one thing i never understood about The Way of the Warrior

[Timo]

Maybe they sent over their Powder Puff Squad or something?

That'd actually make sense. You don't exactly send your most valued fighters into a hopeless first wave - you send expendables. And Gowron was launching an invasion with a military force that had mostly been sitting idle for half a century or so. He'd have plenty of useless "warriors" to get rid of before the Klingon military could fight as a coherent force again. And he'd certainly be the most eager to get rid of those people who had the political means to cling on to warrior status despite not being in the required physical shape... In short, he'd send his enemies or their sons into the first assault, hoping they'd be slaughtered (victory would be a secondary concern).

Starfleet's idea of "reinforcements" was to send six ships?

The station seemed to be quite capable of handling the enemy starships on its own. Sending the Starfleet ships would merely be a gesture - Gowron would know that Starfleet was planning on caring. The weaker a force Starfleet sent, the better: if Gowron dared attack those ships, he'd not only be a traitor but also a coward. There'd be none of the political ambiguity of attacking a Cardassian-Bajoran installation potentially run by Dominion infiltrators if Gowron's ships fired on six tiny Mirandas from Starbase 375!

Yes, they did the same thing in the "Die is Cast" -after they learn that the Dominion might counterattack the Alpha Quandrant, an admiral sends a task force of just nine ships -just nine-and this seems to be before the weapons upgrade, or the shield improvements.

That's probably the best Starfleet could do at such a time of peace. They had trouble summoning 40 ships in six days in "BoBW", so why should they be able to get more than nine in any of those DS9 episodes where there was just a day of advance warning?

Those are the same people who thought it would be a great idea to have the crew for their chief battleship in the area double as the crew for their most important space station

The Defiant never did any "chief battleshipping", to be sure. Whenever there was a battle, her first and primary move was to hide in the shadow of the station. Which, considering their relative firepowers, was obviously the smart move.

In the bigger scheme of things, the Defiant was not an asset in battles. She was an armed reconnaissance asset, and one doesn't do armed recce when one's engaged in a battle about the fate of the station. So burdening the midget ship on the DS9 crew was actually pretty shrewd; no crew from more battleworthy vessels would be required to abandon their posts to fly that ship on the occasional recce mission.

far cry from her fighting in "Invasive Proceedures" which was: I'm Kira, I must attack and defeat another female who is not a resistance fighter but a pleasure planet girl who is hot!

Umm, logically, if one thinks it's a good thing that Kira is "allowed" to be a formidable warrior despite being a hot-looking female, then one should equally laud the dramatic decision that some other hot-looking female without formal military training can surprise us with "male-like" fighting skills...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pavonis]

Now, I loved Kira's scene however - she really looked like a highly trained resistance solider when she got stabbed, pulled out the blade, took out the attacker, then let herself collapse.

You'd think that a highly trained resistance solider would know better, you never pull a knife out. If someone stabs you, you grab the knife, knock your attackers hand away and finish the fight with the knife in you the whole time. The knife acts like a plug, keeps your blood in.

Bajorans may have different physiological responses to being stabbed. Perhaps Bajoran blood won't start coagulating until the penetrating object is removed?

Alternatively, perhaps Klingon blades are coated with anti-coagulants, or poisons, and removing the blade was a necessity despite the risk.

Or perhaps Kira was dazed and pulled the blade out before realizing her mistake.

 

[Too Much Fun]

the same people who thought it would be a great idea to have the crew for their chief battleship in the area double as the crew for their most important space station, and then let the same crew goof around playing baseball in the holosuite in the middle of an interstellar war.

Oh, come on, I don't think the baseball game was as implausible and ridiculous as you imply. Couldn't you imagine some soldiers in the real world playing something like touch football, soccer, ultimate frizbee, etc. just to take the edge off once in awhile during down periods during wartime? I don't see anything wrong with them taking one day just to take their minds off the grim reality of the war, and it did the same for us as viewers, which is part of why I loved that episode so much.

 

[Deks]

It was implausible and ridiculous because it was a ploy on the writers part to introduce more of the contemporary aspects in the future and dumb things down even further.

Playing something else like hoverball for example, or velocity (in numbers) would likely be just as good for 'taking off the edge'.

Bottom line is, the writers had an opportunity to show a futuristic type of game that was contemporary to the 24th century (played in numbers) ... instead, we get baseball.

 

[Tiberius]

Klingons go down much more easily than humans.

In "Conspiracy", Riker gets thrown over the table and comes back fighting. Worf gets thrown over the table and has a nap.

 

[Timo]

This is quite consistent in TNG: Worf is a skilled (by ST standards!) and aggressive fighter, but his muscular strength and ability to take hits are inferior to those of Riker. If something's stuck, it's Riker who pries it open (unless Data is around) after Worf fails. If somebody needs to be carried, it's Riker who lifts him or her, with Worf probably just providing firecover or something.

Sounds quite natural to me. For example the Japanese were considered fearsome warriors in WWII, even though the average Japanese male had inferior muscular strength and body mass (and typically carried a vastly inferior rifle or pistol to boot!) in comparison with the troops of the Western colonial powers in the Southeast or the Pacific. It's in the breeding, not in the breed...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

the same people who thought it would be a great idea to have the crew for their chief battleship in the area double as the crew for their most important space station, and then let the same crew goof around playing baseball in the holosuite in the middle of an interstellar war.

Oh, come on, I don't think the baseball game was as implausible and ridiculous as you imply. Couldn't you imagine some soldiers in the real world playing something like touch football, soccer, ultimate frizbee, etc. just to take the edge off once in awhile during down periods during wartime? I don't see anything wrong with them taking one day just to take their minds off the grim reality of the war, and it did the same for us as viewers, which is part of why I loved that episode so much.

Yeah, that criticism has been doing the rounds for over a decade, and it's still totally stupid.

They weren't on the front line, it was a lull in fighting after the events of Image in the Sand/Shadows and Symbols, and they were perfectly entitled to some R&R.

If it had been in the final nine episodes, then I might have complained...

It was implausible and ridiculous because it was a ploy on the writers part to introduce more of the contemporary aspects in the future and dumb things down even further.

Playing something else like hoverball for example, or velocity (in numbers) would likely be just as good for 'taking off the edge'.

Bottom line is, the writers had an opportunity to show a futuristic type of game that was contemporary to the 24th century (played in numbers) ... instead, we get baseball.

Yeah, that's a load of rubbish too.

Sisko had been established as a baseball fan since the very first episode. It was always depicted as a minority sport, he and Jake were two of the tiny number of aficionados in the galaxy. But in the episode he also says that most of the crew have seen or taken part in at least one baseball game with him and Jake, so it's not crazy to think he'd been thinking about it for a while. Solok's crew just gave him the excuse he needed.

Besides, in simple dramatic terms, who wants to watch some made-up game that we don't understand? The audience is likely to have a vague understanding of how baseball works, so the scenes with the match are easy to understand. If it had been Parrises squares or some other Star Trek game, would we have remotely cared?

And I'm English, I've never even played Baseball. But I know it's like rounders, so I got it.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Good points Tomalak ^

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

If you think about it is very silly in the first place to show Klingons and humans fighting in hand to hand combat. Klingons are trained since young childhood in fighting techniques so it becomes second nature to them and constantly keep those skills sharp. Also Klingons are presented as having strength on par with Vulcans who generally easily kick human ass. Just because some human may like to pick up a bat'leth as a hobby doesn't mean he'll be able to hang with a Klingon warrior.

 

[Myasishchev]

When has a Klingon been presented as having strength on par with a Vulcan? FrankenSpock threw Klingons around like ragdolls.

 

[indolover]

Klingons seem more physically resilient than humans do, and seems can take more punishment than humans too.

in terms of brute strength, i'd say equal, or at least not much difference. Riker beat up a Klingon officer in A Matter of Honor.

 

[Deks]

True ... Klingons do seem to be physically built to be more resilient than Humans ... however in terms of brute strength, they are basically the same, with the advantage going to Klingons that seem to have longer life-spans (at least those that emerge alive from all the battles) and train on a continuous basis (although SF officers also would hone their own fighting skills on a regular basis, so it's not really surprising Klingons fall to trained SF officers ... although doing it too many times just forces credibility out of the Klingons).

 

[Myasishchev]

Regarding Klingon "toughness," at best Klingons have redundant organs. Actually, thinking on it, I bet that's why they're pussies. I mean, to have redundant organs in a human-sized frame, you're making compromises--it's not like our body is full of a lot of expansion space for new video cards and extra hard drives. Extra hearts and such means smaller lungs, and less oxygen capacity, which ultimately translates into less ATP used and less force generated by the muscles.

But on the plus side they can survive a knife to the chest, maybe. They're not very consistent on this.

P.S.--I'm not totally sold on the idea that Klingons have much longer life expectancies than humans. So what if Kor is still alive. So's McCoy, who was older than Kirk, and McCoy is actually less decrepit in many ways.

 

[Nightdiamond]

In Trek III, there was a scene with the Klingon named Kluge- a big snake thing attacks him on the planet he's on, and he spends several minutes struggling with it (with it wrapped around his neck) intensely.

The other Klingons there offered no assistance.

Then afterwards his officer from his ship asks him if anything important happened, and he says, 'no, nothing of importance', and just goes on like nothing happened.

It was kind of funny, yet it also made him (Klingons) look tough.

And then when you think about it, Klingons like playing with pain-the pain stick ritual, the blood letting, all that jazz..

When it comes to fighting, however, it does seem inconsistent at times...

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

When has a Klingon been presented as having strength on par with a Vulcan? FrankenSpock threw Klingons around like ragdolls.

B'Elanna taking out Vorik.

Sisko comparing Worf's physical abilities to the Vulcans in Take
Me Out To The Holosuite.

 

[Myasishchev]

Well, that is inconsistent with a lot of other stuff, but I take the point.

I wonder how plausible it is that someone human-sized would have three times the strength of a human (which I believe is the metric used in Take Me Out; I mean, sure, there are chimps, which are "stronger" than people, but recent investigation seems to suggest they're not really much stronger but instead do not have an inner limiter on muscular output, as people must in order to achieve fine motor control. I'm under the impression that humans actually have rather dense muscular tissue. Combine that with crappy copper-based blood, and it's a real wonder that Vulcans can walk around without getting tired, let alone kick Kirk's ass.

Maybe Vulcans, with all their mental discipline and whatnot, can consciously use all their strength in any given situation, unlike humans, who as noted usually hold back consciously or unconsciously; it would actually half-explain the occasional inconsistency in Vulcan and Rommie apparent strength levels.

 

[Deks]

Or it's also possible that because Vulcans evolved on a different planet with different environmental factors, they developed increased physical strength when compared to Humans.
Plus, Vulcans are telepaths by default.
To my knowledge only a handful of Humans have been born with psionic abilities (although if early TNG is any indication then they can be taught to develop Telepathy) so it's also possible that only a handful of Humans might have increased physical strength as well.

What one species lacks, other may have in abundance.

On-screen portrayal of different species and their abilities (not to mention technological inconsistencies) is another matter.

Klingons were not mentioned to be physically stronger than Humans, but they might have a bit of an advantage due to their continuous training.
Then again, as I already stated, a fully trained SF officer would likely hone their own skills as well, so it's not that much of a stretch to see them defeat Klingons (who usually just charge into battle ... strategy is employed, but not in any significant capacity as SF officers do it).

 

[Tomalak]

To my knowledge only a handful of Humans have been born with psionic abilities (although if early TNG is any indication then they can be taught to develop Telepathy) so it's also possible that only a handful of Humans might have increased physical strength as well.

By the mid-23rd century, ESP is all the rage again. That, or Dr. Dehner is a nutcase.

 

[Training]

I stopped analysing Trek fight scenes a long time ago. It's so stupid. It's all based on storylines and the writer/stunt coordinator being lazy to write proper fight scenes.

With DS9 Kira is a great example. In one episode when she was heavily pregnant she beats up Bajoran security deputies and a Cardassian.

Then you have the Jem'Hadar. Supertrained genetically enanched warriors. Who in episode seem to be able to disable O'Brien by merely squeezing his nipples. Then in an another episode 30 of them die hand to hand against unenhanced humans.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

I stopped analysing Trek fight scenes a long time ago. It's so stupid. It's all based on storylines and the writer/stunt coordinator being lazy to write proper fight scenes.

With DS9 Kira is a great example. In one episode when she was heavily pregnant she beats up Bajoran security deputies and a Cardassian.

Then you have the Jem'Hadar. Supertrained genetically enanched warriors. Who in episode seem to be able to disable O'Brien by merely squeezing his nipples. Then in an another episode 30 of them die hand to hand against unenhanced humans.

Writers change characteristics based on story lines? Next thing you'll be telling me comic book characters have inconsistent power levels.