Hmmm, good idea. Particularly as it breaks the human-Federation equivalency that can get so annoying in Trek. When Picard thinks of "his" history, it makes sense that it should be that of Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Denobulans, etc, as well.
Federation Klingon war?
- Thread starter GalaxyClass1701
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Hmmm, good idea. Particularly as it breaks the human-Federation equivalency that can get so annoying in Trek. When Picard thinks of "his" history, it makes sense that it should be that of Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Denobulans, etc, as well.
But "logical" can also mean "predictable." If a war story is what you expect with the Klingons, I think it's more interesting to look for something more unexpected, a more distinctive twist.
But what would make that story interesting would be the Federation's efforts to resist being dragged down into that war. If the war actually starts, then they've failed. It's a perennial theme of Star Trek that force is rarely the solution to any problem. If someone comes at you wanting to start a war with you, if it looks like there's no way to avoid that war, the Star Trek way of responding to that is to come up with a clever or compassionate way to change the rules of the game at the last minute and nip the war in the bud.
^
I don't disagree with many of your observations about Trek but if one considers war the epic fail, the no win scenario in a sense, I also think it's interesting to see what happens when you do have to face that no win scenario or when you do fail, even despite your best efforts.
Predictability isn't always a bad thing. Especially if it feels organic to the characters, and in this case, the culture of the Klingons. Even they can't bluster about honor and combat and so forth and eventually not go there. It makes them look hypocritical or cowardly, if you take them at their word.
I don't disagree with many of your observations about Trek but if one considers war the epic fail, the no win scenario in a sense, I also think it's interesting to see what happens when you do have to face that no win scenario or when you do fail, even despite your best efforts.
Predictability isn't always a bad thing. Especially if it feels organic to the characters, and in this case, the culture of the Klingons. Even they can't bluster about honor and combat and so forth and eventually not go there. It makes them look hypocritical or cowardly, if you take them at their word.
Actually really like this idea as well. I do think the Federation is too human-centric. And the idea of Picard considering Vulcan as his own would be great. Though the same could apply to the Andorians and Tellarites too. I could see them getting into fisticuffs with the Klingons more readily than the Vulcans, even the jerk Vulcans from ENT.
How about a Vulcan-Klingon War series then?
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Occasionally. Not routinely. It's already been done enough in Trek in recent years.
Its funny that when you watch at least the first 2 seasons of TOS the Enterprise crew really didn't do a whole lot of exploring strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. Instead it was mostly patrols, delivering stuff, diplomatic assignments, visiting outposts, and following up on missing ships.
^But they didn't fight wars either. The only time we saw the Federation in a state of war in TOS was in "Errand of Mercy."
And let's see... episodes in the first two seasons (plus pilots) that involved exploring new worlds/frontiers or doing science:
"The Cage"
"Where No Man..."
"The Corbomite Maneuver"
"The Enemy Within"
"The Man Trap" (in that Crater's outpost was an archaeological research station)
"The Naked Time"
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
"Miri"
"The Galileo Seven"
"Court Martial" (in that they performed scientific observations of the ion storm)
"Shore Leave"
"The Squire of Gothos"
"The Alternative Factor"
"The Return of the Archons"
"A Taste of Armageddon"
"The City on the Edge..."
"Catspaw"
"Who Mourns for Adonais?"
"The Doomsday Machine"
"The Changeling"
"The Apple"
"The Deadly Years"
"Bread and Circuses"
"A Private Little War"
"A Piece fo the Action"
"Return to Tomorrow"
"The Ultimate Computer" (in that a planetary survey was one of their test missions)
"The Omega Glory"
"Assignment: Earth"
So I'd say there was actually quite a lot of exploring in the first two seasons.
And let's see... episodes in the first two seasons (plus pilots) that involved exploring new worlds/frontiers or doing science:
"The Cage"
"Where No Man..."
"The Corbomite Maneuver"
"The Enemy Within"
"The Man Trap" (in that Crater's outpost was an archaeological research station)
"The Naked Time"
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
"Miri"
"The Galileo Seven"
"Court Martial" (in that they performed scientific observations of the ion storm)
"Shore Leave"
"The Squire of Gothos"
"The Alternative Factor"
"The Return of the Archons"
"A Taste of Armageddon"
"The City on the Edge..."
"Catspaw"
"Who Mourns for Adonais?"
"The Doomsday Machine"
"The Changeling"
"The Apple"
"The Deadly Years"
"Bread and Circuses"
"A Private Little War"
"A Piece fo the Action"
"Return to Tomorrow"
"The Ultimate Computer" (in that a planetary survey was one of their test missions)
"The Omega Glory"
"Assignment: Earth"
So I'd say there was actually quite a lot of exploring in the first two seasons.
Where to begin
Actually they were transporting their wounded to a colony for treatment and then took a detour for a rescue mission and were trying the rescue Pike the rest of the episode.
And its not even really a season 1 or season 2 episode
I will give you these
And the Enterprise wasn't there to explore they were doing a medical check up
It was technically a small exploration mission so I will give you half here as they were just watching the planet breaking up after dealing with the major mission of checking up and the outpost and evacuating it.
I though they were checking in on Korby since he was missing up to this point.
Okay I will give you this one
Actually it was a small detour to explore while the main mission was to deliver vital medical supplies (which orders to chart pulsars aside make it a sucky move to stop off while people are dying or about to start dying) so I will give you another half here.
I will give you this, even though if was only in the past in the epsiode proper.
I will give you this
I will give you this though it was more of a mapping assignment.
I will give you these.
I will give you a half since the main plot was warning the people on Deneva and dealing with the egg monsters.
I will give you these
another half since the main plot was stoping it/missing ship plot.
More like investigating a possible threat after finding all life on a known planet was wiped out.
I will give you this
Outpost check and droping off a flag officer.
Missing ship investigation.
Okay you get this one
More of a follow up to make sure Horizon didn't screw up the planet and to fix if they did.
Time travel by accident does not exploration make especially since the whole plot was getting home without screwing up the timeline.
equpiment field test
Missing ship boy this seems to happen a lot.
Okay you get this one.
Okay lets tally this since you put the Cage in we have 55 episodes. Of those you listed 29 episodes. And of those you have 17 give or take. So basically 38 eps of not exploring.
Not really.
Actually they were transporting their wounded to a colony for treatment and then took a detour for a rescue mission and were trying the rescue Pike the rest of the episode.
And its not even really a season 1 or season 2 episode
I will give you these
And the Enterprise wasn't there to explore they were doing a medical check up
It was technically a small exploration mission so I will give you half here as they were just watching the planet breaking up after dealing with the major mission of checking up and the outpost and evacuating it.
I though they were checking in on Korby since he was missing up to this point.
Okay I will give you this one
Actually it was a small detour to explore while the main mission was to deliver vital medical supplies (which orders to chart pulsars aside make it a sucky move to stop off while people are dying or about to start dying) so I will give you another half here.
I will give you this, even though if was only in the past in the epsiode proper.
I will give you this
I will give you this though it was more of a mapping assignment.
I will give you these.
I will give you a half since the main plot was warning the people on Deneva and dealing with the egg monsters.
I will give you these
another half since the main plot was stoping it/missing ship plot.
More like investigating a possible threat after finding all life on a known planet was wiped out.
I will give you this
Outpost check and droping off a flag officer.
Missing ship investigation.
Okay you get this one
More of a follow up to make sure Horizon didn't screw up the planet and to fix if they did.
Time travel by accident does not exploration make especially since the whole plot was getting home without screwing up the timeline.
equpiment field test
Missing ship boy this seems to happen a lot.
Okay you get this one.
Okay lets tally this since you put the Cage in we have 55 episodes. Of those you listed 29 episodes. And of those you have 17 give or take. So basically 38 eps of not exploring.
Not really.
Good find. May be I mixed it up with Tomed Incident? Either way, I guess war is war, even if it was just battles along the border.
But the injuries happened on an exploration mission, as far as we know.
Splitting hairs. As I said, the Craters were exploring.
Hmm, I suppose so. But again, Korby's expedition was originally exploratory.
Umm, you're getting it mixed up with "Operation: Annihilate!" AToA was the one about Eminiar 7 and the computer war. The Enterprise was on a formal first-contact mission to Eminiar, complete with a Federation ambassador aboard.
But they were checking up on a science team on that planet. Then again, it was implied to be a known system, so yeah, I'll concede this one.
Science outpost. Again, I'm counting episodes where anyone is doing exploration, not just the Enterprise.
Conceded.
No, I call it a mission of discovery. They didn't know Iotia existed until they got the Horizon's lightspeed transmission a century late, and then they followed up that discovery by travelling to the planet and seeing what was there. Following up on travelers' tales certainly does count as exploration, especially when they have as little information as they got from the Horizon's signal.
You really need to brush up on your TOS episode titles. You seem to be thinking of "Tomorrow is Yesterday," which was a first-season episode and wouldn't be this far down the list. "Return to Tomorrow" was the one with Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch taking over the crew's bodies. It had no time travel, accidental or otherwise. The Enterprise picked up a faint transmission and investigated it, finding Sargon's planet.
Yes, but as I said, they included a planetary survey as part of that field test. It wasn't the focus of the episode, but it was clearly something Starfleet considered central to the ship's mission.
This time you're off base. The Enterprise wasn't looking for the Exeter. They came into the Omega system to explore, and were surprised to discover the Exeter already there. As Kirk said, "She was patrolling in this area six months ago. I hadn't heard of any trouble."
No, it's still as many as 26 that involved some degree of exploration, whether it was the core focus or not, and whether it was done by the Enterprise or not.
Doesn't a general mission of exploration by definition also entail providing operational support to frontier outposts? I mean, to me, that's just implicit in the definition of exploration; it doesn't just literally mean being in a solar system that no Federate has ever been in before.
I agree. People think that you'd go away for 5 years with no contact with Federation. Naturally, you'll explore worlds right on the edge of Federation space and parallel to the border. You'd always be several days at most from nearest outpost.
An explorer won't go 200 light years away from the border into the unknown. The only exception I can think off would be a special mission, like the one Riker was supposed to go on if he took command of that Excelsion-class ship.
I always assumed the contact was the first between the Klingons and the federation since Enterprise established they had already had contact with both humans and the Vulcan’s. I imagine the Klingons would react poorly to what they might interpret as a large military alliance so close to their boarders and that the resulting war Picard mentions took the form of a cold war like conflict as that’s how it always appeared to me especially in episodes like 'Friday's Child' and 'The Undiscovered Country'.
^Well, both "Friday's Child" and TUC take place after the Organian Peace Treaty was imposed. The treaty was the reason for the cold-war situation after "Errand of Mercy," so those stories can't tell us anything about relations before "Errand." There could've been periods of open conflict, though the lack of any mention of a major UFP/Klingon war makes me inclined to think they must've been more limited border clashes.
Some here have said that the Klingons' martial nature makes it logical that they would've had a war with the UFP, but it occurs to me that the opposite could be argued: since the Klingons see themselves as perpetually warring against the universe, there wouldn't need to be a formal declaration of war between the governments; they'd just be generally inclined to pick a fight with any Starfleet or Federation personnel they came across. So more a series of isolated clashes between ships than a large-scale, organized clash of nations. Which is pretty consistent with the way 23rd-century Starfleet/Klingon interactions have always tended to be portrayed onscreen and in tie-ins.
Some here have said that the Klingons' martial nature makes it logical that they would've had a war with the UFP, but it occurs to me that the opposite could be argued: since the Klingons see themselves as perpetually warring against the universe, there wouldn't need to be a formal declaration of war between the governments; they'd just be generally inclined to pick a fight with any Starfleet or Federation personnel they came across. So more a series of isolated clashes between ships than a large-scale, organized clash of nations. Which is pretty consistent with the way 23rd-century Starfleet/Klingon interactions have always tended to be portrayed onscreen and in tie-ins.
Yes, but the poster I was responding specifically mentioned the Enterprise not the rest of the federation or starfleet.
Some good points about the Klingons' possible mindset and actions, however on the flip side I could see the Federation declaring war after a series of provocations if for no other reason to clarify their position to their citizens and rally their coalition together against the continued threat. So whereas the Klingons might not need a formal declaration, the Federation might. Also, I am assuming there was something of a formal declaration in "Errand of Mercy" (though we don't know who declared war first) and Gowron did pull out of the Khitomer Accords before the Klingons started attacking en masse, so there is precedent for Klingons making their intentions clear, at least with Gowron. Another precedent is the recent actions of the Coalition of Planets declaring war on the Romulans first, as a possible course of action for the Federation.
I didn't have the time to go through all of the posts herein so my apologies if this theory has already been advanced by someone, but...perhaps at some point in the past, predating first contact with the Federation, the Klingons were on the losing end of a Klingon/Romulan conflict, and when the Federation "won" (see below) the Romulan War, the Klingons decided against overt war against the Federation in favor of a "cold war" that had occasional spurts of death-filled conflict but never quite spilled over into an active hot war.
And here I am also thinking of situations ranging from something akin to an American and Soviet Union submarine collision that results in the loss of both ships, to a Klingon ship that attacks a Federation ship but both are destroyed in the battle. I don't necessarily seeing either side letting things slide in the latter example, but there could have been reasons why neither side escalated it to active war.
(as I type this, I don't know off the top of my head who actually "won" the Romulan War, whether the Federation won or if both sides declared an armistice...I'm sure one of you will correct me)
And here I am also thinking of situations ranging from something akin to an American and Soviet Union submarine collision that results in the loss of both ships, to a Klingon ship that attacks a Federation ship but both are destroyed in the battle. I don't necessarily seeing either side letting things slide in the latter example, but there could have been reasons why neither side escalated it to active war.
(as I type this, I don't know off the top of my head who actually "won" the Romulan War, whether the Federation won or if both sides declared an armistice...I'm sure one of you will correct me)
the Feds clearly won, since they imposed a restrictive neutral zone on the Romulans that curtailed their expansion. the Romulans would never have done that to themselves if they won.
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