There’s a DS9 episode featuring a klingon lawyer (I forget which episode it is). THe lawyer has a few pieces of dialogue where they view the legal process as a battle just like any other klingon views a fight. Since then it’s been my head canon that plenty of klingons are around doing plenty of stuff other than fighting but view it in terms of hunting, battle (with something) and honour. I wish more of this were touched on in Trek.
Like … klingon monks and religion … what’s the culture of pursuing that for a klingon?
KOLOS: You didn’t believe all Klingons were soldiers?
ARCHER: I guess I did.
KOLOS: My father was a teacher. My mother, a biologist at the university. They encouraged me to take up the law. Now, all young people want to do is to take up weapons as soon as they can hold them. They’re told there is honor in victory – any victory. What honor is there in a victory over a weaker opponent? Had Duras destroyed that ship, he would have been lauded as a hero of the Empire for murdering helpless refugees. We were a great society, not so long ago. When honor was earned through integrity and acts of true courage, not senseless bloodshed.
From ENT: Judgement
There’s another episode near the end of Enterprise, where Dr. Phlox is kidnapped to help a Klingon doctor make Klingon augments, using Dr. Soong’s augment’s DNA. It’s pretty clear in that episode that, while there are Klingons that pursue other professions, they aren’t thought of very highly by the warrior caste.
Also, they have a caste system, so there are definitely Klingons that have to do other jobs, and this likely would have been even more important in the distant past. General Martok in DS9 had difficulty rising through the ranks originally, because he wasn’t from the warrior caste
The inventor of warp drive would be highly respected, Klingons respect power and warp and specifically matter anti matter reactions are hugely powerful and can (although rarely done) be made into extremely powerful weapons.
What’s crazy to me, I also remembered this as a DS9 episode until I watched it during an ent run a week ago.
You may be thinking of Ch’Pok, the Klingon advocate from DS9: “Rules of Engagement”, where they were trying to extradite Worf on the grounds that he had destroyed a civilian transport.
CH’POK: I look forward to fighting on your terms.
SISKO: This is not a fight. It’s the search for the truth.
CH’POK: The truth must be won. I’ll see you on the battlefield.
And later:
CH’POK: What matters to me is the thrill of the fight, not which side I’m on. And I think we both know the extradition fight is over.
It never ceases to amaze me how good the ST community is at remembering these things, despite the kind of staggering amount of media there is in the franchise. Thank you. That is what I was remembering!
Worf talks about this in TNG as well. Being a Klingon isn’t just about violence. Anything can be a battle if you view it as an internal struggle. Worf described to some other Klingons how he viewed just being the only Klingon in Starfleet as an inherent struggle, and that by being a good representative of the Klingon people in his role, he was being honourable.
Also, in DS9, he asked (kinda) Klingons to join him in battle. They got there in time to help the harvest, and when challenged he said that time was their enemy.
Yeah, it’s more like the traditional view of Islamic jihad, as I understand (note: I am not Muslim, and may have this entirely wrong, please feel free to correct me). It CAN denote war, but it can also denote the struggle of being a good student, or a good father, or struggling against the very forces of nature to bring in a good crop.
Thus, any hard-fought struggle, to a Klingon, can bring glory, though different kinds of glory. DS9 points this out with Garak’s claustrophobia in “By Inferno’s Light”, with Martok stating “there is no greater enemy than one’s own fears”.
Too bad about Alexander tho.
Not a worthy battle, that stupid brat.
Fighting the very laws of reality sounds way more challenging than fighting that dude over there.
But what about boring jobs. Are there Klingon janitors? Klingon repairmen? Klingon construction workers?
There have to be Klingon chefs, right? Isn’t replicated gagh inferior? Is blood wine just blood or are there Klingon vinyards?
They didn’t always have replicators so there must have been Klingon factory workers
They find honor in their own way. They may find honor in serving vile gagh, hunting fresh Lingtas and Targs, cleaning up after the evil messy people. Their enemy may not be another person, another crew, another empire, but time, animals, falling-apart buildings, concrete/cement, messy people, vines and weeds, etc. Everyone finds honor in their own way. (but most of the time they are also fighting.)
Which also makes me wonder if climbing the ladder works the same throughout society. Can the apprentice still learning to forge a bat’leth kill the blacksmith and take over his business? Is that murder or did the p’tah have it coming because he couldn’t defend himself anymore?
There is a klingon restaurant on the promenade on DS9. The Chef is also a passionate singer
A speck of dust! * pulls disruptor, pulverizes surface * For Kah’less!!
Well, that’s optimistic.
Meanwhile, I’m over here imagining them summarily executing litterbugs.
It’s the episode where Worf blows up that civilian ship on accident. I think it’s Rules of Engagement.
Worf was setup!
/spoilers
I am thinking of the DS9 ep where Quark gets into Klingon financial shenanigans.
And I believe it’s just the overcoming the challenge of building a house, declaring a “war on drugs” and actually winning it, discovering how to make an electromagnet as a way of conquering physics, getting into a fight over haggling on selling that rare Charizard card.
So same progress as Earth, just a different way of thinking? Probably totally inaccurate, but maybe a hint of Japanese culture?
they got the warp drive from the hur’q.
Wait, does that mean they indirectly got it from the Dominion?
“I find honor… in blowing up that black hole! Klingons are born to fight and conquer… physics! Today is a good day to die… for science!”
I’ve thought about this a lot. Not this specific thing, but Klingon culture generally.
Like their culture is all about death in battle and glory and honor… so sure maybe they don’t have doctors (those redundant organs help a lot) but what about farmers and cooks? What about builders, bankers, literally anything other than warriors which are necessary for a society to function?
If nothing but death in battle is worthwhile to pursue, how does their society not entirely collapse? Or is the focus on battle a newer shift on their society, now that they have access to other societies to do the grunt work?
This might be a history misconception I’m spreading, but what if it is like Sparta, where there was a huge slave population upholding that martial society?
I don’t think that’s a misconception, this exhaustive series from a real historian makes just that point
Honestly, with a conquest driven society, wouldn’t surprise me. Human history is full of examples, even today.
They have all those things, but they do not discuss it with outsiders.
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To accommodate a larger audience for the inevitable melee-combat-based mutiny.
Best way to explain it all is don’t watch any of the new shows with the exception of Lower Decks. It’s decent parody with actual Star Trek-like storytelling and situations. The rest… aren’t.
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I can only vehemently disagree. DIS only gets worse and worse every season. SNW had potential and they crashed it into Veridian III with the same bad writing and illogical plotting. Picard is the biggest dumpster fire I have ever forced myself to watch.
People love Big Brother and whatever with the Kardashians, but it doesn’t make them good.
All I’m saying is if canon and continuity matter to you, Lower Decks is the only one that even tries.
I’m reminded of this Whomp comic where the one who invented the Warp Drive was the one trying to escape the planet
That’s spectacular!
I miss whomp
I’d never heard of it, but now I do too.
I think the lore is that Qo’noS was occupied at one point and the Klingons eventually overthrew them, allowing the Klingons to replicate the tech
Which is why in Klingon Mythology the Klingons sleep their gods as they were more trouble than what they were worth.
We killed out gods. And replaced them with this weird, jesus-like figure named Kahless who unified our entire planet after a devilish tyrant named Molor working for our equivalent of Satan and demons took it over and ran a dictatorship and when Kahless died he went to rule our heaven and Molor our hell? Klingon religion man, it’s confusing.
Canonically Kahless did at least exist (whether or not he was divine is not answered). Very similar to Jesus lol
there is no evidence that jesus existed and the first writing about jesus appears 100 years after he supposedly died. his original story was eventually replaced with a plagiarized version from mithraism; so jesus = mithra. not that there is any evidence that mithra existed either.
I believe the academic consensus is he likely (>50% probability) existed, but it is for sure disputed by some. Personally I’m not religious and I accept the possibility he existed or maybe he didn’t. Kind of doesn’t really matter because we can be fairly confident he wasn’t the son of god lol
the problem being that there isn’t any evidence at all. if there was, his existence would be harder to dispute lol.
I always imagined it was because of the Hurq invading. Like we know that the Vulcans were warlike at one point, so maybe the Klingons were more… normal? Maybe they had a sect of warriors that basically took over after the Hurq invaded and slowly they became a warrior culture?
I figured they were more diverse before they started conquering other species. Military service seems to be pretty strongly associated with the nobility. My guess is that when they got some other worlds and species under their control Klingons as a whole became quasi-nobility and other species started filling menial jobs. This probably came to a head around the time of ENT. Some jobs, like lawyers and scientists, are probably restricted to Klingons for security reasons, but not as well respected since they’re not traditional professions for nobles.
