Chronological rewatch from a historical perspective

Almost finished with Next Generation season 3 and wanted to post before I moved on to The Best of Both Worlds. I've always considered this to be my favorite season of The Next Generation and it really is as good as I remembered it. With names like Michael Piller, Ira Steven Behr, Ronald Moore and Renee Echeveria starting to appear in the credits, the writing staff is stronger now than it will ever be again.

Episodes like The Enemy, The Vengeance Factor, The Defector, The Hunted, The High Ground, Deja Q, Yesterday's Enterprise, The Offspring, Sins of the Father, Tin Man, Sarek, and of course The Best of Both Worlds part 1 are all top-notch entries into the canon.

Several notes of historical import include continuing Romulan aggressions, including the first hint that the Romulans have larger plans for the Galorndon Core, which we will see bear fruit in season 5, as well as yet another attempt to provoke the Enterprise into being the ones to start a shooting war.

I'm forming the thought in my head that all of the Romulan machinations from the end of season 1 through Unification were all part of the lead-up to a long-term plan to retake their home world of Vulcan, with most of the rest of the confrontations amounting to nothing more than distractions from their ultimate goal. I'll see how well that theory holds up as I move into things like the Klingon Civil War. I realize this wouldn't have been the writer's intent, but I'm sort of connecting imaginary dots here.

Also of note is the return of Sarek. We have now followed this man's journey for approximately 115 years of his life, and have been privy to both his successes and his failures. The episode establishes that his career continued to be successful since we last saw him at the Khitomer conference, and that he is still considered a dignitary of historical import.

I think it's easy to see through the performances of both Mark Lenard and James Frain (and Ben Cross as well, but we will come to him down the line) that, illogical as it may be, Sarek loves his family very, very much. But to finally see the raw, fiery passion of these emotions through his mind meld with Captain Picard brings a tear to my eye every time I see it. Patrick Stewart just absolutely nails that scene.

This time, however, hit particularly close to home. As a villain we will meet up with eventually enough said, "Time is the fire in which we burn", and it catches up with all of us in the end. I'm seeing what Sarek is going through with new eyes, as I'm seeing much the same thing happening now with my own father. It is painful to see someone you consider an anchor slowly fade away.

Oh. I really don't like Perrin at all. She's no Amanda, that's for sure.

On a less somber note, I was pleasantly surprised to realize while rewatching Transfigurations that Chief O'Brien's penchant for injuring himself while kayaking on the Holodeck originated here, rather than on Deep Space Nine. That's some nice continuity right there. I'll have another hit of that.

 

Random thought here, concerning the Offspring - the admiral makes a comment about it may be a breakthrough in the development of AI - but they have had, and banned AI in the past, no? (yet another of the minor inconsistencies that implies to me that ENT/DSC are in a rebooted timeline all of their own, but I digress...)

 

I don't recall any mention in The Offspring of AI being forbidden. In fact, Data is confused as to why Captain Picard had any objection to what he was doing. If research into artificial intelligence were banned, Data would certainly be aware of that fact.

As for the rest, whatever floats your boat and helps you better enjoy the stories being told. It's all a fictional construct, so there is no right or wrong here. For my money, I think it's overcompensation for a couple of discrepancies that are really minor in the long run. I mean, where do you draw the line? Does Space Seed take place in an alternate reality because it described Holocaust-like wars that took place in 1996 and established that Humanity was traveling in between planets by the year 2018? Does The Squire of Gothos take place in an alternate reality because it infers that the show takes place in the 27th century? Does Where No Man Has Gone Before take place in an alternate reality because Kirk's middle initial is "R"? Does the Next Generation's "Home Soil" take place in a different alternate reality than TOS "Devil in the Dark", seeing as the former episode implies that silicon-based life is an unheard of phenomenon? Does The Next Generations "The Host" take place in an alternate timeline than Deep Space 9 because of the differing portrayals of Trill? I could go on, but I think my point is made.

I mean, as I said, if imagining different timelines helps you better enjoy what's being presented to you, then more power to you. Speaking for myself, I never have seen the necessity of it, and this experiment is just reinforcing that opinion. Sure, there are inconsistencies, most of them minor things that could easily be explained away. The worst transgressions are the Romulan cloaks from Minefield, but even that's not enough for me to randomly declare that it takes place in an alternate timeline. Again, where does one draw that line? I'd rather just go along for the ride as it's more fun that way.

Star Trek has never, ever been 100% internally consistent, so why should I hold newer product to a different standard than the prior product?

 

I'm so sorry. ***HUGS***

 

Thank you. It is appreciated.

 

Its funny how perspective works - the same things that reinforce your opinion one way, reinforce my opinion in the opposite way.

I was under the impression that after Control, Starfleet felt AI was dangerous. I may have made that up in my head. Regardless, AI existed in the 23rd in Discovery, but the Admiral thought it was a new emerging goal in the Offspring. Just struck me as funny. (Not to mention that Data already existed, do they not consider him AI anyways?). I don't know. There reaches a point where there are *so many* small inconsistencies, I feel an explanation like a timeline rewrite makes more sense then trying to fit pieces that clearly no longer fit together, together. A lot of smaller details can be handwaved with reasonable explanations, of course - for instance, the way ST:C explains the middle initial gaffe. I don't feel that there are lots of different realities, but just one solid reset after the events of First Contact, where coincidentally, the two subsequent shows have the most inconsistencies, and benefit more from the idea of a reset, which is actually baked into the DNA of ENT (TCW) and the events of FC. Its also interesting that a chronological watch, with a timeline reset, actually rather nicely follows Production order.

(examples of many different incongruities)

 

At the other end of the spectrum, I was watching DS9: "The Sound of Her Voice" today, which is particularly relevant to this era of the 24th century we're discussing from two angles.

First, there is a scene of Chief O'Brien talking to the marooned Captain Lisa Cusak while laying on his bunk. He discusses how he psychologically prepared himself for the Dominion War when it began, but how as it's dragged on, it's been a completely different experience than the Cardassian (Border) Wars for him, more or less saying that the scope and type of the conflict has taken him to a much darker place than his experiences in the 2350s. This is another data point in the limited scope of the "wars" of the long peace period, which were formative for the generation of Captains, Admirals and senior enlisted that were in their mid 40s or later in 2375. The Cardassians were interested in expanding into some space. The Tzenkethi were presumably much the same. The encounters with rogue Ferengi DaiMons were slap fights. You really had to go all the way back to the late 22nd century to find, in the Klingons an enemy that was an existential threat to Federation in the way the Borg were. And before that you'd have to go to just before the birth of the Federation with the Romulans trying to nip it in the bed. The end of the long peace had existential threats pop up in short order.

The Romulans motives in the 23rd century are unclear. It seems to be assertive starting in the 2260s and engaging intrigue through the 2290s, but there is no evidence of an outright plan to attack the Federation the way the Klingons would. The undefined (in canon) Tomed Incident seems to be the one major military effort by them targeted at the Federation, to unknown ends between 2161 and 2364. This is relevant because the Romulan Empire that remerges in the 2360s is extremely aggressive and is clearly trying to, if not outright destroy the Federation, massively weaken it. The say why in their first encounter: in their absence the Federation has grown everywhere and they can't tolerate that. Couldn't be any more clear.

What O'Brien is expressing in that scene then, is a road that was paved when he was still on the Enterprise. The big war with the Romulans that could have happened in the 2360s never came by 2375 (and we know know, never came at all). But there was an even more sweeping one with the Dominion that took him to a spot he never imagined being.

The second angle has to do with Lisa Cusak. To put it simply, she's soft compared to the other Captains we've seen. Her ship, went to explore the far reaches of the Beta Quadrant on an 8 year mission starting in 2363 (that would be, 6 months before Encounter at Farpoint). They were far, far away from everybody for the entirety of the era we're getting into in this TNG chronological perspective, and what would come after with DS9/the Dominion War. It's like she's a frozen in amber example of the purist "explorer generation" that started to take a sharper edge at the 2360s bore on in response to the Borg and the Romulans.

Lastly, Transfigurations is a massively underrated episode (though the suffocation weapon is a stupid plot device). The end of the episode when the Picard says "It's our mission to seek out new life in all its forms. It is our privilege to be present at the birth of a new one" is perfectly performed by Patrick Stewart. His facial expression captures the awe of what he's witnessing, and his two sentences capture, I think, the core mission of Star Trek as a whole in a way entire episodes have been less successful at doing.

That said, TNG Remastered dropped the ball on that episode, because the new glowy god alien is very much a guy in spandex.

 

I think it bears repeating that much of what we think of as an organized 24th century canon is a product of Deep Space Nine, starting around Season 4. When Voyager started having contact with the Alpha Quadrant, they road the wave of that too, as did the post-Generations TNG movies. The 24th century organized, semi-consistent canon started to take shape in Seasons 4 and 5 of TNG (more so 5), and then in an even more more defined form in TNG seasons 6 and 7 / DS9 Season 1 and 2. But basic world building questions like "how big is the Federation", "what is and how big Starfleet", "what does the Klingon-Federation alliance mean", "what are 24th century economics", didn't even begin to get addressed until really after TNG was off the air, and even then wasn't consistent. In fact, I remember when Star Trek: Enterprise began some fans were upset that we were going backwards rather than forwards, but the truth of the matter is, we knew next to nothing about the Birth of the Federation other than the year, and the core 4 founding members weren't even officially defined until Enterprise.

It's ironic really, how much absolute shit Rick Berman got back in the day. And yeah some of it was clearly deserved. He (and Braga) were clearly creatively burned out towards the end of Voyager and working with UPN I think broke their spirit about what they wanted to accomplish on Enterprise (and thus a "creative reset"). But Trek Canon owes him an unrepayable debt because having one guy in charge of the franchise for that long created an internal consistency that really is only rivaled by our sadly defunct Stargate, which also had extremely long tenured franchise management. A common thing to see in other fandoms is "why can't we do this like the MCU?". Well that's because the MCU has Kevin Feige and his team, which encourages creative vision but has a "house style" for all things, from the logic, science and magic of their fictional universe to its history to its visual style. The de-canoning of Marvel Televeision series like Agents of Shield (which was once so crucial to MCU Phase 2) is a testament to that level of creative control and vision.

Berman was Kevin Feige, in a sense, over 20 years ago now. And the result is we can talk about the period from 2364-2380 + 2151-2155 in a fairly consistent manner, with a common visual continuity, a fairly well structured history, and a defined set of rules. And yeah it was far more than Berman. It was people like Mike Okuda and the rest of the long time behind-the-scenes creatives who played a major role in staying consistent (which in many ways meant referencing and being consistent with their own work). It is in fact, no coincidence the internal consistency within TNG began to really take shape as Gene Roddenberry's influence declined. And the further removed he was from it, and the more Berman and Piller were in charge, the better structured it got. But we shouldn't really think about Roddenbery in a negative light in that respect. For a writer-producer of his era, everything was a one-off show. And even Berman had to have that vision broken of him over time as TNG went on. But it clearly worked.

In a twist, we've seen what happens - again - when there isn't one guy in charge. Discovery's troubled first two seasons (especially Season 1) is entire due to the fact that it first had Bryan Fuller's weird, revisionist, vision, then it shifted to Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts vision. And then they were fired and finally it has fallen into the hands of Alex Kurtzman, seemingly for a minimum of 7 years.

Kurtzman has his problems that long pre-date Star Trek. He was long a JJ Abrams / Michael Bay "style over substance" and "details are for nerds" kinda guy. But Star Trek has a certain gravitational pull, and I think we've seen, particularly in Season 3 of Discovery (which has been by far its best and most stable) him break out of some of those habits. That said, I think Discovery will be dogged by a lot of Bryan Fuller's shitty ideas as long as it is on air, and wouldn't' be surprised in the slightest if Strange New Worlds is the more "pure" Kurtzman Trek vision. I do think there is a good chance though, that if he sticks around long enough, we'll be able to say Discovery seasons 1 and 2 were essentially just like TNG seasons 1 and 2: uneven, sometimes dreadful and a rough start with some really bright patches, that got smoothed out as the series matured and found its legs. Restarting Trek with TNG really meant taking the Trek name and building a whole slew of new ideas with just 3 uneven seasons from the 1960s and 4 movies, 2 of which really were any good. And it worked to the degree we don't even blink at things like "command is red, ops/security is yellow" or "pips on collars". In fact, we expect it. Kurtzman has a lot more to go off of than Roddenberry, Berman and Pillar did in the 1980s and 1990s (and thus, a lot more to be consistent to). So over time, that internal consistency we look for should continue to mature.

Long story short, even though every bit as flawed as Rick Berman was, or really anyone would be (Kevin Feige has mountains of criticisms too, don't forget) the single best thing Trek can do from a world building perspective is have him in charge for as many years as possible. And yeah it may mean parts of it are different than Berman-Trek, but that was true too of Berman-Trek and TOS-Trek. And I'd say trying to make all these part fit is half the fun. And it's had a real positive effect on the franchise. 20 years of fans trying to reconcile TOS/TNG+movie differences in Klingon foreheads and culture directly lead to the Klingon Augments storyline, which gave Trek an incredible (and it turned out, needed) reason for for why Human/Klingon relations were so horrific for over a century. Kurtzman may never get into filling in the big blanks between 2399 and 3189, but fans and his successor will, in time!

 

Also of note was that in Yesterday's Enterprise we met a Captain Picard who was well-adjusted and confident in his role as a soldier and Starfleet's place as a military organization rather than an explorer, and this Picard would have had the same beginning to his career that Picard Prime did.

 

"I wonder if the Emperor Honorius watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill truly realized that the Roman Empire was about to fall."

Prophetic words. Although Wolf 359 did not result in the fall of the Federation, the Federation would never, could never, be the same after that.

How does a society react to something like Wolf 359? Especially a society like United Federation of Planets that has never seen carnage on this scale before? I mean, sure, there were a lot of lives lost in the Klingon Wars, but those were battles that the Federation could fight and hold their own in. Not this time. 39 ships and 11000 lives lost in a matter of minutes. Wiped away by the Borg with a single ship in moments. Honestly, I think about 9/11 or Pearl Harbor and the responses to those events. The horrified, dumbfounded shock. Followed by the anger and the fear.

As @Scionz said above, the altercations with the Cardassians, Tzenkethi and Ferengi of recent history could not possibly adequately prepare the rank-and-file of Starfleet for something of this magnitude.

And Shelby says she'll have the fleet back up in a year. That's a massive reallocation of resources and I doubt that this task force stopped at those 39 ships. We also know that Benjamin Sisko, who would have just lost his wife, will be recruited into this task force and will be part of the team that designs the Defiant class starship. A warship. No science labs. All guns and engines. That definitely represents a shift in priorities from the Federation and Starfleet brass.

I would have loved to seen more of a reaction from the Federation as a whole to these events. We know the people of Earth are aware of some of the things that happened. The mayor of Labarre wanted to hold a parade for Picard.

And Picard himself will never be the same after this. We will see that these events still haunt him 32 years later. The scene with Picard and his brother in the vineyard, with Picard sobbing uncontrollably over what was done to him, should have earned Patrick Stewart an Emmy nomination.

 

11

The contrast between Wolf 359 in 2367 and the Battle of Sector 001 in 2373 couldn't be starker. The Federation got chewed up and spit out at Wolf 359. Modernized 23rd and mid-24th century ships fired ineffective weapons, had shields that were basically useless, and were often disabled (as seen in "Emissary") once the Borg tractor beam got hold of them. They also evidently did no damage and brought their families to what was probably the Federation's biggest fleet engagement in the past 70 years. There is no evidence to think that in the Cardassian Border Wars, the Tzenkethi conflict or any other known minor military faces off, the Federation had assembled anything close to the scale of the 40 Federation ships at Wolf 359. Heck the loss of the Enterprise C, a single ship, in 2344 was defining to mid 24th century politics. THe irony is the 40 ships fielded and the 39 ships lost would be dwarfed by the scale of fleets and losses during the Dominion War from 2373-2375, which were ten, sometimes twenty times the size.

The composition of the Wolf 359 fleet is interesting namely the dearth of Ambassadors and the presence of obscure ships of that share Galaxy-class design cues. Clear pictures of these have finally popped up in the last decade, and Eaglemoss saw them all made into collectibles and CG models for the first time.




(eaglemoss above)

Since a big part of Star Trek from a chronological perspective is ships, especially the "hero ships", I like to think that all of these classes represent a late 2340s to mid/late 2350s attempt by Starfleet to engage in risk reduction. I wrote about this before elsewhere (maybe in this thread, I can't recall), but Starfleet landed on the Constitution-class design (and more so: series of associated technologies) that formed the foundation of it from the mid-23rd century until around 2300. It replaced what we know now as the "Battle of the Binary Stars" generation of ships that fought in the Klingon-Federation war of the 2350s. And while the cruiser-type Constitutions were largely out of service by 2300, the Mirandas, which have a big modular hindsection, stuck around until at least 2381 (Lower Decks). The Excelsior "great experiment" in Transwarp may have failed, but as I wrote earlier, probably succeeded in making Warp 9 normal by Starfleet, and thus allowed for the much larger Federation of the 24th century. The many Excelsior variants and technologies played a key role in the 24th century.

The Ambassador class... we never saw many of them. At least one showed up at Wolf 359 and was promptly destroyed. And we never saw any during the Dominion War. It clearly didn;t represent a class successful enough to replace modernized Excelsiors. In fact, scrolling through Memory Alpha for the Excelsior class something jumps out right away - the registry numbers are in blocks! This is really really cool from a relating-it-to-the-real world perspective. These are the blocks:

Block 1: "NCC-2000s" (USS Excelsior, Repulse, Enterprise B). These would probably all be 2390s first-run Excelsiors.
Block 2: "NCC-14000s" (USS Techumseh, USS Berlin, USS Fearless). These would probably be second-run Excelsiors, in the early 2320s.
Block 3: "Around 40000", with a low of the Intrepid (38907) to a high of the Archer (44278). These would probably be third run Excelsiors, around the 2340s/2450s. Most excelsiors we've seen are this block. The USS Lakota (Enterprise-B variant) was NCC-42768.
Block 4: "Late Run Excelsiors", ranging from the Melbourne (62043) to the Atlantis (72007). This puts them in the 2350s and 2360s. In fact the Galaxy class prototype, USS Galaxy, had a registry of 70637, which means the Atlantis entered later.

It's a certainty the Federation kept the basic hull and kept updating the technology so a Block 4 Excelsior was a highly capable mid-century cruiser that wasn't a capital ship program like the Galaxy class, and probably a more work-efficiently design than the Ambassador, which seemingly had no advantages over the Excelsior (by contrast, the Galaxy class's advantages are quite clear). If I haven't made it clear, I think the Ambassador class is pretty much a great lemon by Starfleet. A lot of ambition and good ideas but 20 years too early, not unlike the Zumwalt-class destroyer of the US Navy.

So those Wolf 359 ships..... I've long thought they mostly represent Starfleet taking technologies intended for the Galaxy-class megaproject and breaking them up to prototype and field-test them them at a smaller scale, integrated with some proven technologies, before combining them all together for the first time in the USS Galaxy. That's exactly what modern Naval shipbuilders do. The Galaxy-class shaped saucer for example is a feature that only shows up on the Galaxy class and the Wolf 359 ships, and is a radical departure from the Excelsior, Ambassador and Constitution classes. They featured phaser arrays, a special semi-pearlescent hull plating and narrow windows. It's fair to think Stafleet built scaled-down version of the Galaxy class saucer, and plugged it into a proven secondary hull and nacells, because the test was the saucer. One of these classes has a too-large-for-the-saucer bridge module... so not unrealistic to think it was a test bed for the bridge and computer to manage the ship, again at scale. The Freedom-class's only has a single Galaxy-class nacelle on it, but the nacelle design is so revolutionary and crucial to the class's success that you'd want to test it independently. The Springfield-class USS Chekov is among the most interesting. It has a sensor pod that would be a dead-ringer for a prototype Nebula-class sensor pod (or galaxy-class sensors-in-a-box), and a secondary hull that would be perfect as a testbed for the Galaxy class's revolutionary deflector.

Side note: the Parliament-class and California-class of Lower Decks all show Galaxy-class-derived saucers and are likely 2360s spin-offs of these "Battle of Wolf 359" designs into "behind the lines" ships (like the Cerritos). But they have no features of what would come in the wake of Wolf 359, with the Saber, Akira, Sovereign, Steamrunner, Norway and now (also from Lower Decks) Luna class.

The thought of these Wolf 359 ships as an evolutionary step between Ambassadors / Block 3 Excelsiors and the Galaxy class is compelling because the only ones we ever saw were at Wolf 359. And that kind of makes sense. Admiral Hansen through together that fleet with whatever Starfleet had in range. It's probably these test-bed ships, of which there may be only a couple or a few examples of, were kept close to home. Some, we could figure, were even doing developmental work on the next class of starship, before being called into service, where they were destroyed.

And yet, for getting wiped out in 2367, but by 2373, the revisions to the fleet that came in the wake of Wolf 359 (and given clear urgency by the impending Dominion War that would come within months), had clearly worked. Federation ships took big hits and kept on fighting by the Battle of Sector 001. Their shields did not collapse. They did extensive damage to the Borg cube before the Enterprise-E showed up. And it did take insider-knowledge from Captain Picard, but they had the firepower to destroy a Borg Cube without adaptation by it. And while losses were again, high, it wasn't close to total.

Wedged between this, of course, is the first contact with the Dominion in 2370. The producers of DS9 purposely made Captain Keogh a Picard-analogue, and the USS Odyssey an Enterprise-D stand in. The point was to send the message that our TNG heroes would have faired no better versus the Jem'Hadar. The Galaxy class fought them like they fought every encounter in the 2360s: standing still and relying on superior firepower and its shields. Except it didn't work at all. The polaron beams ignored the shields and the lack of maneuverability made it prone to multi-vector and ultimately a suicide ram attack. Federation shields really didn't get any better until the 2372. Galaxy-class ships ultimately did do well in the Dominion War, but they kept moving and had their flanks covered by smaller, agile ships. In fact, "small and agile" came to define the Federation after Wolf 359. Even their biggest post-Wolf 359 ship, the Sovereign class, was highly agile and streamlines. And lest we forget: this streamlining is not some obscure "action movie" invasion into Star Trek as a result of First Contact. If we go back to "Peak Performance" in Season 2, the war game (staged in response to the Borg threat via dialogue), Picard's first command was to present a minimal aspect ratio to the Hathaway - basically turning the ship at an angle relative to the Hathaway to make the ship as small a target as possible.

In 2021, "the Best of Both Worlds" is a 31 year old episode, but I think its presence in Star Trek is not just an inflection point for the franchise (and its fictional universe / continuity), but also a waypoint in how science fiction sees space itself. TOS, like most space-science fiction in the 1950s and 1960s focused on the unknown mystery of the cosmos. It's a mindset shifted towards mystery and a lack of understanding. Even as late as 1984, with the Voyage Home, Star Trek emphasised this point. V'Ger and the Whale Probe were not out to destroy. They were only destructive because of a misunderstanding.

But in the mid 1980s, perhaps as a result of the upheavals of the 1970s, end of Apollo, and later Challenger, the optimism of space started to drain away and we started to get more and more "Space Horror". That is, the unknown mysteries of the cosmos are dangerous and can, and probably want to kill you. Aliens, Predator, the Thing all are elements of that shift.

The Borg were Star Trek's first expression of it, and the Dominion is its second. The Federation, as we observed in this thread, is very capable of dealing with species, even intractable foes, who operate in much the same way they do - a government, diplomats, trade, territory, interests. When they look at the Klingons or the Romulans they see variations on themselves or what they could be. The Romulans were Vulcan offshoots. The Klingons were not unlike what the Andorians could have become, and even to a degree, what the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe did become. So how does that approach deal with the Borg, which is (at the time) leaderless, faceless and not interested in the things the Federation is? How does that approach deal with the Dominion, which wants the submission of all potential rivals as a way to assuage the Founder's millenia-old paranoia about solids, and do so with an endless army of disposable troops? It doesn't.

"Q Who" was the Federation truly being perfectly introduced to a galaxy outside of its little bubble it barely understood (and arrogantly thought it did understand). The Best of Both Worlds was that reality intruding into the Federation's little paradise. And it wouldn't even be the worst.

Relating this to the real world again, back in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, President Obama decried Russia's "19th Century Foreign Policy that has no place in the 21st century". But we've seen in the years since, by Russia, by China, by the US and others, that in fact the foreign policy mode of operation of the post-Cold War era, starting in 1992, that for 20 years was taken for granted and delusionally seen as self perpetuating and the new normal, was in fact, the aberration. That 19th century foreign policy he decried was not just of the 19th century, but of all but 20 years of the 20th century, and the 18th, and the 17th, and the 16th. Obama - very much not alone in this by the way - saw changing borders and using military power to advance a national agenda as an aberration and didn't have the tools in place to address it. The US did not move our navy and air force into position to force Russia's compliance with the global order. Maybe it would have done that 40 years ago, but not in 2014. The modern system is not equipped to process such disruption.

In evaluating how the Federation would have reacted to Wolf 359, I think that, not Pearl Harbor, is an proper analogue. Imperial Japan was understandable at some level. The US and Imperial Japan had been contesting influence in the Western Pacific for 20 years before the attack. The US wouldn't have done its version of a Pearl Harbor, but the aims were logical from the Japanese perspective, because fundamentally both Japan and the US wanted similar things: political, economic and military influence / dominance of part of the Pacific. But as we've seen since 2014, as the US has ratched up sanctions and penalties, Russia just does not care and has tightened its grip on Crimea. It's been extraordinarily difficult for an entire generation of US diplomats who thought in terms of "win-wins" and making everyone "productive stakeholders" to figure out how to respond to an adversary who just doesn't want and operate in the same manner. In fact, there are some big names in foreign policy who STILL will not let go of the way things were for 20 years, particularly since the same thing is happening now with China.

Relating that to the Federation, I think we'd have to see significant consequences. There would have be massive institutional change (like happened in the US after 9/11, and now).. It would likely end the political prospects of the sitting Federation President. Starfleet Command, which badly misjudged - I'd even say failed - to anticipate security needs as the Federation spread further into the galaxy, would have to be cleaned up. That may even explain the ascension of more militant Admirals in subsequent years, like Pressman, Leyton, Nechayev, Dougherty and Ross. They may have been the minority in the "exploration" era, but quickly came to drive Starfleet priorities, with a tilt towards security, starting around 2369. 18 months would be sufficient for there to have been house cleaning at Starfleet. Unambiguously, I think it's clear that it meant the end to the ill-conceived "families on ships" policy. The next large explorer - the Sovereign class - did not have families and was extremely heavily armed. The smaller post-2370 ships did not have accommodations for them. Picard's point of view about that policy ultimately ended up being the correct one. Writing this, I'm just thinking how when Julian Bashir first saw the Defiant sickbay, he said it was "laughable". I think that just underscores how, well, spoiled, Federation officers were in the 2360s (something Scotty pointed out in Relics when he saw his room). The sickbay the Defiant class was clearly not enough to perform a surgery like a full spinal column replacement that the Galaxy-class could handle, but as we later saw, clearly sufficient for the types of combat injuries the crew of a warship would likely encounter. Again, there is a 2360s perspective thing going on that clashes against the realities that the world they were walking into was changing.

The irony is, Wolf 359 was probably as small price to pay. If Q never accelerated the Federation's encounter with the Borg, the Federation would have been assimilated. If the Borg were never encountered at all, but the wormhole still opened, there is little doubt the Dominion would have rolled over a Federation which didn't have years of Borg-related defense work that could be repurposed to that conflict (like the Defiant and it's cousins). 11,000 dead in 2367 would be dwarfed by the engagements in which 70,000 Starfleet and 80,000 Klingons would die by 2375. But that's the price of survival in an ever more dangerous galaxy.

We've only seen one certifiably post-Dominion War class ship: the Inquiry class of 2399. I'm gonna say - I'm not that big a fan of the design. Made by John Eaves, I think we're seeing what happens when one of the main ship designers of the late TNG era isn't challenged by producers to revise the design to conform to certain "in universe rules" that enhanced the designs of other ships, like the Sovereign-class and NX-01. It's not the worst, but is very "first draft" to me. But even still, we see the post-Wolf 359 lessons carried forward: sleakness, a low profile with a lot of emphasis on a defensive design, fewer windows, sharper edges, an "unibody design", a more armored hull and a strange deflector. It seems, at least that in-universe the lessons delivered during Wolf 359, carried forward into the Dominion War, would be with Starfleet for the next 30 years.

 

Reunion is an interesting turning point in Worf's arc, as well as the Klingon Empire in general. The loss of Keyhlar still stings, all these years later.

This episode got me thinking that Worf will probably be seen as an equally important a figure in Klingon history as Spock will be in Federation and Vulcan history. We see his actions here shape the future of the entire Klingon Empire, and not for the last time.

K'mpec kept the Empire stable for over 20 years, longer than any other Klingon Chancellor. While this was surely good for the people of the Klingon Empire (not to mention the federation's era of peaceful expansion), we have seen that this has left a lot of Klingons of the old school chomping at the bit for the days of old.

K'mpec's death brings an end to that and adds another layer of concern for a Federation that is now more vulnerable than it has ever been. And while a Duras chancellorship would have been essentially handing the Klingon Empire over to the Romulans, in the end Gowron wasn't a much better choice, as we will come to see in both later in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Keyhlar even compared him to a Ferengi.

Worf's choice to kill Duras was not politically motivated, but it still had the direct result of shaping the political future of the Klingon Empire, and this will not be the last time Worf has a direct hand in shaping the direction of the empire. And, of course, this is not the last we have seen of the House of Duras.

And more evidence that the Romulans are manipulating things from behind the scenes. I would love for a tie-in author to tackle what was going on in the halls of Romulus during this era.

For a race that prides itself on its honor, we have seen as many Klingons who are without honor as those who adhere to Klingon ways. Lies and backstabbing and betrayal are things very common amongst the Klingon political and warrior class.

I think Worf has an advantage over other Klingons in that having been raised outside the Empire, his view of his people was shaped by the legends and the tales of glory and duty and honor, rather than the less palatable reality. He is shaped from the mold of Klingon legend, rather than Klingon reality, and he's a better Klingon for it. The best his people have to offer. I would like to think that, if we ever get to see the state of the Klingon Empire in the 31st century, that Klingon history remembers him that way.

 

Ever since the end of Season 3 of Discovery, I've given quite a bit to thought about the status of the post-TNG/DS9/Voy era Klingons. Discovery is seemingly intentionally avoiding them, likely until they decide what to do with Klingon make-up. We know from Daniels on Enterprise "they" joins the Federation by sometime in the 26th century (though it's unclear if he means just the Klingon people or the actual Klingon Empire entity that in the 24th century is the 2nd largest power in local space... but I assume he means the Empire). The revelations in Enterprise that the warrior class became culturally ascendant and then entirely culturally dominant sometime in the late 21st to early 22nd century puts at lot of things in context.

I wrote before that I think at a "God's eye view" level, Star Trek's saga (storyline wise) is really about the inextricable coming together of 4 species: Humans, Vulcans, Romulans and Klingons - together the most powerful influential forces within local space for at least 500 years and likely a lot longer.
The first to come together were the Humans and Vulcans. They had very much in common. Humanity very much needed Vulcan guidance coming out of World War III and into the mid 22nd century. Vulcans also feared that humanity unleashed would mean another Klingon Empire or another Romulan Empire in a couple hundred years (the Terran Empire proves that their fears have a real basis).
The second to come together were Humans and Klingons. A disasterous first half-decade of relations lead to 130 years of conflict (the first 80 of which nothing much happened in, to be fair). By the late 24th century, Klingons and Humanity were not only in an deep, active and extraordinarily successful alliance, but there was a great degree of cultural and societal respect between the two. Many humans seemed to be fascinated by Klingon society and Klingons came to see Humans as every bit the warriors they were.

Klingons and Vulcans never had bad relations it seems, and in fact, it seems the Klingons long respected the Vulcans, perhaps impressed by their physical prowess, technology and history.

The third coming together was Vulcans and Romulans. Perhaps the hardest because of a 2000 year alienation. The Spock and the Hobus Supernova certainly pushed that along, but it took centuries after even that. There is no canon clarity yet, but if we look at our own history, it's likely the post-Supernova Romulans fell upon many years of hard times as a diaspora across local space (As ST:Picard more or less shows) before finding a new home in their original home on Vulcan. Perhaps the Vulcans found pity on their cousins and invited them in.

The Final coming together would be Klingons and Romulans, who right and truly hate each other. But the Federation acting as a mollifying force between once intractable foes is one of its purposes. Indeed, in the real world. historically one of the foundational purposes of European Union and NATO was to keep Germany and France from going to war against each other for the third time in the 20th century. It succeeded in that, and today they're fast friends. The Federation, I'd imagine is essentially that.

The core of this "coming together" though is massive political evolution in each party.

The Human Race changed first and the most, perhaps due to it's comparatively less developed status in the 22nd century. By the late 24th, Earth had become every bit the Federation Headquarters planet as it was the home for Humanity. The Human race had an affinity towards Earth, but they were very much a people of the Federation and easily made homes elsewhere in the galaxy. Even Captain Sisko, a man who identified with a very specific part of Earth with a distinct culture (New Orleans) was excited to make his home on Bajor, a culture nothing like his own. 22nd century humans thought of Earth. By the 24th, not nearly as much.

The Vulcans changed second and nearly as profoundly. We saw it on Enterprise with the collapse of the authoritarian, manipulative (and one might say quasi-Romulan) High Command and replaced by a more philosophical society grounded in Surak's teachings. Likely spurred by the dangers of local space, Vulcans in the 22nd century were almost aggressive, hostile and paranoid. They were proficient at the art of war. But by the 24th century, Vulcans had become the Federation's most respected diplomats, peacemakers and administrators. If humanity is the Federation's id, then the Vulcans became it's superego.

The Romulans... well, we know there was some kind of change of policy in the late 2350s or 2360s that lead to them coming back into affairs of local space that enabled a very active 15 years after decades of isolationism. But the Romulan Empire of 2379 (Nemesis) seems more or less frozen in time for at least 200 years with just those policies sometimes in flux. In TNG, DS9 and Voyager, we encounter many Romulans, including some quite powerful ones, who realize the status quo of hostility towards everyone around them is bad for Romulus and needs to change, but is always suppressed by this immovable Romulan State that, while it would cooperate with the Federation on a matter here and there, in the next breath was ready to attack it. It was really going to take a cataclysm to uproot that, and Shinzon's assassination of the Senate, followed by the Supernova of 2387 was that cataclysm. The Romulans were finally able to change because they had no choice. And eventually they became proponents of the Federation.

WHich leads us, at least, to the Klingons. Their society changed in no positive constructive way for at least 300 years.
Klingons of the 2250s were aggressive and paid lip service to honor. They were more like barbarians with a lot of technology.
The Augment virus-era Klingons were devious and aggressive. They had no code of honor to speak of.
Klingons of the late 23rd century were little different from their Human and Romulan contemporaries.
And finally, Klingons of the mid/late 24th century had a culture that had a very profound focus on Warrior-Honor, Kahless and their religion, but abandoned those precepts freely and often.

K'mpec brought stability to the empire for decades. He was also a disaster for it. Humanity and the Federation had evolved markedly over the 24th century in a way that played to their strengths. The Federation truly capitalized on the long peace after Khitomer. And the Klingons? Sure they expanded their Empire "eastward" away from the Federation, but it became infested with ever greater amounts of corruption, minsmanagement and upheaval that K'mpec kept in place through his sheer will, before he got too old and fat to enforce it any longer, and then those tensions came rising to the surface.

It's hard to understate how many lucky breaks the Federation on this account. K'mpec putting the Empire's political development in stasis and not letting a new, sustainable equilibrium to form could have easily led to a series of disasters for the Federation. The first is obviously, Duras would have become Chancellor had Worf not killed him. That would have meant the end of the Federation-Klingon Alliance. It likely would have meant a Klingon/Romulan alliance and a war against the Federation before long. And had that not happened, there is no chance the Klingons under Duras (a coward) would have been involved (at least to the degree they were) in the Dominion War just a few years later. The Federation could have faced it all by itself and would have lost.

Worf killing Duras cleaned up part of K'mpec's mess that allowed his likely successor to revert the fake-equilibrium K'mpec built. He was replaced by Gowron, who did built a new equilibrium of sorts, but one that proved every bit as susceptible to the terrible rot that Worf would (in 2375) diagnose the Empire with.

The Klingons of the 24th century resolve their disputes typically by fighting it out (which in itself is a woefully counter-productive thing to do), but only ever had a two week long civil war to really sort their differences. What was needed - and K'mpec prevented - was either a massively bloody civil war, sometime before 2350, or a negotiated settlement that all stakeholders of the Empire signed on to and would defend. Neither happened, and decay set in.

The Dominion War would prove to be a successful disaster for the Klingons. Section 31 estimated they'd be rebuilding for decades. With the Klingon-Cardassian War before it, and then the Klingon Civil War before that, an entire generation of Klingon Warriors would see their numbers decimated. Had the Hobus Supernova not destroyed the Romulan Empire, the Klingons would have been a 2nd rate power for years to come as the Romulans and Federation competed.

The question everyone had at the end of DS9 is one that began in "Reunion": could Martok, an commoner outsider, save the Empire from the cancer that was progressively destroying it? No canon sources have spoken to this yet (Star Trek Online though, says more or less, no he can't, the problem's too endemic to the modern Empire). I took decisive action by Worf, on the level that no one else was prepared to do for decades, to short circuit a certain disaster with Duras as Chancellor. It would likely take even greater decisive action - including addressing the contradictions at the heart of Klingon culture (as pointed out by Ezri Dax) - to save the Empire.

No one was more ahead of the curve as to what the Empire was than Keyhlar. She saw the bullshit for all it was. She saw their customs as having been perverted into a cloak against criticism and progress, and their aggressive front as mostly an act. It got her killed in then. But I'd like to think at some level her words about the Empire stuck with Worf, which is why his affinity towards Klingon culture never saw him truly cross over, and always kept one foot firmly within Federation and its values that his very honest adoptive parents bestowed in him.

So could Worf be "Klingon Spock"? Or Martok? I don't think so. The problems are very different. Spock was bringing together one people that were cloven in two by an ancient ideological dispute (that ironically, had it not happened, could have meant a 2000 year old Vulcan Star Empire would have ruled all of local space). The Klingon Empire was being eroded by a way of life that every day Klingons participated in. I think it'd be interesting to see him instead as an analogue of Roman Emperor Diocletian, whose reforms stabilized the Empire and bought it another 150 years of life, but failed to address the intractable structural problems. Someone to be talked about as a missed opportunity.

My personal hope for the Klingons in the 31st century is that they are basically extinct. Like after being part of the Federation for 100 years, in the late 27th century the found their ancient enemies, the Hurq, in a distant part of the Gamma Quadrant. They then left the Federation, started a what amounts to a Klingon Crusade, and annihilated the Hurq and themselves in the process. The few hundred Klingons left would be isolationist pacifist monks. They maintain their ancient religion and martial traditions, but do not externally practice them. Basically Shaolin Monk-Klingons. I think that would be a fitting end to their empire.

 

AI research was banned in 2385, after the Synth attack on Mars. Long after TNG.

 

@Scionz I can't believe that I had actually forgotten about Ezri's discussion with Worf about Klingon honor. She was rather blunt and on the nose if I recall correctly. So, the two people in the canon who have had the clearest view of Klingon behavior have been those on the outside looking in. Keyhlar and (Curzon) Dax.

Interesting. Star Trek shows almost always had the outsider amongst the crew. The alien who comments wryly on the contradictions of human behavior (Spock, Data, Odo, Tuvok, T'Pol, Saru, ect...). It would seem the same is true on the contradictions of the Klingon behavior as well.

 

The Wounded, which introduces the Cardassians.

Hmm. The Cardassian Border Wars lasted longer than I recalled. Ended by treaty in 2366, it went back at least as far Picard's time on the Stargazer, which ended in 2355. So, 11 years at absolute minimum, probably longer. Certainly long enough for there to be bitter scars on both sides of the conflict. I wonder how active a conflict it was. How much of the fleet had to be devoted to it at any given time. I've always imagined the Cardassian wars to be a series of border skirmishes rather than full-scale battle for survival, such as with the Federation experienced with the Klingons, and more recently the Borg.

An interesting quote from Admiral Haden, "Jean-Luc, I don't have to tell you that the Federation is not prepared for a new sustained conflict." So soon after losing 39 ships? I bet. Were that many ships even attached to the original Cardassian conflict?

Chief O'Brien's bigotry is bothersome, but unlike the crew of the Enterprise in The Undiscovered Country, O'Brien recognizes his ugly behavior for what it is.

 

Star Trek had no semi-canon "World Map" until Star Charts in 2003, and to this day an much of what we discussed is very adhoc - some of it clearly canon, some of it Star Charts-esque "Gray canon". A lot of how we discuss the world of the 22nd-24th century in this thread (and outside of it) comes through 15 years of synthesizing the series with production materials / writer statements and the new series and gray canon but it's worth remembering, none of this was planned. Much if just fit really nicely. This is especially true of the Cardassians.

Upthread I wrote that the biggest way to rationalize why the Federation didn't encounter the Cardassians, or get involved in an earlier conflict with them, is that that the security situation of Local Space demanded expansive exploration and annexation into the Beta Quadrant (where the NX-01 did most of its exploration), starting in the 2150s and lasting until really the long peace began post-Khitomer. The Federation wisely needed to "fill in" all the way up to the Klingon and Romulan borders to establish a buffer region against further encroachment and develop a defense-in-depth strategy. It's exactly why in the real world the Russian Empire / Soviet Union sought to control Eastern Europe, as a buffer against Germany and France. I think we can rationalize why this led to minimal expansion into the Alpha Quadrant until the 24th century, with Kirk's famouns 5 year mission being important because it was one of the first big Alpha Quadrant expeditions (reposted the maps below).

In purple: the Federation of ~2300. The Romulan Empire was about the same size as the mid 24th century and the Klingon Empire was about half it's 24th century size.



Green / 1 = Roughly region the NX-01 explored (excluding linear trips up to Klingon space).
Yellow / 2 = The "new territory" the NCC-1701 explored in the five year mission, again excluding operations in Federation Space in the Beta Quadrant.
White / 3 = The regions of exploration into uncharted space of the Enterprise-D, mostly before Season 4. Starting in Season 4, there was a shit to border patrol duty and mapping known but uncharted regions of Federation and borderland space.

As you can see, the Federation could have ran into the Cardassians way earlier Cardassia is closer to Earth than Qo'nos. But again, I think it comes down to warp drive. When you're maxing out at Warp 7.x until the 2240s/2250s with the Constitution class, it takes quite a bit to get around that "purple area" in that first map and the Federation would have wanted to focus its efforts there for security reasons. Decades later, when Warp 8 became the norm with the Constitution class and its derivatives, the Purple area became much easier to get around in, so you could now just start exploring outside of it (which kirk did). And then with the Excelsior class around 2300, finally at Warp 9, all of local space is accessible within a 60 days more or less.


I think the question of "how long did the border war go on" comes down t "how fast did the Federation fill into the border of Cardassia (which we will assume, was roughly the extant border of the 2310s, when Cardassia invaded Bajor). Let's take a closer look.



There's not a lot of "name brand" worlds in there, even by 24th century standards Very close to Earth is obviously Tellar, Axanar and Terra Nova. Towards the edge of Federation space is Trill. But many worlds there (looking at Memory Alpha) are colony worlds. Perhaps a "waypoint" we can consider Peliar Zel. That is the planet (Peliar Zell II) Ambassador Odan, the first trill we ever met, mediated the potential conflict between Alpha Moon and Beta moon. They were familiar with him and "his father". Oh, and that species is also a Federation member, perhaps indicating joining sometime within the early 24th century, if "Odan's father" (really O'dan) was involved int hat. If so, that would indicate a much later expansion tinto this region, and thus contact with Cardassia and the Tzenkethi.

We never got an exact sense of when the Cardassian Border wars started, but judging by Maxwell and Jellico and the statements of others over the years, I gather it was no earlier than the mid 2340s.O'Brien said in the early 2370s he had been in service for over 20 years (he was roughly early 40s around 2374). Ths would have made him around 20 years old in the late 2340s - perfect age for someone who enlisted almost on a whim and shocked his father rather than be a musician. And sure enough, the Setlik III Massacre was in 2347. Setlik III must have been within his first year or two of service.

The Federation of the 2340s would be populated chiefly by Excelsiors (likely the Block 2s and Block 3s I laid out earlier), a lot of Miranda variants, the Constellation-class (the Stargazer fought the Cardassians) and whatever Ambassador-class ships there were. The 'Battle of Wolf 359" Galaxy-relatives were 10 years out.

Starfleet was likely enormous then. If what we said in this thread holds true (and it long predates this thread to be clear), that the Federation engaged in rapid expansion in the 24th century, chiefly on the back of upgraded Miranda-class + Excelsior class and Warp 9, it would have needed a lot of ships to explore, annex, logistically support and patrol such a vast area. Far, far larger than 23rd century starfleet. Even writing that makes the presence of so many Mirandas and Excelsiors in the Dominion War entirely sensible: the Federation would want its backbone to be a ship it could build a lot of very easily, which is plainly not the much more "integrated" Ambassador and Galaxy. But we know from the Dominion War that the Federation had many thousands of those updated 23rd century designs. They probably didn't build very many of them in the 2360s besides those last block Excelsiors with high registry numbers, therefore they were likely present during the time of the Cardassian Border War.

But did the Federation deploy them? Almost certainly not. Let's assume (as is likely) that the Federation of the 2340s was only smaller than the 2370s map at the fringes... so contract it by 15% or something. It would need so many ships to make it work. And we saw those ships on DS9. They are canon. Throwing all of them at Cardassia would have squashed them like a bug. There is no way the Federation did that. We know for a fact it didn't.

So what did it do? Judging by the episodes, mostly a policy of conflict avoidance. Setlik III could have been the call to a massive military campaign, but nothing followed it up. Other on and off engagements in the 2350s and 2360s were just skirmishes and one offs.

This makes a kind of sense. Unless the Federation wanted to conqueror Cardassia, it had to expand elsewhere (and looking at where the Enterprise D was exploring in the first few years of its mission, and where the Federation was growing, that very nicely seems to have been policy, as its far away from everyone). Unless Cardassia wanted to fight a major war against the Federation, the "big blue wall" represented the limit of its potential growth. Therefore both sides have incentive to not let the Border wars grow bigger. The Federation didn't want such a war and Cardassia couldn't win such a war.

We often talk about how the Federation is sandwiched between all these hostile species (in fact, that's more or less its entire history, even as its grown; the species just keep changing). From the Cardassian perspective it's just as bad. To their "east" they have the Federation, which is incalculably more vast than the Cardassian Union and more technologically advanced. To the north they have the hostile Breen, who are mysterious but highly aggressive and capable. To the south they have the Tholians, who are intensively aggressive and not even humanoid. Oh and even more Federation. For a people whose culture is predicated on them being a people of a certain destiny - destined to rule the quadrant - this is quite the problem for that ideology. It really can only pick on... well... basically people like the Bajorans - independent systems that can't really fight back.

I think there is an interesting, if un-planned historical parallel here. For the American military leaders of World War I who were of Maxwell, Picard and Sisko's age, their formative experiences were too entirely different than what they saw in World War I. It was the American-Mexican border conflicts of the late 19th and early 20th century... really very much like the Cardassian-Federation Border war. Much of the pre-WWI US Army (such as it was) was arrayed across the American Southwest. It also had expeditions to Cuba and the Philippines. And for the oldest among them, there were the Indian Wars. All of these are conflicts defined by being a series of skirmishes, very much like the Cardassian-Federation Border War. It really makes that statement I in "the Sound of Her Voice" by O'Brien that the Dominion War was so different than the Cardassian Border Wars ring true.

In a sense, if military experience for Federation leaders was some slap fights with the Ferengi, the Tzenkethi and the Cardassians, is there any surprise they got rolled by the Borg? Or that the Federation was caught with its pants down by the power of the Romulan D'deridex? Galor-class ships were little more than "Cardassian Excelsiors". The Federation had those well matched (and then overmatched with the Galaxy class). And then the Romulans decide to show up with ship twice the size of a Galaxy class (something I always thought was ridiculous but whatever)..

The irony though is that even deranged, Maxwell is more or less entirely right about the Cardassians, and the entire Alpha Quadrant would pay dearly to learn that lesson. The Federation wanted peace too badly. As a status quo power they make the classic mistake of clearly signaling the limits of how their willingness to achieve a diplomatic solution without reciprocation by the Cardassians. Another way of putting this is that the Federation wanted a war less than the Cardassians did, so sued for peace on almost any terms, which the Cardassians used to rearm. And we know they did, from their machinations a few years later in "Chain of Command" and to how vast they built their fleet up before the Dominion War.

The historical takeaway here is that frozen conflicts will invariably either cause new hot conflicts, or worsen them. Even a few years out from "the Wounded" the absurd settlement of border colonies that led to the creation of the Maquis, again, nealy drew the Federation into conflict with Cardassia on several occasions. And when the Dominion War started, everyone not-Starfleet or Cardassian in the region got wiped out anyway.

The Federation simply did not properly deter the Cardassians, and Maxwell called it (and in his own way, was murderously deterring). This isn't to say the Federation should have gone to war, but the way the Federation approached the Romulan Neutral Zone and Romulan infractions of it shows infinitely more wisdom than the almost delusional neglect it showed to its Cardassian Border problem. There shouldn't have been a DMZ... there should have been another Neutral Zone, lined with federation bases, and filled with Starships. If they had done that, Maxwell might not have gone on his rampage, and years later, the Dominion War might too have been deterred.

In Picard and the Federation's defense, they're far from the first people to mistake tranquility for peace.

 

I wanted to deal with this issue separately. It's ironic that Star Trek is on one hand portrayed as so enlightened. In another sense, it's an oddly and excessively "racist" show.

Star Trek mostly shows alien races as mono-cultural. And that's fine because fleshing out a society as culturally diverse as real humans is outside the budget of almost any TV show. And Star Trek, to its credit, has not ignored this. It's commented before on how Earth's diversity (in many things, ecology to people to cultures) is unusual compared to the mostly monocultural societies we see. And this is true within alien races. At the time Tuvok being a black Vulcan was something that required explanation by producers. I don't think we've ever seen a black or brown Bajoran. Not that necessarily should - they're aliens, not humans - but it just goes to underscore how many Star Trek species are treated monolithically.

Which makes the casual racism displayed by Starfleet officers all the worse. The regular, open and broad statements about "races". DS9 in particular is filled to the brim with it. Sometimes its self referential, but other times its commentary on other - humans to others and sometimes others to humans. People say the word "Ferengi" (again, on DS9) in a way that that is basically dismissive of them as having any value. All Romulans are schmers. All Cardassians are paranoid and untrustworthy. All Klingons are cookie cutter warriors.

It's hard to say, on the one hand, Star Trek is so forward looking, when on the other, these great explorers go into interactions expecting certain outcomes based on the race - yes alien race, not earthly sub-race - of who they are talking to. Part (or even all of that) though may be as simple as Star Trek constructing these monolithic alien-races and then confusing culture/society and race. It is by definition racist to say Cardassians are such a way, but it is not racist to make an observation of a Cardassian's behavior enabled by a society dominated by the Central Command and Obsidian Order (that would create a very paranoid society, as we've seen in the real world similar police states).

Star Trek's confusion and combining of race and culture/society/government makes Star Trek stories dealing with "Earthly race" through metaphor of an alien race, very inconsistent and awkward. It's difficult to say "it comes out uniquely badly" in Undiscovered Country, when race-based prejudices are more subtle but still present practically every episode of DS9. Even in Voyager they're poking fun of Tuvok for being Vulcan on a regular basis. Every time someone likens Torres' temper to her Klingon side I think "wow, that's like saying someone is greedy because they're part Jewish" or another similar awful, racist trope. People are people, and not prisoner of their DNA. But Star Trek oddly seems to remember that sometimes and COMPLETELY forget it other times.

Was there "racist intentions" behind the writers in doing that at time time? No chance. I think it's a result firmly due to the limitations of the format of depicting an alien culture, in a way viewers can easily digest and think about and they can tell stories with. There is an economy of storytelling at work that was the motivation. But it's worth mentioning and, I think, seeing if New Trek, once we get more episodes, starts to get back to saying things like "well you know how all Klingons smell bad". I can think of a slur for Mexicans that basically rhymes with that, so we should probably just steer clear of generalizing about races talk.

 

I agree.

 

Various real world issues make me shift priority away from this project for a couple of weeks, but I finally have gotten to finish season 4 and move into season 5.

The Klingon Civil War was more underwhelming than I remembered it. It had a very strong start with the foreshadowing in the Nth Degree and the beginning in Redemption Part 1 was stellar, but the conclusion in Redemption Part 2 fell all kinds of flat. Sela is one of the worst recurring characters to come out of the Next Generation stable, and I'm glad they didn't go very much further with her beyond this story. However, I'm saddened that the one time they did bring her back was the Spock story, where she had a similar effect of killing the story. I can only imagine how much better those stories would have been if we had gotten Tomalak instead of Sela.

The story serves as a fine introduction for the recurring presences of Lursa and B'etor, and pretty much demonstrates that they were probably the brains of the operation even before their older brother got his dumb ass killed. They were great characters and deserved their eventual promotion to movie level villains.

I have some thoughts on the over-reaching story with the Romulans, but I'll wait until I get to Unification to express those.

Interesting that we see, even at this early date, Worf perhaps beginning to feel that Gowron wasn't the best choice to lead the empire after all. Certainly better than Duras, but still. If Gowron had lived up to Klingon ideals as Worf envisions them, perhaps he would have stayed in the Empire rather than return to the Enterprise.

Worf's admission here that the Klingon way was not necessarily his way is a major moment for the character.