Question about the Klingon monitoring station in ST:VI

[Xerxes1979]

I realize this bit was for pure comic relief but did that Klingon actually entertain the idea that this was not a Federation starship on a direct high speed path toward Rura Penthe?

The Soviets took their border security very seriously and did shoot down aircraft from time to time, such as KAL 007.

Has similar ambivalence to duty been shown anywhere else in the ST universe? I want to say the IKV Rotaran in DS9 but they got their act together pretty quickly.

 

[Anticitizen]

The Klingons were very much a parallel to the USSR right before the fall; a bankrupt country with a massive military budget and a suffering people. Rura Penthe was itself a metaphor for Siberian labor camps... The Klingons in the outpost could be likened to some tired, hungry, jaded, Vodka-drinking Soviet officers sitting in a Siberian outpost who haven't seen any action in decades - except for the occasional merchant ship passing by that probably is smuggling something or the other, but they just don't really give a damn.

 

[Basil]

Yeah, we were supposed to believe that the hermetically-sealed perfect world of the future oft imagined post-TOS wasn't quite so, and these were jaded drunks who were supposed to be guarding the border but weren't. But consider it from their POV, too: The Klingon homeworld was in turmoil over the explosion of Praxis, meaning their future was bleak and uncertain. A lot of folks wouldn't care about duty in a similiar situation.