What's the worst non-canon decision in the history of Trek?

[Zarm]

That was a problem introduced by the shows' writers. I mean, TNG: "Heart of Glory" established that the Klingons who still clung to the old warrior ways were considered outcasts and criminals by the Empire, and pretty strongly implied that the Klingons were actually UFP members. But then Ron Moore and other writers came along and played up the whole "samurai Viking" approach to the Klingons and treated them as basically still warriors and conquerors, making it incongruous that the Federation was allied with them.

By the end of DS9, the Klingons definitely came off as volatile, restless enemies who chafed under peacetime and might easily break faith. I didn't get the sense that they were still active conquerors before the Dominion plants stirred things up against the Cardassians...

But in some ways, the idea that the Federation would ally with them in spite of being more of a warrior culture kind of extends The Undiscovered Country's themes, doesn't it? "Do we have to lose our cultural identity in order to have peace with you? Will you only accept those who are just like you? Or is there room for us to exists side-by-side- and even fight back-to-back if threatened by an outside power- even if we remain true to our culture and very different from yours?"

It seems to me that the idea that the alliance is a compromise- prolonged (and perhaps excruciating to them) peacetime on the Klingons' behalf, accepting these unruly allies in spite of their less-egalitarian, more combat-oriented society- that doesn't require conformity but still exists in their ideologically-different diversity, seems like a very Star Trek-y one, to me.

(If they were actively conquering other star systems, that... yeah, that would be different... but when that started happening with the Cardassians, it did lead to hostilities with the Federation, which suggests to me that nothing like that was supposed to be going on beforehand.)

 

[Charles Phipps]

Yeah, I don't feel like arguing with @Christopher as I established they were going very deliberately for what they were.

I just didn't jive with the fact imperialist states were getting such a sympathetic treatment when they're running on broken promises and lies in RL so much. A perhaps un-Federation sentiment that like the Cardassians, Romulans, or Klingons they won't willingly get better unless something forces them to.

It was a fantastic work but I just had issues on an emotional level.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I do find that very interesting, in terms of how people interpret Endgame. I saw the pathogen and destruction of the unicomplex as a significant, possibly mortal blow to the Collective. Sure, they'd lost the Queen before, but this was something disrupting the entire Collective, much like what the Federation originally planned in I, Borg, but more sudden and violent. (Perhaps akin to the Daleks' 'final end' in Doctor Who's Evil of the Daleks- perhaps not the end of them for good, but the last we'd be seeing of them for a long time.

Yet, I was surprised to find that a number of people disagreed, and saw it only as a minor victory over a small portion of the Collective. And the Trek authors seemed to agree, going with that direction on into the Destiny trilogy (indeed, with two Borg trilogies back-to-back then a follow-up Voyager ongoing series based on mistrust that they were really gone, things seemed Borg-heavier than ever!)

So then, I was surprised again when Picard/Prodigy seemed to disagree with my approach and interpret Endgame the way I originally had, which I had come to think of as the 'minority' view. (The irony being that we ended up Borg-heavier than ever there, too, since each season chose to deal with them in a different way).

The general attitude I approach the Borg with and any “defeat” they suffer is that they’re much like ants - it’s the difference of destroying MUCH of the hive and destroying the ENTIRE hive. If the Borg have that inch they can recover from, they will.

And, out of universe, the Borg have historically been a major THING for Star Trek, one of the most memorable villains of the franchise. It’s not surprising to see them be chosen for more focus, and in the case of Picard, the Borg in particular left a massive scar on his psyche because of his assimilation, so digging in to that trauma is a natural topic for Picard as a series.

 

[Christopher]

I just didn't jive with the fact imperialist states were getting such a sympathetic treatment when they're running on broken promises and lies in RL so much. A perhaps un-Federation sentiment that like the Cardassians, Romulans, or Klingons they won't willingly get better unless something forces them to.

It's not about being "sympathetic," it's about exploring alien cultures, fleshing them out as more than just one-dimensional baddies. Just because a work of fiction explores a character or culture in depth doesn't mean the audience is supposed to approve of them -- see Macbeth, Richard III, Tony Soprano, or Walter White, for example.

And the whole point of the Prime Directive is that societies can't be "forced" to change for the better. Anything imposed from outside is just going to spark resistance and make things worse in the long run. Societies only change for the better when the impetus for change comes from within, when the people want it and are ready to embrace it. The Typhon Pact was a small first step in that direction -- hostile or insular cultures admitting that there was value in cooperation with others, in being willing to coexist with those who had different beliefs and ways of life. The thrust of the series was the tension between those factions within the Pact who recognized that and were willing to work toward it vs. those who were still committed to hostility and intolerance and were just using the Pact to advance their own harmful agendas.