Romulans and Klingons: TOS / TNG

[Nerys Myk]

Not sure how you can equal Cestus III or Janus IV with what happened in BOT. There was no misunderstanding with the Romulans. The treaty was in place and the border clearly defined. The Commander knows he is in violation of the treaty. His mission to find and exploit any weaknesses.

You know what happens when we reach home with proof of the Earthmen's weakness,
and we will have proof.
The Earth commander will follow.
When he attacks, we will destroy him.
Our gift to the homeland-- another war.

He is there to provoke a war.

I find your "trying to see the Romualan POV" interesting.

Yes Decius is one brash young man. But his actions and the Commanders' comments are meant to convey more than the action of one person. This is after all fiction. Whats said and shown is usually shorthand for much bigger things.

Many families have a history of service, yet with no political connection. As far as we know no one in the Stiles family achived a rank higher than Captain. Decius on the other we know for a fact is well connected.

Honor is a mutable concept. One can gain honor by causing another to act in a dishonoarable fashion. Its up to the individual to decide if such action is worthy of praise.

The USA sure thought the USSR was a threat no matter how dire the straights were behind the Iron Curtian. Korax seemed quite sure of Klingon superiority in "The Trouble With Tribbles".

TOS is the TV Show made in the 1960s. The final TOS Movies take place 20 years after that. The TOS Klingons are the Post WWII/Pre Reagan Soviets. The Big Red Boogyman. Yeah Chernobyl is Praxis and Gorkon is Gorbachev. Not exactly a State secret.

The Organians thought Kirk and Kor were punks kids playing on their lawn. So they turned the hose on them. Then they paddled their asses and sent them on their way.

If the French launched an unprovoked attack on the Germans in violation of a treaty in WWI, then I'd say yes.

 

[bintak]

Not sure how you can equal Cestus III or Janus IV with what happened in BOT. There was no misunderstanding with the Romulans. The treaty was in place and the border clearly defined. The Commander knows he is in violation of the treaty. His mission to find and exploit any weaknesses.

You know what happens when we reach home with proof of the Earthmen's weakness,
and we will have proof.
The Earth commander will follow.
When he attacks, we will destroy him.
Our gift to the homeland-- another war.

He is there to provoke a war.

You could think that, or you could think that this soldier is just tired of constantly fighting a circle of enemies and just wants to find peace somewhere along the frontier. The Assyrians and Timochen I believe had much this same problem. They, each, would originally send emissaries and then the contactee would send back the emissaries' heads. When the Caliph of all of the sultanates sends back your fourth cousin, minus the rest of his body below his neck, would it be fair to say that you will be burning Baghdad to the ground in the near future?

I find your "trying to see the Romualan POV" interesting.

Well I like to see the other fellow's point of view. Cuts down on prejudice in real life, if I can find my prejudices and biases and factor those in before I make a judgment.

Yes Decius is one brash young man. But his actions and the Commanders' comments are meant to convey more than the action of one person. This is after all fiction. Whats said and shown is usually shorthand for much bigger things.

I'll give you Decius, if you give me Stiles. Prejudice and poor judgement I see here in equal measure.

Many families have a history of service, yet with no political connection. As far as we know no one in the Stiles family achieved a rank higher than Captain. Decius on the other we know for a fact is well connected.

100 years of continuous family service? I don't think you can make that argiment work. Pattons, MacArthurs, McCains, even Kerrys-all with long family histories of service-many of them have family members still serving as captains, majors, or Senators......

Honor is a mutable concept. One can gain honor by causing another to act in a dishonorable fashion. Its up to the individual to decide if such action is worthy of praise.

That goes to motive. Its a fair call to suggest as you do, that it also goes to PoV.

The USA sure thought the USSR was a threat no matter how dire the straights were behind the Iron Curtian. Korax seemed quite sure of Klingon superiority in "The Trouble With Tribbles".

As did Kruschev piblicly when he ran his bluff in 1962, but our side knew better. Does this mean we were more right than he was when we called his bluff? Atomic weapons when your people are eating potatoes and there is no bread may be the price you are willing to pay when you are of the Russian generation that saw one out of eleven people you knew murdered by madmen wearing funny uniforms and speaking a funny language? You know that you are running your country into the ground building a huge rickety war machine that doesn't work, but what have you got but bluff and bluster plus a few atomic weapons to keep more funny looking madmen who speak a strange language from coming into your country and killing all of you next time? The line soldier doesn't know what the Romulan Praetor or the Klingon Chancellor knows, or what WE know or suspect.

TOS is the TV Show made in the 1960s. The final TOS Movies take place 20 years after that. The TOS Klingons are the Post WWII/Pre Reagan Soviets. The Big Red Boogyman. Yeah Chernobyl is Praxis and Gorkon is Gorbachev. Not exactly a State secret.

I addressed this. Its Starfleet Intelligence' fault if they inflate the Romulan or Klingon bogeyman for their own nefarios ends.

The Organians thought Kirk and Kor were punks kids playing on their lawn. So they turned the hose on them. Then they paddled their asses and sent them on their way.

EXACTLY-equally childish, equally wrong-sp why notn the same Roddenberry lesson in BoT?.

If the French launched an unprovoked attack on the Germans in violation of a treaty in WWI, then I'd say yes.

And yet who was stuck with the War Guilt Clause in the Versailles Treaty?

That is how you produce totalitarian states-by promoting injustice and feelings of persecution among the defeated, or the weak.

All I'm saying is let's give the Romulans a fair hearing. Hear their side of the case, and if they can't make an honest argument as to why the Federation isn't picking on them, and beating them up all the time, invading their territory, stealing their property, and kidnapping their citizens, then you might, just might have a small case for accusing the Romulans of being warmongering barbarians.

 

[Unicron]

In contrast, the so-called Big Three TOS Klingons all showed honor, comparable to the admittedly somewhat more formalized-religious TNG style of honor. Kor honored Kirk as an opponent, kept his promises, and was gracious in defeat. Koloth was courteous to a fault, and withdrew immediately when humiliated. Kang, even under the aggression-boosting influence of a mind-bending alien entity, swore to the treaty signed with his enemies, and ultimately came to cooperate with them after following through with a truce and accompanying negotiations. That's way more than can ever be said about Romulans.

Timo Saloniemi

I agree. I think TNG handled the whole Klingon honor thing best, in that Worf constantly referenced it but it wasn't overdone when we saw Klingon society in eps like "Redemption."

 

[Nerys Myk]

The reality is these are fictional peoples. We can extrapolate all we want, but the hard evidence is limited to what we see on screen. Though,credit has to be given to Roddenberry for not creating a black and white world. Star Trek often ventures into the shades of grey and creates good stories and complex characters. The evidence we see in BOT is shows the Romulans crossing the border in violation of treaty and attacking Earth's outposts. The Commander knows what will happen because of this and admits it to the Centurion. He doesn't like it , but he does his duty.

Do we know that there has always been a Stiles in the service for 100 years? Stiles Stiles only mentions members of the family serving during the war.

No one is holding back on Stiles. He's a bigot and a hot head.

Three generations of my family have served. We have no particular influence.

BOT teaches a different lesson than EOE, because of the Organians and the situation. There is no third party in BOT. No "adult" to admonish the kids.

 

[Enterprise1981]

I guess it's all a matter of perception. Kor taking hostages in "Errand of Mercy" is not consistent with Worf's statement in "Heart of Glory." "Only cowards take hostages. Klingons do not." That might be explained by Archer's attorney when he was put on trial in Klingon court. He said his people were distorting the meaning of honor, like how religious fundamentalists invoke the teachings of their religion to justify intolerance towards non-believers, homosexuals, atheists, etc. Various Romulans probably have differing ideas about what is considered honorable. Worf would always say the Romulans have no honor, but then said in Nemesis, "The Romulans fought with honor." And Donatra's beef with Tal'Aura in the novels is that Tal'Aura became Praetor through dishonorable tactics.

 

[bintak]

I guess it's all a matter of perception. Kor taking hostages in "Errand of Mercy" is not consistent with Worf's statement in "Heart of Glory." "Only cowards take hostages. Klingons do not." That might be explained by Archer's attorney when he was put on trial in Klingon court. He said his people were distorting the meaning of honor, like how religious fundamentalists invoke the teachings of their religion to justify intolerance towards non-believers, homosexuals, atheists, etc. Various Romulans probably have differing ideas about what is considered honorable. Worf would always say the Romulans have no honor, but then said in Nemesis, "The Romulans fought with honor." And Donatra's beef with Tal'Aura in the novels is that Tal'Aura became Praetor through dishonorable tactics.

I usually go with screen evidence. What Nerys Myk says:

The evidence we see in BOT is shows the Romulans crossing the border in violation of treaty and attacking Earth's outposts. The Commander knows what will happen because of this and admits it to the Centurion. He doesn't like it , but he does his duty.

Do we know that there has always been a Stiles in the service for 100 years? Stiles Stiles only mentions members of the family serving during the war.

It has bearing in that there is a truce violation. If DPRK soldiers cross the RoK DMZ in search of food or just to tap the defenses to see if the UN defense is awake as they usually do, then a technical state pf war could become active war. Kirk says something to the effect that the Federation fortress line and the Enterprise are expendable as long as it is a limited incursion.

As for Stiles, there must have been thousands of applicants for 435 slots, True we never hear Stile say that there were Stiles in the service continuously so I cannot assert that he did. I can only suggest that he is nuts on the subject of Romulans and possibly represents one of several possible standard Fed views on this subject.
link

SPOCK [OC]: By our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels
[Bridge]
SPOCK: Which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication. Therefore, no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other. Earth believes the Romulans to be warlike, cruel, treacherous, and only the Romulans know what they think of Earth. The treaty, set by sub-space radio, established this Neutral Zone, entry into which by either side, would constitute an act of war. The treaty has been unbroken since that time. Captain.
KIRK: What you do not know and must be told is that my command orders on this subject are precise and inviolable. No act, no provocation [/FONT] [Engineering]
KIRK [OC]: Will be considered sufficient reason to violate the zone. We may defend ourselves,
[Sickbay]
KIRK [OC]: But if necessary to avoid interspace war,
[Bridge]
KIRK: Both these outposts and this vessel will be considered expendable. Captain out.

I knew I would find the relevant Kirk and Spock quotes. It seems to be apparent that the Feds would treat the NZ as we would a DMZ violation in Korea. That seems to indicate that the Fed political leadership want to limit the possibility of escalation.
------------------------------------
The Feds let Stiles into Starfleet. Many modern services try to indoctrinate bigotry out of recruits and officer candidates in boot camp. Often they don't succeed. A person with a preconceived bias aboard a Federation ship in that future does not speak well for the Federation's cultural evolution to that point' if some of the best and the brightest still carry the baggage of such bias inside. I believe that Stiles could be present to counterpoint Decius directly, to show that there is no definitive polarity of morality in the episode between Feds and Roms. I've argued elsewhere that you really don't want to look too closely at the underside of the Federation asd we see it-especially the evolving TNG Federation which is fairly despicable by our own accepted standards today. (Slave hologram miners and Data's dissection legal hearing come to mind.)

As to the Organians; EoM might include them to show exactly how barbarous our Feds actually appear to a neutral observer. That "gods" don't perceive too much difference between Kirk and Kor should worry the Feds and us a LOT. Its a tough galaxy out there, full of Metrons, Melkotians and Qs. Lots of folks exist to whom we [the Feds] are not exactly civilized. The whole premise of Farpoint extends that problem forward into the TNG era. Humanity still appears to make too many assumptions not in evidence and seems to be smug in its assumptions.

Hostage taking, attempted murder, sneaking around committing terrorist acts, etc; I think that, if I was defending tha case against Kirk before an Organian jury, I might get him off on motive and some Organian legal technicality bound with that linkage of good intent, but if the case hinges on the physical legalities of the acts charged, and the local Organian letter of the law, I'm not so sure Kirk is innocent.

BoT conumdrum;

Too many times McCoy points out exactly in BoT that the problem with the NZ treaty is that the wrong you do in retaliation to his wrong, does not make you right. It may be that the Romulans violated the treaty as it appears evident, but then Kirk decides on Spock's advice to engage in a battle of destruction as a Romulan punishment deterrent, instead of shove the intruders back over the line as per his original political instructions from his government. Kirk may be right, militarily; but wrong, morally. Somehow in this day and age I don't find that a hard concept to grasp anymore, just as I don't find it difficult to conceive that the Earth/Romulan war was not as clear cut to me now, as it was presented to the 1960s audience.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The Romulans did more that test defenses, they obliterated them! Which of course put Kirk and the Enterprise in a tough spot.

It's been a while since I've watched BOT. IIRC both Stiles and Decius are gung ho types, but for different reasons. Stiles is motivated by bigotry and revenge. Decius by the need for glory and Patriotism. I don't think he hated humans or the Federation except in the "they are my enemy" manner.

Of course the story doesn't work without Stiles (and Spock). Gives it some added tension.

The thing about Kirk in EOM, is he's acting on his own. He a Spock are a two man underground striking blows for "freedom". The Organians, much to his dismay, ignore him and his calls for an uprising. (And Kor's brutality as well)Like adults at a picnic, they go on eating and talking while the kids play "war" around them. Only taking notice when they upturn the potato salad. As you said Trek revisits this theme again and again. Humans have to prove themselves to the Organians, the Metrons, the Vians, the Q. Some give us a pat on the head and others a slap on the wrist. Usually with a "come back when you're grown up" comment.

At best Kirk and Kor are guilty of playing make-believe. (Unless Kirk offed some Klingons in his sabotage). No different than kids "shooting" each other with fingers. A time out when the play got too rough is the likely verdict an Organian "jury".

 

[bintak]

The Romulans did more that test defenses, they obliterated them! Which of course put Kirk and the Enterprise in a tough spot.

The Romulans may not have expected such a weak defense, or they may have overestimated the outpost line. Can't tell that at all from internal evidence. The DPRK analogy I used is not exact. We both recognize that the Romulan raider went after the outpost line. I suggest that the Romulans were testing the defense by sending a single ship to see what the Feds would do. They poked a sleeping bear with a stick to see if he would wake up. Frankly I don't know what the Romulans were thinking by sending a single raider. Tapping the Fed defense to see what it was like, makes the most story sense to me.

It's been a while since I've watched BOT. IIRC both Stiles and Decius are gung ho types, but for different reasons. Stiles is motivated by bigotry and revenge. Decius by the need for glory and Patriotism. I don't think he hated humans or the Federation except in the "they are my enemy" manner.

Could be. Decius was such a cardboard cutout nazi, I just can't tell from my own playback.

Of course the story doesn't work without Stiles (and Spock). Gives it some added tension.

I agree. The story moral lessons don't work without Stiles learning from Spock what a true balanced man does and thinks in crisis, and Decius needs to be the action trigger to make the Romulan Commander decide the one foolish action he takes out of his own pride and fear.

The thing about Kirk in EOM, is he's acting on his own. He a Spock are a two man underground striking blows for "freedom". The Organians, much to his dismay, ignore him and his calls for an uprising. (And Kor's brutality as well)Like adults at a picnic, they go on eating and talking while the kids play "war" around them. Only taking notice when they upturn the potato salad. As you said Trek revisits this theme again and again. Humans have to prove themselves to the Organians, the Metrons, the Vians, the Q. Some give us a pat on the head and others a slap on the wrist. Usually with a "come back when you're grown up" comment.

The problem you describe, is like they say in Babylon 5, some of those "gods" regard us as no more than ants. They could accidentally step on us, and they would not care about it.

Then there are the supertechnology barbarians who are no more culturally evolved than the Federation is. Spaniards who meet Aztecs do not bode well for Aztecs. The Starfleet Prime Directive could be the basis for a lot of court martials involving this problem. The Federation could be on the receiving end of some of those Prime Directive violation botched first contacts I suspect^1. Captain Archer's complex record is an example of this before the Prime Directive. The Xindi certainly fit the description of supertechnology barbarians.^2

Then there is the Krell problem. Remember them from Forbidden Planet? What smug creatures, like Humans, would show the careful judgment to not take a peak into a Krell goody box? Sargon and Hanoch are the two "Krells" we see in Trek in "Return to Tomorrow". Yep, out there be dragons, Commander John J. Adams barely coped with his Krell problem and those guys were dead.. Kirk was very lucky that Sargon was just a bit smarter and just a little more moral than Hanoch.

ANTS.

Vulcans have this judgment call right in Star Trek, you have to be a careful little insect out there.

At best Kirk and Kor are guilty of playing make-believe. (Unless Kirk offed some Klingons in his sabotage). No different than kids "shooting" each other with fingers. A time out when the play got too rough is the likely verdict an Organian "jury".

True on Organia, true among maybe the Q, but the First Federation, the Metrons, the Melkotians, the Vians, and the EDO guardian, and probably the DS9 Wormhole aliens were playing for keeps.

SQUISHED.

Sorry I went a little off topic here, but I thought you raised two very interesting points which I wanted to discuss.
^1 Captain Picard certainly should be court martialed on the basis of his record, with regard to his usual botched first contacts with super-tech barbarian civilizations. Borg for example? Worst Federation Captain ever!
^2 I never understood this storyline.

 

[Plum]

I find all your comments right on Nerys Myk.

 

[Timo]

Seconded. Oh, and

(Unless Kirk offed some Klingons in his sabotage)

I really doubt it. That would have required the sabotaged munitions dump to have been guarded by a Klingon or two!

It's fun to see Kirk's idea of how to wage a war there: "Set phasers to stun, Mr. Spock." I say, men were honorable back in the old days...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[bintak]

Seconded. Oh, and

(Unless Kirk offed some Klingons in his sabotage)

I really doubt it. That would have required the sabotaged munitions dump to have been guarded by a Klingon or two!

It's fun to see Kirk's idea of how to wage a war there: "Set phasers to stun, Mr. Spock." I say, men were honorable back in the old days...

Timo Saloniemi

He also told Spock in that episode that it could become a killing situation, and if they had to kill, then.......

 

[Timo]

Indeed. But it apparently never became serious enough, in Kirk's mind.

Which is sort of curious from today's doctrinal point of view: an outnumbered party like Kirk, fighting a guerilla action against a superior enemy, should in theory be maximally cruel and ruthless in order to frighten the enemy. Not so according to 23rd century Starfleet doctrine, apparently.

It might have been working just fine, of course. Frightening Klingons with cruelty is probably too hard work to be worth the while! And treating them with velvet gloves resulted in a positive outcome: Kor returned the favor with politeness and respect towards Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[bintak]

Indeed. But it apparently never became serious enough, in Kirk's mind.

Which is sort of curious from today's doctrinal point of view: an outnumbered party like Kirk, fighting a guerilla action against a superior enemy, should in theory be maximally cruel and ruthless in order to frighten the enemy. Not so according to 23rd century Starfleet doctrine, apparently.

It might have been working just fine, of course. Frightening Klingons with cruelty is probably too hard work to be worth the while! And treating them with velvet gloves resulted in a positive outcome: Kor returned the favor with politeness and respect towards Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

I have to agree with that conclusion. Kor was always the professional with professional courtesy to everyone he oppressed-even when he was "massacring Organian hostages".