Articles of the Fed. Question

[Sci]

Babaganoosh said:
I guess I just can't reconcile the Klingon concept of honor in battle - they do seem to fight in ways that even *we* would consider honorable, meaning they wouldn't shoot unarmed opponents in the back or anything like that - with what we're talking about here. How can they treat their opponents honorably in battle, yet not do the same with slaves?

The traditional Klingon mindset would probably reply this way:

We fought with them in honourable combat. We did not stab them in the back. We gave them a fair chance to defeat us in battle, and they lost. Ergo, we have every right to subjugate them.

Remember, Klingons are not us. In fact, by our honour code, Klingons are not nice people. Many of them, by our honour code, aren't even good people. They are an alien culture with an alien value system whose principles stand in fundamental opposition to those of the modern constitutional liberal democrat. I mean, hell, as near as we can tell, they oppress their own people, too -- a small number of aristocratic Houses dominate government, commoners and peasants have almost no representation, and only the occasional extraordinary man like Martok manages to elevate his station in life.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sci said:The traditional Klingon mindset would probably reply this way:

We fought with them in honourable combat. We did not stab them in the back. We gave them a fair chance to defeat us in battle, and they lost. Ergo, we have every right to subjugate them.

If the Klingons actually do fight these people first, giving them a chance to prove themselves in battle, then I can see how they might think that way.

If, however, they just descend upon a planet and immediately take it over without combat, then start brutalizing the natives as slaves, then that's what I could never understand. For instance, I'd find it impossible to believe that Kor's actions towards the Organians in "Errand of Mercy" were honorable.

 

[Trent Roman]

Babaganoosh said:
I guess I just can't reconcile the Klingon concept of honor in battle - they do seem to fight in ways that even *we* would consider honorable, meaning they wouldn't shoot unarmed opponents in the back or anything like that - with what we're talking about here. How can they treat their opponents honorably in battle, yet not do the same with slaves?

See, from my perspective, I wouldn't consider the Klingon epistomology of battle something to be valued (I don't subscribe to any notion of 'honour', which seems mostly used by killers and oppressors anyway). A Klingon would shoot an unarmed opponent in the back, if he or she was running away: thus a coward, and thus unworthy of respect. It doesn't bring them any honour, but it would match their notion of justice.

The Klingons respect people who can fight, and the closer to their level of combativeness the better. Those who can't fight - like slaves, since they wouldn't be slaves if they had been able to fight well in the first place - are treated with contempt. As an analogy, think of contemporary people who only respect wealth: they will value others who are rich like them, but look down on the poor with contempt, and don't hesitate to trample them if they see benefit to themselves. Mistreatment of the poor is justified by the fact that they evidently weak, lazy, stupid or otherwise less deserving, because if they did have intrinsic merit, then they would be rich as well. That's how Klingons view jeghpu'wI: their status as conquered places them outside those to whom the system of honour applies, and they are basically mobile, intelligent tools.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Trent Roman said: A Klingon would shoot an unarmed opponent in the back, if he or she was running away

How do you know?

When have we ever seen a Klingon do that (apart from 'Errand of Mercy')?

 

[Mike Farley]

Babaganoosh said:
If, however, they just descend upon a planet and immediately take it over without combat, then start brutalizing the natives as slaves, then that's what I could never understand. For instance, I'd find it impossible to believe that Kor's actions towards the Organians in "Errand of Mercy" were honorable.

But from the Klingon point of view, a worthy people WOULD fight back...no matter the odds. Remember the contempt Kor had for the Organians, not because they were aliens, but because they were "sheep".

 

[Nerys Myk]

Babaganoosh said:

Trent Roman said: A Klingon would shoot an unarmed opponent in the back, if he or she was running away

How do you know?

When have we ever seen a Klingon do that (apart from 'Errand of Mercy')?

Kras killing Maab in "Friday's Child"?

It's a sad day when the original Klingon from the first Klingon episode is some how thought of as "unKlingon".

 

[KRAD]

Kras killing Maab in "Friday's Child"?

It's a sad day when the original Klingon from the first Klingon episode is some how thought of as "unKlingon".

Uhm, Kras wasn't the original Klingon from the Klingon episode. That would be Kor in "Errand of Mercy," a first-season episode -- "Friday's Child" was second season....

 

[Nerys Myk]

I guess I didn't my self clear enough. That comment was directed to Babaganoosh's referense to "Errand of Mercy". Kras was in reference to another Klingon shooting someone in the back. Didn't mean to imply that Kras was the original Klingon.

 

[KRAD]

^ Oh.

Well.

That's different.

Never mind!

 

[BrotherBenny]

Babaganoosh said:

Xeris said:The world should make George Bush make that walk of shame, as the whole world turns its back on him, we'll call the episode "Sins of the President"

I see. That answers the question above, then. You hate him so much, therefore I guess I know how you feel about those who voted for him.

Even the most intelligent people can be duped sometimes. I don't know you personally, so I cannot say how I feel about you one way or the other. My only question though, is would you still vote for him now?

As for the Klingon sense of honour, it is just that, Klingon. I don't feel the need to expand on that anymore than it already has been.

 

[Christopher]

And there are plenty of Klingons who don't live by a code of honor so much as they look for ways to redefine "honor" to justify doing what they were going to do anyway. Because there's no such singular entity as "Klingons" -- there's just several billion individual members of the Klingon species and culture with their own individual personalities and agendas. And different political factions that come to the fore and impose their definitions of "honor" on the culture for a while until some other faction gains power and advocates a different definition. We've seen this clearly enough in the shows, and even more clearly in KRAD's books.

So debating whether a given action is consistent with "Klingon honor" is kind of missing the point. It depends on which Klingons you ask.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Of course, another issue is that during the original series' run, it was really the Romulans who were supposed to be the race obsessed with honour. It was really only during TNG that the Klingons became The Race That Do Honour.

So I think that some of the criticisms of the lack of honour in TOS' Klingons actions are valid. But equally, those criticisms are being made with the benefit of hindsight.

 

[flandry84]

Nothing I've ever seen leads me to consider the Klingons as anything other than self-righteous blowhards.Honour is just pub-talk,the Klingons are just as cold-blooded and pragmatic as any Romulan.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Captaindemotion said:
Of course, another issue is that during the original series' run, it was really the Romulans who were supposed to be the race obsessed with honour. It was really only during TNG that the Klingons became The Race That Do Honour.

That was because of ST III. It was originally supposed to have Romulans instead of Klingons. They switched the races, but kept all the dialogue.

 

[KRAD]

I have a lengthy diatribe in me on the subject of how there is, in fact, very little real difference between the TOS and TNG/DS9 Klingons, and that the whole notion that the Romulans and Klingons "flipped" is, like so many assumptions about TOS, completely unsupported by onscreen evidence. (Kinda like the notion that Kirk has always been a maverick and rebel who disobeys orders at the drop of a hat, which is actually 100% a byproduct of the movie era. In the 79 episodes of the TV series, he disobeyed orders precisely once: in "Amok Time.")

But I'm about to go off to celebrate my cousin's 25th birthday, and the Yankees are playing for their postseason life tonight, and I've got 857 different things to work on right now, so that diatribe must wait for another time....

 

[Captaindemotion]

*Collective 'Whew!' issued by the denizens of the BBS!*

 

[Trent Roman]

^ Speak for yourself; I was going to ask for a raincheck.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[captcalhoun]

sort of a short version:

point of fact, the Romulan Commander in BoT laments the lack of honour among the ruling classes in the Empire at the time saying it didn't use to be that way. and the Romulans in TEI don't exactly behave honourably either.

Kor on the other hand seemed quite honourable and decent in EoM.

my 2 slips.

 

[Sci]

Captaindemotion said:
Of course, another issue is that during the original series' run, it was really the Romulans who were supposed to be the race obsessed with honour.

No they weren't. Go back and re-watch "Balance of Terror." Part of the whole point of that episode was that the Commander represented the old school who still believed in honour, while the subdordinate whose title I cannot recall, and whom the Commander indicated was a supporter of the Praetor, was one who no longer cared about order, but instead only expediency.

In other words, TOS got the ball rolling on the idea of Romulans not caring about honour; it simply suggested that this had not once always been the case, and that the last generation of Romulans who believed in a strict honour code were losing power during TOS Season One. (ENT's depictions of the Romulans seems to indicate that the process of their loss of power began as far back as the 2150s.) And that's part of the story of Rihannsu -- how the old vanguard lost power.

 

[Christopher]

I think that, like so many longstanding but extracanonical assumptions in fandom, the idea about TOS Klingons being treacherous and TOS Romulans being honorable comes from The Making of Star Trek. The chapter entitled "The Bad Guys" defines them in those terms. It says things like:

It is hard to hate the Romulans completely, as they often display enormous courage. Although members of a warrior society in which the strong alone survive, they live their beliefs with great integrity.

And:

More powerful than the Romulans, the Klingons are less admirable characters. Their only rule of life is that rules are made to be broken by shrewdness, deceit, or power. Cruelty is something admirable; honor is a despicable trait....
All in all, the Klingons appear to have little (by our standards) in the way of redeeming qualities.

It also stresses that Romulans have complete gender equality while Klingons treat women as "sometimes useful animals" -- the latter of which was contradicted within a year by the presence of Mara as Kang's science officer in "Day of the Dove."

But TMoST's nutshell descriptions of the Romulans and Klingons pretty much defined those races in fandom for a long time, I think. In the days before home video, I daresay that books like TMoST and The Star Trek Concordance had a very powerful influence on how fans saw ST, since those books -- which many of us had (and still have) on our shelves -- were often a more accessible source of information about the Trek universe than the episodes themselves -- any given one of which would only be available when it happened to show up in a local station's rerun schedule.