List of episodes in which Our Heroes lose?

[Lord Garth]

In "Errand of Mercy" the Federation and the Klingons both lost to The Organians. Maybe that counts more as a "tie". Nothing-to-nothing.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

In "Errand of Mercy" the Federation and the Klingons both lost to The Organians. Maybe that counts more as a "tie". Nothing-to-nothing.

Millions of lives were saved, so I think both the Klingons and the Federation came out as unqualified winners.

 

[at Quark's]

As a matter of fact, this morning I was thinking about that very episode and I think depending upon how you look at it, you can see it either as a loss, a tie or even a win.

Loss: they learn there are races far stronger in the universe, that can stop them cold in their acts specieswide (well, hot, really).

Tie: as you describe.

Win : Kirk actually gets the objective given to him by Starfleet, even if not by his own acts ("We are to proceed to Organia and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent the Klingons from using it as a base. ")

 

[Sophie74656]

In Voyager's Twisted they kind of loose. They try to do everything they can to fight off the anomaly but in the end they realize there is nothing they can do. They end up not being harmed but they didn't know what was going to happen

 

[Tenacity]

Millions of lives were saved, so I think both the Klingons and the Federation came out as unqualified winners.

The original disputes which lead to war were still there, and at some point the Organians stopped paying attention.

Did millions still die, just later?

 

[Tim Thomason]

Nothing beats the ending of Course: Oblivion. Those crazy cats didn't catch a single break.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The original disputes which lead to war were still there, and at some point the Organians stopped paying attention.

Did millions still die, just later?

I'm unaware of any evidence that the original disputes led to later war. Whenever war finally came, it seems to have been sometime between TUC and TNG. The reason for that conflict is unclear, but some of it at least involved the Romulans ("Yesterday's Enterprise"), who didn't seem to be a party in "Errand of Mercy" at all.

In fiction, victories tend to be just for the day, with tomorrow bringing new drama. Are you saying it's somehow a bad thing that the Organians prevented war for at least a generation, saving particular lives that would certainly have been lost had they not intervened?

 

[Greg Cox]

In Voyager's Twisted they kind of loose. They try to do everything they can to fight off the anomaly but in the end they realize there is nothing they can do. They end up not being harmed but they didn't know what was going to happen

God, that was a terrible episode.

 

[Nyotarules]

Win : Kirk actually gets the objective given to him by Starfleet, even if not by his own acts ("We are to proceed to Organia and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent the Klingons from using it as a base. ")

Since Organia was not a member of the Federation, Starfleet wanted Kirk to break the Prime Directive?

 

[Tim Thomason]

Since Organia was not a member of the Federation, Starfleet wanted Kirk to break the Prime Directive?

Who better?

 

[Nyotarules]

Who better?

Well I suppose an organisation that is allowed to blow up planets will do anything. And Picard and Kelvin Scotty believe Starfleet officers are just explorers lol

 

[Sophie74656]

God, that was a terrible episode.

To each their own. I like it. Its a fun episode about an unknown anomaly, they can't communicate or figure it out.

 

[Nyotarules]

DS9 Call to arms

 

[MAGolding]

How did they lose in Best of Both Worlds? Are you adding a minimum body count criteria to victory?

What constitutes a victory anyway? Does it have to be total victory or do you just have to accomplish your goal? Is there a line of too many casualties where it ceases to be a victory? Or when we get into that are we just trying to be proud-of-ourselves clever criticizing the writing for handwaving casualties?

Empok Nor is pretty clearly a defeat, with over a 70% casualty rate, and no clear goal accomplished except for three people not dying. And Enterprise season 3 they were defeated over and over until they finally won in the one timeline that stuck.

It seems a bit silly and proud-of-yourself clever to say Best of Bost Worlds isn't a victory. They lost 23 starships against an enemy that should have destroyed their entire civilization. DS9 had much higher casualty figures, but they still saved their civilization over an enemy which by numbers should have won. It's hard not to legitimately call bitter victories still victories.

They lost "23" starships at Wolf 359? In "The Drumhead"Admiral Norah Sattie said 39 starships were lost at Wolf 359.

CorporalCaptain said:

I'm unaware of any evidence that the original disputes led to later war. Whenever war finally came, it seems to have been sometime between TUC and TNG. The reason for that conflict is unclear, but some of it at least involved the Romulans ("Yesterday's Enterprise"), who didn't seem to be a party in "Errand of Mercy" at all.

In fiction, victories tend to be just for the day, with tomorrow bringing new drama. Are you saying it's somehow a bad thing that the Organians prevented war for at least a generation, saving particular lives that would certainly have been lost had they not intervened?

The Klingon-Federation War you are talking about happened in an alternate universe to the timeline of TNG according to "Yesterday's Enterprise". But there was a hot war, a shooting war, and not merely a cold war, with the Klingons about the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

In TNG season five, "Unification, Part 1" Sarek says:

SAREK: It could be Pardek.
PICARD: Who is Pardek?
SAREK: He is a Romulan Senator. Spock has maintained a relationship with him over the years. I don't know how they met. At the Khitomer Conference, I'd imagine.
PICARD: Pardek represented Romulus?
SAREK: Yes, I'm sure he did. In fact, I recall Spock coming to me with optimism about a continuing dialogue with the Romulans. I told him it was illogical to maintain such an expectation. Spock was always so impressionable. This Romulan, Pardek, had no support at home. Of course, in the end I was proven correct. I gave Spock the benefit of experience, of logic. He never listened. Never listened.

And in "Unification, Part 2":

PARDEK: Spock, we've been friends for eighty years.

Assuming that Pardek's 80 years is somewhere between 70 and 90 years, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country should have been somewhere between 70 and 90 years before "Unification, Part 2" in the 5th second of TNG.

In "The Emissary" in the 2nd season of TNG, roughly 3 years before the 5th season, and thus somewhere between about 67 to 87 years after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, K'ehleyr says:

K'EHLEYR: Haven't changed a bit. Well, I missed you, too. Two days ago, Starbase Three Three Six received an automated transmission from a Klingon ship, the T'Ong. That ship was sent out over seventy five years ago.
RIKER: When the Federation and the Klingon Empire were still at war.
K'EHLEYR: The message was directed to the Klingon High Command. It said only that the ship was returning home and was about to reach its awakening point.
PICARD: Which suggests that the crew had been in cryogenic sleep for that long journey.
K'EHLEYR: Exactly.
RIKER: And when this crew is revived?
K'EHLEYR: We'll have a ship full of Klingons who think the war is still going on.
PICARD: So our task is to find the ship, and tell the Klingons they're no longer at war.
RIKER: Why us? Wouldn't a Klingon ship be a better choice?
K'EHLEYR: A Klingon ship, the P'rang, is on its way, but it's two days behind us. That may be too late.
TROI: Why too late?
RIKER: When the T'Ong crew awakens it will be within striking range of several Federation outposts.

So the Klingon crew of the T'ong will attack any Federation outposts they encounter.

Most fans seem to interpret that as meaning that the T'Ong crew comes from an era of tension and cold war between the Federation and the Klingons, as during TOS. But TOS era Klingons and Starfleet crews didn't instantly blast ships of the other power as soon as they were sighted, or devastate all colony planets of the other side they encountered. If they did that would have turned the cold war between the Federation and the Klingons into a hot war very fast.

The T'Ong and its crew must have been from an era of hot war, shooting war, between the Federation and the Klingons, when millions of people were being killed, and life was being destroyed on a planetary scale. I can't believe the T'Ong crew would shoot first and ask questions later if they can from an era of peace and merely cold war between the Federation and the Klingons. It is impossible for the T'Ong to have come from any condition except a condition of hot war between the Federation and the Klingons.

Since K'ehleyr said:

That ship was sent out over seventy five years ago

The T'Ong would have left sometime between 75 and 80 years before the 2nd season of TNG, and thus about 78 to 83 years before the 5th season of TNG, which was about 70 to 90 years after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Thus the T'Ong left on its long mission sometime between about 13 years before Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and about 12 years after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

But if there was a vast and bloody war between the Klingons and the Federation soon after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the actions of our protagonists to seek peace during that movie would seem rather futile. Thus the big shooting war between the Klingons and the Federation should have been sometime before Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country begins with Captain Sulu of the Excalsior making a log.

Stardate 9521.6, Captain's log, U.S.S. Excelsior. Hikaru Sulu commanding. After three years I've concluded my first assignment as master of this vessel, cataloguing gaseous planetary anomalies in the Beta Quadrant. We're heading home under full impulse power. I am pleased to report that ship and crew have functioned well.

When Sulu contacts the Klingons after the Praxis explosion:

SULU: Praxis is their key energy production facility. ...Send to Klingon High Command. 'This is Excelsior, a Federation starship. We have monitored a large explosion in your sector. Do you require assistance?'

And the reply:

KERLA (on viewscreen): This is Brigadier Kerla, speaking for the High Command. There has been an incident on Praxis. However everything is under control. We have no need for assistance. Obey treaty stipulations and remain outside the Neutral Zone. This transmission ends now.

The Excelsior, which was the Federation's finest and most powerful ship in the last few movies, would not have been on an exploration mission if the Federation had been in a big war for the last three years. Sulu would not have offered to help the Klingons if there was a shooting war with them at the moment. Kerla would not have told Sulu to obey treaty stipulations if there hadn't been a peace treaty between the Klingons and the Federation at that moment.

Therefore there was a state of peace and cold war between the Federation and the Klingons at the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country which had lasted for at least three years. But the T'Ong had been sent on a mission during a hot war with the Federation 13 years or less before Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

So there was a big and bloody war with the Klingons a few decades after "Errand of Mercy in TOS and sometime between 13 and 3 years before Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Either the Organians stopped keeping the peace during that interval, or else the Federation and the Klingons learned how to fight without going near enough to Organia to be noticed by the Organians.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I stand corrected on the ship count, might be mixing it up with number of ships used in tachyon detection grid in Redemption.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Thanks for the refresher, @MAGolding.

I might indeed have been too declarative in my assertion that at least some of the hot conflict between the Federation and Klingons involved the Romulans. Canonically a lot is sketchy, but I probably should have said that it's merely conceivable that some of it involved the Romulans.

What I was going by was that, by "Yesterday's Enterprise," the Battle of Narendra III occurred in 2344. On the other hand, according to Bashir, two decades of peace between the Federation and Klingons ended with the events of "The Way of the Warrior," which would mean that immediately prior to 2352, give or take, the Federation and Klingons were in a state of war. It's true, there's enough wiggle room to make Narendra III the lone catalyst of peace, but it's not clear at all that peace broke out all over because of that. It's also conceivable, AFAIK, that the hot conflict between the Federation and Klingons ended well before circa 2344-2350, but that it was only around that period that a formal peace treaty was finally signed.

Reference: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Human-Klingon_history and linked-to articles.

 

[Cymriu]

When I started this thread, I must say I was mainly thinking about opponents our crew encounters only once. For me a 'loss' is more when our side is frustrated in accomplishing their goal(s), not so much if the other side is winning or losing. (So it would be possible our side loses, without the other side necessarily 'winning'). In case of returning opponents, I'd say that it's the intentions with the character during the original episode that count. So I'll count a one-time criminal that fools the crew and escapes as a 'loss' for the crew, even if he was later brought back in an episode and got his comeuppance there, whereas for a guy like Dukat it was always clear he was not going to win in the end.



This 'hard choice', or 'virtue of losing some, winning some' is an element which I feel might have disappeared somewhat from later trek. For example, in Endgame (Voy), the situation is originally presented in terms of just such a hard choice: "we can either go home or deal a crippling blow to the Borg, but not both!". But they then find a way to accomplish both goals at the same time nonetheless. Which makes me wonder if forcing such hard choices upon our heroes has become 'less acceptable' over the years.

Then again, perhaps I shouldn't be comparing a series' final with a regular episode, since of course matters are wrapped up there in a satisfactory manner. Also, to be fair to Voyager, you could say that the entire series is based upon such a hard choice. They could have opted not to destroy the Caretaker's array and let the Ocampa and Kazon sort things out, after all. So perhaps it is only fitting that in the final episode they "get to have their cake and eat it too".

Also, I would be grateful if a moderator deleted that superfluous 'o' from 'loose' in the topic title. Can't edit it myself, as far as I know.

Its all about perspective...win and lose generally comes down to who has more ammunition

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

"The Ultimate Computer" - the next big wave in Starfleet ship's computers is delayed by a fatal flaw in the system and its creator's nervous breakdown, sidelining him indefinitely. On the other hand, the AI revolution is slowed sufficiently so that crews made of people don't become obsolete. So win/lose.

 

[johnnybear]

Since Organia was not a member of the Federation, Starfleet wanted Kirk to break the Prime Directive?

In war time who gives a monkeys about the Prime Directive?
JB

 

[johnnybear]

Thanks for the refresher, @MAGolding.

I might indeed have been too declarative in my assertion that at least some of the hot conflict between the Federation and Klingons involved the Romulans. Canonically a lot is sketchy, but I probably should have said that it's merely conceivable that some of it involved the Romulans.

What I was going by was that, by "Yesterday's Enterprise," the Battle of Narendra III occurred in 2344. On the other hand, according to Bashir, two decades of peace between the Federation and Klingons ended with the events of "The Way of the Warrior," which would mean that immediately prior to 2352, give or take, the Federation and Klingons were in a state of war. It's true, there's enough wiggle room to make Narendra III the lone catalyst of peace, but it's not clear at all that peace broke out all over because of that. It's also conceivable, AFAIK, that the hot conflict between the Federation and Klingons ended well before circa 2344-2350, but that it was only around that period that a formal peace treaty was finally signed.

Reference: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Human-Klingon_history and linked-to articles.

Trouble is that account is biased toward the new series which has not been proven to be in the TOS reality!
The TNG timeline I've always thought was that the Romulans tried many times to initiate hostilities between the Federation and the Klingon Empire over the years, especially since they fell out in 2271 and the battle of Klach D'Kel Brakt! The Romulans attacking the Klingon outpost at Narendra III was just one example and the Enterprise C responded to that emergency and was sacrificed in the battle, but this strengthened the alliance between Earth and Q'Onos! Although in an alternate timeline the Romulan attack sparked off a period of hostilities between the Federation and the Klingons as seen in the TNG episode- Yesterday's Enterprise! But the period after this has always been a bit sketchy in the historic sense!
JB