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^I've found it's generally best not to take numbers in Trek episodes and films too literally. I feel that Marcus's statement there has to be taken with a grain of salt. Only two planets? That doesn't make sense. Even ignoring all the rest of Star Trek and taking the movie as a purely self-contained entity, it seems that a considerably larger number would've been appropriate, given that fear of a Klingon invasion was the whole thing that motivated Marcus.
So I prefer to believe that maybe Marcus got a little tongue-tied when he was trying to say "twenty-two planets" or something, and it came out wrong. Or maybe, by the Literary Agent Hypothesis which I'm increasingly coming to appreciate with regard to Trek, the movie was a dramatization that inaccurately represented certain details of the "actual" event.
^I've found it's generally best not to take numbers in Trek episodes and films too literally. I feel that Marcus's statement there has to be taken with a grain of salt. Only two planets? That doesn't make sense. Even ignoring all the rest of Star Trek and taking the movie as a purely self-contained entity, it seems that a considerably larger number would've been appropriate, given that fear of a Klingon invasion was the whole thing that motivated Marcus.
So I prefer to believe that maybe Marcus got a little tongue-tied when he was trying to say "twenty-two planets" or something, and it came out wrong. Or maybe, by the Literary Agent Hypothesis which I'm increasingly coming to appreciate with regard to Trek, the movie was a dramatization that inaccurately represented certain details of the "actual" event.
Well, I think it's a function of some basically different dramatic conceits about the nature of space travel in the Abramsverse vs. the Prime Timeline. In the Abramsverse, space travel appears to be much more difficult than it does in the Prime Timeline (or at least in the Prime Timeline's 24th century) -- starships don't seem to be capable of scanning destinations when they're at warp, full stops at warp speed are potentially dangerous, intra-ship combat at warp is apparently rare, sensors cannot reliably detect large spacedock constructs within a populated solar system, and interstellar borders seem much more difficult to police. Given that, it's not implausible that, from an Abramsverse standpoint, conquering two planets is a huge deal.
We could probably fudge it and imagine that by "planets," Admiral Marcus meant, two modest-sized polities with interstellar territorial holdings that were nonetheless highly centralized around their respective homeworlds. But that's as far as my retconing inclination goes here.
I don't think it's implausible that conquering two planets would be seen as a huge deal, though. It may well be that the Empire was already large in the 22nd century, and that the Federation suspected but could not confirm a great deal of planetary conquests in areas of space away from where the Federation had been able to explore. If the Klingons were generally expanding towards UFP borders, mostly taking unclaimed systems, but then conquered two important buffer planets, I could see that being perceived as a huge threat.
Maybe Marcus meant two Federation colony planets? I.e. that their attacks on UFP territory were already beginning? It wouldn't be out of character for someone like Marcus to treat his own nation as the only part of the universe worth acknowledging.
Maybe Marcus meant two Federation colony planets? I.e. that their attacks on UFP territory were already beginning? It wouldn't be out of character for someone like Marcus to treat his own nation as the only part of the universe worth acknowledging.
I don't really remember the line being discussed here, but this explanation sounds more familiar than the other. I think I'd remember if he said something so glaringly inconsistent with what's been established previously (as in, it'd stick out in my memory because it would've stuck out at the time).
It's in the scene in Marcus's office (the one with all the model ships) where he's briefing Kirk on Section 31 and assigning him to the mission to take out Khan. He says (copying from Memory Alpha):
"All-out war with the Klingons is inevitable, Mr. Kirk. If you ask me, it's already begun. Since we first learned of their existence, the Klingon Empire has conquered and occupied two planets that we know of, fired on our ships half a dozen times. They are coming our way."
That is an odd line given how knowledgeable Orci and Lindelof are of Trek continuity; maybe Abrams changed the line in filming.
^I've found it's generally best not to take numbers in Trek episodes and films too literally. I feel that Marcus's statement there has to be taken with a grain of salt. Only two planets? That doesn't make sense. Even ignoring all the rest of Star Trek and taking the movie as a purely self-contained entity, it seems that a considerably larger number would've been appropriate, given that fear of a Klingon invasion was the whole thing that motivated Marcus.
So I prefer to believe that maybe Marcus got a little tongue-tied when he was trying to say "twenty-two planets" or something, and it came out wrong. Or maybe, by the Literary Agent Hypothesis which I'm increasingly coming to appreciate with regard to Trek, the movie was a dramatization that inaccurately represented certain details of the "actual" event.
I think if the Klingons were seen as being too much of a rampaging force, it would justify Marcus' paranoia. They are a formidable threat, but they've not got Earth in their sights just yet. I think conquering and occupying at least two planets says "dangerous" without making Marcus right.
It's in the scene in Marcus's office (the one with all the model ships) where he's briefing Kirk on Section 31 and assigning him to the mission to take out Khan. He says (copying from Memory Alpha):
"All-out war with the Klingons is inevitable, Mr. Kirk. If you ask me, it's already begun. Since we first learned of their existence, the Klingon Empire has conquered and occupied two planets that we know of, fired on our ships half a dozen times. They are coming our way."
That is an odd line given how knowledgeable Orci and Lindelof are of Trek continuity; maybe Abrams changed the line in filming.
Ah, I see now. Honestly, I think I was distracted by the model of the NX-01 on his desk when I saw the film the first time.
That is tricky to retcon. But, I guess we just have to assume that Federation intelligence on the Klingons is more sketchy in the nuTimeline than in the Prime.
Not totally implausible, really. You yourself, Christopher, have set up the Klingons to be isolationist for a while after 2161. And there are hints aplenty that the astropolitical terrain post-2233 is very different in the nuTimeline than in the Prime.
So, really, all we have to assume is that, post-2233, the Federation gave the Klingons a very wide berth. Marcus says, "two planets that we know of", so presumably these are planets close to the Federation's sphere of influence; there may be others, but, like the man said, they don't know about them. And if the Klingons have conquered two worlds, moving in a general Federation-y direction, well, that would be threatening.
Also: there's a point to be made about the use of the phrase "conquered and occupied." Conquering a planet is one thing– in theory, you can conquer without firing a shot; just scare the government enough to make them surrender, and you get a piece of paper that says "You own this planet." Boom, planet conquered.
(I think this how the Klingons do much of their conquering, but that's a theory for another time.)
But occupation? Depending on how total an occupation is, that can entail an enormous effort. Can you imagine one nation trying to occupy the entire real-life Earth? With soldiers on the ground in every country, every major and minor city, enough to totally quell any resistance? It's nigh unimaginable for us. Apparently Nazi Germany invaded Poland with 1.5 million soldiers. Poland's land mass is on the order of .2% of the Earth's total surface area. So, if I do my math right, it would take 750 million soldiers to invade the entire planet as Germany invaded Poland.
More moderately, apparently Germany occupied France with something on the order of 300,000 soldiers. This is a back-of-the-napkin calculation, but Germany occupied roughly half of France, which currently is 640,679 sq. km. Half that is 320,339 sq. km., making up, again, about .2% of the Earth's total surface. That's roughly one soldier per square kilometer. The Earth has 149 million square kilometers of land, so we're talking something on the order of 150 million Klingon soldiers to occupy a planet like the Earth.
So, in any case, we're talking about the Klingons sinking literally hundreds of millions of soldiers into occupying planets that are likely in the vicinity of the Federation.
That is tricky to retcon. But, I guess we just have to assume that Federation intelligence on the Klingons is more sketchy in the nuTimeline than in the Prime.
Not totally implausible, really. You yourself, Christopher, have set up the Klingons to be isolationist for a while after 2161.
Actually Mike Martin set that up in the later chapters of To Brave the Storm. I'm just staying consistent with the precedent. Although now that The Klingon Art of War has revealed new information about events from that period, it's possible that things could get a little more complicated...
That is tricky to retcon. But, I guess we just have to assume that Federation intelligence on the Klingons is more sketchy in the nuTimeline than in the Prime.
Not totally implausible, really. You yourself, Christopher, have set up the Klingons to be isolationist for a while after 2161.
Actually Mike Martin set that up in the later chapters of To Brave the Storm. I'm just staying consistent with the precedent. Although now that The Klingon Art of War has revealed new information about events from that period, it's possible that things could get a little more complicated...
That is tricky to retcon. But, I guess we just have to assume that Federation intelligence on the Klingons is more sketchy in the nuTimeline than in the Prime.
Not totally implausible, really. You yourself, Christopher, have set up the Klingons to be isolationist for a while after 2161.
Actually Mike Martin set that up in the later chapters of To Brave the Storm. I'm just staying consistent with the precedent. Although now that The Klingon Art of War has revealed new information about events from that period, it's possible that things could get a little more complicated...
Marcus says, "two planets that we know of", so presumably these are planets close to the Federation's sphere of influence; there may be others, but, like the man said, they don't know about them.
I tend to agree. Usually when someone mentions "that we know of", the implication is that there is probably a whole lot more that we *don't* know about. So in this instance, assuming the Federation/Klingon border is fairly stable, there's probably a whole lot of conquering going on in areas that Starfleet can't directly monitor. (And Marcus must have forgotten to follow @KlingonEmpire on the 23rd century version of Twitter, or something.)
I don't really view this as an inconsistency, though. There's no canonical data on how many inhabited planets the Klingons conquered between 2151 and 2259 in the Prime Timeline. And I think that tensions with the Klingons can have become very high without their having to have overtly conquered planets.
If we take Marcus' words at face value, then the Klingon Empire has, on average, conquered a planet (that the Federation knows of) once every 54 years, and has fired on one of "our" ships once every 18 years. Not the best neighbour ever, but I'm not sure it justifies his "the sky is falling" attitude.
Now, I'm not sure who Marcus meant when he said "our" ships, but since he said "since we first learned of their existence", I'm guessing he must mean both Earth ships and Federation ships combined. How many times did Klingons take a shot at NX-01 during the run of Enterprise? We might have burned through most of our half dozen right there!
And sure, maybe you can round to 7 or 8, but you can't get too much higher than that or else most people would have used a different phrase than "half dozen". Based on the point Marcus is trying to make, I would have thought he would be more prone to exaggerate the numbers, rather than underestimate them. A half dozen just seems like an excessively low number. (And obviously there was no Four Years War in the Abramsverse! )
There is no Four Years War in the novel 'verse either . Several books set around the time of the Organian incident mention that there hasn't been a full scale war since the founding of the Federation. (Then again, Star Wars episode II had Palpatine claim the same about that universe, didn't it, even though there had been plenty in the EU material, which required a pretty extensive retcon )
There is no Four Years War in the novel 'verse either . Several books set around the time of the Organian incident mention that there hasn't been a full scale war since the founding of the Federation. (Then again, Star Wars episode II had Palpatine claim the same about that universe, didn't it, even though there had been plenty in the EU material, which required a pretty extensive retcon)
Sort of. One character, Sio Bibble, said that there hadn't been a full-scale war since the formation of the Republic. Palpatine said that the Republic had stood for over a thousand years. Since the EU had established the Republic as having lasted roughly 25,000 years (going off of Obi-Wan's "for over a thousand generations..." line), they retconned it by saying that after the end of the war which saw the Sith destroyed (or so the galaxy thought), the Republic, which had been devastated in the war, initiated a series of government reforms that turned it into the "modern" Republic we saw in Episode I. There are various times in The Clone Wars TV series where characters mentioned "the Old Republic," when the Republic hadn't actually become the Empire yet, which makes me wonder if that was their way of referencing the EU retcon.
Personally, in terms of the Trek 'verse, I'm hoping that whichever novel eventually fleshes out the Battle of Axanar and whatever major crisis it was a part of chooses to acknowledge that statement of a century of peace and takes a more interesting route than having it be an invasion by Klingons or another foe. Especially since the very books which claim a century of peace also stress the essential importance of triumph at Axanar to preserving the Federation.
There is no Four Years War in the novel 'verse either . Several books set around the time of the Organian incident mention that there hasn't been a full scale war since the founding of the Federation. (Then again, Star Wars episode II had Palpatine claim the same about that universe, didn't it, even though there had been plenty in the EU material, which required a pretty extensive retcon )
We can assume that the temporal pod recovered here is of Federation manufacture, or is at least affiliated in some way with the Federation and/or any offshoot societies. Certainly the pilot's genetic profile suggests he's the product of such. Eventually, then, the Federation will possess the ability to alter spatial dynamics and create interiors larger than their exteriors. Some sort of subspace manipulation, I suppose.
This is the first confirmation of interspecies mating as one day becoming commonplace. Eventually, many Federation natives will become hybridized, making species identification somewhat obsolete, with ancestry more a matter of identifying family lines and individual genetic histories rather than species blocs. This largely Human pilot is also part Vulcan, Terrelian and Rigelian (Zami, I assume, but who knows; given how medical science might advance, it could be Jelna).
This episode also reinforces how rigid and intransigent the Vulcans have become, with even T'Pol unwilling to deviate from accepted wisdom on the issue of time travel, in a rather ironically illogical manner. Phlox, in his usually gently provocative way, tries to challenge her in this.
First Appearances of Things That Are Important:
The Tholians make their first appearance. We learn that Tholians are xenophobic and that they're rarely encountered outside their own territory; they're not explorers. Vulcan has had limited encounters with them, and isn't certain of their appearance, noting that they're believed to be non-Humanoid. They prefer a super-heated environment. They have tractor beam technology and appear to fire energy dampening weapons on Enterprise. "Tholia" was previously one of the nouns listed in "Broken Bow", a list from which T'Pol extracted Rigel (Raij'hl ) as notable. That was apparently evidence of the Tholians' involvement in the Temporal Cold War, though what their motive might be or who they're working for isn't revealed here. It will be suggested in the novels that their motive is more defensive than anything, with the Tholian Assembly among the first nations to have a dedicated temporal defence department within their government. This makes sense, given how defensive and paranoid they apparently are at the best of times. As for why that should be, we'll learn about the origins and history of the Tholians in the Vanguard series.
By the mid-23rd Century, the Tholian Assembly will be considered one of the major nations in known space, and a rival to the Federation and Klingons.
Continuity
This is the first time we've heard mention of Zefram Cochrane's fate. He disappeared late in life while believed to be piloting a one-man ship, possibly a new experimental craft, and his final whereabouts is considered one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the century. We'll find out what really happened to him somewhere down the line, but for now it's interesting to note that despite his original motives he was truly bitten by the freedom bug and made a final Reepicheep-style exit for the final frontier.
The Terellian Plague was previously mentioned in "Singularity"; this episode features the first mention of the Terellians (Terrellians) themselves.
Denobulans were introduced to alien life by the B'Saari, whoever they might be.
Daniels' Future Box Of Mystery makes another appearance. One of the ship designs featured is a three-ring Vulcan cruiser that has yet to be invented. Does this ship exist in the prime timeline, or is it only created in a possible future where Vulcan does not rededicate itself to pacifism and retire much of its starfleet?
