Klingon Fleets?

[EmperorTiberius]

Which episode is that? I don't think I've ever seen that

It's what the other IDF did, back in the exciting 1980s. Although I'm not sure this incident ever had a Picard-analogue...

It's possible the Klingons gave up most occupied worlds under some treaty with the Federation, and the remaining are colonies largely populated by Klingons or "protectorate" worlds of scientifically undeveloped races.

One'd expect the Empire to recapture said worlds the first thing after going belligerent again. It must have been a great platform for any Chancellor-hopeful - and if Gowron failed to deliver on his campaign promises in this respect, I don't see how he could have remained in power for long...

Personally, I think the Feds weren't powerful enough to dictate terms on the Klingons back when the Khitomer Accords were first signed. As late as TNG S1, our heroes seem quite frightened of the Klingons as a species or a culture, and as late as TNG S6, we learn that the Klingons kept raiding UFP installations well into the mid-24th century. I doubt these fearsome barbarians would have given up a single conquered world just because the UFP asked.

Timo Saloniemi

Oh, I see, I missed the reactor thing. I guess it was Picard's ire that threw me off.

As for conquered world, Federation didn't care about that. They didn't interfere in internal matters of anybody, so I don't think they would request that worlds be freed.

In fact, in the episode where Geordi is brainwashed by the Romulans, the Krios colony is rebelling against the Empire. The ambassador says that they dont' care about minor rebellions like that because they don't have resources, but they might conquer it later on. Picard doesn't seem to care much.

If UFP cared about those worlds, they would never ally themselves with a warlike culture in the first place, that alliance always struck me as odd.

 

[SilentP]

If UFP cared about those worlds, they would never ally themselves with a warlike culture in the first place, that alliance always struck me as odd.

Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer

The Federation is far sneakier than most people and empires give it credit, and that's probably intentional

 

[nx1701g]

What I find it hard to understand is why we never see any allied races, ships, or mixed crews. If it really is an Empire there must be other planets under Klingon 'supervision' and/or control - Kirk as much as says so to the Organians. Where are all the allies and colaborators of the Empire?

Same question for the Romulan 'Empire' although we do know about the Remans at least.

They probably are on the lower decks working in the laborer positions among the crew. If you're the leading power in the empire you aren't going to want to have the servant races in positions where they could take over your ships. Sort of like the Alliance in the Mirror Universe how they would have humans working in lesser positions, but all of the leadership roles were held by Bajorans, Cardassians, or Klingons.

 

[captcalhoun]

I'm trying to remember what Klingon agency using 'I', which presumably stands for Imperial...

IKS = Imperial Klingon Starship

also, Imperial Intelligence - although i believe II is only mentioned in the novels...

 

[Myasishchev]

Which episode is that? I don't think I've ever seen that

It's what the other IDF did, back in the exciting 1980s. Although I'm not sure this incident ever had a Picard-analogue...

Mere French joke--the French built Osirak for Hussein, and a French technician was actually killed during Operation Opera.

Regarding subject races, I've always strongly wondered whether the Klingons and Romulans actually kept the indigenous sapients inside their borders alive. The Cardassian example aside, there isn't really much reason to.

I never really understood why Kang didn't obliterate Organia from orbit. Possibly the genocide doesn't begin until the Federation is well out of sight.

 

[Anwar]

Slave labor, I'd assume. Why trash the place and any pre-existing infrastructure when you can just appropriate it?

 

[Pauln6]

Slave labor, I'd assume. Why trash the place and any pre-existing infrastructure when you can just appropriate it?

Plus they're suppose to have an empire. You can't have an empire without subjects. The Federation has hundreds of allied planets all with resources, ships, and manpower (the arcturians clone soldiers to order). The Klingons and Romulans couldn't be a viable threat to such a huge organisation unless they had willing allies too (many subject races were employed willingly by the Romans). Admittedly, Starfleet is small compared to the size of the Federation but the planets must have defence ships of their own.

I just don't see the Klingons being a threat as a couple of planets, a power-generating moon, and a bunch of feuding Houses. The politics of STVI made very little sense to me.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I just don't see the Klingons being a threat as a couple of planets, a power-generating moon, and a bunch of feuding Houses. The politics of STVI made very little sense to me.

It would be plausible perhaps if Starfleet and the Klingon forces were of comparative sizes. We assume that Starfleet has lots of starships to cover every sector of the Federation, but what if that isn't actually the case and Starfleet is a lot smaller than we think it is?

 

[Pauln6]

I just don't see the Klingons being a threat as a couple of planets, a power-generating moon, and a bunch of feuding Houses. The politics of STVI made very little sense to me.

It would be plausible perhaps if Starfleet and the Klingon forces were of comparative sizes. We assume that Starfleet has lots of starships to cover every sector of the Federation, but what if that isn't actually the case and Starfleet is a lot smaller than we think it is?

Well I actually think Starfleet is very small myself. The fact that it is staffed by 90% humans means it must be tiny in comparison to the Federation as a whole, but in times of war, I would have thought that other ships from member planets could be drafted in - they are hardly going to leave defence of their own territories exclusively to those pesky humans who - big surprise - have only one vessel in the quadrant...

If the Klingons declared war the combined fleet of Starfleet, Andorian, Tellarite, and er... Bolian ships could crush them no probs never mind those other 90 member worlds. It might be that Klingon ships have very powerful weapons that would carve up most home grown ships. It's still odd though that the Klingons seem so small and politically unstable and yet they're looked at like a credible threat. It is possible that the peaceful Federation has a really low threat threshold?

 

[Timo]

I never really understood why Kang didn't obliterate Organia from orbit. Possibly the genocide doesn't begin until the Federation is well out of sight.

Nitpick of the hour: that'd have been Kor.

It's unclear what the Empire needed of Organia to begin with. Supposedly this planet was at a strategic location, but what was its value to a high-tech star empire intent on waging widespread war? Everybody thought the planet was primitive and agrarian. Would the Klingons have needed slave labor? Or would they have brought their own equipment, either agricultural or then of other, unknown nature and purpose, and provided their own workforce?

In any case, it doesn't seem that the Klingons were all that interested in defeating or subjugating the planet's inhabitants as such. Their, and the Feds', interest was in controlling the planet and preventing the opposite side from gaining it; the natives probably didn't feature much in that equation, and wouldn't have been worth the ammunition costs of bombing to submission.

Whether the Klingons would have "purged" the planet afterwards is unknown. They aren't particularly xenophobic or anything, and their prominent prison planet seems to be full of non-Klingons. They could easily be of the sort that conquers primitive planets, and then makes sure the planets stay primitive, so a rebellion there is of no consequence and reconquest is trivially easy. No need to kill the natives, then. At least not all of them.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Whether the Klingons would have "purged" the planet afterwards is unknown. They aren't particularly xenophobic or anything, and their prominent prison planet seems to be full of non-Klingons. They could easily be of the sort that conquers primitive planets, and then makes sure the planets stay primitive, so a rebellion there is of no consequence and reconquest is trivially easy. No need to kill the natives, then. At least not all of them.

Timo Saloniemi

We're being a bit harsh on the Klingons here. Despite Kirk's rhetoric about their motives and methods there could be many races who appreciate the rule of law, notions of honour, and strong war-like leadership. Not all aliens are mambi-pambi like the Federation members - in fact from an evolutionary perspective the Federation model is far less likely to be successful in the face of pirates, thieves, and war-mongers unless it is a sleeping lion with vast resources that we never see but everybody knows about... Although I would have thought that this is quite likely, we still didn't see any of those resources deployed during the Dominion War.

 

[Myasishchev]

Slave labor, I'd assume. Why trash the place and any pre-existing infrastructure when you can just appropriate it?

Because an iron age society is completely worthless to a starfaring people whose primary economic sector should be almost totally automated, with naught but a few technicians to oversee it, ala Moon. The gross domestic product of the whole planet of Organia is negligible: field after field of inefficiently raised staple crops that are, from an evolutionary standpoint, probably not even digestible, even if they turn out not to be some kind of weird energy construct and not real food at all.

Nitpick of the hour: that'd have been Kor.

I should've looked it up.

It's unclear what the Empire needed of Organia to begin with. Supposedly this planet was at a strategic location, but what was its value to a high-tech star empire intent on waging widespread war? Everybody thought the planet was primitive and agrarian. Would the Klingons have needed slave labor? Or would they have brought their own equipment, either agricultural or then of other, unknown nature and purpose, and provided their own workforce?

It might have had some valuable mineral resources, or simply a strategic location. Neither one of which would require keeping the Organians alive.

The second wouldn't actually require going down to the planet at all, as, taking Organia at face value, vast orbital facilities for their space fleet could be constructed without the Organians even knowing--or, if they had good telescopes, without the Organians being able to do anything about it. If the Klingons had established a presence in Earth orbit in the time of Galileo, maybe he could have witnessed the construction of Praxis II on our moon, but what exactly could we have done to clear them from what we would surely consider "our" cosmic real estate? Given the defenses of starships, it's actually unlikely even modern ASATs and nuclear arsenals and so forth could vacate a space fleet intent on staying, even if they were resolved to never fire a shot...

In any case, it doesn't seem that the Klingons were all that interested in defeating or subjugating the planet's inhabitants as such. Their, and the Feds', interest was in controlling the planet and preventing the opposite side from gaining it; the natives probably didn't feature much in that equation, and wouldn't have been worth the ammunition costs of bombing to submission.

Whether the Klingons would have "purged" the planet afterwards is unknown. They aren't particularly xenophobic or anything, and their prominent prison planet seems to be full of non-Klingons. They could easily be of the sort that conquers primitive planets, and then makes sure the planets stay primitive, so a rebellion there is of no consequence and reconquest is trivially easy. No need to kill the natives, then. At least not all of them.

A good point--although it's by no means assured that the aliens at Rura Penthe are Klingon subjects. They could just as easily be foreign nationals, not executed because of treaties with their respective governments... this certainly seems to be why Kirk and Bones aren't subject to capital punishment for their putative part in Gorkon's assassination.

However, you make a good point about the necessity of genociding all of Organia. Again, taking Organia at face value, to establish a planetside base (of dubious military or economic value, but let's assume it is necessary for some reason) the communications and logistics capabilities of the primitive society would make it easy to create a zone of control. Yet there did not seem to be a great need to rely on ground troops or stockpiles of flammable ammunition.

It probably would have been better to simply kill everyone in Organia's Iceland or Hawaii, and establish their base. It is impossible that the Organian society could retaliate (at least the one depicted, not the true society populated by advanced space gods). With a suitably chosen site, it is unlikely that in the near term that Organia at large would even realize there was an alien genocide in the first place. The Chinese of the 1500s were certainly quite ignorant of the depradations of the Aztecs, for example.

I wonder if Spock's presence might have mitigated the Klingons' mode of control? Been a while since I've seen "Errand," so maybe this is actually mentioned... but killing a Vulcan national, whether he was a travelling merchant or Starfleet officer or whatever, might have been more inflammatory than Kor would have easily countenanced, and letting him live while genociding a bunch of Organians might have permitted the story to get out, influencing interstellar opinion against Klingon butchery.

Alternatively, it is possible that the Klingons, despite their bad press, particularly in the TOS era, have moral qualms about simply massacring an unarmed populace. And even if individual decisionmakers don't really care, they may yet have fears that domestic political rivals could make hay in the Council with such pleas to morality, honor, and so forth.

I deeply believe one, the other, or a combination of moral and domestic political concerns is the only way to explain Cardassia's restraint during the occupation of Bajor; perhaps the same explains the Klingons' apparent distaste for outright genocide (Tribbles excepted).

 

[T'Girl]

During the '70s the idea floating around was that only the officers on a klingon ship were klingons, the bulk of the crew was composed of slave races, the techs and specialists.

 

[Bluesteel]

And there also has to be sizeable number of Klingon ships dedicated to maintaining control over the individual worlds, systems, and entire sectors that have been presumably annexed (either by force or by coercion) into the Empire as well...

Do they even annex or invade other countries? From what it sounds like in the "Way of the Warrior" the Klingons until the invasion of Cardassia have left their "old ways" behind.