Introduction
“In 2218, under the command of Captain Frances Benoit, the USS Sentry made contact with the Klingon starship IKV Devisor while responding to a distress call from a small, warp-capable shuttlecraft of unknown markings. “
-Memory Beta
As all Star Trek fans know, there are multiple timelines out there in which events can vary from minute alterations up to massive changes where the ‘Borg are everywhere’ and the Federation we know no longer exists at all. In that spirit, this is an alternate tale that tells the story of a cusp event in Federation history the way it was originally imagined, in a Trek-verse less advanced than the one we saw stemming from later TV and movie productions. Its premise is rooted in the Memory Beta entry above, itself paraphrased from earlier literary works in the Trek-verse such as “The Spaceflight Chronology” and John M. Ford’s “The Final Reflection.”
In this version, the Trek-verse of 2218 is a wilder, less advanced place than canon works make it out to be. Dilithium and its power-channeling effects are still more than two decades in the future, rendering top warp speeds at slightly less than Warp 5. Phasers and photon torpedoes do not yet exist, and deflector shield technology is still under development. Materializer technology (later known as the Transporter) is still under research and development, and that only for the earliest versions used for inanimate cargo. The Federation is still in its infancy, barely more than half a century old since the end of the Romulan War and its incorporation in 2161.
Concerning the Klingons…
The Klingons of the Star Trek canon are centered around a warrior culture and code like Bushido, but this was supplanted in ST VI by Klingons patterned after Soviet Russians, complete with cold war references such as the ‘gulag’ and ‘listening posts,’ Russian accents, and the obvious parallels between Chernobyl and Praxis. These were changes that many considered apocryphal, shoehorned in to make the movie work as an allegory for the years immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall. I’ve gone a third direction with the Klingons: In this story, you will find Klingons and a Klingon Empire based on John M. Ford’s novel The Final Reflection. That is my favorite Star Trek novel of all time, and in my opinion, Mister Ford wrote the definitive version of the Klingon race long before Star Trek: The Next Generation redefined them as a species. If you have read Ford’s novel, you will find these Klingons very familiar.
“In 2218, under the command of Captain Frances Benoit, the USS Sentry made contact with the Klingon starship IKV Devisor while responding to a distress call from a small, warp-capable shuttlecraft of unknown markings. “
-Memory Beta
As all Star Trek fans know, there are multiple timelines out there in which events can vary from minute alterations up to massive changes where the ‘Borg are everywhere’ and the Federation we know no longer exists at all. In that spirit, this is an alternate tale that tells the story of a cusp event in Federation history the way it was originally imagined, in a Trek-verse less advanced than the one we saw stemming from later TV and movie productions. Its premise is rooted in the Memory Beta entry above, itself paraphrased from earlier literary works in the Trek-verse such as “The Spaceflight Chronology” and John M. Ford’s “The Final Reflection.”
In this version, the Trek-verse of 2218 is a wilder, less advanced place than canon works make it out to be. Dilithium and its power-channeling effects are still more than two decades in the future, rendering top warp speeds at slightly less than Warp 5. Phasers and photon torpedoes do not yet exist, and deflector shield technology is still under development. Materializer technology (later known as the Transporter) is still under research and development, and that only for the earliest versions used for inanimate cargo. The Federation is still in its infancy, barely more than half a century old since the end of the Romulan War and its incorporation in 2161.
Concerning the Klingons…
The Klingons of the Star Trek canon are centered around a warrior culture and code like Bushido, but this was supplanted in ST VI by Klingons patterned after Soviet Russians, complete with cold war references such as the ‘gulag’ and ‘listening posts,’ Russian accents, and the obvious parallels between Chernobyl and Praxis. These were changes that many considered apocryphal, shoehorned in to make the movie work as an allegory for the years immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall. I’ve gone a third direction with the Klingons: In this story, you will find Klingons and a Klingon Empire based on John M. Ford’s novel The Final Reflection. That is my favorite Star Trek novel of all time, and in my opinion, Mister Ford wrote the definitive version of the Klingon race long before Star Trek: The Next Generation redefined them as a species. If you have read Ford’s novel, you will find these Klingons very familiar.