Klingon Technology

[Rachel88]

I'm currently watching DS9 again and I suddenly found myself wondering why the Klingon's are still using ancient technology - their ships must be almost 100 years old.

Do they continue to manufacture new parts for the old ships, or so they constantly upgrade them with the latest tech?

From what I can see, the ships look unchanged since the days of Kirk.
How does a warrior race stay relevant against adversaries like with more advanced ships?

 

[FormerLurker]

Probably more of a desire for a consistent design lineage. Even if the new ships have latest tech, the old, classic designs get reused over and over again. Something to do with Klingon honor, I'd imagine.

 

[Tenacity]

The Russian Soyuz spacecraft, basics are nearly half a century old.

The Klingons did come up with a larger warship, first seen in TNG.

With the older D7 "K'Tinga's" likely they were constantly updated with the newest technology (weapons, warp drive, sensors) to stay in tech parity/superiority verses the Federation, Romulan and whoever else.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

IIRC, most Klingon technology was actually stolen from the Hur'q. That's why they don't advance much - they don't know how.

 

[C.E. Evans]

It may just a matter of different naval policies. Starfleet regularly churns out new designs, while the Klingon Defense Force instead regularly updates existing designs. While two Klingon ships a century apart from the same class may look alike, their capabilities could be drastically different, IMO.

 

[Tim Thomason]

I'm sure they changed weapons as need be to keep up. And shields too. And maybe warp engines and sensors. But, beyond that, they don't care about the other stuff. They don't even have bedsheets.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm currently watching DS9 again and I suddenly found myself wondering why the Klingon's are still using ancient technology - their ships must be almost 100 years old.

Try 225, the first appearance of the D7/K'tinga-class battlecruiser is in ENT: "Unexpected" set in 2151.

I was really hoping Enterprise would depict shiny new Klingon ships with bright silver metallic walls, but sadly they just reused the old rustbucket Klingon bridge set from TNG/DS9.

Do they continue to manufacture new parts for the old ships, or so they constantly upgrade them with the latest tech?

From what I can see, the ships look unchanged since the days of Kirk.
How does a warrior race stay relevant against adversaries like with more advanced ships?

There was an old novel called Ishmael, which came up with a detailed backstory for the Klingons. It said they were a tribal race conquered by the Karsid Empire centuries ago. The Karsids then mysteriously disappeared, leaving these Klingon slaves loads of advanced ships and technology which they upgraded as best their engineers could over the decades. I thought it was a pretty cool way to make sense of what we saw, but I'm pretty sure TNG/DS9 contradicted it later.

Then there's Discovery, which completely reimagines Klingons, their ships (the D7 and Bird of Prey are entirely unrecognizable) and technology (ditto the Bat'leth), and gives us a miles-long, centuries-old Sarcophagus Ship which is somehow more than a match for Starfleet's finest in 2256. At least the Klingon ships aren't rusty anymore.

 

[Rachel88]

Try 225, the first appearance of the D7/K'tinga-class battlecruiser is in ENT: "Unexpected" set in 2151.

I was really hoping Enterprise would depict shiny new Klingon ships with bright silver metallic walls, but sadly they just reused the old rustbucket Klingon bridge set from TNG/DS9.

There was an old novel called Ishmael, which came up with a detailed backstory for the Klingons. It said they were a tribal race conquered by the Karsid Empire centuries ago. The Karsids then mysteriously disappeared, leaving these Klingon slaves loads of advanced ships and technology which they upgraded as best their engineers could over the decades. I thought it was a pretty cool way to make sense of what we saw, but I'm pretty sure TNG/DS9 contradicted it later.

Then there's Discovery, which completely reimagines Klingons, their ships (the D7 and Bird of Prey are entirely unrecognizable) and technology (ditto the Bat'leth), and gives us a miles-long, centuries-old Sarcophagus Ship which is somehow more than a match for Starfleet's finest in 2256. At least the Klingon ships aren't rusty anymore.

Wow, 225 years!

Don't mention Discovery though, I don't like it!

 

[Timo]

That Klingon tech would have something to do with the Hur'q is an odd notion not much supported by the episodes - but novels like The Left Hand of Dar.. I Mean Destiny run with it, and essentially describe a situation where the Karsids are simply renamed (and physically made to look a bit less likely to succeed in pretending to be humans). Nothing in canon to say Klingons didn't steal their tech and ships. After all, we never needed to think the Kazon stole their tech and ships from their oppressors, either, until a story established that exact thing.

I am fine with the Ship of the Dead. It is big, so of course entitled to win some battles. But it is never said to be old. Only some of the corpses welded on are said to be that. Might have been brand spanking new when T'Kumva's grandmother bought it, and still pretty hot when his dad perma-parked it on their back yard for lack of money for antimatter.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[f14peter]

As we know, in space no one can hear you scream, but also the physical configuration of a vessel is virtually meaningless.

A space ship really just needs to carry who/what it needs to carry, go as fast as it need to go, travel as far as it needs to travel and survive whatever it needs to survive ... what it looks like is irrelevant. Something we might thing bizarrely shaped, like the Whale Probe or a borg cube/sphere, is no more or less effective/efficient than the sleekest looking Starfleet speed buggy. What could be more effective/efficient is using an existing physical design that suits your needs and can accept all the technological upgrades you want to install as the basis for your newer vessels.

A very old "looking" vessel, with all the modern features, can be as useful as a totally brand spanking new shape. Thus, a Miranda-Class or Excelsior-Class would be a familiar shape to Kirk, as well as Picard, Sisko or Janeway.

 

[johnnybear]

I thought the K'Tinga class of Klingon ships came in with TMP? The earlier versions of their vessels in TOS we never saw until Elaan of Troyius in the third season so who's to say that they weren't a new battleship at that time? (Not interested in ENT either) Plus there is a newer vessel they have in both TNG and DS9 in the Vor'cha cruisers! Also the Bird of Prey Klingon ship which wasn't seen before Search For Spock! So I'd say the Klingons are upgrading their ships every now and then just like the other powers in the galaxy! In the future projection as seen in All Good Things the Negh'Var cruiser first appeared but was also among the invading Klingon ships in DS9s Way of The Warrior and also in Voyager's Endgame so we do know they are or will upgrade their battleships in times to come!
JB

 

[DS9forever]

A new bird of prey was to debut in DS9 season four but didn't happen, John Eaves modified his design somewhat and it later appeared in Enterprise.

 

[Ghost]

I really wish there had been more new design Klingon vessels in Deep Space Nine rather than using the known couple of designs over and over again (including upscaling the Bird of Prey).

That is one of the things I like a lot about the Star Trek games, they show a lot more variety of designs in the Klingon and Romulan fleets and various other species.
Not all designs are a hit but there are still plenty of nice ones.

I wish that redesigned BOP Eaves designed for DSN had appeared on the show.

 

[Timo]

Ditto. Then again, DS9 did giive us at least one "new" design, the big Negh'Var flagship that in "future" episodes would be run-of-the-mill but in "Way of the Warrior" was still the hottest thing in town. And it gave us one "old" design to ogle, the container freighter (big brother to the Cardassian transport), plus one "ancient" one if we take the green-colored Promellian ship in "Sons of Mogh" to be the Klingon vessel hinted at in dialogue (even though the dialogue actually specified a mere "shuttle"). TNG had already given the other "newbie", the Vor'Cha.

By maintaining this mere trickle of new designs, DS9/TNG actually made things easier for the overall continuity where shows and movies either cannot afford to introduce lots of new designs, or don't have the screen time for those. Klingons simply being conservatives in shipbuilding sits well with me. Even ENT follows suite, giving three prominent designs from that era (the BoP, the Raptor and the D-5), two of which are part of an "evolving lineage" (the BoP and the D-5), a few small craft or civilian ships, plus an early appearance of the D-7 to bridge the centuries and show that Klingons do build their ships to last, instead of jumping to the full sort of CGI-enabled diversity.

Which makes DSC all the more problematic when I see Klingons having as diverse a fleet as Starfleet always has sported, with many differently shaped ships apparently performing the same duty. Has such divesity always lurked in the background, while the "Imperial" part of fleet clashing with our heroes sticks to a narrower range of proven designs with longer histories? Or does DSC represent an era of diversity because the Empire is exceptionally divided at the time, with the Houses refusing to share resources?

(Not that DSC so far would really show us an exceptionally large number of Klingon designs - it doesn't really outdo ENT, say. It just shows all-new ships outside recognizable lineages, which not only breaks said lineages but breaks with the tradition of a trickle of designs.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

IIRC, most Klingon technology was actually stolen from the Hur'q. That's why they don't advance much - they don't know how.

Problem there is this.

If the slaves of the Ottoman Empire inherited the Ottoman's technology and weapons in the early 20th century, the former slaves would have world war one level tech and weapons.

If they didn't innovate and improve at the rate of the powers surrounding the old Ottoman Empire they would be a second class (then third class) power pretty quickly.

The Klingons could have inherited their stuff. But either it was incredible advanced beyond anything around the Klingon space, in which case the Klingons would have easily conquered the galaxy. Or it was at the time in parity with the surrounding space, in which case the Klingon would have had to of been able to improve it themselves in order to keep up.

The Klingons and the Federation were basically evenly matched in the second half of the 23rd century, and they were basically evenly matched in the second half of the late 24th century.

And it's pretty clear the Federation DID advance during that time period..

 

[SpyOne]

But in the late 23rd century the Klingons and Federation had been friendly for a while.

I don't happen to like the idea, but it is within possibility that the Klingons made only small improvements until the peace with the Federation came, and that peace brought with it better drives, shields, and weapons.

My main complaint with the idea that Klingons got their tech from aliens while they were still pre-warp is it feels like it says the Klingons are violent because they are primative. I like much better the idea that they just value violence and safety differently than Humans of Vulcans do.

 

[Tenacity]

While there was lack of hostilities between the Federation and the Klingons for decades, I seriously doubt the Federation was selling/providing propulsion or weapons technology to the Klingons.

 

[Kor]

Ditto. Then again, DS9 did giive us at least one "new" design, the big Negh'Var flagship that in "future" episodes would be run-of-the-mill but in "Way of the Warrior" was still the hottest thing in town. ...

I thought the Negh'Var design first appeared in TNG "All Good Things."

Kor

 

[ItIsGreen]

I thought the Negh'Var design first appeared in TNG "All Good Things."

Kor

I think that's why he put "future" in inverted commas, in AGT it was in a possible future shown by Q, Way of the Warrior was its debut in the "present" timeline and hence the first appearance chronologically.

 

[Timo]

Yup, I prefer to think in in-universe things here because the actual stories of how a certain model ended up playing a certain role are largely unrelated to what supposedly happened in the Trek universe. Until "Way of the Warrior", we could not tell whether this particular design was "real" at all, or just some figment of Q's imagination, a feature of a never-to-be-realized timeline, or perhaps a vessel that later episodes would firmly associate with the Pakled Galactic Reign of Terror (colored purple with yellow stripes and fangs).

Introducing the vessel in-universe around the 2370s certainly makes me purr with satisfation: there's clear lineage from the Vor'Cha to this beast, and nice evolution from its initial "flagship" appearance to its later "patrol cruiser" demotion and subtle modification.

Is there a point in the timeline where we would fail to have a Klingon design introduced even when we would expect one? A new BoP in DS9 would have been nice indeed. Nothing in ENT was indicated to be new as such, though (although T'Pol's relative unfamiliarity with the Raptor might suggest it was indeed a novelty). We can interpret the BoP of TOS movies as having been newish at the time, but only by virtue of there having been this older model in ENT. And obviously the Vor'Cha was introduced after those movies but before TNG. Little more than a single explicit novelty per century, then...

...Even counting DSC, where we get no explicit novelties (so far) and instead get support for the idea of ships as family heirlooms.

Timo Saloniemi