The establishment of how the Klingons get the warp ability

[Timo]

Yet we have to come up with a reason for why they didn't conquer it in the 22nd century anyway. That reason could easily cover the preceding centuries as well.

Perhaps the Vulcans were the top dogs, keeping upstarts at bay with their superior space combat technology and their diplomatic scheming, while protecting primitive worlds in an early and more effective version of the Prime Directive. Perhaps the Klingons were up to their necks in a fight with the Romulans or the Breen or the Kinshaya or whomever. Perhaps the Delphic Expanse back then was situated inconveniently between the bulk of Klingon space and Earth, making expansion in this direction strategically unwise. Perhaps there were richer pickings in other directions. Etc.

We do know the Klingons went on interstellar conquest sprees back in the days of the Second Empire. When was that? The last officially acknowledged Emperor before Kahless II ruled in the 20th century, but the "Klingon Empire" has never been known by any other name AFAWK. So the First, Second and Third Empires must be separated by something more nuanced than intervening Republics (although there's one of those, too, the "Dark Times" as they call it!). It could be lacunae like the three-century gap before Kahless II, or it could be alien occupations, or whatever. Or it could be dynastic changes - in which case the Second Empire would probably match the Second Dynasty, which lost power in the 16th century. Or then all this dynastic nonsense, nowadays long gone, was a feature of the First Empire only, or the Third, or the Sixth.

In any case, the Second Empire must be in the past, and the current one must be Third or higher, for Worf's story about the Breen campaign to make any sense. This probably tells us something about the age of Klingon starflight. What exactly, remains to be determined...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

@Timo, Klingons did have dynastic tradition, but it ended when the bloodline of Kahless died in 21st century (never mind that it might have actually died much earlier and was covered up.) Anyway, the Second Empire was ruled by a chancellor, so this implies it was after the age of emperors, so late 21st century earliest. Actually it seems reasonable to assume that the First Empire was the time when the emperors ruled (9th to 21st centuries.) I really don't know what would be the transition point between the Second and Third Empires.

(And yes, you can make all sorts of excuses why warp capable Klingon Empire would not have overrun half of the galaxy by now, but the most plausible explanation is that they haven't had warp that long.)

 

[USS Triumphant]

Whilst I would gladly forget that this stupid technology was ever mentioned, it at least seems to be really advanced tech, much more so than warp drive. Any civilization with such a tech would must have first mastered both warp drive and transporters.

It was just one example. There are others: the solar sails the Bajorans used (and that the USS Yorktown was apparently preparing to rig in ST IV), the shunt drive mentioned in one of the books, and it at least looks like the Vulcans may have been using an Alcubierre-style ring drive - which, admittedly, is still *a* "warp drive", but not quite the same as the Cochrane-style used by humans, Klingons, and others. The point being that a warp nacelle setup isn't the only game in town for managing to achieve interstellar travel in Trek. For that matter, a particularly long-lived species might just go at conventional speeds - especially toward the galactic core where stars (and possibly, inhabited worlds) are closer together.

 

[Timo]

Klingons did have dynastic tradition, but it ended when the bloodline of Kahless died in 21st century (never mind that it might have actually died much earlier and was covered up.)

Do we have a reason to believe in a dynastic tradition in the 21st century? Modern Klingons are meritocrats, earning power by prying it from the dead hands of their predecessors. Why should modern emperors have been any different? OTOH, every Klingon interested in such prying has Kahless' blood in his veins anyway - "imperial blood" is so common that even Kor can make a claim for it. Nothing suggests that Kahless' bloodline would have been lost with the last official emperor, or even that it would have ceased to rule the Empire.

Anyway, the Second Empire was ruled by a chancellor, so this implies it was after the age of emperors, so late 21st century earliest.

Hmm. Chancellors supposedly existed before they became the de facto heads of state, didn't they? Romulans launch campaigns on the behest of their Praetors, too, not their Emperors.

(And yes, you can make all sorts of excuses why warp capable Klingon Empire would not have overrun half of the galaxy by now, but the most plausible explanation is that they haven't had warp that long.)

It doesn't cover too many bases, though. Romulans certainly were interstellar yet remained bit players for two millennia, failing to conquer nearby Earth. So other factors have to be at play, too - and those could well be more plausible than lack-of-warp, considering how common warp drive is and how uncommon conquest of Earth is!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

It's obviously quite difficult to conquer entire planets in Star Trek. Colonise, yes, but how many conquered worlds do the Klingons even have? Their Empire is very monocultural, I don't recall any non-Klingon conquestees. The Romulans likewise. The Cardassians are the one exception, but they couldn't even hold on to a planet on their doorstep!

The Son'a conquered two species, but they needn't have come from different planets.

The technology in Star Trek might be capable of obliterating the surface of a planet, but dealing with ground-level insurgencies seems to still require copious manpower, which no one seems to have the stomach for. Planets are very big things, even for peoples with Starships, transporters and warp drives.

 

[Timo]

Regarding Klingon conquests, we don't know the species of the Krios inhabitants from "Mind's Eye" (might be a Klingon colony for all we know), but we do know that their Klingon masters feel a reconquest after a secession would be a simple matter...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

Regarding Klingon conquests, we don't know the species of the Krios inhabitants from "Mind's Eye" (might be a Klingon colony for all we know), but we do know that their Klingon masters feel a reconquest after a secession would be a simple matter...

Timo Saloniemi

I did wonder about the Kriosians, but there was no suggestion they weren't Klingons. Reimposing central control over a wayward colony might be fairly straightforward. Klingons seem to like fighting amongst themselves more than conquering other people from what we've seen.

One subjugated race I forgot about is, of course, the Remans.

 

[Timo]

I did wonder about the Kriosians, but there was no suggestion they weren't Klingons.

Which just ups the ante: if you can conquer a planet from Klingons at your leisure, you can probably conquer any planet you wish...

Conquest may not be explicated much, in terms of listing planets whose natives are being ruled by invaders. But conquest does get implied a lot, in terms of describing vast empires that rule over hundreds or thousands of worlds even when the default assumption in Trek is that an inhabitable planet has inhabitants. We might simply conclude that making the conquest is easy, but ruling over it is too much of a hassle, and therefore conquerors almost invariably exterminate the natives.

Then again, slave labor supposedly is viable in Trek. Although this may be misleading: the captives we see may be doing forced labor solely for punishment, without offering any productive contribution (say, the captives of Cardassians or Klingons), or are useful only for small-time criminals performing clandestine mining ops (Breen, Briori, Skagarran and perhaps Preserver captives).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

Yeah, that's what I was saying above - ships can easily raze the surface of a planet, so conquest for the Klingons could be as simple as exterminating whoever lives there already, and beginning settling and/or exploiting the planet.

Perhaps they keep one continent untouched as a source of slave labour, if needed.

 

[Timo]

This doesn't explain why Klingons wouldn't have conquered Earth, though. If extermination is the way to go, why hasn't that happened yet?

Klingons do conquer. We don't know when they last did that - it may be more a "glorious past" thing, really, or was until the Dominion War. Others conquer, too. Yet not all of the galaxy is conquered, and the independents tend to be weak primitives. So the real causes for Earth's continuing existence and liberty may be found in it being too unattractive after all: primitive worlds only appeal to primitive and desperate conquerors such as Cardassians, and Klingons conquer more out of a hobby and a sense of prestige...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

Empires aren't always expanding. Earth's vulnerable period might have coincided with yet another Klingon civil war, internecine struggle, wars with other powers, or more limited instetellar range and ability. By the time they were in a position to conquer Earth, it was already defended. The Romulan War wasn't about conquest, it seems to be more about the Humans encroaching on their territory.

 

[Vandervecken]

OTOH, we never hear of a civilization reaching out to space by means other than warp travel; things like subspace radio or fancy teleportation only enter the picture after the discovery of warp drive, as far as we can tell.

They're probably an exception, but although we don't know for sure I'd think this of the Iconians, that they had their gates and maybe didn't use warp at all and maybe never used it. Also the Sikarians of Voyager's Prime Factors.

So if they're a sampling, maybe that's 2%-4% of all known Trek species? Not sure how many known species we have in all the series.

Whilst this possible, I don't think it exactly a good interpretation. If Klingons would have had warp drive that long, they would have already conquered Earth by now.

Not if there were easier pickings much closer to the homeworld. And maybe most of the good stuff was in directions many degrees opposed to that of earth, leading to more good stuff in those directions, and more, so that there were preferred directions of conquest in early Klingon expansionist times--pointed away from earth.

And Timo's point that earth would have looked like a shitty crapsack world compared to many other civilizations is a good one. Even if the Klingons found earth, they might just leave it. Why bother conquering a dungheap? But I do think they would have noted the discovery, at least, and so it would be odd that that would never be mentioned on screen in all our Klingon episodes--that is, the absence of "we found you first and you were soooo primitive" is harder to swallow than the absence of an explanation of how early Klingon expansionism went in entirely different directions from earth. So I lean toward them simply not knowing about earth.

 

[Timo]

They're probably an exception, but although we don't know for sure I'd think this of the Iconians, that they had their gates and maybe didn't use warp at all and maybe never used it. Also the Sikarians of Voyager's Prime Factors.

We never got any confirmation that they wouldn't have had conventional warp technology first, though. They were considered frighteningly advanced, not merely exotic, by people who did putter around at warp...

On the issue of Klingons failing to conquer Earth, the thing is, so did everybody else. Earth has been around for four and a half billion years. So have starfaring civilizations in Trek. We'd better come up with something all-encompassing rather than specific to the Klingons if we want a working rationale for why Earth remains free, then. Or why any planet in the galaxy does.

I mean, yes, things may be cyclic, and perhaps Earth did get conquered by two or three cultures back when the local civilization consisted of smart dinosaurs, then struggled free or was sucked dry and dropped. But even that doesn't really address the staggering population density of the Trek Milky Way: we really need to learn why Earth doesn't get conquered twice a year, all through the anthropocene!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

I mean, yes, things may be cyclic, and perhaps Earth did get conquered by two or three cultures back when the local civilization consisted of smart dinosaurs, then struggled free or was sucked dry and dropped. But even that doesn't really address the staggering population density of the Trek Milky Way: we really need to learn why Earth doesn't get conquered twice a year, all through the anthropocene!

Timo Saloniemi

Earth was defended by those intelligent, spacefaring dinosaurs from Voyager! Or the Preservers, or the Aegis, or Q, or 29th century Starfleet time travellers.

I like the idea of the Vulcans kind of policing the local spaceways, but the reality is that wars of conquest seem pretty rare in Star Trek. There are plenty of colonisable planets that don't have intelligent life, so why invade a primitive, and later irradiated mess? By the time Earth is anything like an attractive target, it's got tacit Vulcan protection.

Interstellar wars are pretty uncommon too - before the Dominion War, it's localised border disputes fought over a handful of planets and systems.

 

[Timo]

The concept of "border dispute" sort of supports the notion that control of volumes of space is crucially important to the various empires, though. They wouldn't want to let a planet go unconquered merely because it's uninteresting, if the failure to act leaves a gap in their precious border!

The Feds may choose to expand without concern for borders: they may accept new members who are separated from "UFP proper" by hundreds or thousands of lightyears and dozens of alien territorial claims. The Klingons wouldn't do that, out of fear of the distant folks seceding or being taken away from them by others.

While "evil empires" probably are tight affairs with few gaps, they may still be lopsided. The Cardassian Union, while featuring dozens of known systems, has its core world bordering directly on neutral space (that is, Bajor). The Klingons and Romulans may have expanded in directions not blocked by whatever force was protecting Earth, too, leaving their cores abnormally close to Earth. But expand they all did, and doing that systematically would mean conquering the inhabited rather than just colonizing the inhabitable.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

Hmm. Chancellors supposedly existed before they became the de facto heads of state, didn't they?

Possibly.

Romulans launch campaigns on the behest of their Praetors, too, not their Emperors.

Do Romulans even have an Emperor? I thought Praetor was their head of state.

It doesn't cover too many bases, though. Romulans certainly were interstellar yet remained bit players for two millennia, failing to conquer nearby Earth.

But there's no need to assume they had warp drive all that time. Romulan diaspora might have been via sub-light travel.

It's obviously quite difficult to conquer entire planets in Star Trek. Colonise, yes, but how many conquered worlds do the Klingons even have? Their Empire is very monocultural, I don't recall any non-Klingon conquestees. The Romulans likewise. The Cardassians are the one exception, but they couldn't even hold on to a planet on their doorstep!

Both Romulan and Klingon empires control huge swathes of space, they must have dozens of conquered worlds. Klingons were about to conquer Organia, until it turned out that the Organians were a tad more powerful than anticipated. We don't see the subject races, as both Klingons and Romulans are racist assholes. Conqured races probably mostly stay on their planets, toiling for the glory of the empire.

And where do you think all those aliens on Rura Penthe came from?

Regarding Klingon conquests, we don't know the species of the Krios inhabitants from "Mind's Eye" (might be a Klingon colony for all we know), but we do know that their Klingon masters feel a reconquest after a secession would be a simple matter...

This guy doesn't look like a Klingon to me...

 

[Timo]

Do Romulans even have an Emperor? I thought Praetor was their head of state.

Never established either way. They had an Empress at one point at least ("The Q and the Grey"), but we don't know the specifics. By the Roman precedent, Praetors would be people surprisingly low down on the totem pole, trying to make a big buck by launching private wars, which is what all Romulan Praetors in Trek seem to be doing.

But there's no need to assume they had warp drive all that time. Romulan diaspora might have been via sub-light travel.

Sure. Indeed, something about them was sublight, because the acquisition of warp turned them from thugs to an empire; if warp was acquired first and the interstellar separation from Vulcans took place later, where does that leave the Romulan identity that was supposedly only created by the separation?

OTOH, we do have a reason from ENT to think that Romulans were a faction on Vulcan even before the purported diaspora, during the final wars; perhaps them gaining warp and using it for leaving Vulcan is what Dougherty is referring to in ST:INS?

Assuming that Vulcan "always" had warp makes things easier in general, though. A losing faction in a war going interstellar is the more plausible, the less demanding and exceptional the undertaking is. Monasteries founded on distant planets benefit from cheap interstellar travel, too, and are difficult to justify if said travel is astronomically expensive in terms of time and effort (although the difficulty may appeal to the monks). And the Romulans didn't just move off Vulcan, they spread out whichever way, resulting in the Debrune among others.

Also, Vulcan had a violent period of colonization, but the departure of the Romulans is associated with the emergence of Surakian peace. If that colonization period refers to interstellar colonization at all, then we might just as well assume that Romulans were a colony before they engaged in those final wars, and the separation just meant a severing of ties. But the back-and-forth movement relating to that interpretation would call for swift interstellar drives.

This guy doesn't look like a Klingon to me...

But we cannot postulate that he would be from the Klingon possession named Krios, as he is doing his own foreign politics, something the Empire certainly wouldn't allow. Must be two different Krioses.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

One might gather that the Klingon Empire of Kirk's time had several races and planets under its control, but after generations of conflict with the Federation and the disaster of Praxis, the held planets managed to gain their independence from the Klingons. Some might have even joined the Federation in the following years. Thus by Picard's time, the remains of the Klingon Empire are talking about past glories and that they are warriors. They are still and empire by default naming practice, but their empire is no longer as vast as it once was.

The modern analogy would be what the Klingons-Federation conflict was based after, the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. Near the end of the Cold War, several Warsaw Pact nations were leaving the Soviet's influence. After the Soviet Union fell, the rest of the Warsaw Pact left and then several Soviet Republics left as well. Other Soviet allies remained allies, but others joined in with NATO to help contain the Russians.

 

[Longinus]

But we cannot postulate that he would be from the Klingon possession named Krios, as he is doing his own foreign politics, something the Empire certainly wouldn't allow. Must be two different Krioses.

Or the Kriosian rebellion succeeded and Krios regained its independence.

 

[Tomalak]

This guy doesn't look like a Klingon to me...

That's the guy off Buck Rogers!

I just assumed it's a different Krios, like there are loads of Talerians/Talarians/Tyrellians etc.