“Affliction”
Written by Manny Coto and Michael Sussman
Directed by Michael Grossman
Season 4, Episode 15
Production episode 091
Original air date: February 18, 2005
Date: November 27, 2154
Captain’s star log. At the Qu’vat colony, a scientist named Antaak is conducting experiments under the direction of General K’Vagh. K’Vagh brings in a prisoner, who insists that he see the magistrate, but his protests are ignored as Antaak injects him with something that causes him great pain—and which also makes his cranial ridges disappear…
Enterprise is returning to Earth for the launch of her sister ship, Columbia, and also bid adieu to Tucker, who is transferring to NX-02 to take over as chief engineer. T’Pol confronts Tucker, who insists that he’s not transferring because of her. She looks skeptical, as does everyone in the audience.
Phlox and Sato depart from a meal at Madame Chang’s, which has become much more popular since they last visited Earth, which Sato takes rueful credit for. She spread the word far and wide as only a communications officer can about how fabulous the place is. They’re jumped by some aliens; Sato tries to fight back using the black belt in aikido that we only recently found out she has, but she’s clubbed on the head from behind and the kidnappers take the doctor away. She hears the aliens speak in another language right before she loses consciousness.
Archer and Reed arrive at the scene and talk to the investigating officer for Starfleet Security, Commander Collins. Sato doesn’t remember what the kidnappers said before she fell unconscious. Collins also mentions Phlox’s prior assault in a bar, but Reed recalls them being a bunch of dumb drunks, unlikely to have planned something like this six months later. They also picked up ionization disturbances that could be from a transporter—something not a lot of people have access to.
On Columbia, Tucker is working his new staff pretty hard, to the point that several have requested transfers. Hernandez has denied them, as she needs people. She also gently berates Tucker twice, first for reporting to engineering before reporting to her (he says he wanted to see what the lay of the land was before talking to her) and second for not switching out the patch on his uniform to a Columbia one.
On Archer’s orders (and with his coaching, since he learned some stuff from Surak’s katra), T’Pol initiates a mind-meld with Sato, which enables her to recall what was said by the attackers. Sato and T’Pol both recognize the language as Rigelian—and, it turns out, a Rigelian freighter left orbit of Earth two hours after Phlox was kidnapped, and its trajectory does not match its flight plan.
Reed tries to check the satellite network over Earth to see if transporter activity was detected in the area, but the grid was down for maintenance right then. When Reed tries to contact Starfleet Operations to ask about that, he instead gets Harris, a black-leather-clad operative for whom Reed used to work. The pair meet in person in San Francisco, where Harris makes it clear that Reed still answers to him, even though he doesn’t work for his “section” anymore (gee, think maybe it’s the thirty-first section????).
Phlox is brought to Antaak by K’Vagh. Antaak and Phlox met at a medical conference, though Antaak was disguised as a Mazarite at the time (Klingon physicians were—perhaps not surprisingly—not invited to the conference). They need Phlox’s help. There is a strain of Levodian flu that is threatening to devastate the empire. They’ve already had to wipe out the population of an entire planet to try to contain the virus. Phlox—who is disgusted at being kidnapped and at the Klingons’ medical practices—initially refuses to be Antaak’s lab assistant. But K’Vagh makes it clear that Antaak is to be his assistant.
On Columbia, Tucker has dinner with Hernandez, who wonders why he changed his mind about leaving Enterprise. He even said in an interview after the Xindi crisis that he couldn’t imagine serving on any other ship. Tucker says he was getting too familiar on Enterprise and while he has friends there, he feels there’s value in working with colleagues instead of friends. This is almost convincing.
On Enterprise, T’Pol is meditating. Mentally, she’s on a virtual plane of existence, one that is basically a big white space. Tucker shows up there, to both of their surprise. He was daydreaming on Columbia. Tucker criticizes her choice in mental vacations, as he thinks it should be a beach in Florida or the Fire Plains on Vulcan.
Enterprise catches up to the freighter, but it’s been destroyed. All the corpses they find are Rigelian. Reed reports that he can’t identify the signature of the weapons used on the freighter, but we see his viewscreen and know that that’s a lie. Archer orders that the black box be retrieved.
On Qu’vat, Phlox tries to convince Antaak to go public with this and ask for help. The IME would be more than willing to provide resources. Antaak says that they already have the IME’s entire database, which K’Vagh had stolen. K’Vagh brings in a person infected with the virus, but is at Stage 1—it doesn’t become contagious until Stage 3. Antaak moves to euthanize the patient, but Phlox stops him, saying that’s barbaric. While they’re arguing, K’Vagh casually takes out his disruptor and kills the patient, ending the argument.
On Enterprise, Reed contacts Harris on a secure channel and expresses his consternation with lying to his captain, and proposes the notion of reading Archer in on what’s going on. Harris thinks he’s adorable and encourages him instead to tell Archer that Orion raiders hit the Rigelians.
Enterprise comes under attack, cutting short Reed’s conversation. A Klingon ship is attacking them, and a boarding party transports over, all of whom are bereft of cranial ridges. They commit sabotage on the computer, and then most of them retreat; one, Marab, is shot by a MACO, and they have to leave him behind. The Klingon ship warps away; Mayweather is unable to pursue, as helm control is nonresponsive.
Archer and T’Pol are shocked to realize that, though the prisoner looks human, he is biologically Klingon. Warp drive is down and it will take at least six hours to repair. T’Pol also reports that the black box from the Rigelian freighter has been erased. Archer orders T’Pol and Sato to try to reconstruct the data.
On Qu’vat, Phlox is appalled to realize that there’s human Augment DNA in the flu virus. The other shoe drops: Antaak was trying to create Klingon Augments, using Augment embryos they salvaged from the wreckage of the ship Soong and the Augments stole. K’Vagh says that they couldn’t allow an inferior species (humans) to create super-soldiers. Phlox points out that they were relics of a time before Earth banned genetic engineering, and K’Vagh sneers and says he didn’t believe the Vulcans when they said that, either.
However, the experiments didn’t go well. Initially it was fine, and while the Klingons lost their cranial ridges, they did become stronger and smarter—but then their neural pathways degraded, and they died horrible deaths. One of the test subjects had the Levodian flu and the Augment DNA mutated the virus into this nasty-ass strain that is now threatening to wipe out the Empire. Phlox is more than a little peeved that they left that out of the information they provided him initially.
On Enterprise, while working on the recorder, Sato asks if there are residual effects from the mind-meld, because she had a dream about meeting Tucker in a big white space—basically, exactly what happened when T’Pol meditated and Tucker daydreamt—which disturbs T’Pol a bit, especially since Sato says the dream had a romantic quality to it.
Unfortunately, their investigation reveals that the recorder was erased on Enterprise by a microdyne coupler, which was last accessed by Reed. This leads Archer to have T’Pol double-check Reed’s analysis of the weapons signatures on the freighter, and it turns out to definitely be Klingons, not maybe being Orion, as Reed said. Reed refuses to explain himself, and Archer is forced to throw him into the brig.
On Qu’vat, K’Vagh makes it clear that Phlox has a timetable. The doctor counters that he needs weeks to work on this, but they only have five days before a fleet will arrive to wipe out this colony to contain the virus. (Phlox also points out that they should’ve kidnapped Arik Soong, not him, but Antaak says he was too well guarded to abduct.)
Antaak suggests sustaining the Augment DNA so that the Klingons who are enhanced don’t die horribly. Succeeding in the original experiment would probably convince the High Council to hold off on wiping the colony out. Phlox, however, refuses to go along with that, and he’s taken away at disruptor-point.
On Earth, Columbia successfully launches from drydock.
On Enterprise, Marab is thrown into the brig next to Reed. Marab tells Reed that he’s lucky to be alive—on a Klingon ship, lying to the captain is punishable by death. Reed also says that he is working toward the same goal as Marab: a cure.
The ship shudders. Apparently Marab and the rest of the boarding party sabotaged the warp drive. The matter/antimatter intermix chamber is malfunctioning. Increasing speed alleviates the pressure on the flow regulators, which are locked open, so Mayweather puts his foot on the gas. But they can’t sustain ludicrous speed for very long…
To be continued…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? If the flow regulators are locked open, the warp core will breach if you drop out of warp, but if you go faster, the pressure is lessened. This is actually rather a spiffy bit of sabotage, akin to that which we saw in the movie Speed…
The gazelle speech. Archer gets to coach T’Pol in how to initiate a mind-meld, as he picked up a few things after having a couple of Vulcan katras embedded in his brain meats for four days.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol gets to initiate her first mind-meld and also learns that she and Tucker have a mental link.
Florida Man. Florida Man In Denial Over Why He Requested A Transfer.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox is kidnapped by Klingons because he was awesome at a conference. He’s willing to work with his kidnappers when it comes to curing Klingons of a deadly flu bug, but draws the line at creating Klingon Augments.
Better get MACO. The MACOs are, as usual, completely ineffectual in repelling boarders, though at least one of them is able to get them a prisoner, at the price of being shot himself.
Also when Reed is tossed in the brig, Archer has a MACO do it rather than a member of Reed’s security staff, which is considerate.
Qapla’! The Klingon High Council is revolted by the notion of human Augments, and want to try to do to themselves what was done to the humans in the past. It doesn’t go particularly well.
We also see Klingon medicine at its worst, as their “quarantine” measures involve utter destruction of all patients.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Tucker insists that he’s not transferring off Enterprise because of T’Pol, even though they’re obviously connected enough to be mindlinked.
More on this later… While the phrase “Section 31” is never used in this episode, it’s obvious that the organization that Harris belongs to (and that Reed used to be affiliated with) is supposed to be an early version of that black ops organization introduced in DS9’s “Inquisition,” and seen (sigh) far too often in Trek since.
Also, this two-parter finally provides an explanation for the discrepancy between what Klingons looked like in the original and animated series, and what they have looked like in every other Trek production.
I’ve got faith…
“I don’t know who’s in charge of your mess hall, but he’d give the Chef on Enterprise a run for his money.”
“I stole him from the Republic. Captain Jennings said I could have anything I wanted when I left, so I took his cook.”
–Tucker and Hernandez chatting over dinner in the Captain’s Mess.
Welcome aboard. Several Trek veterans are back in this one: John Schuck as Antaak, having previously played a different Klingon, the ambassador in The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country, as well as a Cardassian legate in DS9’s “The Maquis, Part II” and a member of the chorus in Voyager’s “Muse.” Eric Pierpoint as Harris, having previously played an Eska hunter in “Rogue Planet,” an Iyaaran in TNG’s “Liaisons,” Captain Sanders in DS9’s “For the Uniform,” and the mythical Klingon figure Kortar in Voyager’s “Barge of the Dead.” Brad Greenquist as the Rigelian kidnapper, having previously played Khata’n Zshaar in “Dawn,” Demmas in Voyager’s “Warlord,” and Krit in DS9’s “Who Mourns for Morn?” And Marc Worden as the doomed prisoner in the teaser, having previously played Worf’s son Alexander in DS9’s “Sons and Daughters” and “You Are Cordially Invited.”
Ada Maris officially makes Hernandez recurring, returning from “Home.” Derek Magyar debuts the recurring role of Kelby. Terrell Tilford plays Marab, Kate McNeil plays Collins, and Seth MacFarlane makes another appearance as an engineer being ordered around by Tucker, though it’s unclear whether or not he’s the same unfortunate who got chewed out by Tucker in “The Forgotten.”
And finally, the great James Avery plays K’Vagh, and the amazing thing is that it took so long to cast him as a Klingon, as he’s perfect in every way.
Shuck, Avery, Maris, Pierpoint, and Tilford will return in “Divergence” next time. Magyar will return in “Bound.”
Trivial matters: This is the first of a two-parter that will conclude in “Divergence,” and was specifically done to address the discrepancy between how Klingons looked in screen productions made between 1967 and 1974 and how they looked in all screen productions made since 1979.
Tucker requested a transfer to Columbia at the end of “The Aenar.”
Phlox was previously attacked while visiting Earth in “Home.” That episode also established that Madame Chang’s was Phlox’s favorite source of egg drop soup, and Sato went there on the doctor’s recommendation.
Collins says that assaults against aliens are rare, a statement belied by both Phlox’s previous assault in “Home” and the events forthcoming in “Demons” and “Terra Prime.”
Sato was established as having a black belt in aikido in “Observer Effect.”
Archer held the katras of both Syrran and Surak for several days from the end of “The Forge,” through to “Awakening” and “Kir’Shara.”
T’Pol took Tucker to the Fire Plains on Vulcan in “Home.”
The Klingon ship stolen by the Augments was blown up over Qu’vat in “The Augments.”
Antaak references the Hur’q invasion, which was established as a long-ago event in which Kronos was pillaged in DS9’s “The Sword of Kahless.”
Hernandez’s previous assignment, the Republic, appears in The Romulan War: To Brave the Storm by Michael A. Martin.
This is the first time Section 31 has appeared outside of DS9. But it will continue to appear on this show, in Star Trek Into Darkness, and on both Discovery and Picard for no compellingly good reason.
It’s been a long road… “Given the choice between honor and saving lives, I choose the latter.” On the one hand, this two-parter doesn’t have any particularly good reason to exist. I’ve never had much patience with storylines that try to explain something in-universe that has a very good out-of-the-box explanation. And honestly, the previous time they addressed the discrepancy between original/animated series Klingons and all the other Klingons, in DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations,” was, to my mind, sufficient. Worf just said, “It is a long story” and “We do not discuss it with outsiders,” and that’s it. That’s all we needed.
Having said that, unlike some other examples of this breed—like TNG’s “The Chase”—this is a genuinely compelling story. If they did have to come up with an explanation for smooth-headed Klingons, having it be the result of trying to create Klingon Augments based on the genetically engineered humans was, frankly, a stroke of genius.
And the storyline created around it is genuinely compelling. Honestly, the whole storyline is worth it to have three actors of the calibre of John Billingsley, John Schuck, and James Avery in a room together for large chunks of it. Avery in particular is magnificent, bringing a calm and efficient brutality to the role of K’Vagh.
Ada Maris gives us in Hernandez a wonderful shipmaster. I love how even-tempered and friendly she is without ever once losing her authority or command presence. It’s a magnificently low-key charismatic performance, continuing the good work she did in “Home.” Honestly, given how lackluster Scott Bakula has been in the role of Archer all this time, one longs for the alternate universe where the NX-01 was commanded by Hernandez as played by Maris.
The episode loses points for the insertion of Section 31 bullshit. Leaving aside that the whole concept of 31 is idiotic and a blight on the franchise that has metastasized into a cancer (though I will admit to it making more sense on twenty-second-century Earth than it does in the twenty-fourth-century Federation), it’s just there to pad out the plot and create artificial conflict between Archer and Reed.
Warp factor rating: 8
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be an author guest at Philcon 2023, where he and Wrenn Simms will have the official launch of their anthology The Four ???? of the Apocalypse, which they’re publishing through their very-small press, WhysperWude. Several of the authors who contributed to the anthology will be present as well, and it will be part of the eSpec Books/WhysperWude launch party Saturday night at the con. Keith and Wrenn will also have a table in the dealer room where they’ll be selling and signing Keith’s books, as well as some of Wrenn’s craft items. Keith’s full schedule can be found here.
“The council will do whatever’s required to contain this outbreak.”
It’s difficult to know what to make of this one. I enjoyed it while watching it, but it feels like this is the point where the continuity porn got out of control. What exactly were the pitch/break sessions for this episode like? “Okay, now let’s do two episodes explaining how the Klingons lost their cranial ridges!”/ “Yeah, and we can have Section 31 in it!” Most of it gets ignored by Discovery among others anyway.
On the positive side, well, Phlox gets a bigger share of the action than has been common this season, and builds a nice not-quite-colleagues-not-quite-adversaries relationship with Antaak. Reed’s betrayal of the crew is a gut-punch, if not entirely in-character. Sato gets to show off some martial arts skills. Tucker’s attitude on Columbia, making it clear he’s not there to make friends, in order to avoid the uncomfortable attachments on Enterprise, is intriguing, although the next episode will render most of it redundant.
T’Pol doing a mind-meld just comes out of nowhere, as if everyone just forgot that ‘Stigma’ established that only a minority of Vulcans can initiate melds (and makes that episode’s already strained analogy even more strained). Are we meant to assume that was more propaganda from V’Las’ people? Either way, it feels a bit like someone doing too much of a course correction from the way the Vulcans were portrayed in the early seasons.
Captain Hernandez’s name actually gets mentioned here, although Harris’ doesn’t! For some reason, Hernandez calls her helm office “Lieutenant” even though she’s only wearing an ensign’s pip. Sorry to take a rare bit of competence from the MACOs, but they even have to leave it to the regular security guards to take down Marab!
I’d completely forgotten about T’Pol and Tucker’s weird shared daydream thing (which…Hoshi may have shared as well?), so see where they go with that.
Humans decided to create Augments by engineering embryos (or eggs?), bringing them to term somehow (is that ever spelled out?) and raising the children. Klingons try something which seems to have started with adult Klingons and transformed them. No wonder it comes apart, one does not need to be a connoisseur of apocalyptic movies to know how that will end …
And just what exactly was the Klingon boarding party trying to do on the Enterprise? Sabotage her? It seemed that their relatively tiny ship was able to damage Enterprise at will.
Regarding Tucker in love, is he lying about having no personal motives, or is he deceiving himself?
@cap-mjb in 1,
I thought we learned that mind-melding and all that is a learned skill. Vulcans just repressed that little bit, but Surak’s katra burst it all wide open again.
It seems so odd in retrospect that they would go out of their way to explain the Klingon forehead issue and then just never show any smooth-headed Klingons on any subsequent production. That said, I think that the events of this two-parter goes a long way towards explaining why the Klingon Empire is in such a shambles by the time Discovery picks up the thread. And I enjoyed the depiction of Klingon medicine; it really reinforces the point made in “Judgment” about how their society has decayed as a result of the ascendance of the warrior caste.
I am not a fan of Section 31 and they don’t really seem to serve any actual purpose here, but I do think that if any Starfleet character would be drawn to them, it would be Malcolm Reed.
I agree — we didn’t need an explanation for the real-world makeup change in the Klingons, any more than we needed a story where Saavik got plastic surgery after Spock’s funeral. But if they were going to do one, this was a pretty good story to get out of it.
The guest casting in particular was fantastic. I agree that it’s astounding they took this long to cast James Avery as a Klingon. When I wrote my first Trek spec script way back during TNG, I wrote the main Klingon guest star with Avery in mind. Plus we’ve also got John Shuck returning to the ridges in a bigger, meatier role than he had in the movies, and it’s always nice to see Eric Pierpoint. Although we’ll have to wait until “Terra Prime” to see him in the same episode as his Alien Nation co-lead Gary Graham.
Speaking of which, in my Rise of the Federation novels, I gave Harris the first name of Matthew, as a nod to Graham’s Alien Nation character Matt Sikes. Not sure why I didn’t call him George after Pierpoint’s character. Maybe I just didn’t think it was a good fit.
(I’ve just begun a comprehensive rewatch/review series of the entire Alien Nation franchise on my Patreon, coming out twice a week. My prices are lower now, and there’s a free trial period. I’m very proud of this rewatch series, so I hope you check it out.)
@1/cap-mjb: “Most of it gets ignored by Discovery among others anyway.”
Ignored, maybe, but not contradicted, since “Divergence” establishes that the number of mutated Klingons is only in the millions, which would be a tiny fraction of the overall Klingon population, which is presumably in the tens or hundreds of billions.
“T’Pol doing a mind-meld just comes out of nowhere, as if everyone just forgot that ‘Stigma’ established that only a minority of Vulcans can initiate melds (and makes that episode’s already strained analogy even more strained).”
You’re forgetting that in the Vulcan 3-parter, T’Pau revealed that that was a lie, that all Vulcans are capable of melding if they train themselves to do it.
@4/jaimebabb: “It seems so odd in retrospect that they would go out of their way to explain the Klingon forehead issue and then just never show any smooth-headed Klingons on any subsequent production.”
Different “they.” Later Trek productions are from different creators entirely, and they were intended to attract new viewers, so they probably didn’t want to confuse novices with the whole Klingon forehead business.
My theory about the appearance of the Klingons in the first season of Discovery is that, as per Antaak’s comments about reconstructive surgery in next weeks episode, is that it is the result of extensive body modifications. Like humans with multiple tattoos and piercings. A fad. A cultural movement. A point of pride. Any of those could work.
As for the original series Klingons, obviously a mutated version of the augment virus reared its head around 2264 and basically undid all the artificial modification as well as the natural ridges and it took a couple of years for Klingon medical to get a handle on it. By that time, Klingon society as a whole was over its exaggerated body work fad and just settled for their natural appearance.
In all fairness to the MACOs, the only reason they fail to repel boarders in this episode is said Klingons HIT THEM WITH HEAVY ARTILLERY (That is, they call a strike from their own ship to hit the section the troops are in, which is Awesomely Klingon).
I’m not sure how many MACO troops would be left after that.
In all honesty, as mentioned above there’s a lot to like this episode (Which has already been highlighted by @krad and others – though I take objection as to the suggestion that Mr Seth MacFarlane’s character might NOT be the very same one whom Mr Tucker tore a strip out of*); special mention to Ensign Sato being her usual covertly-bad*** self (OF COURSE she and the Doc are dinner buddies, of course she spread the news all over town!), our very first Klingon medicine man being a targ Dad; Klingons proving that the only thing more dangerous than a brutal Klingon is a deviously brutal Klingon; Doc Phlox being so done with Klingon intrigues and other misbehaviour; Captain Hernandez sounding suspiciously like a woman who has kissed and is planning to tell EVERYTHING over dinner with Mr Tucker; and Captain Archer being his usual graceful self when it comes to enjoying the benefits of Vulcan expertise (I swear there might have been potential for a recurring joke in Mr “I DO WHAT I WANT, Vulcan Dad!” shocking Vulcans (and vaguely annoying himself) by casually dropping deep cuts from the wisdom of Surak.
Also, is it just me or did anyone else get a little Hoshi/T’Pol energy from Ensign Sato having never dreamed of Mr Tucker before?
*I’m not a MacFarlane fan, but I dearly want him to make at least a cameo on LOWER DECKS as his character from ENTERPRISE, preferably struggling to keep smiling through the fact that Trip Tucker – Hero, Martyr, Legend – hates his guts (Bonus points if this is mostly a persecution complex based on his usually meeting Trip when the man was having a bad day).
I’m not suggesting a Time Travel episode, just an episode showing the Lower Decks experience across various eras of STAR TREK history.
Personally I liked how they gave the Klingons helmets in the JJ Abrams movies to give themselves some flexibility over the issue.
jaimebabb: As Christopher said, nobody involved in the production of Star Trek between 1987 and 2005 has been involved with the franchise since Enterprise‘s cancellation (with the sole exceptions of Joe Menosky for about four episodes of Discovery and Terry Matalas, who was very very very low on the totem pole during Voyager and Enterprise). I totally get why Discovery and SNW have generally avoided the issue.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Two Words: KLINGON OPERA (In all seriousness, I would love to see the first season DISCO-Klingon look used as a basis for the costumes of a Klingon theatrical troupe: bonus points if the early 2250s is forever ‘The Decade that Fashion Forgot’ for the Klingon Empire).
…
Even if we all know that Old Kor would have loved every minute of it!
@6/Steven McMullan – My headcanon is that it became fashionable for uninfected Klingons to emphasize the non-human elements of their phenotypes as much as possible. It also makes sense for T’Kuvma and his crew in particular, since their whole thing was fear of being assimilated by the Federation. In fact, I wish thar they had at least found a way to inobtrusively allude to the events of this episode on Discovery, since I think Klingon genetics literally being rewritten to be more human would have been a pretty concrete basis for T’Kuvma’s fear.
All I can say for how the Klingons want to deal with the Augment Virus is that “You haven’t read Warhammer 40k lore until you’ve read it in the original Klingon”. The Klingon plan is straight out of the 40k Inquisition playbook. Extreminatus a planet first and ask questions later.
This is Rogue Inquisitor dabbles in Chaos tech which blows up in their face, followed by a Hard Line Inquisitor Lord deciding to exterminate the planet to contain the resulting Chaos Plague.
@6/Steven McMullan: I don’t need an explanation for why we don’t see smooth-headed Klingons in DSC or anywhere else, any more than I need an explanation for why we don’t see bathrooms in Trek, or why we never saw 23rd-century Earth in TOS. It’s a big universe, and we’re seeing a tiny, selective fraction of it. Just because we don’t see something in that tiny sample doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Sure, logically there are things we should see if the fictional universe were entirely consistent and realistic, but the laws of probability are such that the absence of something from a limited sample is not entirely out of the question.
Although it would’ve been really cool if, when Discovery showed all the divided, warring Klingon Great Houses meeting in council, they’d all had different makeups, representing all the different Klingon makeups seen to date.
@8/jaime: “Personally I liked how they gave the Klingons helmets in the JJ Abrams movies to give themselves some flexibility over the issue.”
In the first movie, yes (though those scenes were all cut from the final film), but we did see a number of unhelmeted Klingons in Into Darkness, and they were as radically different as the Discovery Klingons (unsurprisingly, as both designs were by Neville Page).
I still kind of hope that SNW will include an episode/storyline explaining how the smooth-headed Klingons came to seemingly dominate the Empire during TOS. It’s be interesting if they were treated as second-class citizens who ultimately engineered a coup.
The question I’ve always had is whether the likes of Kang, Kor, and Koloth got reconstructive surgery to get ridges, or if an actual cure was discovered that brought them back.
Chase: who says they dominated the empire? All we saw were the crews of four Klingon ships (out of a fleet of, no doubt, thousands) — Kor and his crew in “Errand of Mercy” and “The Time Trap,” Koloth and his crew in “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “More Tribbles, More Troubles,” the unnamed captain (and his crew) seen in “Elaan of Troyius,” and Kang and his crew in “Day of the Dove” — plus three Klingons who were engaged in espionage — Kras in “Friday’s Child,” Krell in “A Private Little War,” and Arne Darvin in “Tribbles.” Nothing in any of those episodes indicates that the smooth-heads were in any way dominant.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@14/Chase: “I still kind of hope that SNW will include an episode/storyline explaining how the smooth-headed Klingons came to seemingly dominate the Empire during TOS. It’s be interesting if they were treated as second-class citizens who ultimately engineered a coup.”
My preferred interpretation, which has been used in the novels, is that the QuchHa’ (the smooth-headed ones) didn’t dominate at all; rather, they were segregated to their own ships within the Defense Force by the HemQuch (ridged) majority, and the human-hybrid Klingons were assigned to be the ones who interacted with the Federation during that period, a policy analogous to the Imperial Chinese doctrine of “Send barbarians to deal with barbarians.” (This is basically how John M. Ford had explained it in The Final Reflection, positing that Klingons engineered “fusions” of themselves with other species and used them as the front-line troops interacting with those species.)
After all, we never saw a member of the Klingon government or civilian population in TOS; we only saw the crews of several warships and a couple of spies.
“The question I’ve always had is whether the likes of Kang, Kor, and Koloth got reconstructive surgery to get ridges, or if an actual cure was discovered that brought them back.”
I used to have a pet theory that the smooth-headed Klingons naturally grew ridges as they got older; General Chang in TUC, with his very subtle ridges, would’ve been in the early stages of this process. I had a different theory for why they existed, but come to think of it, my idea about the ridges growing in with age is still compatible with the canonical explanation.
@14 said: I still kind of hope that SNW will include an episode/storyline explaining how the smooth-headed Klingons came to seemingly dominate the Empire during TOS. It’s be interesting if they were treated as second-class citizens who ultimately engineered a coup.
I realize this isn’t quite the same thing, but the “Aftermath” comic series that follows Captain Pike right after Discovery Season Two features Kor, who is drawn to resemble John Colicos – though his forehead is in shadow, if memory serves.
My head canon for the existence of Section 31 in the 24th century is that they have gone completely rogue at some point since their initial founding. All we know is that they were supposedly created by Article 14, Section 31 of the Starfleet charter. But there are literally centuries of time between the founding of Starfleet, and when we meet Sloan on DS9. We also don’t really know if that is the United Earth Starfleet, or the UFP one.
So who is to say that Starfleet didn’t shut 31 down at some point, but the leaders and members just kept going anyway, on their own initiative. As a black ops organization seemingly accountable to no one, they might have stashed away ill-gotten resources to the point where they could simply keep going and ignore any orders to stand down. By the 24th century, they are zealots who follow their own goals, even of those goals are counter to Federation policy. Sloan and the rest are therefore criminals, not the hidden dark face of the Federation or Starfleet.
To my memory, there is not anything that really contradicts this idea, though I am open to being corrected on that. I also haven’t watched the last couple of seasons of DISCO or the final Picard season, so those might prove me wrong too.
@5:CLB: “You’re forgetting that in the Vulcan 3-parter, T’Pau revealed that that was a lie, that all Vulcans are capable of melding if they train themselves to do it.”
Trust me, I’m not. I was keeping a close listen to see if she said anything like that, and she didn’t. I’ve just checked the transcript to make sure and, although she makes references to melders being “trained”, at no point does she say any Vulcan can do it.
@18/Grenadier – My headcanon for Section 31 is that it’s the same organization from this series up until the 23rd century, and then it’s disbanded after the events of Discovery season 2, and the “Section 31” we saw on Deep Space Nine and (*sigh*) Picard is a later revival.
@19/cap: Hmm… I guess I’m forgetting the difference between what was established in the show and what I (and others?) established in the novels.
Still, it stands to reason that melding abilities would be more commonplace than the society that stigmatized melding would have admitted, in the same way that LGBTQ+ people are more common than society would’ve admitted a few decades ago.
@18 & 20: It’s hard to reconcile DS9’s depiction of S31 as an underground group few people have heard of with DSC’s portrayal of it as an open part of Starfleet in the 23rd century. The idea that it was disbanded after DSC and later revived in secret is the least bad handwave, though it doesn’t explain how people could’ve forgotten it ever existed. The problem is that PIC and LD have shown the 24th-century S31 as being commonly known to exist, and even accepted as a “critical division” of Starfleet. It’s very hard to reconcile that with DS9.
@21: My theory reconciling Discovery with DS9 is that Section 31 was known within Starfleet during the 23rd century but wasn’t known to the general public, so later generations wouldn’t be aware of it. I guess we just have to assume that it became commoner knowledge again after the events of DS9.
I freely admit that this is a good episode, but it still annoys me that it even exists. I hate it when people insist on explaining the obvious with convoluted in-universe nonsense. It just annoys the heck out of me and I can’t take it seriously. The worst thing about it is that once you’ve gone out of your way to give an in-universe explanation for the differing makeup for Klingons, then fans freak out when the makeup changes again without explanation, as it inevitably did in the Abrams films and then Star Trek Discovery, leading to all kinds of endless online arguments.
The fact that people feel that the Federation shouldn’t have something like Section 31 makes as much sense as feeling that Starfleet shouldn’t use cloaking devices. Both cases put Starfleet at a severe disadvantage. But remember, “we don’t sneak around.” Please.
I loved this story, and really enjoyed the explanation of smooth Klingons. I hated the whole redesign of Klingons for Discovery and felt they were just fantasy Orcs in a Sci Fi setting.
<sigh> I really wanted to like Discovery. If it had been a standalone show without being Star Trek it might have worked better for me. There were a lot of irritations that made me give up by the time they entered the Mirror Universe. The Klingons were an early example. They slowed down every scene they were in and the dialogue was so slow and painful. I’ve seen people speaking Klingon and having fast and emotional conversations, but they are people deeply enmeshed in the lore of Trek and totally fluent. The actors in the terrible costumes weren’t and it was just so horrible watching them slowly stumble over nonsensical syllables and reading the subtitles underneath. It’s a conceit to have everyone speak English when there are no humans on board, but it keeps the pacing up and helps it make sense. Many people hate subtitles in general and don’t read them.
And don’t get me started on the technology. In many ways they were way in advance of anything we’d seen onscreen before. I kind of got the spore drive as being experimental, but considering how much they used it and how convenient it was I always felt Star Fleet would have really doubled down on the research. There is no way an organisation like that would have just shelved it.
Discovery should have set the show after Voyager, not before Original series. At least Enterprise tried hard not to give in to the temptation to have some kind of super tech that would have been terribly useful moving forward.
@24/JasonD: “The fact that people feel that the Federation shouldn’t have something like Section 31 makes as much sense as feeling that Starfleet shouldn’t use cloaking devices. Both cases put Starfleet at a severe disadvantage.”
Except history shows that’s not true — dirty tricks by spy agencies tend to do more to hurt national security than to protect it. The CIA helped overthrow a reformist Iranian president to put the brutal, oppressive Shah back in power, and that provoked a revolution that installed the current fundamentalist regime that hates America because the CIA sided with a tyrant. The CIA also trained Osama bin Laden and others like him to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, and they ended up becoming al-Qaeda.
Similarly, in the Trek universe, Section 31’s actions tend to do more harm than good, as seen in this very 2-parter, where their actions are partly responsible for unleashing the Qu’Vat virus and giving the Klingons more reason to hate and fear humanity. And later in Discovery, where S31’s AI runs amuck and almost destroys the galaxy.
Not to mention that, while the Secret Hideout series have blurred the line, there’s a major difference between S31 and a legitimate intelligence agency. Even the CIA, or Starfleet Intelligence, is answerable to the government, and there’s a mechanism for reining it in if it goes too far. Section 31 has no such guardrails because it’s a secret, unsanctioned group operating without oversight. Its very purpose for existing is to break the rules when it deems it necessary to do so, and that means it’s inevitably going to look for excuses to break rules and do the wrong thing in order to justify its existence. That’s an intrinsically corrupt institution that can never do any good except for itself. It’s not an immune system, it’s a cancer.
@12. Charles Rosenberg: Technically speaking, this would be a Radical Inquisitor dabbling in degenerate Xenos techniques for fun & profit, but the outcome is certainly the same (It’s also slightly amusing to note that Klingons would, by the cheerfully-lunatic 40K standards, be one of the friendlier alien species of the setting: heck, they’d be almost as mikd-mannered as the Tau by comparison with the ‘nids, the Orks, the Dark Eldar and a terrifying rogues gallery of other monstrosities).
There are several intelligence gathering agencies just in the US that were partly or wholly “black” for years or decades before they became publicly acknowledged, after which they were promptly forgotten by everyone outside the intel community. NSA and, especially, NRO, being but two examples.
“Deep Black” is long out of print, but still a fascinating read on that sort of thing.
@28/wiredog: The question, though, is, were those agencies answerable to the government? Were they actual authorized agencies whose members could be held accountable if they went too far, even if it was never known to the public? If so, then they aren’t the equivalent of Section 31, not as it was originally portrayed in DS9. That S31 was a straight-up criminal conspiracy answerable to no one.
Also, there’s a big difference between a group that simply gathers intelligence and an organization that actively engages in criminal acts against foreign powers. Most real-life espionage is just collecting information, not going around doing James Bond or Mission: Impossible stuff.
@29
True, NRO and other agencies were known, at least to the executive branch. But publicly, and to most of the government, they didn’t’ exist. Just an obfuscated line item in a budget somewhere. So, like Section 31 in that no one knew about them, and then they were known, and then forgotten. But unlike it in that they operate with oversight.
The original DS9 S31 episodes were cool. In keeping with the “not all is perfect in paradise” theme, the officiality of S31 ever in question, sanctioned by complicit admirals with less than stellar (no pun intended) ethics, etc. Great stuff and used to great effect just twice.
The moment they decided to make S31 a Brand™ was when it went downhill. First here, where it’s at least somewhat more plausible, but especially in Discovery. The covert group of which, DS9 tells us, no record exists and nobody has ever heard of, is on full display all throughout the 23rd century, everyone knows them and their name, every captain in the fleet is familiar with them, to the point where ordinary crewmembers can identify them by their badges. To show that and expect the audience to believe that in the century hence, nobody will remember them after they first helped win the war and then started another, is ludicrous and almost as pathetic as the ending of Discovery’s second season (expecting us to believe the existence of the ship, crew, and drive that won the war could be kept secret).
The insistence to show the transformation of the Klingons is in line with Enterprise’s prequelitis, unfortunately. There are the remains of a great episode in this one, but as usual with Enterprise, it’s a mediocre-at-best plot that’s undeservingly uplifted by great acting.
And I do say that as a big fan of Enterprise. I love the show (mostly for what it could have been), but you wouldn’t know it hearing me talk about it.
I’m still holding on to hope that someday in a Trek series, perhaps in SNW, that we see a ‘family photo’ of all the different Klingon designs together in one room. Hey, it’s a big empire.
On that note, I was happy when Picard acknowledged the two different Romulan designs we’ve seen.
I’ll say this about Mike Sussman’s writing. He manages to pack in a lot of threads into one episode and make it seem effortless. As a viewer, I certainly never feel lost. “Affliction” is one of the best examples of juggling multiple stories while still functioning as a problem of the week. And it does it way better than the early seasons of Discovery and most of Picard. A perfect marriage of serialization and episodic.
I’m torn about whether looking for an explanation for the Klingon makeup differences was essential or not. I always laugh at Worf’s dismissive explanation to the whole thing. But if Manny Coto is going there, it doesn’t hurt when we get an episode like this one. When picking up the Augment trilogy story thread from earlier in the season, it actually works much better this time around. Phlox, Antaak and K’Vagh are way better characters than Arik Soong and his augments and their scenes together have much more weight
Not content with the augment angle, the episode does some necesary and welcome legwork for the upcoming “Terra Prime” story while also picking up Phlox’s unfortunate run-in with the racists from “Home”.
Whether Section 31 is a storytelling crutch or not, it certainly works better here than it would on other shows. Mainly because it fits the more paranoid unevolved mentality of 22nd century humanity compared to the later eras. And it fits Reed, whose background has always been on the murky side. And it makes sense that he would want to distance himself from their influence. In his heart, he may have a more negative view of exploration, but he still supports the mission and what Starfleet is supposed to be about.
And then there’s the warp drive problem. If there’s one thing anyone associates with Brannon Braga is high-concept story pitches. Most of his TNG work was built from those premises. And 1994’s Speed is the epitome of high-concept. I imagine Braga must have loved it when the staff decided to the Trek version of the bus going over 50MPH, incorporating it into this two parter.
On another note, this was the third ENT episode directed by Michael Grossman. Between him and James A. Contner during the first two seasons, I see a clear trend. Rick Berman must have been paying attention to other genre shows, specifically Whedon’s corner. Grossman, Contner (and also David Straiton) all directed multiple episodes of Buffy and Angel. With older directors like Vejar, Bole and Kolbe retiring from directing, I imagine Berman looked to those shows to find the right people to fill the gaps who could also work within the Trek aesthetic.
@32/ErnestSavesThanksgiving – I found it hilarious that Picard came up with an explanation for the two Romulan designs and then SNW just retconned the “Balance of Terror” Romulans to have “northern” TNG-style make-up anyways.
#34.
Ha, I didn’t catch that! Too funny.
Well… something something alternate timeline…
@26 – “As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape/disc will self-destruct in five seconds.”
Assuming you didn’t like Mission Impossible then.
Also, as Worf stated in S3 of Picard, Section 31 is a part of Starfleet intelligence. But it operates like the Impossible Mission Force. “Those guys? Totally unsanctioned. Can’t blame us for that.”.
“Also, there’s a big difference between a group that simply gathers intelligence and an organization that actively engages in criminal acts against foreign powers.”
As we saw in The Enterprise Incident, Kirk was ordered to cross into Romulan Space, an act of war, with orders to steal top secret Romulan Tech and given the “He’s insane. We had nothing to do with it” excuse.
@29 – “The question, though, is, were those agencies answerable to the government? Were they actual authorized agencies whose members could be held accountable if they went too far, even if it was never known to the public? If so, then they aren’t the equivalent of Section 31, not as it was originally portrayed in DS9. That S31 was a straight-up criminal conspiracy answerable to no one.”
No, Sloan SAID that they were answerable to no one. He lied about everything else but on that one thing it’s supposed to be taken as gospel?
in Picard S3, Worf calls Section 31 “a Critical division of Starfleet Intelligence” and admits that the changeling virus was created by Starfleet. So much for the idea that S31 is a rogue division. Starfleet knew exactly what they were doing, keeping Starfleets hands clean while doing the jobs that they didn’t want traced back to them.
The idea that Section 31 could operate for centuries and not be shut down means that either Starfleet is totally incompetent or that they were part of it and just wanted plausible deniability. The most likely answer is the second one.
@28/30: I thought of this example as well. Ironically, as a DC-era resident, I drive right past NRO headquarters every day on my way to work…
@36. kkozoriz: That rather supposes that every appearance of ‘Section 31’ involves the exact same organisation, rather than a single name being reused by various short-lived conspiracies across the centuries (Or, more plausibly, being used in reference to these conspiracies by outside parties attempting to track their activities and adopted by the conspiracies in question when dealing with outsiders – whether to draw on the mystique of the name or mislead their pursuers or because they need some sort of name, but don’t want to give away their actual codename).
I believe @ChristopherLBennett has suggested this idea once or twice and I certainly agree with this particular theory.
@9/krad: I presume you’re not counting directors (i.e. Jonathan Frakes) as “involved with the production”?
@38/ED: Both David Mack and I have portrayed Section 31 in the novels as a succession of conspiracies following a common playbook, though Dave added a deeper underlying element.
The thing is, stories about vast conspiracies that last for centuries are stupid, because you can only keep a secret for so long. The bigger a conspiracy is and the longer it lasts, the more inevitable it becomes that someone will make a mistake or have a crisis of conscience and give it away, or that someone on the outside will expose the secret. So the only remotely sensible way something like Section 31 could exist is if it were small and mostly inactive, if it kept a low profile instead of being the kind of vast, all-encompassing, activist conspiracy that’s such a ludicrous and overused trope in fiction. So I’ve always believed that S31 needed to be mostly dormant and only become active in exceptional periods of crisis.
Unfortunately, Secret Hideout has persisted in retconning S31 into an actual, authorized intelligence agency rather than the criminal cabal it was intended to be, complete with its own distinctive badges. I suppose that makes it more plausible that it could persist for centuries, but it’s difficult to reconcile with the secrecy of its existence in DS9.
@39/Anthony: In addition to directors, a few TNG-era art staffers like Michael Okuda and Doug Drexler worked on the latter seasons of Picard.
@40 – “The thing is, stories about vast conspiracies that last for centuries are stupid, because you can only keep a secret for so long.”
And yet Section 31 has done exactly that despite being discovered many times over the centuries
The secret has been known to many people ever since Enterprise and running throgh the last season of Picard. Reed had a crisis of conscience way back in the 22nd century and spilled the beans. Even after that, S31 endured by the mid 23rd century, they were operating in the open while still keeping secrets. Lots of people knew about them. Then they went deep undercover and were later known to be operating by pretty much the entire crew of DS9.
Say what you will about them, they endure as a “critical division” of Starfleet Intelligence.
They’re not the first stupid thing embraced by Star Trek and they won’t be the last. Trek isn’t meant to be realistic, it’s meant to be entertaining. If that means embracing stupid every now and then, then so be it..just keep it entertaining while I’m rolling my eyes back in my skull..
Yeah but Section 31 isn’t entertaining, they’re a bunch of OP assholes (in story at least) who always either get away with it or actively make things worse. I found the “Critical Division of Starfleet Intelligence” line to be ridiculous. In DS9 and the 24th century they were never associated directly with Starfleet Intelligence, and that was part of their mystique and function. They were either exactly what they said, or running a con.
The thing that pissed me off about S31 is that they are unnecessary. Starfleet Intelligence already existed. They can run their own deniable ops, and they have. It’s Treadstone, it’s Black Briar, it’s an organization of someone who thinks that the only way to win conflicts is to be the most underhanded and the most inhumane. It is antithetical and anti-thematic to the story being told.
That’s another thing Section 31 is both inhumane and incompetent. No one has ever said, “Thank God, Section 31 is here.” it’s always, “Dammit Section 31 has got their finger in this, what mess are we gonna have to clean up now?” In DS9 it works as a minor flaw, when things are scary the Federation reverts to actions based on fear rather than their ideals, but there are other people who can blunt the damage. Them as a standing organization that bosses around Starfleet Admirals on the other hand basically says all the idealism the Federation is built on is a lie. Which might be fine if they were effective, but the truth is everything they do makes things worse. Their Augment plot here causes the First Federation Klingon War and unites the Klingon Empire. Their AI almost exterminates all life in the galaxy. Their attempted genocide of the Founders both convinced the Founder “Queen” to order her forces to fight to the last and almost resulted in the genocide of the Cardassians. It THEN led Changeling POWs they were holding to ally with the Borg and almost resulted in Starfleet being assimilated, the obliteration of Earth, and the Federation. They have no good outcomes, while preaching that they’re the ones who really protect the Federation. If that was the point it’d be great, but people just see “cool black ops organization that doesn’t play nice” and think they’re actually necessary, when they’re really a pain in the ass.
@42 – Well somebody finds them entertaining. Multiple appearances in DS9, Enterprise, Discovery and the upcoming movie. Not to mention the carious novels, comics and such.
And the attempted genocide isn’t that much out of character. We saw Picard willing to let entire planets die to uphold the Prime Directive. Kirk came within minutes of exterminating all life on Eminiar VII. During the Klingon War, There wa a plan to exterminate all life on the Klingon homeward that was only foiled by dumb luck. And in none of these cases was there any sort of action taken against the perpetrators. Picard was upholding the PD until he decide not to. And Kirk and Sarek went on to be held up as shining examples of excellence.
Wiping out a couple of races that you’re at war with doesn’t seem to be taking things too far for the Federation. And in the case of Eminiar VII, it’s seen as a reasonable response to holding Federation hostages who shouldn’t have been on the planet in the first place.
So yeah, the idealism of the Federation is pretty much a lie. It’s easy to be an angel in paradise.
This episode shouldn’t have worked for me, but it did. I hate Section 31, as it makes a lie of the whole ethos of Star Trek. And I didn’t need a backstory that explained why Klingon makeup choices changed. But I was entertained by the resulting story.
@44/AlanBrown: “I hate Section 31, as it makes a lie of the whole ethos of Star Trek.”
Not really, because as mr_d said above, S31’s plans never actually make the Federation safer like they claim; if anything, they create more dangers. If S31’s self-serving claims were true, it would make a lie of the ethos of Trek, but instead they end up doing more harm than good, and their plans are thwarted by the heroes living up to Trek’s ethos and doing the right thing. So they’re a challenge to the ethos that ends up reaffirming it.
Although that argument was easier to make for DS9 and ENT where they were a secret cabal than it is for the Secret Hideout era where they keep being called “a critical division of Starfleet Intelligence.” I mean, they do still keep causing problems and making things more dangerous — up to nearly eradicating all life in the galaxy — but the premise that Starfleet still believes they’re worth having around despite all that is hard to reconcile with Trek’s values — or indeed with in-universe common sense.
@45 / ChristopherLBennett – Though one thing that I actually do like about S31’s use in this duology and afterwards is that, for all that they like to talk about how they’re a necessary evil who Do What Must Done, they’re actually complete blithering idiots who can’t even pull off their own objectives, let alone make Earth any safer in the long run. This is, by far, the aspect of their characterization that feels the most like a real intelligence agency.
Quoth jaimebabb: “This is, by far, the aspect of their characterization that feels the most like a real intelligence agency.”
This made me snarf my coffee……….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@5/CLB: I’d never heard the plastic surgery explanation for Saavik’s differing appearance between Star Trek 2 and 3, but boy is that just dumb and unneeded.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who considered a possible connection between human augments and smooth-headed Klingons, but it occured to me at the end of “The Augments” and I was pleasantly surprised when that came to be in this episode.
I feel bad for admitting it, but I found K’Vagh’s sudden killing of the Klingon patient and subsequent one liner for Phlox to “proceed” with his research quite hilariously delivered…
@48/Thierafhal: “I’d never heard the plastic surgery explanation for Saavik’s differing appearance… but boy is that just dumb and unneeded.”
Exactly my point. We never needed it, and it’s fine that it never happened. I’m saying that it would’ve been just as fine if they’d never explained the change in the Klingons, if they’d just done what DS9: “Blood Oath” did and implied that Klingons had always been ridged, just as ST III & IV treated Saavik’s new look as if it was the way she’d always been. A change in how a story is told does not require a diegetic explanation within the story.