy and used it so casually that it seemed warp cores would breach the moment someone looked at them funny.

 

[Dryson]

The Enterprise, particularly in TOS, was a multipurpose ship designed for combat as much as anything else, yet its crystals were overloaded and burned out on a number of occasions.

It's fiction. No matter how robust the defenses are said to be, they'll fail whenever it's convenient for the story. TNG: "Contagion" said there were something like 13 levels of safeguards that would have to fail before a warp core breach happened, and the incredible unlikelihood of it was a key story point, but once the phrase "warp core breach" was introduced, later writers got lazy and used it so casually that it seemed warp cores would breach the moment someone looked at them funny.

Although the story is fiction, writers have to maintain canon, even with warp core breaches. The 13 levels of defenses that you are referring, are in fact levels of defenses Starfleet engineers built around the warp core, based on threat forces, Romulan, Breen, Klingon, Orion, etc. The entity from Contagion had never been encountered before, thus the reason why the Yamato and Romulan Warbirds were so easily defeated. Both races had never encountered the entity before and didnt have the data to immunize the computer systems aboard their starships.

Back on topic.

With Qo'nos being damaged after Praxis exploded, logic would say that a new Klingon homeworld should have been established.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Although the story is fiction, writers have to maintain canon

Now pull the other leg.

 

[David cgc]

Military ships would probably be assigned to more specific short-term missions -- bombard this planet, deliver relief troops to that occupation force, put down the rebellion on this subject world, defend the border against that enemy's attack, etc. True, you'd probably have ships just generally patrolling the border to watch for enemy incursions, but you'd probably want to rotate ships and crews every few months at most, because if a Klingon crew got too bored with a long, tedious border patrol, they'd probably end up killing each other. So it probably wouldn't be necessary to equip a battleship to be able to operate for years in the field without returning to port for repair or resupply.

We did see two D-7/K't'inga battlecruisers on century-ish long voyages, the sleeper ship in "The Emissary," and the generational ship in "Prophecy." Its possible they were both modified for long journeys (and we never did find out what the "Emissary" ship's mission was that involved a 75-year round-trip), but the fact that they were able to use a battlecruiser hull and not something purpose-built implies Klingon ships are designed with autonomy and durability in mind.

 

[Christopher]

writers have to maintain canon

Writers don't "have to maintain canon." That's getting it backward. What the writers create is the canon, by definition. It's not some set of rules forced on us by whatever higher authority you're imagining. The creator of a fictional universe is the highest authority. A canon is just a set of stories that have something in common, and stories are just pretend, so they can change their specifics and pretend it always worked that way -- like James R. Kirk becoming James T., or Data using contractions regularly until suddenly he couldn't, or the 24th-century Federation being portrayed as utterly peaceful in seasons 1-2 until season 4 retconned in a recently-ended Cardassian war.

You're making the common mistake of assuming that "canon" means "continuity." Yes, it's preferable to maintain as much continuity as feasible for the sake of credibility, but continuity is a means to the end of telling stories, not the other way around. All creativity is a process of trial, error, revision, and rethinking, because no human achievement is perfect the first time out, and there's always room for more improvement. Ideally, you want the revision and change to happen before release, but any ongoing series is inevitably going to require some revisions along the way. A canon is something that pretends to have a uniform continuity even when it changes the details -- like, say, the Marvel Comics canon pretending that every story from 1961 to the present has taken place within the past 10-15 years, constantly altering the period specifics (for instance, Reed Richards is no longer a WWII veteran and Flash Thompson no longer fought in Vietnam) while pretending it's all still a single unified continuity. Continuity, like everything else in fiction, is an illusion, a pretense. The audience is expected to play along with the illusion, to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story. Continuity is not a straitjacket. It's not the overriding purpose of storytelling. It's just a story device, to be used or set aside as needed.

We did see two D-7/K't'inga battlecruisers on century-ish long voyages, the sleeper ship in "The Emissary," and the generational ship in "Prophecy." Its possible they were both modified for long journeys (and we never did find out what the "Emissary" ship's mission was that involved a 75-year round-trip), but the fact that they were able to use a battlecruiser hull and not something purpose-built implies Klingon ships are designed with autonomy and durability in mind.

That doesn't change the fact that Star Trek has routinely portrayed dilithium crystals as a resource that can be quickly depleted and require regular replacement, going back to the introduction of the crystals (as "lithium crystals") in "Mudd's Women." I don't see the point of trying to argue that something explicitly and consistently depicted in canon is somehow not actually the case.

 

[Dryson]

Writers don't "have to maintain canon." That's getting it backward. What the writers create is the canon, by definition. It's not some set of rules forced on us by whatever higher authority you're imagining. The creator of a fictional universe is the highest authority. A canon is just a set of stories that have something in common, and stories are just pretend, so they can change their specifics and pretend it always worked that way -- like James R. Kirk becoming James T., or Data using contractions regularly until suddenly he couldn't, or the 24th-century Federation being portrayed as utterly peaceful in seasons 1-2 until season 4 retconned in a recently-ended Cardassian war.

You're making the common mistake of assuming that "canon" means "continuity." Yes, it's preferable to maintain as much continuity as feasible for the sake of credibility, but continuity is a means to the end of telling stories, not the other way around. All creativity is a process of trial, error, revision, and rethinking, because no human achievement is perfect the first time out, and there's always room for more improvement. Ideally, you want the revision and change to happen before release, but any ongoing series is inevitably going to require some revisions along the way. A canon is something that pretends to have a uniform continuity even when it changes the details -- like, say, the Marvel Comics canon pretending that every story from 1961 to the present has taken place within the past 10-15 years, constantly altering the period specifics (for instance, Reed Richards is no longer a WWII veteran and Flash Thompson no longer fought in Vietnam) while pretending it's all still a single unified continuity. Continuity, like everything else in fiction, is an illusion, a pretense. The audience is expected to play along with the illusion, to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story. Continuity is not a straitjacket. It's not the overriding purpose of storytelling. It's just a story device, to be used or set aside as needed.





That doesn't change the fact that Star Trek has routinely portrayed dilithium crystals as a resource that can be quickly depleted and require regular replacement, going back to the introduction of the crystals (as "lithium crystals") in "Mudd's Women." I don't see the point of trying to argue that something explicitly and consistently depicted in canon is somehow not actually the case.

Yes dilithium can be depleted under extreme use situations, but not under normal use. With the Klingons being at constant war, their use of dilithium would far exceed normal Federation use thar would require, at least three times the amount of dilithium.

 

[Christopher]

Yes dilithium can be depleted under extreme use situations, but not under normal use. With the Klingons being at constant war, their use of dilithium would far exceed normal Federation use thar would require, at least three times the amount of dilithium.

Umm, yes, that's exactly my point -- that dilithium is an expendable resource. "Normal use" is irrelevant, because works of fiction are not about normal, everyday events; the stories we see are situations that push the ship and crew to their limits. And it stands to reason that Klingon battleships would experience similar stresses on a regular basis.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yes dilithium can be depleted under extreme use situations, but not under normal use. With the Klingons being at constant war, their use of dilithium would far exceed normal Federation use thar would require, at least three times the amount of dilithium.

Who were they at constant war with? In TOS it was a cold war with the UFP and possible alliance with the Romulans.

 

[Christopher]

Who were they at constant war with?

The worlds they were conquering, presumably. An empire, by definition, rules over multiple subject peoples. Or perhaps they were fighting nations on the opposite side of their space from the Federation and Romulans.

 

[Silvercrest]

The Enterprise's mission was 5 years because it was a general frontier patrol tour encompassing exploration, diplomacy, colony support, and defense as needed. Military ships would probably be assigned to more specific short-term missions -- bombard this planet, deliver relief troops to that occupation force, put down the rebellion on this subject world, defend the border against that enemy's attack, etc. True, you'd probably have ships just generally patrolling the border to watch for enemy incursions, but you'd probably want to rotate ships and crews every few months at most, because if a Klingon crew got too bored with a long, tedious border patrol, they'd probably end up killing each other. So it probably wouldn't be necessary to equip a battleship to be able to operate for years in the field without returning to port for repair or resupply.

A Klingon tour only lasts until the blood wine runs out.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The worlds they were conquering, presumably. An empire, by definition, rules over multiple subject peoples. Or perhaps they were fighting nations on the opposite side of their space from the Federation and Romulans.

I guess they mostly keep that stuff to them selves.

 

[Christopher]

I guess they mostly keep that stuff to them selves.

Selection bias. Since we see the show from the perspective of a Starfleet vessel, we only see the instances where Starfleet interacts with the Klingons. That doesn't mean there's nothing else going on, any more than the fact that a hospital drama only features sick or injured people means that there are no healthy people in the city. It just means that what we see is a narrow, curated cross-section of what goes on in the show's world.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Selection bias. Since we see the show from the perspective of a Starfleet vessel, we only see the instances where Starfleet interacts with the Klingons. That doesn't mean there's nothing else going on, any more than the fact that a hospital drama only features sick or injured people means that there are no healthy people in the city. It just means that what we see is a narrow, curated cross-section of what goes on in the show's world.

I didn't say there was nothing going on, I said they don't talk about it. ( with their other enemies)

 

[Christopher]

I didn't say there was nothing going on, I said they don't talk about it. ( with their other enemies)

Klingons interacting with Starfleet talk about things relevant to that interaction. The stuff happening on the other end of the Empire usually wouldn't be relevant.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Klingons interacting with Starfleet talk about things relevant to that interaction. The stuff happening on the other end of the Empire usually wouldn't be relevant.

Yes, that's what I said.

 

[Dryson]

Klingon dilithium must have been substandard to Federation dilithium if the Klingons were always trying and actually conquering planets.

How many planets did the Klingons conquer that had dilithium crystals?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Klingon dilithium must have been substandard to Federation dilithium if the Klingons were always trying and actually conquering planets.

How many planets did the Klingons conquer that had dilithium crystals?

None? Have there been any episode where the Klingons were after dilithium? I honestly don't recall.