Yes, but Carol Marcus was wrong.
Spoilers Is the Klingon War within canon?
- Thread starter timmy84
- Start date
Yes, but Carol Marcus was wrong.
I’m not sorry at all
I needed a kick in my complacency and I’m chagrined that I took such a narrow view of Trek history. Humans clearly are not the only species in the galaxy. It just looks that way sometimes. 
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WWII is an exception that is too often used as a rule in many situations.
We are also dealing with a warrior culture. Wonder what that impact is?
By that reasoning, the whole Cold War is a single data point. NRF.
Since all of Trek is a fairly broad mapping of the modern world onto a make-up future, Klingon War I and Klingon War II fit as plausibly into it as Kirk and the Klingons playing Vietnam with Tyree and company.
The history of the world is full of nations who engaged in a series of wars in rapid succession. Some spent entire centuries where there was barely a few years where they were NOT at war with someone.
We know one of the Klinks from DS9 - I think it was Kor - was distinguished in a battle at what the UFP calls the Briar Patch. We can see said Briar Patch was occupied in the DSC episode, so I'd say not only does it fit, it fits very well.
Yeah, I'm sure the Federation doesn't want to get into another war with the Klingons, but I don't think the reverse is true. Barring time travel, the Klingons will lose the war (i.e. they might get some territory, but will not permanently conquer and enslave UFP members). Losing a war with an existential enemy might not sit well back home. 10 years is enough time for them to get new leadership who might be all gung ho on militarizing and getting it right this time.
Except that the Klingon/Federation conflict was purposefully patterned after the Cold War .
But never with the kind of existential, mutual anihilation capabilities of modern warfare. I really think most writers and viewers don’t get the destructiveness major powers can heap on each other. We can’t even attack North Korea because before our bombs could land they would utterly destroy Seoul with conventional rockets alone. War on a planetary scale wouldn’t be the lumbering ships in DS9. A few torpedos would desamate a planet. A charge of antimatter could crack it in half. We’ve seen chemicals render whole ecosystems inert. Discovery’s premise of ships and guns and knives of all things is inane. No one would fight like that in a full scale intergalactic war. The only intergalactic war we know of in the TOS universe is the romulan one which was against an enemy that probably couldn’t reach our home planets with atomic weapons and no land battles. The idea that the Klingons and Federation would fight and just stop and then do it all again 11 years later is just plain nuts to me. I think it was for the Genes as well.
It was just referred to as Klach D'Kel Brakt on DS9. The Briar Patch (in Federation territory near the Ba'ku) is from Star Trek: Insurrection, and it wasn't until the Enterprise augment trilogy in 2004 that those two names were brought up again and conflated into the same territory by Arik Soong.
Discovery is using Star Charts, which is from 2002. This poses a quandary, as Klach D'Kel Brakt and the Briar Patch were still treated as two places then, on opposing sides of the Federation, and are probably featured that way in the Discovery maps.
In 2154, Briar Klach was undisputed Klingon territory. It should still be so in 2257, although we know that will change in 118 years. Either as the result of this war, a territorial exchange from the Organians, or a post-Khitomer concession.
You know, that doesn't speak to the point.
Aside from which, not much about the conflict was planned at all. Coon wrote a single story in which the Klingons were invented as fascist enemies and ended it in a stalemate of sorts, in service of a "war is bad" message. Later episode writers improvised around that, and then the Klingons were eventually repurposed as Soviet analogues for shows like "A Private Little War."
BTW, "mutual annilhation" was never on the table, even in "Errand Of Mercy." So the Cold War analogy falls down there, too.
The whole Cold War equivalency has simply been constructed around the portrayal of the Klingons and Feds as two great powers not currently at war. Of course, that's only because an outside force constrains them.
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It seems to speak exactly to it, or you wouldn’t have bothered spending time reacting to it.
The Klingons were always patterned after the enemy of the moment - Asian communists. They had Fu Manchu beards and were described in the script as “oriental”. They are the great opposite super power in the galaxy who have, yes, been put in a stale mate just like the US and USSR were. It’s pure hand wavery to say otherwise.
Except everything Ayelborne says speaks directly otherwise: to destroy life on a planetary scale. It’s not dogfighting and tanks and rows of soldiers. This is planet level destruction that you are, again, hand waving. This is why DS9 and Discovery are short sighted and down right wrong in their portrayals of Star Trek style space war.
The Discovery maps also have stuff like "Path of Enterprise-A (2293)" and copypasted bits of random Wikipedia articles. They're not meant to be seen up close.
Trek the fictional universe does. Not backstage mutterings. And actors are a central part of that Trek, the "real" Trek.
Writers... To a much lesser degree, and only through what they actually get made on screen. Actors are there to a much greater degree, not just reading their lines, but living and breathing the pseudo-reality. We even sometimes get to hear their thoughts (those Captain's Logs really are nifty), which never happens with writers.
Just how ridiculous can this get? The writer of "Errand of Mercy" never wrote Jean-Luc Picard to be assimilated by the Borg, either. If he intended the opposite, too bad - he fumbled it big time. And if he intended that there be no war with Klingons in 2256, he fumbled that one, too.
Except such intent is only in your head. The writer just plain didn't care. Or do you have some contrary proof?
The military losses, I gather. Some 8000 lost at the Binaries, all Starfleet - and then some 10,000 "fallen comrades" when Tyler makes his speech, still presumably purely his warrior buddies.
Would there be civilian casualties? We know the Klingons bombarded a mine and apparently killed some folks down there. We never hear of them bombarding a colony or occupying a planet, though.
Huh? Thousands probably die violently or bizarrely in space in the UFP every day, considering. Heck, if thousands died in a half-year-long conflict here on Earth, most people couldn't even name that conflict, even though there are at least a dozen such to choose from right now.
Whether the two actually are the same is still far from decided.
Calling Klach D'Kel Brakt "The Briar Patch" is Arik Soong's personal choice. Doesn't mean a dozen other space villains, heroes or vagrants wouldn't be calling a dozen other spots "The Briar Patch", while a dozen others still would have their own Badlands and Cueballs and Great Barriers and Bridal Veil Nebulas and whatnot.
Arik Soong just doesn't strike me as a person who would have any say. Hey, Federation cartographers might not have any say, either, because United Earth ones would already have dibs - while Klingons had never charted the place, Malik seemed to believe that Earth ships could and would come after him in the Klach D'Kel Brakt region.
Timo Saloniemi
Well no, but Archer could have easily called it as such in his logs and it just caught on back at Starflert
Which version of the fictional universe matters to you? One of the various versions depicted on-screen over the decades, or the heavily edited conglomerate version you imagine?
The writers are the ones who put pen to paper (or rather, finger to keyboard) and create those "thoughts"
He didn't imagine his Klingons to look, act or speak anything like the ones in Discovery, either. That's not his fault at all. His creation was completely altered and is now unrecognisable.
It has never been said Klingons lose the war has it. My impression is that eventually they come to terms creating the neutral zone as a buffer between their two territories to avoid further conflicts. That doesn't mean there was a winner.
Just as with Korea. You have a Demilitarized Zone (Neutral Zone) but they never actually ended the war. No winner or loser just a perpetual tension that therefore needs to be given a separation as to not flare back up into hostility.
That is how I see it ending - no winner just an agreement to stay away from each other.
No, I don't think by my standards or the Federation's standards, they will lose the war. But to Mr. Joe'Schmogh of the House of Klogh, the fact that they didn't conquer all the Founding Worlds and drink bloodwine out of the skull of the Federation President, means they lost miserably, and like the dirty Romulans before them, are pushed behind some imaginary line chafing their imperial nature. The Klingon leadership that signs the 2257 treaty is not going to be popular.
They will probably win some major victories, and be granted territorial concessions (Gamma Hydra?). But they can't possibly achieve their current unreasonable objective.
They will probably win some major victories, and be granted territorial concessions (Gamma Hydra?). But they can't possibly achieve their current unreasonable objective.
It's more true with Trek than with most productions that every word - be it spoken onscreen or voiceover as "thoughts" or a character's log - and every story action come from the writers. The actor's job is interpretation through voice and gesture. Ad libbing is rare - much rarer than actors would suggest in their anecdotes.
Occasionally an actor who's crucial to a Trek series will reach the point of having some occasional input into a script once it's written - usually by way of vetoing something regarding their own character. This too is rarer than people think.
And, of course, once in a blue moon a Trek actor writes something for Trek. Guess What? At that point they're another writer delivering a script that actors interpret.
Occasionally an actor who's crucial to a Trek series will reach the point of having some occasional input into a script once it's written - usually by way of vetoing something regarding their own character. This too is rarer than people think.
And, of course, once in a blue moon a Trek actor writes something for Trek. Guess What? At that point they're another writer delivering a script that actors interpret.
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According to 'Errand of Mercy' Organia was in disputed territory, which means they knew of the area, which really doesn't mean they actually landed on the planet during the war.
SPOCK: ...Organia is the only Class M planet in the disputed area, ideally located for use by either side.
This disputed territory could easily be because of the war currently going on in DSC.
From The Trouble with Tribbles:
The Federation did control Sherman's planet before the war started in DSC, which works with Spock's line. T'Kuvma also referenced the Battle of Donatu Five in the first episode.
SPOCK: ...Organia is the only Class M planet in the disputed area, ideally located for use by either side.
This disputed territory could easily be because of the war currently going on in DSC.
From The Trouble with Tribbles:
The Federation did control Sherman's planet before the war started in DSC, which works with Spock's line. T'Kuvma also referenced the Battle of Donatu Five in the first episode.
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