The age of the antihero

[O_Kav]

And yet they absolutely were concerned about leaving anything to the enemy. Especially leftover ammo or fuel from some abandoned vehicle. Because in war it was certain that what they couldn’t destroy they would have to face it...

That sounds good on paper and all, however, the reality is that if you visit one of these battlefields today, you're probably going to find ammo, equipment, bombs, guns, etc. soldiers of the winning side left there. You claim there was an urgency of getting rid of the most mundane of resources yet History tells us the concern was always with large quantities or irreplaceable resources.

 

[zar]

Territory they ignored for six months, even though there was the source for cloaking tech there.

Right. And this makes it not Klingon controlled, how, again? Obviously if the border has expanded there is no pressing need to defend that particular area. That doesn't mean it's safe to reach.

 

[Captain of the USS Averof]

That sounds good on paper and all, however, the reality is that if you visit one of these battlefields today, you're probably going to find ammo, equipment, bombs, guns, etc. soldiers of the winning side left there. You claim there was an urgency of getting rid of the most mundane of resources yet History tells us the concern was always with large quantities or irreplaceable resources.

The fact that you would equate bullets, bombs and rifles with a whole fleet of abandoned 1,000 ft. ships is both highly amusing and indicative of grasping at straws.

 

[Psion]

From what I remember, it was placed in a container together with a will, to be given to the mutineer.
...
And yet they managed not to overlook the telescope? Or the telescope with the container and the will?

We have no idea what circumstances led up to the telescope's placement in that crate. But it was most likely fitted with a box later. Georgiou's will was almost certainly on-file with Starfleet or a civilian solicitor. Note that whoever recovered the scope neglected to take its mount on the Shenzhou. This suggests haste.

 

[O_Kav]

The fact that you would equate bullets, bombs and rifles with a whole fleet of abandoned 1,000 ft. ships is both highly amusing and indicative of grasping at straws.

You're conveniently trying to omit the fact that 1,000ft ships are as common in the Star Trek Universe as cars are common in the real world. All factions dispose of hundreds of Starships like the Shenzhou. And inside those Starships there are other dozen smaller warp-capable shuttles. Some even have mastered Warp Capability for millennia now. Dilithium is literally everywhere, no one has shortages of it. Implying Dilithium Cores are rare in ST is like implying Cars filled with Gasoline are rare too. You can literally go outside and find one.

 

[Captain of the USS Averof]

You're conveniently trying to omit the fact that 1,000ft ships are as common in the Star Trek Universe as cars are common in the real world. All factions dispose of thousands and thousands of Starships like the Shenzhou. And inside those Starships there are other dozen smaller warp-capable shuttles. Some even have mastered Warp Capability for millennia now. Dilithium is literally everywhere, no one has shortages of it. Implying Dilithium Cores are rare in ST is like implying Cars filled with Gasoline are rare too. You can literally go outside and find one.

What the heck are you talking about? Almost anyone over 18 drives around in a car in the real world. Are you seriously under the impression that in Star Trek everyone "flies" around the universe with their own 1,000 ft starship? You must be thinking of the wrong Enterprise!

Dilithium is literally everywhere, no one has shortages of it.

No one has shortages of it except of course the Klingons who were stranded in space without it for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!!!

 

[zar]

No one has shortages of it except of course the Klingons who were stranded in space without it for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!!!

You're trying way too hard to find a plot hole here, to the point of being dishonest. "The Klingons" were never suffering a dilithium shortage and you know it. One small group of Klingons, who played no role in the war for those 6 months and were considered dishonorable vermin to the rest of the Klingons, were forgotten on a disabled ship that wasn't even in one piece and are scrounging for scraps. Meanwhile, the Klingons were busy carrying out the actual war and couldn't care less about the dead hulks of starships littering the space-scape, let alone one Shenzhou at a long-deserted battlefield from the beginning of the war.

 

[O_Kav]

What the heck are you talking about?

I'm talking about a Post-Scarcity Society called the United Federation of Planets. Star Trek main plots aren't centered around the scarcity of starships like The Expanse, Stargate SG-1and Battlestar Galactica are. Star Trek assumes Starships are everywhere like cars are today or wagons were during the expansion to the West. That's why they pitched Star Trek as "Wagon Train to the Stars".

Almost anyone over 18 drives around in a car in the real world.

Buses aren't real amirite ? Car was a figure of speech. I was saying that Warp-capable Starships are as common as Fuel-powered Vehicles are today.

Are you seriously under the impression that in Star Trek everyone "flies" around the universe with their own 1,000 ft starship?

Uh. Space Operas are about Space Societies. Almost everyone's life in Space Operas have something to do with Space Travel. That's how the genre works.

Besides, Star Trek had Space Boomers, for example. Idiots like Mudd always had Starships around. Even his father-in-law showed up with a pimped Starship to take him. How many times the Enterprise-D or DS9 disposed of Shuttles for their members to do something silly like leisure time on some planet ? There's no evidence Starships are a rare thing in Star Trek like you're implying they are.

No one has shortages of it except of course the Klingons who were stranded in space without it for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!!!

Uh... Maybe if you weren't hate watching DISCO you would've paid attention to the line saying they could've simply left that place six months before, if Voq wasn't a stubborn asshole who refused to harvest Dilithium from enemy ships because he believed in some religious Klingon mumbo jumbo about honor. L'Rell convincing him of otherwise was the main reason of the scene onboard the Klingon Sarcophagus.

 

[zar]

Uh... Maybe if you weren't hate watching DISCO you would've paid attention to the line saying they could've simply left that place six months before, if Voq wasn't a stubborn asshole who refused to harvest Dilithium from enemy ships because he believed in some religious Klingon mumbo jumbo about honor. L'Rell convincing him of otherwise was the main reason of the scene onboard the Klingon Sarcophagus.

"We have scavenged the dead vessels floating around us in the graveyard left by our battle with Starfleet. Six months from that fight, we are almost operational again but we still lack a dilithium processor."

...Seems like it has taken almost the full six months of scavenging other items to become "almost operational" so they wouldn't have been able to leave much sooner. It just so happens the dilithium processor is the only thing that hasn't been available on other Klingon ships so Voq kept putting it off to keep the ship "pure" until they could no longer ignore it.

 

[O_Kav]

"We have scavenged the dead vessels floating around us in the graveyard left by our battle with Starfleet. Six months from that fight, we are almost operational again but we still lack a dilithium processor."

...Seems like it has taken almost the full six months of scavenging other items to become "almost operational" so they wouldn't have been able to leave much sooner. It just so happens the dilithium processor is the only thing that hasn't been available on other Klingon ships so Voq kept putting it off to keep the ship "pure" until they could no longer ignore it.

Indeed. That's correct, they harvested what they could from other Klingon ships and the Dilithium Core was the only remaining piece it lacked.

I wouldn't doubt they could've left the place even sooner if they harvested Starfleet ships since the beginning, though. It seems that Discovery wanted to hint that these Klingons were in that situation more out of weird Religious beliefs than because they couldn't. One way or the other, it doesn't look like a Plot Hole like some people are claiming to be in this thread.

 

[Captain of the USS Averof]

Uh... Maybe if you weren't hate watching DISCO you would've paid attention to the line saying they could've simply left that place six months before, if Voq wasn't a stubborn asshole who refused to harvest Dilithium from enemy ships because he believed in some religious Klingon mumbo jumbo about honor. L'Rell convincing him of otherwise was the main reason of the scene onboard the Klingon Sarcophagus.

Uh... Maybe if you weren’t making baseless assumptions about my ulterior motives and viewing habits you’d realize that that’s exactly the point I was making... HARVESTING VALUABLE RESOURCES FROM ENEMY SHIPS!!!!!! Because the "Enemy" just left them there for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, doesn't that also imply that they also left the telescope?

Why would it imply that? They didn't evacuate the ship in the middle of a Klingon boarding action, nor in the middle of a pitched battle. They abandoned ship because they were hopelessly stranded and literally didn't have anything better to do.

Perhaps when they abandon ship, there's a ship-wide mechanism that disables critical components

Perhaps Uhura's miniskirt also doubles as a flotation device? No one ever said it wasn't, so we might as well speculate right?

It's not so much a matter of sanitizing a crash site but to prevent anyone from using particular devices, and one can imagine that taking place automatically as the crew abandons ship. That might not even mean recovery but simply disabling or using booby traps.

Neither of which Starfleet has ever bothered to do in the past. So why are you acting like it's a given that they would have done that to the Shenzhou? It's not standard procedure and never has been. There are reasons to think that it SHOULD be, but Starfleet evidently does not share that reasoning.

I mean, the Cardassians obviously do (Civil Defense) as do the Ferengi probably. But we can conclusively say that asset denial is not something Starfleet has ever really bothered with.

All I'm using is common sense. If the crew had the discipline to bring along a telescope of their dead commander (plus a container and a will with instructions to give them to the mutineer?), then they very likely had the discipline to simply disable a power core.

The power core was already disabled, and their ship was dead in the water (that is, in fact, the entire reason they abandoned ship in the first place). But Shenzhou is a starship with billions of different parts, and without knowing what the Klingons or anyone else might have been able to salvage and use, the only way to deny them those assets would be to blow up the entire ship.

Which, as I have pointed out, is not something Starfleet has ever done with its abandoned ships. Standard procedure is to just leave it floating in the debris field until someone (usually another ship) can swing by later and retrieve it.

Why would they wait?

Because the possibility of additional Starfleet vessels showing up to tow them home is a pretty strong one. Taking the lifeboats and hoofing it to a rallying point is a far more dangerous move, but it becomes worth it if they have no other alternative.

Or hours? Or given the level of damage, perhaps minutes?

The level of damage to the SHIP wouldn't affect the status of its emergency batteries, as that mostly depends on how much load you're putting on them. Suffice to say, they had at least as much time the Enteprise had Khan disabled the main energizer and auxiliary power. Per Spock, that is AT LEAST two hours, though Scotty's repairs probably took quite a bit less time than that.

Either way, that's two hours in which the crew had literally nothing better to do except count their dead, lick their wounds, and prepare to abandon ship. If a crew of 100 officers can't find time in two hours to pack their dead Captain's priceless family heirloom, I shudder to think how you think they'd manage to trigger a self destruct mechanism.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

No, but they could've wasted more resources beforehand trying to protect those codes. There's a hundred ways they could've implemented fail safes but they didn't care. They were more concerned with bigger things.

You're definitely misunderstanding that situation.

The Germans did everything reasonable to prevent those codes from being captured or broken, and yes they WERE a pretty damn big deal. As it stands, the Allies were only able to break those codes BECAUSE they were able to capture the machines intact. The Enigma code used one-time pad encryption, which meant the only way to break it was to actually know something about the keys that were used as cyphers and even then it was extremely difficult.

Incidentally, the Germans eventually DID figure out the code had been broken and changed their encryption scheme, which resulted in the allies once again doing things to try and get samples of the new codes and their machines. In 1944 they captured U-505, again with its enigma machines and code books intact.

tl'dr: its not like the germans had ADHD and just didn't care. They tried hard as hell to guard those codes and used some pretty amazing mathematical and cryptological tricks to do it. The Allies just happened to get the drop on them a few times and/or got lucky more times than the Germans did. It still cuts the legs out of the "must deny the enemy access to the ship!" thing, since even when people have standing orders to do so, it actually happens only about 50% of the time.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The fact that you would equate bullets, bombs and rifles with a whole fleet of abandoned 1,000 ft. ships is both highly amusing and indicative of grasping at straws.

Why? The surface of the ocean is littered with the hulls of sunken warships sent to the bottom during battle. I've never heard of anyone firing torpedoes or demolition charges to make sure no one can ever raise those wrecks. Why would they need to? Anyone desperate enough to scavenge from a wrecked battleship probably isn't going to be much of a threat in the first place.

In this case, especially, it's worth remembering that Voq was in that position because the Klingons abandoned HIM too. If they had waited another week for Kol to show up, salvage on the Shenzhou would be irrelevant, as Kol would probably just LOAN them a spare part from his own stores or have one of his ships fly one out to them eventually. The only reason salvage was even neccesary is because T'Kuvma's little cult, inventive as they were, had no connections or no resources that they didn't bring with them into that battle. If they had been regular Klingon military, it wouldn't have mattered in the first place (and ultimately, probably didn't).

What the heck are you talking about? Almost anyone over 18 drives around in a car in the real world. Are you seriously under the impression that in Star Trek everyone "flies" around the universe with their own 1,000 ft starship?

Stella's father does. So do Travis' parents and that dumbass on the Horizon. There's also Okona, Kassidy Yates, Kivas Fajo, God knows who else... Hell, Mudd has his own ship when we see him in TOS! Maybe not the 1000 footers, but the Star Trek galaxy has no shortage of warp capable vessels.

Besides, nobody seemed particularly alarmed when the Ferengi brought the Stargazer out of the woodworks with a full complement of photon torpedoes still aboard.

No one has shortages of it except of course the Klingons who were stranded in space without it for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!!!

T'Kuvma has his own ship. What he doesn't have is his own shipyard. You need a military for that, and that's something T'Kuvma DOES NOT have.

If you have infrastructure and a supply chain, you don't need to salvage from wrecks. If you're the kind of complete dumbass that needs to salvage from wrecks, you're not a threat to the Federation.

 

[O_Kav]

HARVESTING VALUABLE RESOURCES FROM ENEMY SHIPS!!!!!!

The Babel Conference had 32 delegates. The Federation at the time of TOS was composed of at least 32 warp-capable members. First Contact tells us that in the 24th Century the Federation had 150 members. So we have around 120+ warp capable species in the Star Trek Universe just before Discovery's stardate, who aren't part of the Federation.

Of these 32 Federation members, we know that at least 4 of them already had a large number of ships and colonies before the Federation even existed. The Vulcans were doing it for centuries.

Starfleet itself needs to be huge, bigger than any Earth Navy that ever existed, so they can protect and explore in the name of these 32 members.

A logical assumption is that Federation Civilian and Cargo crafts were even more numerous than Starfleet ships, so they could maintain that Space Faring Post-Scarcity Civilization and its many member worlds with internal migration, colonization, commerce and diplomacy.

Again, why in the world the leftover fuel of a dozen destroyed starships would make that much of an impact in a Universe where there's hundreds and hundreds of those Starships running around ? The Shenzhou's Dilithium Core is valuable as much as the gas inside the fuel tank of the Bus you commute on. It may be valuable if you're in a survival situation, like these Klingons were, in the bigger picture it just doesn't matter. That's why Starfleet left it there and after six months, never bothered to retrieve it. It isn't valuable. Large quantities like entire Dilithium Mines are. A dozen used warp cores ? Nope, just nope.

The Germans did everything reasonable

Yes, yes. You're absolutely right. Reasonable is the key word here. They wouldn't waste resources in an unreasonable manner. That's what I meant, not that the Germans had no fail safes already implemented. What @ralfy is proposing is that Starfleet should've been unreasonable and un-focus its attention on bigger things so they could retrieve the imaginary encrypting device he claims the Shenzhou had. The evacuees did what they could, the Federation used its resources to "protect its secrets" the best way it could and that's it. However, for some people it seems that wasn't enough and the Federation should've done something that no or very few factions did throughout history in wartime. That's my bone to pick with the stuff he's saying.

 

[zar]

Uh... Maybe if you weren’t making baseless assumptions about my ulterior motives and viewing habits you’d realize that that’s exactly the point I was making... HARVESTING VALUABLE RESOURCES FROM ENEMY SHIPS!!!!!! Because the "Enemy" just left them there for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!

Maybe instead of repeatedly typing VALUABLE and SIX MONTHS in caps, you could explain exactly how this works in your mind? Do you think Starfleet routinely eliminates its "valuable" dilithium processors after abandoning ships? It seems to me that it would be redundant since normally anyone capable of traveling to a wreck to salvage it would have to already have a functioning warp drive.

Anyway, is there any evidence that this is the procedure? I seem to remember the Ferengi transacting a lot of salvage, and the entire plot of "Empok Nor" was based on enemy resources abandoned for A WHOLE YEAR (!!!!!!) that were being salvaged. Were these also plot holes?

 

[fireproof78]

Maybe instead of repeatedly typing VALUABLE and SIX MONTHS in caps, you could explain exactly how this works in your mind? Do you think Starfleet routinely eliminates its "valuable" dilithium processors after abandoning ships? It seems to me that it would be redundant since normally anyone capable of traveling to a wreck to salvage it would have to already have a functioning warp drive.

Anyway, is there any evidence that this is the procedure? I seem to remember the Ferengi transacting a lot of salvage, and the entire plot of "Empok Nor" was based on enemy resources abandoned for A WHOLE YEAR (!!!!!!) that were being salvaged. Were these also plot holes?

If you keep in mind that "If DISCO does it it must be bad" then the plot holes make sense

 

[Refuge]

Reasonable is the key word here. They wouldn't waste resources in an unreasonable manner. That's what I meant, not that the Germans had no fail safes already implemented. What @ralfy is proposing is that Starfleet should've been unreasonable and un-focus its attention on bigger things so they could retrieve the imaginary encrypting device he claims the Shenzhou had. The evacuees did what they could, the Federation used its resources to "protect its secrets" the best way it could and that's it. However, for some people it seems that wasn't enough and the Federation should've done something that no or very few factions did throughout history in wartime. That's my bone to pick with the stuff he's saying.

Reasonable is where you lose your argument. Blowing up an empty ship (note to Lorca - empty) is reasonable. Please don't suggest it was in the too difficult basket. Torpedoes are 'reasonably' available in war situations. Self-destruct options and settings are an option too. Frankly I don't know what other invaluable resources were left on the Shenzhou but if there was anything that was left there to be exploited by the enemy OR not protected by Starfleet it should have been either transported or destroyed.

 

[Satron]

Because they didn't think the cloak was much of an advantage. They probably thought it was a showy gimmick that had little strategic value at all. I doubt anyone in the Klingon military other than Kol ever understood its true potential. I doubt even Starfleet understood it until Kol started bitch slapping them left and right with it.

Then I'm right. They are stupid, if they'd think that cloaking tech would not be an advantage.

 

[zar]

Reasonable is where you lose your argument. Blowing up an empty ship (note to Lorca - empty) is reasonable. Please don't suggest it was in the too difficult basket. Torpedoes are 'reasonably' available in war situations. Self-destruct options and settings are an option too. Frankly I don't know what other invaluable resources were left on the Shenzhou but if there was anything that was left there to be exploited by the enemy OR not protected by Starfleet it should have been either transported or destroyed.

Once again, if it hadn't turned out that a handful of Klingons stuck around for 6 months scavenging derelicts, none of this would even cross your mind. Even if we grant the idea that the Shenzhou surviving ended up turning the tide of the war (though honestly, it didn't, Kol would have shown up and provided either way), our characters can't see the future. It probably would have seemed gratuitous if they self destructed at the end of the battle for no apparent reason. Even more ridiculous if they explained it. "Let's blow up the ship just in case those stragglers on that ship we just destroyed manage to superglue it back together and happen to require a piece of our ship to adapt to their systems. And first let's vaporize all the other Klingon debris that they'll also use."

I'm looking over @O_Kav's posts and I can't find anywhere they suggested it was "too difficult". Reasonable and unreasonable aren't synonyms for simple and difficult, you know. It also would have been simple for them to shoot down one of the coffins on the ship just in case it contained Zombie Kahless who would arise in 6 months and win the war, but it wouldn't have been reasonable.