Re: Did Ron Moore get the Klingons / Romulans the wrong way round in T
...but really, the Klingons were not featured all that much in TOS. We are talking out of 77 episodes, less than 5, I think, and of course, the movies.
They were in seven episodes: "Errand of Mercy," "Friday's Child," "The Trouble With Tribbles," "A Private Little War," "Elaan of Troyius," "Day of the Dove," and "The Savage Curtain." Okay, technically only an illusory Klingon was in that last one, but it was our introduction to Kahless.
And they were also in "More Tribbles, More Troubles" and "The Time Trap" in the animated series. The Romulans, meanwhile, were in three TAS episodes: "The Survivor," "The Practical Joker," and "The Time Trap" (in the person of Xerius, who was hardly a typical Romulan or a representative of their government or military). That roughly ties their appearances in TOS, where they were in "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident" and their ships appeared in "The Deadly Years."
But for an in-universe explanation, it is possible that the Klingons were once more honorable during the times of Kahless, and "devolved" by the times of Enterprise and TOS, and with honorable thought and action making a resurgence and became more main stream by the TNG era.
ENT: "Judgment" pretty much confirms that, while also establishing that it was only within the prior generation that the military nobility had come to dominate Klingon society and marginalize the non-military classes.
Naturally any civilization is going to go through its ups and downs over the course of history. To expect it to remain the same century after century would be most foolish. Indeed, that's what's kind of annoying about the Romulans' portrayal over the various series. TNG and ENT both showed us Klingon culture evolving somewhat over time. ENT showed us a Vulcan society that was very different in the 22nd century than it would become by the 23rd. But ENT Romulans were pretty much indistinguishable from TNG-era Romulans. Why were they so exempt from change? Ditto for the Ferengi, while we're at it.
Maybe a real world analogy to the klingons changing would be how humans are now realizing that global climate change is caused, at least in part, by human pollution and are now taking steps to become more conscious of using more efficient means of transportation and being less wasteful of their resources. Hence the term "going green." That attitude didn't really exist 30-40 years ago.
No, conservationism has been around for a long time. Indeed, prior to the Reagan era, it was a cause celebre of the Republican Party. Perhaps the most admirable thing Richard Nixon accomplished in his presidency was the foundation of the EPA. And in the '70s there was a big push for ecological awareness and fuel economy, though that was in response to a severe gas shortage. Then there was Rachel Carson's book
Silent Spring and the awareness it raised about pesticides, which led to new laws and restrictions on those. Heck, whatever we think about the air quality in our cities today, it was really horrible in the 19th century. Things have improved because of generations' worth of environmental activism. But, naturally, there have been swings of the pendulum. After the shortages of the '70s ended, we got the pro-business Reagan generation and the rise of a backlash against environmentalism in the mistaken belief that it worked against corporate profits. So the gains of the '60s and '70s were slowed or reversed by deregulation, and in time that led to new consequences for the environment, requiring the next generation to do something about it.
But it still feels, for me, like the Klingons being so obsessed with tradition feels like a bit of an ass-pull. Unless (as I've theorized in other threads recently) we take it that they are all playing up the 'honorable Klingon' bit for the benefit of outsiders? Offering up a kind of Disneyland Klingon Empire, something that looks kinda like the real-deal but is really just pomp and pretense?
good post
