“Judgment”
Written by Taylor Elmore & David A. Goodman
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 2, Episode 19
Production episode 045
Original air date: April 9, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. We open in a Klingon courtroom, where Archer is accused of aiding enemies of the empire. He’s brought to a cell before the trial starts, where Phlox is allowed to examine him—apparently, T’Pol convinced the Klingons that he needed treatment for a potentially infectious disease.
Under the guise of a checkup, Phlox fills him (and the viewer) in: Archer was arrested, and both Starfleet and the Vulcan High Command are attempting to free him through diplomatic channels, thus far to no avail. Archer makes it clear he doesn’t want Enterprise to do anything stupid to try to rescue him, like start a war.
Archer then meets his advocate, an older Klingon named Kolos. Archer is confused by Kolos’ unwillingness to even talk to Archer about what happened, and he’s actively annoyed by Kolos doing almost nothing during the trial itself.
The prosecutor, Orak, has only one witness. Captain Duras—or, rather, Weapons Officer Duras, as he’s been demoted. When he was a captain, he was in command of the Bortas, and he encountered Enterprise with a rebel ship in tow. They fought, a fight leading to a planet’s rings, and while there, Enterprise detonated plasma with a torpedo, confusing Bortas’ sensors enough to enable the Starfleet vessel to escape.
According to Duras, Archer identified his ship as a battle cruiser, said he didn’t know the Klingon chancellor, and claimed to support the rebels in their fight against the empire. Archer tries to point out to Kolos and to the magistrate that these are lies (and the viewer knows certainly that the first two are), but he is ordered to remain quiet, an order that is backed up with a bunch of painstiks.
When Archer wakes up in his cell, and tries and fails to eat his meal of raw targ meat, Kolos arrives to offer him a deal: if Archer reveals where he took the rebels, he won’t be sentenced to death. Archer again insists that the people Enterprise rescued were not rebels, and he won’t give them up to be hunted down.
Kolos starts to open up to Archer, longing for the good old days when Klingon courts were an open forum for justice and honor. Now it’s just a vehicle for the warrior class to maintain their superior position in Klingon politics.
Back in court, Kolos asks to enter testimony. Orak objects, but while such is no longer the custom, the actual law that allows an advocate to enter evidence at any time before judgment is still on the books. The magistrate allows Archer to be questioned, though Orak interrupts regularly.
According to Archer, Enterprise answered a distress call from a group of twenty-seven aliens. There were more than fifty when they left their homeworld—their ship is falling apart and their food and water supplies are tainted. Phlox treats them, and their leader explains that some aliens they’d never seen before (Klingons) showed up on their homeworld. The Klingons said they were now part of their empire, and they looted and pillaged the world, promising to return with food and supplies and other nifty things. They never did come back, and so these aliens decided to escape and find another world. They’re not rebels, they’re refugees.
The Bortas showed up, and, contrary to Duras’ testimony, Archer did not fire first, and in fact he tried very hard to find a diplomatic solution. But Duras wasn’t interested in talking and fired. Archer—who had had Reed modify a torpedo when Bortas first showed up on their scanners—runs to the planetary rings, where the battle plays out as Duras had testified.
Kolos then declares that Archer is guilty of meddling in Klingon affairs—as he already has done twice before, bringing Klaang to the High Council to report on Suliban sabotage, and again to rescue the Somraw from a gas giant. He is not guilty of treason or aiding rebels, he’s just guilty of sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.
The magistrate considers the evidence, and still finds Archer guilty, but in deference to his past service to the empire, he is not condemned to death, but instead to life imprisonment on Rura Penthe. Kolos is disgusted by this—the maximum life expectancy of a prisoner on that ice planet is a year, and Archer probably won’t last that long. It’s still condemning him to death, but cloaking it in a bullshit layer of “mercy.” The magistrate finds Kolos in contempt, and sentences him to a year at Rura Penthe.
On Enterprise, T’Pol orders Mayweather to leave orbit. Tucker wants to try to rescue Archer, but T’Pol says that isn’t wise—and probably won’t work. They have to try more diplomatic solutions. When Tucker points out that diplomatic solutions didn’t work, T’Pol says there’s a few they haven’t tried yet…
Kolos struggles on Rura Penthe, as he is old and the work is backbreaking. Archer tries to help him, and that just gets both of them hit with painstiks. When new prisoners arrive, one of them is Reed in disguise, there to rescue him. T’Pol was able to use her connections from her days in the Ministry of Security to find a guard who could be bribed. Archer offers to take Kolos with him, but he can’t fight to make the empire a more honorable place if he’s a fugitive. He’s determined to live out his sentence and carry on the work he started in Archer’s trial. When Archer reminds him that a year is a long time on Rura Penthe, Kolos counters that he, unlike the other prisoners, has something to live for…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The planetary rings have methane ice, isolytic plasma, and diamagnetic dust. The Berman-era Trek productions’ obsession with the adjective “isolytic” without having the first clue what it really means continues unabated. Apparently, in this context, “isolytic” means “can ignite with a torpedo”…
The gazelle speech. Hilariously, we never do find out exactly how the Klingons arrested Archer…
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol is able to use her connections from her prior job in the Ministry of Security to find a good prison guard to bribe. Because she’s just that awesome.
Florida Man. Florida Man Refuses To Give Up On Captain.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox is able to talk privately with Archer in his cell by mentioning the possibility of an infectious disease, which gets the guard to back the hell up.
Good boy, Porthos! It is not made clear who is taking care of Porthos while Archer is in jail, which is a major flaw in the script…
Qapla’! We learn in this episode that the warrior caste has the greatest status in the empire—which remains true for the next two centuries—but that it wasn’t always like that, and that Klingons used to value other professions more than they do now, but these days it’s all warriors this and soldiers that. These kids today, with their music and their hair…
More on this later… This is the first chronological appearance of a Klingon court, Klingon painstiks, and Rura Penthe, not to mention the House of Duras, all of whom have been seen in previous shows that take place later.
I’ve got faith…
“What is it?”
“Bloodwine. It should make the wait more pleasant.”
“What’s it the blood of?”
“Don’t feel badly if you can’t stomach it.”
“I didn’t say that…”
–Archer and Kolos sharing a drink while waiting for the verdict.
Welcome aboard. The main guests here are two Trek veterans as the two lawyers: J.G. Hertzler as Kolos and John Vickery as Orak. Hertzler had the recurring role of Martok on DS9 (and, sort of, on LD) and has played various other roles on DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and LD, including another Klingon he’ll play in “Borderland.” Vickery played a Betazoid in TNG’s “Night Terrors” and had the recurring role of Rusot on DS9.
In addition, Granville Van Dusen plays the magistrate (he’ll be back as an Andorian in “Proving Ground”), Daniel Riordan plays Duras (he’ll be back in the same role in “The Expanse,” and he previously played a Zaldan in TNG’s “Coming of Age” and a Bajoran in DS9’s “Progress”), Victor Talmadge plays the refugee leader, and Helen Cates plays Duras’ first officer.
Trivial matters: Both Klingon tribunals and the prison planet of Rura Penthe were established in The Undiscovered Country. While Rura Penthe hasn’t been seen onscreen again since, it was part of the script of the 2009 Star Trek as where Nero and his crew were imprisoned after they came through to the alternate timeline of that film, but those scenes were cut. The comic book Nero by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Tim Jones, Mike Johnson, & David Messina detailed Nero’s crew’s time on that prison planet. Rura Penthe is also seen in Federation: The First 150 Years by David A. Goodman (the scripter of this episode), Destiny: Lost Souls by David Mack, and the games Klingon Honor Guard and Star Trek Online.
Though it’s never spoken in dialogue, the script establishes the trial as taking place on Narendra III, which is a Klingon world that another ship called Enterprise will be seen defending from a Romulan attack in TNG’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
Neither Kolos nor Orak have been seen onscreen since. However, Federation: The First 150 Years establishes that Orak went on to become chancellor of the Klingon High Council later in life, while the Romulan War novels by Michael A. Martin establish that Kolos survived his sentence and continued his work to advocate for a return to honor for the empire. The Klingon Empire Core Rulebook published by Star Trek Adventures (to which your humble rewatcher contributed) establishes that Kolos’ sentence was commuted to nine months and he afterward became a magistrate.
Kolos cites the Judicial Charter of Koloth, which was presumably drafted by an ancestor of the Klingon played by William Campbell that we met in the original series’ “The Trouble with Tribbles,” the animated episode “More Tribbles, More Troubles,” and DS9’s “Blood Oath.”
Goodman named Orak after the super-computer ORAC from Blake’s 7.
Duras is intended to be an ancestor of the twenty-fourth century characters Duras (TNG’s “Sins of the Father” and “Reunion”), Lursa, B’Etor (TNG’s “Redemption” two-parter and “Firstborn,” DS9’s “Past Prologue,” Generations), and Toral (TNG’s “Redemption,” DS9’s “Sword of Kahless”). His crest has the same design as the other four.
Duras’ ship is the Bortas, which means “revenge.” That will be a ship name for another Klingon vessel in TNG’s “The Defector,” “Redemption,” and “Rightful Heir.” His new assignment is to Ty’Gokor, a Klingon world established in DS9’s “Apocalypse Rising.”
Kolos’ concerns about the stagnation and corruption of the Klingon Empire will be echoed a century hence by T’Kuvma in Discovery’s “The Vulcan Hello.”
That the Klingon Empire has a rigid class system was established in DS9’s “Once More Unto the Breach.”
T’Pol’s past in the Vulcan Ministry of Security was established in “The Seventh.”
The refugees are not named in the episode, but according to production notes are called the Arin’Sen. They haven’t been seen since.
Xenopolycythemia is a fatal disease that was first mentioned in the original series’ “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.”
Archer brought Klaang back to the High Council with vital intelligence in “Broken Bow.” Enterprise rescued the Somraw in “Sleeping Dogs.”
Archer mentions that Earth suffered three world wars. World War III has been a part of Trek’s Earth history since the original series (“Space Seed” and “The Savage Curtain,” as well as TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint,” First Contact, Voyager’s “In the Flesh,” Enterprise’s “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II,” Discovery’s “New Eden,” SNW’s “Strange New Worlds,” etc.).
It’s been a long road… “They promised me a trial before the execution.” I’ve always had a deep, abiding love of Klingons, going back to when I watched the original series as a kid, and the characters of Kor and Kang in particular created a tremendous impression on me. I have gone on to write quite a bit of Klingon fiction in the Trek universe, and have done a great deal of work developing the Klingon culture in the ancillary fiction of prose, comics, and role-playing games.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I adore this episode.
This is for several reasons, but the main thing is that it addresses one of the lacks of the prior portrayals of Klingons onscreen: the consistent casting of the Klingon Empire as a “warrior culture.” This is nonsense, of course—the Klingon Empire is a star-spanning nation, one that is considered one of the super-powers of this section of the galaxy. That cannot possibly happen if everyone is a warrior.
But this episode finally codifies what was implied but never stated by those previous stories: warriors have the highest rank and consideration in Klingon society. They’re the aristocrats, the elite. But there are other Klingons who do all the other, less violent tasks that actually keep the empire going.
We see three of them here in Kolos, Orak, and the magistrate, and the casting department deserves tremendous credit here. J.G. Hertzler, John Vickery, and Granville Van Dusen are three actors with magnificent voices and a tremendous sense of gravitas.
Van Dusen’s magistrate is the toughest job here, because he has to be a hard-ass while still having at least a vestige of honor and consideration for the rule of law. And, of course, he has to follow the way the High Council is blowing, which is right in Archer’s face…
Vickery is stupendous as always, using his great voice and superlative line deliveries to give us a prosecutor who wields rhetoric with verve and talent, manipulating the proceedings with his words.
And then there’s Hertzler, who never fails to be amazing in every role he’s played on Trek. With all due respect to Martok, Kolos may be my favorite role of his, only because you get such a great sense of the character’s age, and the weight of his reduced role in Klingon society due to a lack of caring about justice. When we first see him, he’s almost as bad as Kovat, the conservator who “defended” O’Brien in DS9’s “Tribunal,” which was even more of a show trial than this—going through the motions, steering the trial toward the predetermined outcome. But the more he talks to Archer, the more he remembers the good old days, and Hertzler does a wonderful job of showing Kolos gaining confidence and outrage as he reverts to his old self in the best way.
Okay, we’re on the ninth paragraph, and I’ve barely talked about the actual stars of the show. And there’s not much to say. Aside from Scott Bakula, the main cast is barely even in it. Truly, this is a story about the evolution of the Klingon Empire and an examination of the society of the Klingon people, giving us a new look at one of Trek’s most venerable alien species while utilizing several familiar elements, particularly from The Undiscovered Country. This story would work with pretty much any generic human ship captain—which is handy, as there is no more human ship captain more generic than Jonathan Archer…
Warp factor rating: 10
Keith R.A. DeCandido has a very lengthy history of writing Klingons, starting with his very first Trek novel, the 2001 TNG novel Diplomatic Implausibility, and also including the four novels focusing on the crew of the I.K.S. Gorkon from 2003-2008, the comic Alien Spotlight: Klingons in 2009, short fiction in Tales from the Captain’s Table in 2005 and Seven Deadly Sins in 2010, the reference book The Klingon Art of War in 2014, material for the Star Trek Adventures Klingon Empire Core Rulebook in 2020, and the forthcoming STA adventure Incident at Kraav III (written with Fred Love), among many others.
“Judgment” is one of the finest episodes of the second season, and one of my favorite Klingon episodes of the franchise. And that’s largely because, as Keith says, it finally, finally looks beneath the simplistic “warrior race” idea and acknowledges that there can be no such thing, that warrior is simply one role within a society and that there must be other kinds of Klingon. It reveals that the glorification of warriors is simply the ascendancy of a particular class to social and political dominance, its glorification at the expense of everyone else.
And, like so much of ENT, it has the good judgment (pun intended) to recognize that societies do, in fact, change over time, that it’s not a continuity error to portray 22nd-century Vulcans or Klingons or whoever differently from their later counterparts. (Indeed, I find it disappointing that 22nd-century Romulans, when we meet them later in the series, will be so identical to their descendants.) This episode fleshes out Klingons in a way that only the books had managed to do before. Even all the Klingon episodes on TNG and DS9 were fixated on the warrior elite and the noble houses to the exclusion of everything else. (Martok was a commoner by birth, but one who had earned a noble title and become part of the elite by the time we met him.)
On the downside, though, the episode tries a little too hard to emulate the courtroom scene from TUC. It’s nice to have that continuity, that suggestion that Archer’s trial took place in the same courtroom or at least one of the same design, but including both the courtroom scenes and a trip to Rura Penthe made it feel kind of derivative.
I’d love to see a story set in Kolos’s youth or earlier, to see what Klingon civilization was like before the warrior caste took over.
I first became aware of John Vickery from his recurring role of Neroon on Babylon 5. Granville Van Dusen was the second actor to play Jonny Quest‘s Race Bannon, a role in which he would be succeeded by frequent Trek guest Robert Foxworth.
Given the circumstances under which we meet the only known representatives of this species it’s horribly easy to imagine WHY they have never been seen again (Especially with the House of Duras alive, angry and delighted to bear grudges two centuries later): there’s some truly magnificent pathos in this episode, but there’s also more than a little tragedy even on the Klingon end of things.
It’s very much to the credit of this episode that not only does it quite expectedly catch @krad‘s fancy (as any Klingon episode is likely to), it absolutely merits the unusual degree of esteem in which he holds it – credit to Mr J G Hertzler for his towering performance as “The Klingon Atticus Finch” and to those other gentlemen doing distinguished service as the Lords, Masters & Servants of the Empire.
Also, credit to the crew of NX-01 for doing a fair bit with their brief appearance (Captain Archer refusing to even pretend any willingness to trade in those refugees to save his own skin and apparently making another small, significant contribution to Galactic History*; T’Pol springing the Good Captain from that iced over slag-heap of a prison world with a finesse NCC-1701’s crew could only envy, Mr Tucker refusing to give up on his cap’n).
*I’m rather relieved that, in at least one variation on the STAR TREK prime continuity, Kolos lived through his penal service and went on to make a contribution to the Klingon Empire: given the similarity of their names and his parent’s eagerness to commit him to the Law, one can only wonder if Kolos is related in any degree to the Koloth who wrote that Charter or the later officer of the same name? (To be honest, I prefer the notion he was NAMED for Koloth of the Charter – with ‘Kolos’ a local variant, similar to ‘Johann’ Vs ‘John’ – as a token of his parent’s ambitions for the future advocate).
Also, that little bit of business about the Blood Wine is a minor classic: you can practically hear Lawyer Kolos thinking “There may be hope for us yet!”
This is the one that really made the Klingon culture “click” for me. As you say, the idea of a civilization made up of only warriors is silly; but the idea of a civilization that has hollowed-out to the point where it no longer has interest in anything but waging war makes a lot of sense. In spite (or because) of their military successes, the empire is basically a nation that has been in varying states of decline for the whole of the Star Trek franchise; and this fits well, not only with what we’ve seen of the empire in The Undiscovered Country, TNG, and DS9, but what we will see in the backstory for Discovery. It makes curious what the Klingon culture of the thirty-second century will look like (if Disco ever gets around to showing them); has the hegemony of the warrior caste been broken? Has the empire finally collapsed once and for all?
My only complaint about this episode is that it felt too derivative of TUC, but at least they take it in a more interesting direction.
@1. ChristopherLBennett: I have to admit that for some time now the mental image of Klingon academic conferences having a moratorium on edged weapons (“Here we are scholars, not slayers!”) and a proud tradition of unarmed combat – think of it as a bit like chess-boxing: you work yourself up debating with your rivals, then work off those tensions in an arena, under strict parameters (“No permanent injuries”) – has visited my imagination.
Note that the unarmed combat bit is optional, though traditional – can’t let the warriors get too condescending.
…
Wait a minute, perhaps the Unarmed Combat bit only applies to medical conferences, while other branches of academia host other traditional displays of mens sana in corpore sank energy, pour encourger les guerrieres?
@ed in 2, that thing of the Arin’Sen homeworld was one thing that was bugging me about the episode. Presumably the homeworld of an entire sentient species, yet the Klingons managed to haul so much stuff away that civilization broke down? The loss of 50 refugees should not be enough to wipe them out, either. The Planetville trope in action, even if that was not necessary for the story.
@ed in 4, do you know the quips about Klingon software developers? They don’t just release software, you know …
@5 Just taking all of Earth’s readily available refined minerals and fossil fuels would probably cause civilization to collapse. Especially given the collateral damage caused by Klingons eager to prove themselves in combat. For “First World” values of civilization at least.
And I think ED is suggesting the Klingons go back to finish the job rather than the 50 refugees having any significance to the species’ survival.
I don’t remember this one; sounds like I missed a good episode.
This is one of the few memorable episodes from season 2, and I really liked it. I’m always up for some Klingon nonsense, and this episode actually develops them a bit beyond just being shouty space vikings. I didn’t mind that it borrows so much from The Undiscovered Country, since, unlike our humble rewatcher, I actually like that movie.
Yeah, given the lengths the Empire went to categorize them as rebels, I can’t imagine the Defense Force didn’t do a lot more to them in the end, including, possibly, genocide.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Quoth David Pirtie: “I didn’t mind that it borrows so much from The Undiscovered Country, since, unlike our humble rewatcher, I actually like that movie.”
I didn’t mind it either, as the stuff it borrowed from TUC was stuff I actually liked in the movie…………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“Judgement” is the episode of ENT that I was wanting to hear your feedback most on, @krad because I know you eat, sleep, and breathe Klingons. I have my issues with the episode but it is one of my favorite episodes of the first two seasons because it not only revisits one of my favorite cultures in Trek but it actually does address one of the things the show should always have been about: showing how things were BEFORE the Original Series/TNG.
Honestly, I think the show could have gone further with its portrayal of Klingon culture going through a change. Sadly, the TOS Klingons have an explanation for why they become the sneaky, cowardly, dishonorable petaQ in ENT and it will be genetic rather than societal. But I think a more interesting take was hinted at here like the rise of Imperial Japan or fascism in Europe.
It’s not that everyone is a warrior but that “warriors” are glamourized by society and they take command for their own benefit. We also know at some point that the warrior caste opened itself up to commoners joining and recently enough that Kor is annoyed at the fact that Martok was considered for an officership (possibly elevation to the peerage–I don’t know how related the two things are in the Klingon aristocracy).
Re: Arin’Sen
I would very much like to hear what happened to these people as they are a perfect example of what might have happened to people who would have been (hopefully) freed by the Khtiomer Treaty. I’m assuming that they’re also a species that wasn’t reduced to only the refugees Archer helped but as many attempted to flee the planet as possible in various directions while being hunted by Duras as well as others.
“Had Duras destroyed that ship, he would have been lauded as a hero of the Empire for murdering helpless refugees.”
Ah yes, this one. If stories are meant to have a beginning, a middle and an end, then this one seems to only have one of those. While we see both Archer and Duras’ version of their previous meeting, it’s never explained how Archer ends up as the Klingons’ prisoner. If it was as easy for them to capture him as this episode implies, that raises the question of why they’ll be so bad at it from then onwards, making two inept attempts to retrieve him and then just giving up.
But okay, we have Archer on trial. Unfortunately, what we’re treated to feels to me a bit like a theme park version of the Klingons, which simultaneously seems like it doesn’t understand them and is trying to over-explain them. It’s obvious that the majority of comments on here agree with its interpretation of Klingon society but I think the episode (and, it seems, a lot of the people watching it) gets “Not all Klingons are soldiers” mixed up with “Not all Klingons are warriors”, with sudden references to a so-called “warrior class”. (Contrary to popular belief, the term “warrior caste” isn’t used here. Trust me, I checked.) This clearly isn’t what was being talked about in ‘Once More Unto the Breach’. Martok wasn’t from a non-warrior class: He says himself that he came from a family of warriors stretching back fifteen generations. The point was that he was someone from a family of common soldiers trying to join the officer class.
My interpretation of Klingon society is that they’re warriors by culture, not by profession. They view their lives in terms of a warrior’s code of conduct and in terms of struggle, whatever those lives consist of. We get an example of that in DS9’s ‘Children of Time’, when Worf sees that the colonists following Klingon culture have taken it too literally and think it’s all about fighting and hunting and convinces them to join in planting crops by explaining it to them in warrior’s terms. And here, these supposedly non-warrior Klingons still talk about “honour” all the time as if they’re warriors.
Maybe, as some comments have suggested, this is deliberate and we’re meant to believe that at some point after the 22nd century, the “warrior class” swallowed up the whole of Klingon society. But I can’t help thinking this is an attempt to explain why the Klingons of the TOS era aren’t the honourable warriors that, well, Kolos is, for all the script insisting he’s not a warrior. It appears that Orak and Duras will be the norm in a century’s time when we have Kor executing hostages, Kras being portrayed as a coward who murders a helpless opponent in contrast to the episode’s actual honourable-if-brutal warrior race, Koloth acting like a fop while Arne Darwin tries to poison colonists, and Kruge having an unarmed prisoner killed to prove a point. I guess whatever reform Kolos attempts will take a while to get going.
On the positive side, the relationship between Archer and Kolos, which the episode sensibly focuses on, is compelling. Archer is once more in the position of trying to inspire someone to be their best self and manages to convince Kolos to turn the theatrical show trial into a genuine presentation of opposing arguments. But ultimately this achieves nothing, except keeping Archer alive long enough for someone else to save him at the expense of Kolos potentially dying on Rura Penthe. The rest of the regulars barely feature, although I like that T’Pol’s familiar enough with Archer’s good samaritan tendencies by now that she anticipates him taking the refugees on board. So, we don’t have the ending of Kolos successfully getting Archer freed, and the next best ending of Archer being rescued before he can arrive on the prison planet got used as ‘Canamar’ instead, so what have we got instead? Um.
With the court room drama taking up almost the entire episode, Rura Penthe gets squeezed into five minutes at the end where Archer and Kolos have a bit of trouble with guards, then Reed turns up, delivers a few lines of rushed explanation and achieves the most undramatic jail break ever by literally just walking out of a maximum security prison. I know the Klingon warden in TUC had that speech about there being no guard towers, stockades or electronic frontier because nothing can survive on the surface, but do the Klingons really not bother to check that prisoners aren’t hitching rides out on visiting ships? This is no way to run an empire!
So, yeah, I’m afraid this is another case where I’m not as big a fan of an episode as the majority. JG Hertzler is absolutely terrific but I’m afraid I found it poor both as an examination of Klingon culture and as a story.
@13
I danced around it but I was actually saying that ENTERPRISE provides an answer for why the Klingons of TOS are a bunch of dishonorable, cowardly, murderers of innocent scumbags. The answer being that they were altered by the Augmentation Virus and this had psychological effects on all of them and it led to a widespread rejection of culture and norms by the people (Klingons now suddenly knowing fear and other dirty emotions). It’s not an answer I LIKE per se but it is an answer and one that is presented as the canonical reason that the Klingon culture goes through such a seismic shift until they cure it somehow in the 23rd century.
(While they will never listen to poor old me, I assume T’Kuvma and other “weird” Klingons from DISCOVERY are another result of the Augment virus–or perhaps attempts to treat it)
Now to deal with the elephant in the room, the episode is a great one for Klingon lovers but it really is a “greatest hits” of THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY’s courtroom scene. Star Trek reusing plots is hardly a bad thing and you can’t really steal from yourself but it’s certainly noticeable that Archer is dumped in a kangaroo trial with one decent Klingon lawyer.
I will say I actually LOVE the ending because if you knew anything about the Soviet prison system, you’d know it was corrupt as hell (unlike the incredibly honest and noble American one). So, the fact that T’Pol’s solution is just, “bribe a guard to say Archer died” is a lot more believable than anything more epic.
Clearly the star of this show is J.G. Hertzler and he’s awesome as usual, but I don’t think I could ever get tired of John Vickery’s scenery chewing! It’s hard to believe that both these fine actors had such nondescript roles in their first Star Trek jobs.
My only complaint about this episode is how unintimidating the Rura Penthe set was in comparison to The Undiscovered Country version. Obviously budgetary constraints were a factor and it’s not a huge deal considering how we only see the set in the last few minutes of the episode, but I still wish it could have been better. Otherwise this is a Fantastic episode.
@14/CT Phipps: I’m not sure if it’s “bribe a guard to say he died” so much as…”bribe a guard to take him home”? The Klingons clearly don’t think Archer’s dead going forward and want him back (at least until the whole silly plotline gets forgotten), probably because he doesn’t exactly keep his head down for the next two and a bit seasons.
@16/cap-mjb: Well, if the guard did say Archer died, the lie wouldn’t have to hold up indefinitely, just long enough that nobody raises an alarm until after Archer has successfully escaped.
@Christopher
Mind you, the guard will undoubtedly be in hot water but that’s not ENTERPRISE’s problem. What they bribed him to say on the report is left ambiguous, though. I just think it’s probably pretty common on Rura Penthe to let criminals go that way and it would be the easiest way to do it. You don’t expect, of course, for the escapee to then become an interstellar famous do-gooder.
OUT OF CHARACTER ALERT:
Note that Archer’s behavior here contradicts very much his one in “Cogenitor” where taking in and helping refugees might offend a powerful neighbor. I wonder if Archer was thinking of trying to avoid making enemies like he did with the Klingons and its utter failure on a moral level is why he ripped into Trip so hard.
Something to consider when that episode arrives.
@17 and 18: I don’t think the guard necessarily has to say anything. It’s not someone at the penitentiary that they’ve bribed, it’s the pilot of the ship taking the mined dilithium away. His response will probably be along the lines of “One of your prisoners escaped around the same time I was there? No, didn’t see anything.”
Whilst I agree that Archer’s attitude in “Cogenitor” is a massive case of “Do as I say, not as I do”, I think Archer does tend to judge each request for help on its own merits. He tends to help more often than not, but we see him swing the other way in “Dear Doctor”. Here, he’s not trying to overturn a culture’s values or change their “natural” development, he’s just trying to help out the survivors of a culture that’s been devastated by the interference of another super-power.
@18/19: I don’t see the comparison with “Cogenitor.” There, it’s a conflict within a single culture, which is the sort of thing the Prime Directive (or its Vulcan antecedent that Archer tends to be guided by) forbids meddling in, because it’s a matter of the culture’s own values and belief systems and something that can only change if the culture chooses to make the change on its own. But here, it’s a group of people being preyed on by outsiders. It’s much more straightforward.
@noblehunter in 7
My point is that Enterprise-era or even TOS-era starships are not going to take away all the refined or readily available raw materials from a planet. How many cubic meters (or cubic yards, not really a difference for orders-of-magnitude) can one starship loot? 10.000? 100.000? How many roundtrips per year? How many freighters loot that one world?
We can assume that the ship from Marauders was rather small. Still, how much larger would a bulk freighter be?
@6. o.m. Ah, so do you have to beat it out of them or is some other sort of blood sacrifice necessary? (-;
@7. noblehunter: You are quite right, I was in fact inferring that either the House of Duras in particular (or the Klingon Empire as a whole) would make it a point of pride to employ this species (and it’s homeworld) as an object lesson in why resistance to the Klingon Empire is pointless, painful and more laughable than any kind of real threat (No matter how many Klingon warriors may or may not have died in any given rebellion).
In all honesty I would like to see the Arin’Sen survive as a species and a culture, whether in diaspora or despite having been tributaries to the Klingon Empire: one merely wanted to point out what Occam’s razor and demonstrated Klingon tendencies suggested as the most logical reason for this species to have never been seen again.
@10. krad: Hopefully the Klingons wouldn’t actually go that far (I think the only time we’ve seen the Klingons pursue an actively genocidal policy is against the non-sapient Tribbles), but at the very least we can imagine the Empire planting it’s collective boot on the jugular of this particular species and growling “Heel!” (or, quite possibly, “Lick!”), just to make it clear that even when YOU can run & hide your relations are going to suffer for such ‘disrespectful’ conduct.
I’ll bet you cash money that, at the very least, the House of Duras made every effort to make this planet a part of their fiefdom (Once they hit the Big Time).
@14. C.T. Phipps: I actually tend to assume that T’Kumva and his kind are simply the product of a planetary (or interplanetary) environment different to that of Qo’noS – it makes perfect sense that a species out in the black for multiple generations would produce quite a few variations on the same baseline (though this doesn’t actually contradict your own theory and may in fact work quite well in tandem with it).
You will, however, tear my pet theory that (First Season) DISCO-era Klingons dress the way the do because they want to live life like it’s all Klingon Opera, all the time from my cold, dead hands!
No, really, I absolutely want to see a scene where PICARD shows our heroes attend the Klingon Opera, with the DISCO-era costumes on stage – bonus points if a Klingon in the audience grumbles “They couldn’t really have worn those outfits. How could they have possibly worn those outfits?” only for a very elderly Klingon to lean in (whisper) “We wore them …” (BELLOW) “… WITH PRIDE!” (normal speaking voice) “Now be quiet and let the artist work“.
Also, I would love to get Mr Worf’s thoughts on Chancellor L’Rell and T’Kumva: he’s the epitome of much that they would admire and quite possibly the living avatar of everything the latter feared when it came to “We come in peace.”
@21. o.m. Note that one doesn’t need to strip a planet down to the bone to reduce a culture (or even a species) to the point of non-viability, especially if population levels weren’t all that high to start with (especially if this is a case of a multi-planet power wearing down a single-planet species over an extended period of time).
#15
I noticed that too, and I think it comes down to the lighting. Rura Penthe in the movie was very dark and moody. In this episode, however, it’s lit like Santa’s workshop. It’s borderline cheery.
The courtroom was also too brightly lit, looking quite a bit smaller than what we saw in TUC, especially in the overhead shots. But it could’ve very well been the same size as the movie, I don’t know. Such is the trick of lighting things.
@21 Too many unknowns and it’s hard to reason it out given conflicts between what kinds of extrapolation we can make based on the real world and what we get told about the size of things in Star Trek worldbuilding. That being said, I think a few dozen ships, especially focusing more on smash than grab, over an extended but reasonably short period of time could probably wreck a planet.
On the other hand, one starship could take out a planet fairly easily. Just one bored gunner playing shoot the power plant and its welcome to the new dark age.
STAR TREK has always had a terrible sense of scale.
Presumably when conquering a planet, the Klingon Empire would employ hundreds if not thousands of ships.
But Star Trek is infamous for “only ship in the quadrant.”
@25/C.T. Phipps: In a realistic universe, one starship would be enough to conquer a planet without its own space defenses. Tractor a large asteroid onto an impact trajectory — “Surrender now or we let it hit and your species goes extinct.” Or erect a huge sun shield at the L1 point — “Surrender or you’ll never see sunlight again.”
That comes with the caveat that you can certainly destroy a planet but you can’t control it. Sort of like how the fact the United States usually has total air superiority in the nations it’s invaded in recent years but that doesn’t give it the ability manage its resources. One presumes the Klingons do have a bunch of freighters and carriers to carry off all the loot they want even if they’d only need something like the Enterprise to nuke whatever capitals they need to in order to dominate the people below.
@27/C.T. Phipps: “That comes with the caveat that you can certainly destroy a planet but you can’t control it. Sort of like how the fact the United States usually has total air superiority in the nations it’s invaded in recent years but that doesn’t give it the ability manage its resources.”
That’s why smart empire-builders have historically made alliances with local factions and ruled through them, letting them do the work of managing the locals so long as they supplied the necessary money, resources, tribute, and personnel to the empire. No need to build your own control structure when you can just co-opt the one already in place and put an ally of yours in charge of it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Klingons weren’t even members of the KDF (if such a creature exists) or just regular pirates.
Interestingly, if what we take from DISCOVERY is true then the Great Council doesn’t presently exist and was created by T’Kuvma, which implies that the Klingon Empire may be operating in a bunch of feuding warlord states here.
But that brings the question of who exactly Archer met with at the end of Broken Bow, though.
@29/C.T. Phipps: No, the High Council existed in T’Kuvma’s time. In episode 2, Kol told T’Kuvma “You have not earned a seat on this Council.” The Great Houses that made up the Council may have been fragmented, the Council weakened, but it still existed at least nominally.
And in episode 1, T’Kuvma spoke of the need to reunite the Houses, implying that they had been more unified in the past and had fragmented since.
@13: “…a lot of the people watching it) gets “Not all Klingons are soldiers” mixed up with “Not all Klingons are warriors”, with sudden references to a so-called “warrior class”. (Contrary to popular belief, the term “warrior caste” isn’t used here. Trust me, I checked.) “
There is this line in the episode:
“KOLOS: Oh, I’m not sure. Over two hundred. But that was a long time ago, when the tribunal was a forum for the truth and not a tool for the warrior class.”
So “warrior class” is definitely mentioned here. Whether individuals commenting (or even the episode writers) blur the distinction between “caste” and “class” seems a little irrelevant; I think the point is there. “Warriors” are but one component of what has to be a more diverse society.
“And here, these supposedly non-warrior Klingons still talk about “honour” all the time as if they’re warriors.”
And why should warriors have a monopoly on hono(u)r? Admittedly, honor is something loosely defined and describes an individuals’ standing within their society. But from the point of view of another society, the warrior culture of the Klingons might be seen as dishonorable. The Klingons in these shows go on and on about honor, but what’s honorable about solving your problems with killing?
—-
Anyway, I think about that Klingon scientist in the fly-through-the-sun episode of TNG as an earlier hint that not all Klingons are the warriors glorified by Worf’s interpretation of what it means to be Klingon. Kind of looking forward to him being a pacifist in season 3 of Picard and hope they don’t just reverse it at the end with some message about “being true to your past self.”
@31/crzydroid: “The Klingons in these shows go on and on about honor, but what’s honorable about solving your problems with killing?”
Hear, hear. I’ve never been a fan of the cliche of “honorable warriors,” as if killing and conquering according to some set of rules somehow made it okay. Really, “honor” in warrior cultures is all too often just an excuse to pick fights by taking offense at something someone says or does.
At least Trek has occasionally confronted the hypocrisy by pointing out that Klingon “honor” can mean whatever is convenient for the speaker’s agenda, and that it’s often used as a justification for treachery and corruption.
There’s a quote something like “honor is just a word aristocrats use when they want you to kill somebody.”
I think it is safe to say that Precious Cargo was the exception on David Goodman’s writing resumé rather than the rule. Judgement is the absolute best Klingon episode since DS9‘s Tacking into the Wind! Both episodes four years apart. He’s the first Berman-era writer to really bring out the best in Klingon stories since Ron Moore’s departure (who at this point was knee-deep involved with the BSG miniseries).
And even though it’s 200 years before the events of TNG and DS9, you can already see how the discriminatory caste system on Klingon society already breeds decay and corruption. Given their traditions and how the warrior class is treated to the detriment of the others, it was inevitable it would cause a structural breakdown of the Klingon empire as a whole. Someone who’s never watched TNG or DS9 could watch this one and even possibly predict events like Duras and Gowron corrupting the high council in the long run.
Some superlative casting throughout, with Hertzler playing a character that definitely compliments Martok, despite not being Warrior caste. It reminded me quite a bit of DS9‘s Once More unto the Breach, and the way Martok was treated by Kor when he applied to become a soldier. Kolos is the most rounded Klingon character since those days. A tragic figure relegated to second-class until Archer pushes him to overcome the life that’s been given to him. Easily one of ENT‘s best callbacks to the classic Trek mantra of “pushing to better ourselves and the rest of humanity“.
Also kudos to Vickery yet again. He has a commanding voice and a level of diction and articulation that few actors can match. Neroon was one of the Minbari Warrior Caste highlights on Babylon 5, with one of the best arcs on that show.
And with this episode, season 2 turns around a welcome corner. After weeks of uninspired shows with a feeling of fatigue, we finally get something inspired – and I think that’s a reflection of the show’s dwindling ratings. Berman and Braga finally realized they had to set the ship right again, and this would eventually lead to the Xindi finale.
On the downside, though, the episode tries a little too hard to emulate the courtroom scene from TUC. It’s nice to have that continuity, that suggestion that Archer’s trial took place in the same courtroom or at least one of the same design, but including both the courtroom scenes and a trip to Rura Penthe made it feel kind of derivative.
@1/Christopher: It’s no secret that the people who work on Trek, especially the Berman era, are particularly fond and respectful of Meyer’s work on the TOS films. Even though Roddenberry initially designed to TNG to stand apart from the movies, there have been plenty of visual callbacks to entries like Khan and Undiscovered Country before. David Livingston emulated that movie’s scenes when he directed VOY‘s Flashback. It isn’t a surprise that Conway would end up doing the same with this one.
@31: Yes, okay, maybe I’m quibbling about semantics, but I feel like you’ve made my point for me, twice over. The line you quote refers to “warrior class”, which is why that was the term I used. Popular opinion and Memory Alpha claim the episode is the first to apply the phrase “warrior caste” to the Klingons, which suggests either everyone’s misheard the line or they’ve just straight-out confused them with the Minbari. I would be intrigued to know whether the term “warrior caste” is ever actually used in the series or whether it’s a complete myth. Either way, it doesn’t seem like Klingon society is as rigid in terms of the roles of families as some are making out. I’ve already addressed what actually happens in ‘Once More Unto the Breach’, which establishes there are different classes even within warriors/soldiers.
To me, Kolos is not a radical departure from Klingons of the past. Ever since TNG’s “Heart of Glory” gave us the first close look at their society, there’s been an expectation for all Klingons to act like Worf, in the same way that all Vulcans are expected to act like Spock. Yes, there’s variations on the theme, but ultimately all Klingons are aggressive, shout a lot and can’t get through a scene without claiming “honour” as their motivation, just as Vulcans tend to be arrogant, cold and forever insisting whatever they do is “logical”. Kolos just seems to think that his idea of honour is better than everyone else’s…and he’s probably right, but he’s still very much in the mold of what everyone expects Klingons to be like. (“What honour is there in a victory over a weaker opponent?…We were a great society not too long ago, where honour was earned through integrity and acts of true courage, not senseless bloodshed.”)
I know someone claimed upthread that it’s “Affliction”/“Divergence” that does that: It’s a while since I’ve seen that, my memory is it didn’t do much more than explain the change of appearance, but I’ll be interested to see when we get there. But to me, this feels like an attempt to “explain” why TOS Klingons don’t act like Worf, in the same way that the Season 4 Kir’Shara trilogy attempts to “explain” why the Vulcans of the first two seasons don’t act like Spock, by treating the exception as an aberration and acting as though what we think all Klingons or Vulcans are like actually is what they’re like when they’re not going through a dark period where they’ve strayed away from Kahless/Surak’s true teachings.
Slightly off-topic but still concerning The Undiscovered Country, it’s amazing the things fans make these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdRUL8RbDw8
Easily one of the best episodes in the series, a look at the tragedy of the Klingon Empire. A call forward to Ezri’s condemnation of Klingon’s concept of honor and how it works in their society showing that not only was she spot on, but it was an ongoing problem that was foreseen by some Klingons. As great a character as Kolos is, the sad thing is, we know he fails.
Firstly, the fact that this episode cribs so much from TUC is making me remember that Star Trek 6 went from one of my favorite movies not just from Star Trek but of all time, to… somehow still that, but also a movie I’m deeply troubled about, and it’s entirely because of Krad’s rewatch making Shatner’s own concerns expressed in his “Movie Memories” book with Chris Kreski, about everyone’s characterization, finally stick in my mind. (I can at one point be impressed with what Nimoy, Meyer and Flynn were trying to do, and on another watch finish the thought with “Oh but they failed miserably at convincing me Spock would DO that!”)
Secondly, I do appreciate this episode for shining a light on some aspects of Klingon society that needed to be examined. Probably my favorite novel from Trek growing up has to be Sarek by AC Crispin, which had Ambassador Kamarag’s niece as a woman in Klingon society that wanted to be a diplomat. I have to admit it was almost TOO callback heavy for my tastes (referencing approximately all the TOS episodes, and the one movie not referenced was NOT the fifth), but it really did get me thinking about how Klingon society could actually work. And obviously, that wasn’t even the primary point of the novel, just one that I picked up on.
@38
Being the Deep Space Nine fan that I am, The Undiscovered Country remains my favorite Star Trek movie in large part BECAUSE of all the out of character actions by everyone involved. The stakes are that high and alcohol induced stupidity mixed with skepticism results in people failing where they should succeed. Even then, I think Kirk’s speciesm is overstated in the movie as he still spends the movie’s opening trying to get the peace treaty done. As for Spock’s interrogation via mind-meld, yeah, it was just that necessary (which would never be applicable in RL).
But with regards to “Judgement”, I think the episode is strong enough that they should have ditched some of the lesser episodes of Season 2 and made it a two parter. Have the flashbacks to the refugee matter actually happen and Archer captured by Duras as a cliffhanger then do the trial and Rura Penthe escape. “Judgement 1 and 2” would be remembered as one of the best ENT two parters then and help elevate season 2’s reputation.
#39
I don’t think Spock’s interrogation via mind-meld was necessary, as Valeris was an arrogant person who could’ve just as well challenged Spock to find the information in her mind. Then it would become a mental battle of wills, sort of like in Village of the Damned, without the ugly “mind rape” aspect. Which was encouraged by Kirk no less.
Other than that, I enjoy TUC quite a lot.
@39/C.T. Phipps: “As for Spock’s interrogation via mind-meld, yeah, it was just that necessary”
It wasn’t necessary at all. Valeris didn’t have the information they needed, and Sulu gave it to them minutes later. Sure, she named the conspirators, but that wasn’t time-sensitive information and could’ve been determined later through a more ethical interrogation or investigation.
C.T.: DS9 is my favorite Trek show, and I think TUC is a piece of garbage. I don’t see how people acting out of character is a virtue. I think you’re completely misremembering the early parts of the movie, because Kirk is only really reluctantly going along with moving the peace process along, and doing it petulantly and barely willingly.
And Spock’s mind-rape (which is what it actually is) is wholly fucking unnecessary, as Christopher said above me, because the information they got from her wasn’t time sensitive, and the information they actually needed from her (which she didn’t have) they got a few minutes later by the much less invasive expedient of asking Captain Sulu.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
For me, Kirk acting petulantly and reluctantly about the peace process is a good thing because he does not support it emotionally. He believes the Klingons will betray them (“Don’t trust em”) and is full of anger over things like Kruge’s mission that got his son murdered as well as previous invasion of innocents worlds we know from TOS. He trusts Spock and Starfleet enough to try, though. Should Kirk have enthusiastically embraced it? Maybe but the movies always presented a more flawed and damaged Kirk from his many adventures. Even “Errand of Mercy” and “Day of the Dove” show Kirk does have deep seated issues that he has to work to overcome even before Kruge’s horrific actions.
I admit I may also give them a hall pass because I feel like David’s murder was dropped as a character plot point by comics, books, and movies until this point. Chirs Claremont’s “Debt of Honor” always annoyed me because it even implied Kirk cared more about losing the Enterprise. I guess I like the idea that Kirk is flawed enough that he is carrying a lot of anger to the Klingon government.
As for the time-sensitive element, the President of the Federation is about to be assassinated and his own bodyguards are going to be the ones carrying it out (assuming Cartwight and West have access to his security), Roman style. Knowing the conspirators is as important as the location. Ripping information away from someone by the saintly Spock should be something shocking and a sign of his own deep seated seething anger as well as sense of betrayal. Also, how utterly played he was and made accomplice to murder by his own protege.
I compare TUS to VOY’s “Year of Hell” and “Equinox” and Season 3 of ENT, oddly, as the idea is to push our characters to the limit and see how they react. There will be people who come back from the edge and people who go over it. I get not supporting our heroes failing their moral standards and doing things they will regret but it worked for me in TUS. The big difference for me and other media being I think Spock will probably be disgusted with himself for the rest of his life and Kirk learns that he should have believed in peace even if he was right that some klingons (and some Federation types) would betray it.
Well, they needed to make the information they got from Valeris time-sensitive then. I mean, they needed some dramatic revelation there. Simply asking a friend what’s what and them telling you as we’re ramping up into the third act isn’t very dramatic. The idea of an interrogation is fine. They just needed a better way to go about it.
Oh, and it’s not at all out of character for Kirk at his age to behave in that way. Trust me on this. One day they’re you’re hero, the next day they’re wearing a MAGA hat. It happens. Personally, I found it inspirational to see him snap out of it in the end and deliver that speech. May we all be so fortunate.
At the risk of going seriously off topic…If you want a film that departs from the image of Kirk as a maverick and portrays him as a loyal officer who does his duty and follows his orders, The Undiscovered Country is it. (He does go off grid eventually but only because there’s a conspiracy in Starfleet at high levels.) He voices his doubts about the peace process to his superiors, but once their decision has been made and he has his orders, he’s committed to following them. He still doesn’t trust the Klingons, and he voices those opinions in private with Spock and in his log. I accept he isn’t fully professional on the bridge, adding to the tension by expressing his nervousness at the Klingons’ presence and sniping at Spock. But he’s unfailingly, if awkwardly, polite to Gorkon: The only one he lets provoke him is Chang, which is both deliberate on Chang’s part and exacerbated by Romulan ale. In the aftermath, he knows he hasn’t handled things as well as he could have done and he isn’t proud of it.
Then the crucial moment: He refuses to open fire or even defend himself against a Klingon ship that’s about to attack the Enterprise. He knows where his duty lies and he knows it’s not going to be served by getting involved in a shooting match or running away. He knows the only way to save the peace process is to stay and help, whatever the personal consequences. He knows the situation is bigger than him and his personal feelings.
As for the mind rape, my only defence of that is that, as I said in the dedicated thread, I think it’s meant to be a horrifying moment, and Spock’s anguish at the fact it was for nothing is part of that.
@44/Hayseed: “Well, they needed to make the information they got from Valeris time-sensitive then.”
No, they needed to do the opposite — not have Spock psychically rape Valeris in the first place. The idea that torture scenes can be “justified” by the urgency of the need for information is a hideous lie. In real life, information gained through torture or coercion is not considered actionable or reliable at all. Torture is not a means of gaining information, it’s just a tool of brutality and control by an authoritarian state. It’s not for getting the truth, just for the power trip of getting people to agree with whatever you want them to say, like “There are five lights.”
The way to get valid information from an interrogation is through positive reinforcement — you form a relationship with the subject, earn their trust, give them a positive incentive to cooperate. Kirk or Spock could have reasoned with Valeris, persuaded her to cooperate. Indeed, IIRC, that’s what happened in the original script, when it was Saavik.
Sure, you could argue that in a mind meld, the information is guaranteed to be reliable, but how do you know that? Surely a fellow telepath could trick a melder with false images. And aside from in-story considerations, it was just in really crappy taste to put in a scene that was deliberately written and directed with rape subtext. There was no need for it to be there at all, so any in-story justification is just as gratuitous as the scene itself.
#46
Uh, what? I never said Spock should rape or torture Valeris to get the information or that it could be “justified.” Read my earlier comment where I said it should have been a mental battle of wills between them. Either through a mind-meld or, yes, a conversation between them using logic. Some clever dialogue is always preferable.
But again, it needed to be dramatic. They just went about it the wrong way. Spock grabbing her arm and pulling her in for a forceable mind-meld was very “ugly,” a word I’ve also already used to describe the scene. Okay?
Yes, I don’t think torture can ever be justified. However, I suppose the metaphor is so strained involving telepathy that it’s hard to draw an emotional parallel to real life.
Regardless of whether or not the mind meld was necessary or not, I can’t agree that it was out of character. Nimoy was heavily involved in the film including having a story credit as well as being executive producer. Nimoy is well known to be very protective of the character of Spock. If he felt it was out of character, he wouldn’t have done it.
@47/Hayseed: Sorry, I had a kneejerk reaction to your first sentence and didn’t notice the rest.
#50
No problemo.
Come to think of it, I wonder if the interrogation scene should have been between Kirk and Valeris instead. The reason I bring this up, if I remember correctly, she at one point throws Kirk’s words back at him about not trusting Klingons. It might have been more rewarding to see Kirk realize his bitterness is poisoning the ‘next generation’ so to speak, he admits he was wrong, she admits her wrongdoing as well, and we move on from there.
I dunno, just a thought.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
C.T.: I already went into all this in my rewatch of TUC, and we’re veering off of “Judgment” quite a bit, but one of my many issues with TUC is the issues with the Klingon people as opposed to the Klingon government. The racist language, the “they don’t value life the way we do” and “guess who’s coming to dinner?” lines, not to mention, “Let them die!” In every other appearance but one prior to this, the Klingons were political enemies; there was never a prejudicial component to it before this, except in “Day of the Dove,” and that was artificially imposed by the swirly thing. Hell, just one movie ago, which was after a single Klingon killed the son he barely knew, Kirk threw a party for the Klingons. Yet now we’re supposed to believe he hates all Klingons and wants them to die? Not buying it, for him, or for the rest of the crew.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@52/krad: I agree completely, and to add to that, making it a racial thing instead of a political thing undermines the Cold War/glasnost allegory that TUC was going for at the time, the parallel to the fall of the Soviet Union. The rivalry between the US and the USSR was never racial. People on both sides may have hated the opposite governments for their policies, yet still generally bore no animosity toward the common people of the opposite nation, more likely seeing them as victims of their evil government than as vermin who deserved to be exterminated.
Granted, the Klingons in TOS were conceived as “Space Mongols,” more inspired by Red China and stock Fu Manchu/Genghis Khan tropes than by the USSR, to the point that James Blish’s novelizations (based on the scripts) even described them as being of “Oriental stock.” So there were racial fears built into the original concept. But TUC made no secret of being specifically an allegory for the recent fall of the Soviet Union. So even in the context of the time the movie was made, it was a strange choice to make the characters suddenly racist toward Klingons as a species, rather than hostile to their government and military.
@52-53: I touched on this in the TUC thread but didn’t pursue it. I think it’s all a matter of interpretation. Is it the Klingon government, the Klingon people or the Klingon Empire that Kirk doesn’t trust? Obviously, his kneejerk “Let them die” reaction applies to more than the people in charge. But, to bring the conversation back to “Judgement” at least tangentially, the Klingon Empire isn’t made up of the innocent victims of an oppressive government (like arguably the Soviet Union and, indeed, present day Russia). This episode portrays Kolos as a lone voice, with the majority having embraced the warrior ethos of might making right wholeheartedly. So, yes, I think Kirk mistrusting the Klingon Empire as a whole rather than just the politicians is in-keeping.
It’s amusing that Gene Rodenberry, the man who is still namechecked by critics in a “Gene Rodenberry would never have agreed to this” way, objected to the film (as he did TWOK) not because it portrayed Kirk as prejudiced but because it portrayed Kirk as wrong to be prejudiced. Even he saw the Klingons as a people of mistrustful back-stabbers!
@54 I think that’s *very* arguable concerning Russia: while following the coverage of this war, it’s been pretty clear that *most* Russians are buying what Putin’s selling, and crave a return to the days of Empire. Russia, frankly, is in need of the kind of debasement Germany and Japan received after World War II, which cleansed their cultures of their worst excesses. Unfortunately, nukes mean that’ll never happen with Russia.
I stick with my view regarding racism and xenophobia among the main cast:
* Kirk is against the authoritarian conquest-minded Klingon Empire government. He’s also not WRONG the Klingons will have elements who will break the treaty.
* Chekov is actively racist against Klingons the aliens. Which is why his comments are more puerile and despicable.
* Spock is openly idealistic and takes one of his genuine gut punches from the betrayal of someone he genuinely trusted (and put in a position to help sabotage the peace talks).
Which, to bring it back to “Judgement”, it’s interesting to note that Archer is someone I’d say is actively racist against Vulcans but genuinely open minded to just about every other species in the galaxy (which helps with the Andorians). However, if Picard’s statement on First Contact with the Klingons going disastrously wrong, I think we can retroactively state that virtually everything Archer does with the Klingons just makes the hostility of them toward Earth worse.
1. Not letting the Klingon agent die with honor.
2. Rescuing the starship without a request for help, dishonoring them again
3. The “aiding rebels” and humiliating Duras
4. Escaping from Rura Penthe
5. Straight up killing Duras and his allies in self-defense.
6. Possibly being blamed for involvement in the Augment Virus that I’m sure some Qanon-version of Klingon suggests was a Federation bioweapon.
This is assuming Picard was lumping all of Archer’s misadventures with the Klingons under “First Contact” but I think an effective patch. I also note that the bad relations with the Klingons is a direct result of Archer’s racism to the Vulcans and refusal to believe them when they say that the Klingons are a death-focused culture.
Quoth C.T.: “Chekov is actively racist against Klingons the aliens.”
Um, what? Where do you get this from? The only time Chekov has been portrayed that way was in “Day of the Dove,” but any behavior there was artificially imposed by the swirly thing and doesn’t really count. Please cite your evidence for this assertion.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@54/cap-mjb: “This episode portrays Kolos as a lone voice, with the majority having embraced the warrior ethos of might making right wholeheartedly.”
The majority of whom, though? We don’t see the rank and file of the Klingon people here; we just see the people in power in the court system. So all we really know is that the warrior class has filled the government and judicial system with its members. That doesn’t tell us anything about the rest of the population.
I mean, as Keith has pointed out on numerous occasions, it’s nonsensical to posit a whole civilization of just warriors and nothing else. Warriors don’t grow the food and bake the bread and pave the roads and wire the power grid. So the majority of the Klingon population would have to be in non-warrior roles. But we don’t see them because the warrior class has monopolized the halls of power. We don’t know if they agree with the values of the warrior class or are just powerless to defy them. And if they do agree, it’s probably because the warrior class has manipulated them into it by convincing them to blame outside enemies for their problems, in the classic fascist playbook.
“So, yes, I think Kirk mistrusting the Klingon Empire as a whole rather than just the politicians is in-keeping.”
That doesn’t excuse it. There’s a gigantic leap from mistrust to contemplating genocide, and it’s not a leap James Kirk would make.
“It’s amusing that Gene Rodenberry, the man who is still namechecked by critics in a “Gene Rodenberry would never have agreed to this” way, objected to the film (as he did TWOK) not because it portrayed Kirk as prejudiced but because it portrayed Kirk as wrong to be prejudiced. Even he saw the Klingons as a people of mistrustful back-stabbers!”
Roddenberry was extremely ill and near death at that point, though, and his judgment was severely compromised and vulnerable to manipulation by the people around him. His older self in his final years professed a number of attitudes that conflicted with his views in his prime.
And again: “I mistrust them” does NOT EVEN REMOTELY justify “Let them die.” It’s a complete non sequitur.
@56/C.T. Phipps: “This is assuming Picard was lumping all of Archer’s misadventures with the Klingons under “First Contact” but I think an effective patch.”
What everyone overlooks is that Picard never said he was talking about humanity’s first contact with the Klingons. That’s probably what the writers of “First Contact” were assuming, but in fact, he just said “a disastrous contact with the Klingon Empire,” never specifying whose. I posited in my novels that he meant the Vulcans’ first contact, and what Discovery later established in “The Vulcan Hello” is roughly consistent with that, in that the Vulcans’ initial misunderstanding of the Klingons led to conflict until they figured out they needed to open with a show of strength to win the Klingons’ respect.
And really, given that ENT confirmed that the Vulcans contacted the Klingons long before Earth did, it’s only reasonable that a Federation citizen in the future would define “first contact with the Klingons” as something achieved by the Vulcans. (Although that resonates with the question of why they attribute the invention of warp drive to Zefram Cochrane instead of a Vulcan or Andorian inventor. Trek has always struggled to grow beyond human-centrism.)
@58 and quite a few others: If I’m generalising about Klingon society, then so’s Kolos. As he says in the episode: “Now all young people want to do is take up weapons as soon as they can hold them. They’re told there’s honour in victory, any victory. What honour is there in a victory over a weaker opponent?” That’s what Kolos thinks the majority (all?) of the Kingons are like in his time, and from what we’ve seen, it hasn’t changed much by Kirk’s or even Picard’s time. It’s telling that, unlike with the Romulans and the Cardassians, the Klingons are never shown to have “dissidents” as such. If a Klingon disagrees with their leadership, then it leads to civil war or a challenge to combat, and thus to more of the same. Worf stopped Duras from becoming chancellor only for Gowron to turn out to be corrupt as well, and as Ezri points out, Klingons, even the “good” ones, just accept it.
You can dismiss “Day of the Dove” as the result of external influence, but I think the point is that humans and Klingons already hate each other and it’s just amplified. Kirk’s attitude towards the Klingons in that episode is no different than in “Errand of Mercy”, “Friday’s Child” or “The Trouble With Tribbles”, which is why I think Gene Rodenberry didn’t see him hating Klingons as out of character. (Indeed, Kirk’s most extreme violent reaction in “Day of the Dove” is directed at Chekov in defence of a Klingon.) I maintain that Kirk’s “Let them die!” comment (which seems to be repeatedly held up as evidence that the film got Kirk wrong) is simply a kneejerk reaction like his “We have the right!” outburst in “Errand of Mercy”, not firm evidence that the film paints him as a genocidal racist. As I’ve tried to point out in the past (not very well, I admit), the situation only affects the Klingon Empire. Any Klingons who’ve turned their back on that and made lives for themselves outside the Empire won’t be affected. So Kirk’s comment, even if taken literally, isn’t purely racist but merely lumping in all citizens of the Empire together, from the leaders ordering aggression against the Federation to the servants ironing their uniforms. We see what Kirk really think in the meeting preceding that conversation, when he agrees with Cartwright (but with much less venom and passion and obvious regret) that the safest way to nullify the Klingons as a threat is to let the disaster weaken them, rather than use it as an opportunity to befriend them. He doesn’t actually want them all dead, he’s just willing to let people he sees as part of the problem die in poverty when the Empire collapses. It’s not pretty, but it’s not genocide and it’s not as out of character as people perhaps like to believe.
I apologise if my comments on specific real-world leadership were part of the reason this thread was placed on mod preview. I will just try and say, speaking generally, that despotic leaders are often very quick to silence anyone speaking out against them or their policies, and to make sure the only voices people here are the ones that agree with them.
I was referring to Chekov’s lines like his instant desire to raise shields, talking about their terrible table manners, and “Guess who’s coming to dinner?” Things that Nichelle Nichols refused to say. You could also speculate the entity from “Day of the Dove” was drawing on Chekov’s own issues before forging his fake brother.
I suppose it’s the fact that I took the movie like Shatner suggests he wanted to play it and I felt was exactly that in the movie. He said something in the heat of the moment because Spock, his good friend, has sprung this on him. It’s something he instantly regrets and rather surprisingly shocks himself with. It’s never seriously entertained by Kirk versus Admiral Cartwright who seriously argues the Space Chernobyl incident should be used strategically to destroy Klingon society.
This episode’s idea of Klingon “warrior” culture doesn’t ring as true as Ron Canada’s Klingon lawyer in “Rules of Engagement”, an uneven episode that still presents the most plausible idea of the Klingon culture from this era of the show: just as people in the U.S. today so often see themselves as capitalist entrepreneurs or “personal brands”, when most of them are no such thing, so too Klingons see themselves as “warriors”, when most of them are no such thing. And, far from those others being discouraged from identifying with the favored part of society, this ideology is encouraged, deepened and realized in the way we find in Ch’Pok from “Rules of Engagement”, because it only serves to salve the sting of that bias and preserve the existing hierarchy.
Still, a good episode here overall.
I don’t see any inconsistency, since the two episodes are two centuries apart and the culture has presumably evolved in the interim. We know from “Judgment” that the warrior caste taking over rule of Klingon society happened within Kolos’s lifetime, so there are still a fair number of surviving Klingons who remember how it was before the warriors took over and started indoctrinating other Klingons to believe their warrior values were the only ones worth having. By two centuries later, the warrior mentality is more entrenched because nobody alive remembers how it was before.
Although personally, I find the more diverse Klingon culture in “Judgment” to be far more plausible than “Rules”‘s idea that every single Klingon alive shares the exact same “warrior” values even if they apply them in different ways. Real cultures are not as monolithic as fictional ones tend to be. There are always different factions holding different belief systems; if a culture appears monolithic, it’s because one subculture dominates and those who disagree with it are marginalized or suppressed. But they’re always there. It’s completely unrealistic to expect any entire civilization to have only one universally accepted belief system.