I don't know. The memory of having been maimed by a beast is something that kind of sticks.
Worf sucks in Birthright.
- Thread starter gakelly
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I don't know. The memory of having been maimed by a beast is something that kind of sticks.
Worf is basically telling a bunch of people who are satisfied with their lives that they are living it wrong because of some genetic determination. They’re not acting like the stereotypes he’s formed around literally learning about Klingons from books and a cult of three rogue militia guys. He has very little direct experience with the culture but he’s made himself into the arbiter of what a Klingon is.
The episode makes a mockery of multi cultural backgrounds, turns race into behavioral traits you can betray, and doesn’t even touch the idea of consent when it comes to marrying your jail keeper.
It’s the perfect argument for how important diversity in writer’s rooms is considering it’s the brain child of a white guy who was inspired by the “Malcom X” film.
A paradise you can't leave is still a prison.
There's a big asterisk to what you're saying because these people were kidnapped and forcibly denied their cultural heritage. If you found a bunch of children that were Native American or Aborginal by birth but had been stripped of their heritage by people who'd taken them in at gunpoint, even if they were happy "now", then I think there's nothing wrong with someone wanting to share the heritage that was denied them.
Because that IS a real life story.
And its still happening.
Klingons aren’t a colonized or marginalized people. They’re an empire on equal footing with the Romulans, so comparing them to indigenous Americans is a sloppy analogy at best. It also comes along with a Planet-of-hats genetic reductionism that’s prevalent in Berman era and later Treks. Race=culture. Vulcans must be logical. Ferengi must be greedy (and later cowardly), Romulans must be sneaky, and Klingons have to be brainlessly violent. Our heroes repeat these stereotypes as fact regularly. With that in mind it’s hard to see this episode with the kind of depth you’re awarding it.
I also would agree that those real life children should learn about their heritage if they are interested. They shouldn’t be made to feel lesser because they don’t rigidly adhere to it, as Worf plainly feels they should. Worf’s idea of Klingon culture is, again, shallow and based on noble savagery. It’s like if some western film buff tried to teach Native American kids their culture through John Wayne movies.
Whether they're an Empire in their own right, THESE Klingons are a marginalized and colonized people that are living in a prison camp.
Worf is ironically also not teaching these kids the whole story. The reason these kids didn't get taught their culture is because their parents are outcasts from Klingon society due to their cowardice (according to their culture). Worf is teaching them a "good parts' version that he was taught himself. Given his dad was taken captive and is very probably alive and there, he unknowingly is giving them the same version he was.
Sorry, but a bunch of Conquistadors in a Portuguese prison camp are not marginalized or colonized people. It’s just two jerk societies fighting with one another. Plus, we’re neglecting the part where the Klingons have chosen to stay there because their own people don’t want them. How offensive to the black power analogy is that?
@Mark 2000 is right on all counts.
Worf is a reductive prick who thinks he knows what's right for a community after spending only a few hours with them.
Worf is a reductive prick who thinks he knows what's right for a community after spending only a few hours with them.
The people of the planet Moab IV in that episode only left Earth in the 22nd century because they were opposed to the law against genetic engineering the United Earth Republic had passed, and wanted to create a genetically perfect society in a biosphere on a non-Class M planet; I have no sympathy for their problems, and Captain Picard shouldn't have to feel any guilt about having disrupted their society, since it was all based on Augmented precepts anyway (well, nicer ones from nicer Augments than Khan Noonien Singh and company, but still Augment ones.) I will agree that Worf was full of it for doing what he did in this episode.
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Except it was a bunch of Klingon farmers and their children kidnapped in a peacetime act of piracy by a hostile nation. This would be treated as apologia for kidnappers in RL.
If the Soviets did this to a bunch of Americans or French they'd be just as awful.
If you can have your society undone by suggesting people learn about their past then your society sucks.
Seriously, there's no way to get around the fact it's a concentration camp that includes children.
This isn’t true. The Klingons were “warriors”assigned to Kitommer during a time of open hostilities with the Romulans. They were POWs who were first bartered and then simply let free. They chose to stay. This is one of the gapping plot holes of this dumb episode. Why do you need armed guards in a prison no one wants to escape from, and probably can’t through lack of transportation? They could have just left them there and resupplied them on occasion.
The French and Americans would want their people back. The Klingons actively didn’t.
This is getting a bit offensive. It is not a concentration camp. Would you have considered Nazi POW camps in the US concentration camps? Was Ceti Alpha V a concentration camp? Probably not. Concentration camps don’t contain people who chose to be there and refuse to leave.
It becomes a concentration camp if people aren't allowed to leave and contains more people than just POWs. In this case it is the prison for all the civilian prisoners of Khitomer. Also, Khitomer was a colony.
The Federation gave Khitomer to the Klingons to house their refugees. We know there were civilians there because Worf's nursemaid was one of the witnesses against Duras.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Khitomer_Massacre
You’re ignoring facts from the episode about the nature of the camp and bringing up what looks like fan theories about Khitomer and refugees. I’m not interested in that kind of discussion. But, thanks, it’s been fun!
Its not fan theories but sure.
So paradise itself, if it exists at all, according to this definition, is a prison.
If some bozo came and told me that I should leave my comfortable life, live in a tent and hunt beasts with a spear because that's what "my kind" is supposed to do, I would spit in his face (if I was in a good mood).
Absolutely. There’s nothing heavenly about Heaven. In fact, every description of it sounds awful and tedious. Except the versions where’re you’re so blissed-out that you don’t CARE that you’re doing the same mindless task for all eternity. That sounds worse.
That doesn't mean the people who want to should be executed.
I didn't say that, did I? Besides if we executed every asshole... where was I getting at?
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