@@marwig87 That is only a theory, me they reversed engineered the tech after the hurk were driven away. If Kirtzmen writes the canon version, I will not be impressed. #FuckAlexKirtzmen
I've got a question: Did the Hur'q travel through the Bajoran wormhole or use a Iconian gateway in the Gamma Quadrant? Because the Iconian gateway would explain why they only attacked the Klingons.
The Klingon lawyer that represented Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise said that Klingons used to have a more diverse range of professions and only in the last couple of generations that becoming a warrior has been the only profession that Klingons want to do. So that could explain the Klingon Empire not growing rapidly.
@@the_kombinator I'm just saying that if the Klingons had fewer warriors/soldiers in the past, might be the reason that the Empire might have grown slower if they have had warp technology for several hundred years and that Klingons used to have more Doctors, Scientists and Engineers so that it is more likely they developed warp travel by themselves.
no ... here is a twist. What if a peaceful Vulcans trader left Vulcan in warp ship. This before their “only contact warp capable” species. When the Vulcan stepped out his ship to give him the Vulcan high-five, victory salute, the Klingon stabs him in the chest. He then reverse engineers warp ushering a new era of conquest and the Klingon space empire. The name of this Klingon? Zephka of the house of Kokra. How’s that for a coincidence. Now the Vulcans were furious. This was incidence that parcipated the hotly debated topic of contacting non-warp and Vulcan's non-interference directive and lead to their law. The most interesting thing is that at his trial Zephka claimed that in his family the Vulcan's salute was a sign like our finger. He was only defending the honor of his clan under klingon law and since the Vulcan was on Klingon, his defense council claimed klingon law should apply. The Vulcan prosecutor claimed there was no such history of Vulcan salute resembling anything. But Zephka said it was close and his being older and of poor eyesight, which he was ashamed only mentioned now in self-defense, was what resulted in this unfortunate incidence. And Zepka said he only had the Vulcans word and after the fact that it was a peace greeting and not the bird. Zepka and the other klingon clan leaders were afraid that Vulcan with powerful weapons and space travel technology would destroy Klingon. This is why Klingon alowed Zephka to be put on trial, but on Klingon. The whole idea that Archer wanted to return a klingon was "upsetting" to Saval. But he did not let on to this. This whole history is a thing Vulcans do not speak because it's in part an admission they are responsible for Klingon empire and its start. I spoke to a Vulcan from the high command. She mind melded with me as it is more pleasurable than sex to some vulcans. She said she had never done it with an alien and was only curious, because she was awed by my intellect and creativity, if not my perverse sense of irony and humor. I'm like okay, but just as long as I don't find myself carrying a love child in 16 months. But she assured me that it is always the Vulcan female that got pregnant. So, I decided to do it. And learned all this as in the meld you can discover things. After the loving ... I mean mind meld I asked her how she knew so much of the klingon motivation. She said she was part of the delegation that went for trial. She had chance to meld with a klingon. She told me the meld was rough. Fortunately, he was older and she had her Vulcan stamina. She also wore a .... Then I realized the "never done it with alien" was a lie and just a come on to get me to do it and make me feel special. But then she apologized for any misunderstanding and actually meant with human and not alien. Lol
If the Hur'q came through the Bajoran wormhole, it could explain why the Klingon Empire has expanded so far into the Beta Quadrant. They were expanding away from the direction that Hur'q must have traveled.
@@claytonberg721 Maybe The Prophets protected them. But in my opinion the Hur'q probably found an Iconian gateway and just picked Kronos or another planet in the Klingon Empire and built warp drive
The Klingons taking Hur’Q tech after their invasion is a good case for the prime directive. They obtained tech before they were ready, hence their famed aggression. Maybe much of it was independent though. We still don’t fully know.
Actually, the rate of expansion of the Klingons makes perfect sense, even if they had Warp capabilities since around the 14th century earth. Consider that they are a warrior race, they do not allow other races to join them, they conquer them, and thus the rate of expansion would be considerably slower, as wars would be waged, supply lines to maintain, governing the new worlds, etc. In contrast, the Federation expands in territory by adding the worlds to it's roster.
rapid expansion drive is also a lot of what made vulcans skeptical of humans early on, then consider that the klingon empire's blob is about the same size as the federation blob (which also includes vulcan and andorian space as well as human and anyone else that wants to more or less), and that they've been expanding slowly since the 9the century makes perfect sense.
Its easy to conquer but hard to control especially when you have empires that stretch out in all 3 dimensions and by hundreds or thousands of light years.
Awesome video! I loved the Klingons as "the bad guys" until TNG. Now I'm more fascinated by Klingon history and culture. I look at them more as "good guys". Could you imagine if Worf had his own show and have a chance to explore the Klingons even more? Sure would be nice but for now, I can only dream about it.
Here is how you extract a history from a cultures language: Tolkien (Elves & Dwarves): valianttheywere.blogspot.com/2022/02/linguistic-archaeology-history-of.html Ancient Egypt: valianttheywere.blogspot.com/2021/09/linguistic-archaeology-egyptians-in-pdf.html To do that to Klingon you would need klingon names and a dictionary of klingon words and a realization that it is fictional and likely randomly assigned as opposed to the result of growth.
Better Idea, Michael Dorn plays Mogh, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great great-great-great grandfather of Colonel Worf (the lawyer who Kirk met), in the early years of the Empire. No Humans are ever seen, as they won't develop warp drive for decades.
I could see the Klingon's developing an initial warp drive around the 10th century AD with the express purpose of going to Borath, the warp tech would have been fairly primitive and only get to speeds of say warp 1.3, good enough to get to Borath but not much good for exploring and sense they accomplished the goal of reaching Borath the tech stagnated due in fighting among the houses on the homeworld. The Hur'q invasion would have made the Klingon's revisit their warp tech and improve upon it using stolen Hur'q tech and they would begin to slowly branch out and start conquering neighboring systems before they become a threat, the only thing that would slow down there expansion is there distrust of other species so they would always be stuck with a manpower shortage to build and crew there ships. The Klingon Empire is rather large and we never see non Klingon's on ships or stations, not even as slaves or menial labor.
This makes the most sense to me. Some time after Kahless death the Klingons could have turned on each other leading to a period of infighting and technological stagnation. The Hur'q invasion unites the Klingons against a common enemy and encourages them to create more advanced warp drives with the help of some captured Hur'q tech.
I like the ideal of T'Kuvma's Sarcophagus ship being a relic from before the Hur'q invasion. It's cloaking tech is different then Romulan cloaks and was unknown to other Kligon houses until he reintroduced it (Klingons later trade for Romulan cloaking tech) combined with the fact that some of the bodies on it hull were said to thousands of years old It could easily be lost tech. T'Kuvma family could have been outcast or deep space explorers on a generational ship during the hur'q invasion thus not near Qo'noS and spared from the brunt of the invasion and loss of technology that there home world suffered, And there warp capabilities were simply to slow to get there in time to fight in the invasion thus leaving them as possibly the last the last purely Kligon designed ship built before Qo'noS started rebuilding and using Hur'q Technology. It's know the ship had been passed from father to son over generations but had fallen into disrepair after the passing of T'Kuvma's father when he was young and that it took him a decent part of his life to restore and perhaps upgrade his ship using hur'q derived tech, He was attempting to restore his house in Kligon society when he died. Since We are stuck with Discovery being part of Star Trek history we might as well try to retcon it into know lore and events.
Another great video. Inciteful, thought-provoking, well delivered and smoothly edited. I love the subtle background music that gives your videos depth while not taking over. Nice work.
Very interesting! I’d always assumed that they “borrowed” much of their more advanced technology from other races, considering the Klingons are such as aggressive species. I know that times of war (at least on earth) tend to spur technological advancement, however I’ve never associated Klingon culture with one that particularly values intellectual or scientific endeavors.
Same would have been true of humanity if the nx01 enterprise captured that stricken raptor class ship at gas giant.as well as cripple the ship which asked them to surrender .then archer overloaded the phasers . With both those ships scanned in detail and pulled apart to examine they could have rivalled andorians.
As Archer's lawyer points out, Klingon society was not always quite as warlike, hostile, and dominated by the warrior class as it is in the 22nd-24th century. With Kahless not only setting forth a warrior ethos but also a code of honorable conduct for all Klingons as well as him being described as a just and fair ruler for all, we can infer that Klingons lost their way much like the Vulcans strayed from the true teachings of Kahless. It is said that Klingons once had classes of warriors, law, a political class, scientists, laborers and artisans, various specialists in different fields, doctors, artists, philosophers, and every other field and that anyone could achieve honor so long as they behaved honorably and strove for excellence in whatever field they chose. What's happened is the warrior caste came to dominate society to such a degree that the other classes are seen as lesser. As the lawyer said, "we were a great society once, but now all young people want to do is pick up weapons. They find honor in victory--any victory--but what honor is there in an easy victory over a weaker opponent. Not so long ago honor was defined by noble deeds and acts of true courage."
The Bagdad battery has been proven not to be a "battery" of any kind. It was actually a prayer jar, who happened to have stuff it needed to give off a slight charge. It was convergent evolution in a way.
Don’t forget to be awesome is back!! Good analysis too, I think they might have developed warp drive early but maybe a primitive warp 1. So you can expand slowly, but not overrun the quadrant.
Back in the 1970's I bought a publication from Lincoln Enterprises that said Klingons reverse engineered a crashed warp vessel they discovered. I can't remember if it said when or where this happened.
5:00 I like the explanation that Quark isn't as familiar with other plants history...after all, how well do I know the history of Australia or New Zealand? ...also I like that you said "from where I am standing, or in this case sitting. "
I had never thought of feudal Klingons being jump started into a space traveling species. Or if they had some kind of travel before the H'urq. If the later is true, would that also help explain the vast variety of klingon appearance? Lost colonies developed on their own only to be reconquored and re absorbed into the New Empire. This was a great dive into klingons. We know so much but also so little about them. Like the Enterprise episode with the Klingon lawyer "You didn't think all of us were warriors, did you?" Um, up until he said that, yeah I kinda did. Klingons hate change but war motivates change and innovation. I can't imagine how ancient Klingons fought national wars... and didn't wipe themselves out. Can't wait for your next video
A point about Roman concrete. It wasn't so much lost, as they stopped using it because exporting the specific limestone from just outside of Rome was too pricey due to ancient inflation. Edit: Please correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe that the limestone has specific properties that made hit good for Roman concrete.
A species doesn't just require a decent warp drive, to expand into an empire, it also needs to develop weapons & reliable life support systems as well. If Earth had a practical Warp 3 (27c) drive system tomorrow, it would still take us at least a few decades to learn to build fabricate feasible starships capable of surviving voyages to our nearest stars. then there's our current weapons technology: Chemical explosive missiles, nuclear missiles, rail guns, naval artillery guns, basic low powered lasers, etc. which would be considered crude & feeble, by the era ENT is set in.
I'm pretty sure we already have air recycling tech, so that's no big issue. And functional laser weapons do exist, and lasers are inherently a lot easier to use as weapons in a vacuum since there's no air to get in the way of the beam. We couldn't have artificial gravity like in ST, but the use of centripetal force to simulate gravity is a known, if not often used, technology. Food would probably be the biggest issue, since plants generally grow pretty slowly and making edible stuff from our waste products is a lot harder than just filtering and treating urine to get drinkable water.
To be fair, the fact that you can get places so quickly with warp drive actually makes a lot of the problems associated with space travel go away. Like food........you can now carry enough. The human body degrading.......well you'll be on the next planet in a few days, not so big a deal. Water and life support.......again you won't need them long before resupply. Materials...........well you have an almost endless supply all of a sudden. The ship capable of withstanding warp travel is the most pressing matter. After that things get easier.
Exo- outside/beyond Xeno- alien/other I’d be inclined to use Exo- for inanimate objects, eg Exo-Metallurgy for asteroid mining; and Xeno- for animate objects, eg Xeno-Biology for studying life forms. A bit tricky when applied to “politics” as it’s an inanimate concept relating to animate beings... perhaps go a 3rd way and call it “Astro-Relations” 🚀
This was very enjoyable! Thank you. Another thing to consider is interstellar space junk. Ancient lost ships and tech falling into orbit or the planet surface could jump start a civilization into progress they may have never achieved "naturally". 🤔
I've always thought the Klingons got advanced technology from the Hur'q and they learned how to create it, but it took them a long time to really learn how it worked leading them to be on rough technological parity with the powers that would go on to form the Federation. Discounting, of course, Discovery's "additions" to Klingon history.
I’m fairly certain the “Baghdad Battery,” as it’s called, was a single clay pot, not an array of cylinders. No evidence of any others of its kind have ever been found. It’s even contested that it was ever operational as a battery to begin with, just that it’s *possible* that it could function as a 1V battery if it was filled with an acid of some kind. If it was a battery, it was probably a novelty, and not used for any industrial purpose like electro-plating.
As a warrior empire I guess I'd assume that backstabbing and infighting could have acted as brakes. As well, I find the option of the Hur'q invasion actually being predicated upon early Klingon spaceflight kind of plausible. Perhaps it was an early Klingon spacecraft that attracted their attention in the first place. It might have also delayed their exploration of their immediate surroundings until they "armed up", as they were wary of attracting further negative attention to themselves before they felt capable of defending the Homeworld.
When the Klingons were invaded by the alien race they were already having primitive interplanetary flights and establishing space colonies but they did not have FTL for several more centuries. Probably realizing the dangers they faced out there the Klingons had to first develop impulse drives, magnetic-plasma shielding, advanced armor plating, transporters, tractor beams and energy disruptor weapons. By the time these technologies were developed the warp drive was ready. Their first forays into interstellar space was not monitored like the way the Vulcans did with Earth and they were also more prepared to deal with threats when they encountered them unlike the first earth starships like the NX-01 Enterprise which had no tractor beam, plasma shields, warp capable torpedoes or phase cannons until much later.
The warrior class is just one of many, like the Samurai. We don't see enough of their scientists or Engineers because the Klingon warrior caste dominated space travel/exploration/conquest. In short, I'm pretty confident they developed their own warp technology.
According to Canon, they dominate more than just space travel. They dominate all of society. Look at the Enterprise wanna be tos movie episodes. Where archer gets put on trial.
@@nyetloki yes the episode in tos with kor , he and kirk discuss the Klingon empire vs federation. The later st writers changed them . In undiscovered country, they are like the Soviets and federation is America. Soviets were a super power . ( in every way) good or bad system isn't relevant.
I have always wondered how the Klingons, who embrace a warrior lifestyle so much, were ever able to get to this point in their advancement as a society. I feel like they stole warp tech from some outside invaders who underestimated the Klingons. That might explain why their empire is not huge because relative to the Romulans, they might not be so strategy minded.
Great vid, although... even if we were to build new Saturn V engines, each engine built was literally finished "by hand" make each a custom engine. To repeat the building of said engines we'd not only need the engineers notes, but the builders notes from the welders and millwrights that literally tuned the engines. It's my understanding the NASA either lost or destroyed said notes.
In the game Klingon Acadamy, it is said that Klingons developed warp drive and somewhere down the line Kirk is the result of a Klingon/Earthling crossbreeding.
I always held on to the Hur'q upliftment theory but (ignoring any time/multiverse chicanery including Boreth's time crystals) the timeline never added up with some of Klingon. It is possible that they achieved non-dilithium low warp like Cochrane did or maybe something like Bajoran lightships and then that was lost because of the Hur'q invasion. I like that you pointed out the haphazard nature of technological evolution I usually reference Greek Fire as an example as well
Do a video on the Vulcans warp drive development. From what I've read they invented warp in 900 BC. And by the time of enterprise they have only achieved warp 7. That means that humans nearly achieved in 100 years what it took the Vulcans about 3000 years. What was the cause of their incredibly slow development? We see in Enterprise that they are a uniquely uncurious race so maybe they just didn't have the interest in researching it. Were there just no vulcans interested in pushing the technology or did something happen that made them stop advancing? Its always been an interesting question because they seem to be one of the first races to get Warp but are quickly surpassed by nearly every warp capable power.
I don't think they were not curious - Hey a warp signature in a place that should have none- it is logical to ignore it and continue on course to research a dust cloud instead. :P
@@the_kombinator in ENT they definitely portray them as not curious. There are several instances of the vulcans questioning why the humans want to study things. I remember an example when they want to study a gas giant and T'pol says "you have gas giants in your solar system, why do you want to study another". To me that shows a lack of curiosity that could lead to missing out on advancement. Think of it like studying tornados. What if 100 years ago we did a study and then everyone was like, well we've seen 1 tornado, no point in ever researching further. Sure you could record everything possible at the time to record about it, but you never know what else there is to learn if you don't study it further. This requires curiosity about the world, which the vulcans repeatedly don't show. He'll even their interactions with humans show a distinct lack of curiosity. They seem content to judge humanity on a few surface level characteristics rather than spending the time to actually get to know them and gain any true understanding. In fact any Vulcan that does show any curiosity about humans and tries to spend time around them is looked at like there is something wrong with them.
The lack of curiosity was partly pushed by the Romulan influence, since Surak’s katra said they weren’t always like that. But yes, Trip said it took them 200 years to “crack warp 2”, so we can assume every single warp scale increase took multiple Vulcan generations (they live ~250 years so let’s assume a generation is like 60-80 years on Vulcan rather than the ~20 it is here).
I Always thought the klingons got certain known Star Trek Tech from the Hur'Q Invasion. They Reversed engineered it but it took them a few decades or even centuries so they could only establish the Klingon Empire relatively shortly before the events of Star Trek Enterprise. Yes they seemingly had Space flight Technology before but only sublight. When they got rid of the Hur'Q and disvovered Warp Drive, it was Like a Homo Sapiens finding a Diesel engine
Nice video; like the historical references. One of the ways that TNG annoyed me when it premiered in the late 80s is the way TNG fundamentally changed the “personality” Klingon culture. The Klingons of TOS were more than physically different, they were culturally different. Commander Kor in “Errand of Mercy” was the perfect example. He was an aristocrat. He was sophisticated, educated, diplomatic, and enjoyed the finer things. Koloth was much the same, if less sincere and honest. Kang, as so many characters portrayed with the gravitas of Michael Ansara, was a bit more like the honorable samurai-like personally which has sometimes been used to describe Klingons (although not often displayed by modern TNG-era Klingons); Kang was noble, honorable, and reasonable. Other Klingons we met in “Friday’s Child” and “A Private Little War” were more underhanded but still represented an empire which was sophisticated, scientific, and politically savvy. One could easily believe that these Klingons of old were self-made when it came to science and technology. Even the Klingons of the TOS movies displayed a similar cultural sophistication despite being physically altered. Early TNG, however, in many ways did a disservice to the Klingons in portraying them as near-animalistic at times, as wild-eyed Viking warriors, barely capable of rising above their most base desires to murder and pillage. With this new mindset, the writers fell into the trap of underestimating the intellect of their own creations, going so far as to imply that the Klingons may have even been too stupid to develop warp drive on their own-forgetting that the Vikings, because of their many military ventures and the need to innovate for them, were actually the most technologically advanced people in all of Europe. They had the best armor, the most lethal weapons, and ships which could literally cross the Atlantic Ocean centuries before Columbus. It’s an unfortunate fact of history that war advances technology faster than peace. I’m sure the Klingons would have picked up some pointers from the Hur’q, but I tend to give the Klingons more credit than some writers in the TNG-era seemed to. Even reverse engineering takes a great deal of know-how.
"The klingon warp drive, a mighty warrior itself like the race that built it, forces the universe itself to bend to its will. The universe, being a worthless vulcan-like petaq, submits and propels the klingon ship faster than even light itself"
I quite like the interpretation that the Klingons reverse engineered warp drive from the Hur'q, I think it neatly explains why the Klingons are stuck in their early medieval state of cultural development, because they just leapfrogged over whatever would have been their own equivalent of a renaissance, industrial revolution, information age, etc, and landed straight into a hi-tech post-scarcity world where there wouldn't be any economic forces pushing their cultures to adapt and change.
My theory has always been this: We know that their first contact event was NOWHERE NEAR as positive as ours. The HurQ enslaved them, plundered their precious artifacts, and took planetary resources. This also influenced their perceived xenophobia and even the level of HOW aggressive, militaristic, and warlike we see them as one could get the feeling that the original teachings of Kahless prior to that might have "balanced them out." I agree with you that they likely reverse-engineered it after driving them off. As far as agency, I think it shows a roughly medieval people being, at their base, intelligent enough to comprehend the technology, analyze it, and be technically-proficient enough to duplicate it. And then, certainly, once getting to the point of being fully spacefaring, we do see them able to innovate somewhat on their own. As far as Molor bringing the whole planet under his regime, remember that, whereas out planet has multiple continents, they have a Pangaea, so that would be quite a bit easier to do than here.
Don't forget during the TNG ep emissary the Klingon battle cruiser from the former Klingon war with the Federation was still using cryo sleep because of the time and fuel needed to travel long distances through space when it was sent on it's mission so it couldn't have been that long since they got dependable warp drive.
One problem I have always had with the Klingons is how did they get the technology they have. Their general temperament is that of a warrior race beyond anything we know on earth. They appear to have little respect for those who desire knowledge or what we would call the finer things of life. Unless something can be turned to use for war or conquest, they have little use for it.
Given their similarities to one of Star Trek's most iconic races, the Kazon, I think the Klingons might have obtained their modern warp technology in a similar way but with a few key differences. Both have a history of antagonism with a more advanced species, the Trabe for the Kazon and the Hur'q for the Klingons. Both have a rather feudal society, the Klingon Houses and the Kazon Sects, with often complex and antagonistic relations with one another. Both value military prowess and strength, though the Klingons are MUCH better at it. We also see some key differences between them. The Klingons are capable of repairing and producing their technology, while the Kazon don't, or at least they don't inspire confidence in their techno-prowess. Also, the Klingons, for all their divisions and rivalries, are more firmly united under a central government; the Kazon don't even have the pretense of being unified. Their brief unification under a single leader was the exception, not the norm. Lastly, the Klingons were only briefly occupied by the Hur'q whereas the Kazon were subjugated for centuries. This implies to me that the Klingons DID develop warp drive and other technologies on their own rather than simply stealing it from the Hur'q. To repair and produce technology you need to have a deep understanding of how it works, which you are more likely to possess if you actually made it yourself. The Hur'q probably had an impact but this could have been virtually anything. Their plundering may have destroyed Klingon infrastructure and industry, setting them back, but the exposure to their technology may have inspired Klingon engineers and scientists by showing them new possibilities and giving them new tech to play around with, pushing them forward. In either case, I think it's clear that the Kingons are much more gifted in science and technology than many people give them credit for.
You remember how angry and defensive that the few Klingon engineers and scientists you see on screen were? I bet they go through a LOT of shit to work in those fields, so I wouldn't count out their abilities, if they're willing to put up with social scorn to do the job.
I would love to see a video on the Klingons, the Hurq and Klingon political history and specifically just what the "Empire" looks like. I mean, mostly we've only ever seen the homeworld and heard about a couple of other planets -- and that's it.
In one of the Star Trek novels it talks about the Karsid Empire that used the Klingons as mercenaries. Eventually the Klingons managed to overthrow the Karsids and by doing so took over their technology and empire. The idea was that Klingons were like a medieval society that suddenly obtained high tech spaceships and weapons.
They could have invented warp drive, but a Warp1-2 drive might have been the best available for a very long time, meaning travelling between star systems would have been possible but taken a very long time therefore slowing down expansion.
It's amazing that the Klingon's had much in the way of advanced technology at all because Klingon families would tend to berate, and almost shun their kids for even wanting to be scientists, engineers, or intellectuals because it wasn't as honorable to the clan as dying in battle as a warrior.
Dont forget 'warp drive' is on a scale. Perhaps the Klingons had warp drive 1 but was able to leap frog to warp 6 (or what ever) due to the influence of invasion/comquest/trade. Peace! \o/ Peace
I find it exceedingly unlikely that the Baghdad Battery was used for electroplating, as *that* technology would require a bit of chemistry, and some other knowledge they did not possess at the time. I have no earthly idea what it *was* used for, but I can't believe that was it.
My personal headcanon is similar to your Hur'q theory; but I tie in their mythology. To quote Word "Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth." They got warp drive from a race that had subjugated them about a thousand years ago. I've seen other theories that they are like the Jem'Hadar, a genetically created/modified warrior race. This would also fit my theory, and also fixes the agency issues if they literally destroyed the species that created them. This left them with access to warp capable ships; but it took a while until they were able to actually build them. This allows them to expand the way they did while limiting their ability to overrun the entire quadrant. It also makes Quark's statement potentially accurate, they could have had little or no warp capacity for a good period of time after dealing with the Hur'q. Many Klingon ships may also be ancient, potentially not made by them. This would explain why so many ships seen in the first season of Discovery look so different from what we are used to from Klingons. The ships we see in that season are not Klingon manufactured. Definitely explains the tomb ship. And that also explains how we don't see new Klingon ships very often. In Next Gen, they are still using Bird of Prey from the movie era.
Very interesting. I'd missed the age of the Khaless monastery. At least my thinking was that the monastery was constructed many centuries after Khaless pointed out the star. The Hurq connection made sense to me in that the Klingons become a sort of 'uplifted' race. They 'stole' the tech from the Hurq, albeit I do see them having to go on a crash course to educate themselves to understand it. The sort of caste system of the pre-22nd Century that honored teachers and such (as related to Jonathon Archer by the Klingon lawyer in ENTERPRISE) suggests that the Klingons 'enlightened' themselves in order to take what they had and reach the stars. But after succeeding, they fell to older cultural traditions. Such an uplifted race might often have such issues of cultural primitiveness? The Roddenberry ideal of advanced races having overcome a propensity to war not sticking to such races that were uplifted, even if they did do half the work themselves in understanding what they'd inherited? Another reason for the Prime Directive. Warp travel is multi-level tech. Personally, I even think of impulse as having a great deal to do with warp fields so as to neutralize mass effects in travel, hence how a large starship can travel at relativistic speeds and then stop on a dime. A race that has impulse power without FTL could still reach neighboring star systems in a somewhat reasonable time. At least we'd certainly be very happy if such technology came available! Reaching warp is relatively easy. Traveling a multiple warp factors is much harder. Humans spent almost a human lifetime traveling at less than warp 2. The Vulcans and perhaps several other races struggling for centuries to beat the 'Warp 2 barrier'. Much work then being necessary to reach a more stable warp 5 and 6 by struggling through difficult warps 3 and 4. Anyway, regardless of if the Klingons developed warp on their own, or got it from the Hurq, they might have spent a long time, many generations, traveling under the warp 2 barrier. Still, traveling to neighboring star systems in several months rather than over a decade would be quite a boon. But they'd have a hard time spreading out several sectors from Qo'noS.
Mycenaean Greeks forgot how to write for a few hundred years. Then borrowed a new alphabet from the Phonoecians and started writing more or less the same language again. It can happen
I always thought they were a planetary empire before the Hur’q, and the ships the Klingons damaged enough to get left behind were studied, leading to warp drive and expansion into neighbouring systems. Good point about Roman concrete though, we still don’t know exactly what it was made from. There’s also Persian Fire, I think it was called (edit: Greek Fire?), which was a better Napalm than Napalm. I hadn’t considered that the Klingons could’ve gained and then lost warp drive really, since I always imagined Kahless being in a kind of Enlightenment-type technology society (such as the afterlife only mentioning oceangoing ships, not spacefaring ones).
One weird alternative explanation... what if the Klingons gave warp drive to *themselves*? It is heavily implied that the Klingons are actually pretty sophisticated when it comes to certain types of technology, especially in areas where the Federation may not be as dominant. Time travel in particular is a field where they have a strong advantage ("Through the Valley of Shadows", "Quality of Mercy", "Firstborn", "Endgame"). At times they have used it in a way that's a little more casual than other powers (compare the need to use the Borg Queen for time travel calculations in "Assimilation" versus Alexander just running across some dude that could send him back in time in "Firstborn" or Korath selling a time travel device to Janeway in Endgame). They also, however, realized that using it as a weapon would have unpredictable consequences ("Through the Valley of Shadows"), implying that they had also tried experimenting with such technologies in the past with dire results. They did have a massive leg up with time travel though as the only known natural source of time crystals was also a place of significant cultural importance. As Kahless specifically pointed out the *one* planet in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants with known natural time crystal deposits, this pushed the Klingons to occupy that planet ("Rightful Heir"). Note that this was probably done with warp drive as the monastery was implied to not have a full colony associated with it ("Through the Valley of Shadows"), and the notion of coming to the monastery to ask questions of Kahless would be a bit absurd if it could only be reached with a generation ship. The addition of the Temporal War and Temporal Accords ("Die Trying") indirectly suggest that the timeline seen in Star Trek is not our timeline, and in fact may reflect significant tampering from the "real" human history. If that is true, why wouldn't this be true of the Klingons too? If in the original timeline there was no Eugenics Wars, perhaps the Kllingons were a poor, backwater power with a long history of barbarism and no clear ethos to guide their culture in that timeline. A time agent could have been sent both to give them cultural guidance and push them to occupy a planet that would be probably one of the most strategic locations in the Temporal War, potenitally even giving early Klingons warp drive technology to accomplish that goal.
I think they basic warp when the hur'q invaded, then reversed engineered their advancements. That would also explain why Klingon have Disruptors (plasma weapons) when the rest of the quadrant chose Phasers (beam weapons).
In the video game, “Star Trek: Klingon Academy”, it explains that the Klingons acquired warp drive and other technologies from the Hur'q, a vicious race of conquerors who attempted to plunder the Klingon homeworld, Q'onos, around the time of Earth's 14th century.
i'm surprised you didn't mention the Fek'lhri and the Founders having possibly introduced warp drive technology to the Klingons. also, the baghdad battery was almost certainly not a battery as the only evidence that it was is that it contained an acidic substance, which could have just been some kind of alcohol.
Funny. Shortly after The Motion Picture-there was a history of Star Fleet published. In it we learned that Coccerin was from Alpha Centuri. And Humans made the first trip there at sub light. Humans and Centuians created the warp drive together.
Perhaps the reason why the Klingon Empire is not as expansive as it could be despite existing since at least the 9th century AD at the earliest is in-fighting among all the houses. I imagine it'd be difficult to focus on expanding the Empire if it's an Empire in name only, each house acting more or less on its own, and not only having to worry about threats from outside the Empire but their neighbors as well.
Considering it seems, atleast to me, that they got alot of technology and ideas during their alliance with the Romulans it leads me to think they got warp drive from another race, with the possible exception of a primitive version similar to Cochrane's version. I will admit Im not totally sure on all the details of the alliance, probably know the behind the scenes details better then inuniverse details.
Klingons used to have awesome warp capability. While far from home they had a run in with the H'urq and because of their warrior nature, they attacked. That's how they knew of the Klingons. After they repelled the H'urq, the Klinon High Counsol agreed that if they didn't draw back warp tech that, due to that warrior nature, that the H'urq wouldn't be the last species with superior tech to come knocking on the front door.
"If his words hold wisdom and his philosophy is honorable, what does it matter if he returns? What is important is that we follow his teachings. Perhaps the words are more important than the man." -Kahless the Unforgettable
In my head-canon, the Klingons developed warp-drive during the lifetime of the original Kahless. Certainly, uniting a planet requires a certain level of advanced infrastructure that would facilitate the construction and research into FTL-systems. And I believe that the Klingons were able to colonise a few nearby systems, but this expansion drew the interest of the Hur'q, who invaded, plundered and ravaged all Klingon planets. Keep in mind that we know that the Hur'q never settled long-term, only plundered and stole artifacts. We also know that the Klingons "killed their gods" around the same time. After the Klingons fought the Hur'q back and erased their gods from existence, they likely used the remains of the Hur'q ships and technology to powerboost their own for a rapid expansion. Far more rapid than before, because now the Klingons were driven by both vengeance against these invaders and the want to create a multi-layered buffer-zone around Qo'noS. This lead to the subjugation of several neighbouring civilisations and their assimilation into the Klingon Empire. We also know of the Aldean, who cloaked their entire planet against "their enemy" (TNG: "When the Bough breaks"), which could be the Hur'q, giving a rough approximation of the reach of these pillagers.
So, what do you think? When did the Klingons achieve warp drive?
I think the Klingons stole the tech after they killed the Klingon gods.
I would think they had stole it from the hurk after their invasion.
Klingons used to have more professions than just being a warrior, so I wouldn't put it past Klingons developing warp travel by themselves.
@@marwig87 That is only a theory, me they reversed engineered the tech after the hurk were driven away. If Kirtzmen writes the canon version, I will not be impressed. #FuckAlexKirtzmen
I've got a question: Did the Hur'q travel through the Bajoran wormhole or use a Iconian gateway in the Gamma Quadrant? Because the Iconian gateway would explain why they only attacked the Klingons.
The Klingon lawyer that represented Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise said that Klingons used to have a more diverse range of professions and only in the last couple of generations that becoming a warrior has been the only profession that Klingons want to do. So that could explain the Klingon Empire not growing rapidly.
Like the way children now all want to be UA-camrs and pro gamers - lack of diversificatoin.
@@the_kombinator I'm just saying that if the Klingons had fewer warriors/soldiers in the past, might be the reason that the Empire might have grown slower if they have had warp technology for several hundred years and that Klingons used to have more Doctors, Scientists and Engineers so that it is more likely they developed warp travel by themselves.
no ... here is a twist. What if a peaceful Vulcans trader left Vulcan in warp ship. This before their “only contact warp capable” species.
When the Vulcan stepped out his ship to give him the Vulcan high-five, victory salute, the Klingon stabs him in the chest. He then reverse engineers warp ushering a new era of conquest and the Klingon space empire.
The name of this Klingon? Zephka of the house of Kokra. How’s that for a coincidence.
Now the Vulcans were furious. This was incidence that parcipated the hotly debated topic of contacting non-warp and Vulcan's non-interference directive and lead to their law.
The most interesting thing is that at his trial Zephka claimed that in his family the Vulcan's salute was a sign like our finger. He was only defending the honor of his clan under klingon law and since the Vulcan was on Klingon, his defense council claimed klingon law should apply. The Vulcan prosecutor claimed there was no such history of Vulcan salute resembling anything. But Zephka said it was close and his being older and of poor eyesight, which he was ashamed only mentioned now in self-defense, was what resulted in this unfortunate incidence. And Zepka said he only had the Vulcans word and after the fact that it was a peace greeting and not the bird.
Zepka and the other klingon clan leaders were afraid that Vulcan with powerful weapons and space travel technology would destroy Klingon. This is why Klingon alowed Zephka to be put on trial, but on Klingon.
The whole idea that Archer wanted to return a klingon was "upsetting" to Saval. But he did not let on to this. This whole history is a thing Vulcans do not speak because it's in part an admission they are responsible for Klingon empire and its start.
I spoke to a Vulcan from the high command. She mind melded with me as it is more pleasurable than sex to some vulcans. She said she had never done it with an alien and was only curious, because she was awed by my intellect and creativity, if not my perverse sense of irony and humor. I'm like okay, but just as long as I don't find myself carrying a love child in 16 months. But she assured me that it is always the Vulcan female that got pregnant. So, I decided to do it. And learned all this as in the meld you can discover things.
After the loving ... I mean mind meld I asked her how she knew so much of the klingon motivation. She said she was part of the delegation that went for trial. She had chance to meld with a klingon. She told me the meld was rough. Fortunately, he was older and she had her Vulcan stamina. She also wore a ....
Then I realized the "never done it with alien" was a lie and just a come on to get me to do it and make me feel special. But then she apologized for any misunderstanding and actually meant with human and not alien.
Lol
Ditto. They acquired the advanced tech, not invented it.
Ditto. They acquired the advanced tech, not invented it.
The "Bagdad Battery" was never a battery. It was a storage jar for scrolls. Scrolls that decomposed.
If the Hur'q came through the Bajoran wormhole, it could explain why the Klingon Empire has expanded so far into the Beta Quadrant. They were expanding away from the direction that Hur'q must have traveled.
which would then beg the question, why didn't the Hur'q subjugate Bajor?
@@claytonberg721 Maybe The Prophets protected them. But in my opinion the Hur'q probably found an Iconian gateway and just picked Kronos or another planet in the Klingon Empire and built warp drive
@@marwig87 Or the Hur'q were an Iconian Servant-Species.
Good analysis
The Klingons taking Hur’Q tech after their invasion is a good case for the prime directive. They obtained tech before they were ready, hence their famed aggression.
Maybe much of it was independent though. We still don’t fully know.
Actually, the rate of expansion of the Klingons makes perfect sense, even if they had Warp capabilities since around the 14th century earth. Consider that they are a warrior race, they do not allow other races to join them, they conquer them, and thus the rate of expansion would be considerably slower, as wars would be waged, supply lines to maintain, governing the new worlds, etc. In contrast, the Federation expands in territory by adding the worlds to it's roster.
rapid expansion drive is also a lot of what made vulcans skeptical of humans early on, then consider that the klingon empire's blob is about the same size as the federation blob (which also includes vulcan and andorian space as well as human and anyone else that wants to more or less), and that they've been expanding slowly since the 9the century makes perfect sense.
Its easy to conquer but hard to control especially when you have empires that stretch out in all 3 dimensions and by hundreds or thousands of light years.
Awesome video! I loved the Klingons as "the bad guys" until TNG. Now I'm more fascinated by Klingon history and culture. I look at them more as "good guys". Could you imagine if Worf had his own show and have a chance to explore the Klingons even more? Sure would be nice but for now, I can only dream about it.
I would've loved a Captain Worf show!
Here is how you extract a history from a cultures language:
Tolkien (Elves & Dwarves): valianttheywere.blogspot.com/2022/02/linguistic-archaeology-history-of.html
Ancient Egypt: valianttheywere.blogspot.com/2021/09/linguistic-archaeology-egyptians-in-pdf.html
To do that to Klingon you would need klingon names and a dictionary of klingon words and a realization that it is fictional and likely randomly assigned as opposed to the result of growth.
Better Idea, Michael Dorn plays Mogh, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great great-great-great grandfather of Colonel Worf (the lawyer who Kirk met), in the early years of the Empire.
No Humans are ever seen, as they won't develop warp drive for decades.
I am Klingon and I give you a thumbs up
I could see the Klingon's developing an initial warp drive around the 10th century AD with the express purpose of going to Borath, the warp tech would have been fairly primitive and only get to speeds of say warp 1.3, good enough to get to Borath but not much good for exploring and sense they accomplished the goal of reaching Borath the tech stagnated due in fighting among the houses on the homeworld. The Hur'q invasion would have made the Klingon's revisit their warp tech and improve upon it using stolen Hur'q tech and they would begin to slowly branch out and start conquering neighboring systems before they become a threat, the only thing that would slow down there expansion is there distrust of other species so they would always be stuck with a manpower shortage to build and crew there ships. The Klingon Empire is rather large and we never see non Klingon's on ships or stations, not even as slaves or menial labor.
This makes the most sense to me. Some time after Kahless death the Klingons could have turned on each other leading to a period of infighting and technological stagnation. The Hur'q invasion unites the Klingons against a common enemy and encourages them to create more advanced warp drives with the help of some captured Hur'q tech.
I like this.
I like the ideal of T'Kuvma's Sarcophagus ship being a relic from before the Hur'q invasion.
It's cloaking tech is different then Romulan cloaks and was unknown to other Kligon houses until he reintroduced it (Klingons later trade for Romulan cloaking tech) combined with the fact that some of the bodies on it hull were said to thousands of years old It could easily be lost tech.
T'Kuvma family could have been outcast or deep space explorers on a generational ship during the hur'q invasion thus not near Qo'noS and spared from the brunt of the invasion and loss of technology that there home world suffered, And there warp capabilities were simply to slow to get there in time to fight in the invasion thus leaving them as possibly the last the last purely Kligon designed ship built before Qo'noS started rebuilding and using Hur'q Technology.
It's know the ship had been passed from father to son over generations but had fallen into disrepair after the passing of T'Kuvma's father when he was young and that it took him a decent part of his life to restore and perhaps upgrade his ship using hur'q derived tech, He was attempting to restore his house in Kligon society when he died.
Since We are stuck with Discovery being part of Star Trek history we might as well try to retcon it into know lore and events.
You may want to double check the Baghdad battery stuff 😅
I really like how you approached this topic. Awesome job.
If you're taking it from a dead enemy, it's not stealing; it's corpse looting.
Another great video. Inciteful, thought-provoking, well delivered and smoothly edited. I love the subtle background music that gives your videos depth while not taking over. Nice work.
Very interesting! I’d always assumed that they “borrowed” much of their more advanced technology from other races, considering the Klingons are such as aggressive species. I know that times of war (at least on earth) tend to spur technological advancement, however I’ve never associated Klingon culture with one that particularly values intellectual or scientific endeavors.
I know what you mean, but in one of the episodes it is explainer there are different classes. They are not all from the warrior class.
@@kornuithildr4129 Ah. That makes sense. I can’t believe I missed that. Was that a TNG episode?
Same would have been true of humanity if the nx01 enterprise captured that stricken raptor class ship at gas giant.as well as cripple the ship which asked them to surrender .then archer overloaded the phasers .
With both those ships scanned in detail and pulled apart to examine they could have rivalled andorians.
As Archer's lawyer points out, Klingon society was not always quite as warlike, hostile, and dominated by the warrior class as it is in the 22nd-24th century. With Kahless not only setting forth a warrior ethos but also a code of honorable conduct for all Klingons as well as him being described as a just and fair ruler for all, we can infer that Klingons lost their way much like the Vulcans strayed from the true teachings of Kahless. It is said that Klingons once had classes of warriors, law, a political class, scientists, laborers and artisans, various specialists in different fields, doctors, artists, philosophers, and every other field and that anyone could achieve honor so long as they behaved honorably and strove for excellence in whatever field they chose. What's happened is the warrior caste came to dominate society to such a degree that the other classes are seen as lesser. As the lawyer said, "we were a great society once, but now all young people want to do is pick up weapons. They find honor in victory--any victory--but what honor is there in an easy victory over a weaker opponent. Not so long ago honor was defined by noble deeds and acts of true courage."
Well much like we "borrowed" technology from that crashed Roswell saucer. And yet we still don't have FTL, so reverse engineering must be very hard.
Yepper! Another interesting and we'll researched video!! Thank you oh great sir of the river that is orange 😁
The Bagdad battery has been proven not to be a "battery" of any kind. It was actually a prayer jar, who happened to have stuff it needed to give off a slight charge. It was convergent evolution in a way.
I think 99% of people still don't know this.
Don’t forget to be awesome is back!!
Good analysis too, I think they might have developed warp drive early but maybe a primitive warp 1. So you can expand slowly, but not overrun the quadrant.
Wooo Hooooo! Finally gettin' to watch it!! This makes 2 Fridays in a row work delayed my viewing! Now .... I'm a watch this!!!
Back in the 1970's I bought a publication from Lincoln Enterprises that said Klingons reverse engineered a crashed warp vessel they discovered. I can't remember if it said when or where this happened.
5:00 I like the explanation that Quark isn't as familiar with other plants history...after all, how well do I know the history of Australia or New Zealand?
...also I like that you said "from where I am standing, or in this case sitting. "
Love your videos, bro. You make the nerdiness seem professional and high brow. Keep up the good work.
Great video! Thanks!
Every appearance of a Klingon D-7 Sombrero makes me laugh.
I had never thought of feudal Klingons being jump started into a space traveling species. Or if they had some kind of travel before the H'urq. If the later is true, would that also help explain the vast variety of klingon appearance? Lost colonies developed on their own only to be reconquored and re absorbed into the New Empire.
This was a great dive into klingons. We know so much but also so little about them. Like the Enterprise episode with the Klingon lawyer "You didn't think all of us were warriors, did you?" Um, up until he said that, yeah I kinda did.
Klingons hate change but war motivates change and innovation. I can't imagine how ancient Klingons fought national wars... and didn't wipe themselves out.
Can't wait for your next video
A point about Roman concrete. It wasn't so much lost, as they stopped using it because exporting the specific limestone from just outside of Rome was too pricey due to ancient inflation.
Edit: Please correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe that the limestone has specific properties that made hit good for Roman concrete.
A species doesn't just require a decent warp drive, to expand into an empire, it also needs to develop weapons & reliable life support systems as well.
If Earth had a practical Warp 3 (27c) drive system tomorrow, it would still take us at least a few decades to learn to build fabricate feasible starships capable of surviving voyages to our nearest stars. then there's our current weapons technology: Chemical explosive missiles, nuclear missiles, rail guns, naval artillery guns, basic low powered lasers, etc. which would be considered crude & feeble, by the era ENT is set in.
I'm pretty sure we already have air recycling tech, so that's no big issue. And functional laser weapons do exist, and lasers are inherently a lot easier to use as weapons in a vacuum since there's no air to get in the way of the beam. We couldn't have artificial gravity like in ST, but the use of centripetal force to simulate gravity is a known, if not often used, technology.
Food would probably be the biggest issue, since plants generally grow pretty slowly and making edible stuff from our waste products is a lot harder than just filtering and treating urine to get drinkable water.
To be fair, the fact that you can get places so quickly with warp drive actually makes a lot of the problems associated with space travel go away. Like food........you can now carry enough. The human body degrading.......well you'll be on the next planet in a few days, not so big a deal. Water and life support.......again you won't need them long before resupply. Materials...........well you have an almost endless supply all of a sudden. The ship capable of withstanding warp travel is the most pressing matter. After that things get easier.
I think the new catchphrase for geopolitics in outer space is "exopolitics."
Exo- outside/beyond
Xeno- alien/other
I’d be inclined to use Exo- for inanimate objects, eg Exo-Metallurgy for asteroid mining; and Xeno- for animate objects, eg Xeno-Biology for studying life forms.
A bit tricky when applied to “politics” as it’s an inanimate concept relating to animate beings... perhaps go a 3rd way and call it “Astro-Relations” 🚀
This was very enjoyable! Thank you. Another thing to consider is interstellar space junk. Ancient lost ships and tech falling into orbit or the planet surface could jump start a civilization into progress they may have never achieved "naturally". 🤔
Editing your own work will give you an immense appreciation for how easy it is to create continuity errors >_
I've always thought the Klingons got advanced technology from the Hur'q and they learned how to create it, but it took them a long time to really learn how it worked leading them to be on rough technological parity with the powers that would go on to form the Federation. Discounting, of course, Discovery's "additions" to Klingon history.
I’m fairly certain the “Baghdad Battery,” as it’s called, was a single clay pot, not an array of cylinders. No evidence of any others of its kind have ever been found. It’s even contested that it was ever operational as a battery to begin with, just that it’s *possible* that it could function as a 1V battery if it was filled with an acid of some kind. If it was a battery, it was probably a novelty, and not used for any industrial purpose like electro-plating.
As a warrior empire I guess I'd assume that backstabbing and infighting could have acted as brakes.
As well, I find the option of the Hur'q invasion actually being predicated upon early Klingon spaceflight kind of plausible. Perhaps it was an early Klingon spacecraft that attracted their attention in the first place. It might have also delayed their exploration of their immediate surroundings until they "armed up", as they were wary of attracting further negative attention to themselves before they felt capable of defending the Homeworld.
I think I enjoy more these situations with many questions and no clear answers. So much more to think about! 😁👍
When the Klingons were invaded by the alien race they were already having primitive interplanetary flights and establishing space colonies but they did not have FTL for several more centuries. Probably realizing the dangers they faced out there the Klingons had to first develop impulse drives, magnetic-plasma shielding, advanced armor plating, transporters, tractor beams and energy disruptor weapons. By the time these technologies were developed the warp drive was ready. Their first forays into interstellar space was not monitored like the way the Vulcans did with Earth and they were also more prepared to deal with threats when they encountered them unlike the first earth starships like the NX-01 Enterprise which had no tractor beam, plasma shields, warp capable torpedoes or phase cannons until much later.
The warrior class is just one of many, like the Samurai. We don't see enough of their scientists or Engineers because the Klingon warrior caste dominated space travel/exploration/conquest. In short, I'm pretty confident they developed their own warp technology.
Possibly.
It makes sense during war military funding produces dramatic innovations. And advancement becomes more important.
According to Canon, they dominate more than just space travel. They dominate all of society. Look at the Enterprise wanna be tos movie episodes. Where archer gets put on trial.
@@nyetloki yes the episode in tos with kor , he and kirk discuss the Klingon empire vs federation. The later st writers changed them . In undiscovered country, they are like the Soviets and federation is America. Soviets were a super power . ( in every way) good or bad system isn't relevant.
I have always wondered how the Klingons, who embrace a warrior lifestyle so much, were ever able to get to this point in their advancement as a society. I feel like they stole warp tech from some outside invaders who underestimated the Klingons. That might explain why their empire is not huge because relative to the Romulans, they might not be so strategy minded.
They punched spacetime untile it warped right.
the Baghdad battery is very well known to be a myth
Great vid, although... even if we were to build new Saturn V engines, each engine built was literally finished "by hand" make each a custom engine. To repeat the building of said engines we'd not only need the engineers notes, but the builders notes from the welders and millwrights that literally tuned the engines. It's my understanding the NASA either lost or destroyed said notes.
In the game Klingon Acadamy, it is said that Klingons developed warp drive and somewhere down the line Kirk is the result of a Klingon/Earthling crossbreeding.
I always held on to the Hur'q upliftment theory but (ignoring any time/multiverse chicanery including Boreth's time crystals) the timeline never added up with some of Klingon.
It is possible that they achieved non-dilithium low warp like Cochrane did or maybe something like Bajoran lightships and then that was lost because of the Hur'q invasion.
I like that you pointed out the haphazard nature of technological evolution I usually reference Greek Fire as an example as well
Do a video on the Vulcans warp drive development. From what I've read they invented warp in 900 BC. And by the time of enterprise they have only achieved warp 7. That means that humans nearly achieved in 100 years what it took the Vulcans about 3000 years. What was the cause of their incredibly slow development? We see in Enterprise that they are a uniquely uncurious race so maybe they just didn't have the interest in researching it. Were there just no vulcans interested in pushing the technology or did something happen that made them stop advancing? Its always been an interesting question because they seem to be one of the first races to get Warp but are quickly surpassed by nearly every warp capable power.
They most like were greatly set back by the Vulcan civil war leading to the ancestors of the Romulans being pushed off of Vulcan.
I don't think they were not curious - Hey a warp signature in a place that should have none- it is logical to ignore it and continue on course to research a dust cloud instead. :P
@@the_kombinator in ENT they definitely portray them as not curious. There are several instances of the vulcans questioning why the humans want to study things. I remember an example when they want to study a gas giant and T'pol says "you have gas giants in your solar system, why do you want to study another". To me that shows a lack of curiosity that could lead to missing out on advancement. Think of it like studying tornados. What if 100 years ago we did a study and then everyone was like, well we've seen 1 tornado, no point in ever researching further. Sure you could record everything possible at the time to record about it, but you never know what else there is to learn if you don't study it further. This requires curiosity about the world, which the vulcans repeatedly don't show. He'll even their interactions with humans show a distinct lack of curiosity. They seem content to judge humanity on a few surface level characteristics rather than spending the time to actually get to know them and gain any true understanding. In fact any Vulcan that does show any curiosity about humans and tries to spend time around them is looked at like there is something wrong with them.
@@dash4800 Good points actually.
The lack of curiosity was partly pushed by the Romulan influence, since Surak’s katra said they weren’t always like that. But yes, Trip said it took them 200 years to “crack warp 2”, so we can assume every single warp scale increase took multiple Vulcan generations (they live ~250 years so let’s assume a generation is like 60-80 years on Vulcan rather than the ~20 it is here).
Very well done, and thank you.
Fan of FASA's STRPG back in the day, so your explanation is appreciated.
I Always thought the klingons got certain known Star Trek Tech from the Hur'Q Invasion. They Reversed engineered it but it took them a few decades or even centuries so they could only establish the Klingon Empire relatively shortly before the events of Star Trek Enterprise. Yes they seemingly had Space flight Technology before but only sublight.
When they got rid of the Hur'Q and disvovered Warp Drive, it was Like a Homo Sapiens finding a Diesel engine
You always thought that? When is the hrur''Q first mentioned in Star Trek?
@@loctite222ms In DS9 afaik
Nice video; like the historical references. One of the ways that TNG annoyed me when it premiered in the late 80s is the way TNG fundamentally changed the “personality” Klingon culture. The Klingons of TOS were more than physically different, they were culturally different. Commander Kor in “Errand of Mercy” was the perfect example. He was an aristocrat. He was sophisticated, educated, diplomatic, and enjoyed the finer things.
Koloth was much the same, if less sincere and honest. Kang, as so many characters portrayed with the gravitas of Michael Ansara, was a bit more like the honorable samurai-like personally which has sometimes been used to describe Klingons (although not often displayed by modern TNG-era Klingons); Kang was noble, honorable, and reasonable. Other Klingons we met in “Friday’s Child” and “A Private Little War” were more underhanded but still represented an empire which was sophisticated, scientific, and politically savvy.
One could easily believe that these Klingons of old were self-made when it came to science and technology. Even the Klingons of the TOS movies displayed a similar cultural sophistication despite being physically altered.
Early TNG, however, in many ways did a disservice to the Klingons in portraying them as near-animalistic at times, as wild-eyed Viking warriors, barely capable of rising above their most base desires to murder and pillage. With this new mindset, the writers fell into the trap of underestimating the intellect of their own creations, going so far as to imply that the Klingons may have even been too stupid to develop warp drive on their own-forgetting that the Vikings, because of their many military ventures and the need to innovate for them, were actually the most technologically advanced people in all of Europe. They had the best armor, the most lethal weapons, and ships which could literally cross the Atlantic Ocean centuries before Columbus. It’s an unfortunate fact of history that war advances technology faster than peace.
I’m sure the Klingons would have picked up some pointers from the Hur’q, but I tend to give the Klingons more credit than some writers in the TNG-era seemed to. Even reverse engineering takes a great deal of know-how.
Imagine learning General Relativity in a Klingon math class
"The klingon warp drive, a mighty warrior itself like the race that built it, forces the universe itself to bend to its will. The universe, being a worthless vulcan-like petaq, submits and propels the klingon ship faster than even light itself"
The Bagdad Battery information needs updating but this video is amazing!
Bejorans be like "hop into my solar sail, lets go to the gamma quad"
I had always figured that it was reverse engineered from hurq technology
Considering the fact Klingons originated as cost cutting measure, they made it really far.
I quite like the interpretation that the Klingons reverse engineered warp drive from the Hur'q, I think it neatly explains why the Klingons are stuck in their early medieval state of cultural development, because they just leapfrogged over whatever would have been their own equivalent of a renaissance, industrial revolution, information age, etc, and landed straight into a hi-tech post-scarcity world where there wouldn't be any economic forces pushing their cultures to adapt and change.
Written Klingon bears a striking resemblance to the Daedric text.
My theory has always been this:
We know that their first contact event was NOWHERE NEAR as positive as ours. The HurQ enslaved them, plundered their precious artifacts, and took planetary resources. This also influenced their perceived xenophobia and even the level of HOW aggressive, militaristic, and warlike we see them as one could get the feeling that the original teachings of Kahless prior to that might have "balanced them out." I agree with you that they likely reverse-engineered it after driving them off. As far as agency, I think it shows a roughly medieval people being, at their base, intelligent enough to comprehend the technology, analyze it, and be technically-proficient enough to duplicate it. And then, certainly, once getting to the point of being fully spacefaring, we do see them able to innovate somewhat on their own. As far as Molor bringing the whole planet under his regime, remember that, whereas out planet has multiple continents, they have a Pangaea, so that would be quite a bit easier to do than here.
Don't forget during the TNG ep emissary the Klingon battle cruiser from the former Klingon war with the Federation was still using cryo sleep because of the time and fuel needed to travel long distances through space when it was sent on it's mission so it couldn't have been that long since they got dependable warp drive.
These species' forays... HAVE made for some fascinating television.
One problem I have always had with the Klingons is how did they get the technology they have. Their general temperament is that of a warrior race beyond anything we know on earth. They appear to have little respect for those who desire knowledge or what we would call the finer things of life. Unless something can be turned to use for war or conquest, they have little use for it.
Given their similarities to one of Star Trek's most iconic races, the Kazon, I think the Klingons might have obtained their modern warp technology in a similar way but with a few key differences.
Both have a history of antagonism with a more advanced species, the Trabe for the Kazon and the Hur'q for the Klingons.
Both have a rather feudal society, the Klingon Houses and the Kazon Sects, with often complex and antagonistic relations with one another.
Both value military prowess and strength, though the Klingons are MUCH better at it.
We also see some key differences between them. The Klingons are capable of repairing and producing their technology, while the Kazon don't, or at least they don't inspire confidence in their techno-prowess. Also, the Klingons, for all their divisions and rivalries, are more firmly united under a central government; the Kazon don't even have the pretense of being unified. Their brief unification under a single leader was the exception, not the norm. Lastly, the Klingons were only briefly occupied by the Hur'q whereas the Kazon were subjugated for centuries.
This implies to me that the Klingons DID develop warp drive and other technologies on their own rather than simply stealing it from the Hur'q. To repair and produce technology you need to have a deep understanding of how it works, which you are more likely to possess if you actually made it yourself. The Hur'q probably had an impact but this could have been virtually anything. Their plundering may have destroyed Klingon infrastructure and industry, setting them back, but the exposure to their technology may have inspired Klingon engineers and scientists by showing them new possibilities and giving them new tech to play around with, pushing them forward. In either case, I think it's clear that the Kingons are much more gifted in science and technology than many people give them credit for.
You remember how angry and defensive that the few Klingon engineers and scientists you see on screen were? I bet they go through a LOT of shit to work in those fields, so I wouldn't count out their abilities, if they're willing to put up with social scorn to do the job.
I would love to see a video on the Klingons, the Hurq and Klingon political history and specifically just what the "Empire" looks like. I mean, mostly we've only ever seen the homeworld and heard about a couple of other planets -- and that's it.
In one of the Star Trek novels it talks about the Karsid Empire that used the Klingons as mercenaries. Eventually the Klingons managed to overthrow the Karsids and by doing so took over their technology and empire. The idea was that Klingons were like a medieval society that suddenly obtained high tech spaceships and weapons.
They could have invented warp drive, but a Warp1-2 drive might have been the best available for a very long time, meaning travelling between star systems would have been possible but taken a very long time therefore slowing down expansion.
I think the hurk. Is the answer. At least an intro to work.
I like the orange and green lighting. 🤟
It's amazing that the Klingon's had much in the way of advanced technology at all because Klingon families would tend to berate, and almost shun their kids for even wanting to be scientists, engineers, or intellectuals because it wasn't as honorable to the clan as dying in battle as a warrior.
the word "steal" makes the mighty Klingon Empire sound like a bunch of Ferengi. The Klingon conquer. They "conquered" warp drive.
Loved the Jim Ignatowsky Klingon.
Dont forget 'warp drive' is on a scale. Perhaps the Klingons had warp drive 1 but was able to leap frog to warp 6 (or what ever) due to the influence of invasion/comquest/trade.
Peace!
\o/
Peace
The steam engine, mechanical gears, Greek fire, Damascus steel the list goes on.
Sounds like a Larry Niven "history of the Kzinti"
Please go into detail on Klingon government and history. I can't be the only one who wants it. 👍👍👍👍
My impression was that Klingon expansion was largely hampered by rivalries and infighting between the various great houses.
I find it exceedingly unlikely that the Baghdad Battery was used for electroplating, as *that* technology would require a bit of chemistry, and some other knowledge they did not possess at the time. I have no earthly idea what it *was* used for, but I can't believe that was it.
Star trek writers should watch your videos
My personal headcanon is similar to your Hur'q theory; but I tie in their mythology.
To quote Word "Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth."
They got warp drive from a race that had subjugated them about a thousand years ago. I've seen other theories that they are like the Jem'Hadar, a genetically created/modified warrior race. This would also fit my theory, and also fixes the agency issues if they literally destroyed the species that created them.
This left them with access to warp capable ships; but it took a while until they were able to actually build them. This allows them to expand the way they did while limiting their ability to overrun the entire quadrant. It also makes Quark's statement potentially accurate, they could have had little or no warp capacity for a good period of time after dealing with the Hur'q.
Many Klingon ships may also be ancient, potentially not made by them. This would explain why so many ships seen in the first season of Discovery look so different from what we are used to from Klingons. The ships we see in that season are not Klingon manufactured. Definitely explains the tomb ship.
And that also explains how we don't see new Klingon ships very often. In Next Gen, they are still using Bird of Prey from the movie era.
Very interesting. I'd missed the age of the Khaless monastery. At least my thinking was that the monastery was constructed many centuries after Khaless pointed out the star. The Hurq connection made sense to me in that the Klingons become a sort of 'uplifted' race. They 'stole' the tech from the Hurq, albeit I do see them having to go on a crash course to educate themselves to understand it. The sort of caste system of the pre-22nd Century that honored teachers and such (as related to Jonathon Archer by the Klingon lawyer in ENTERPRISE) suggests that the Klingons 'enlightened' themselves in order to take what they had and reach the stars. But after succeeding, they fell to older cultural traditions.
Such an uplifted race might often have such issues of cultural primitiveness? The Roddenberry ideal of advanced races having overcome a propensity to war not sticking to such races that were uplifted, even if they did do half the work themselves in understanding what they'd inherited? Another reason for the Prime Directive.
Warp travel is multi-level tech. Personally, I even think of impulse as having a great deal to do with warp fields so as to neutralize mass effects in travel, hence how a large starship can travel at relativistic speeds and then stop on a dime. A race that has impulse power without FTL could still reach neighboring star systems in a somewhat reasonable time. At least we'd certainly be very happy if such technology came available! Reaching warp is relatively easy. Traveling a multiple warp factors is much harder. Humans spent almost a human lifetime traveling at less than warp 2. The Vulcans and perhaps several other races struggling for centuries to beat the 'Warp 2 barrier'. Much work then being necessary to reach a more stable warp 5 and 6 by struggling through difficult warps 3 and 4.
Anyway, regardless of if the Klingons developed warp on their own, or got it from the Hurq, they might have spent a long time, many generations, traveling under the warp 2 barrier. Still, traveling to neighboring star systems in several months rather than over a decade would be quite a boon. But they'd have a hard time spreading out several sectors from Qo'noS.
Mycenaean Greeks forgot how to write for a few hundred years. Then borrowed a new alphabet from the Phonoecians and started writing more or less the same language again. It can happen
After the barbarians known as anglos led a siege on Roman that starved mosts it's population.
I always thought they were a planetary empire before the Hur’q, and the ships the Klingons damaged enough to get left behind were studied, leading to warp drive and expansion into neighbouring systems. Good point about Roman concrete though, we still don’t know exactly what it was made from. There’s also Persian Fire, I think it was called (edit: Greek Fire?), which was a better Napalm than Napalm. I hadn’t considered that the Klingons could’ve gained and then lost warp drive really, since I always imagined Kahless being in a kind of Enlightenment-type technology society (such as the afterlife only mentioning oceangoing ships, not spacefaring ones).
How dare you accuse the Klingons of dishonorably stealing warp technology!
It hurts me to even suggest they did such a thing! Lol
How about history of FTL of other races?
Very interesting video, however the baghdad battery is most likely NOT a battery
If you want a unique perspective on the Klingon culture (set when the UFP didn't have transporters) read The Final Refle ction. Great book
One weird alternative explanation... what if the Klingons gave warp drive to *themselves*?
It is heavily implied that the Klingons are actually pretty sophisticated when it comes to certain types of technology, especially in areas where the Federation may not be as dominant. Time travel in particular is a field where they have a strong advantage ("Through the Valley of Shadows", "Quality of Mercy", "Firstborn", "Endgame"). At times they have used it in a way that's a little more casual than other powers (compare the need to use the Borg Queen for time travel calculations in "Assimilation" versus Alexander just running across some dude that could send him back in time in "Firstborn" or Korath selling a time travel device to Janeway in Endgame). They also, however, realized that using it as a weapon would have unpredictable consequences ("Through the Valley of Shadows"), implying that they had also tried experimenting with such technologies in the past with dire results.
They did have a massive leg up with time travel though as the only known natural source of time crystals was also a place of significant cultural importance. As Kahless specifically pointed out the *one* planet in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants with known natural time crystal deposits, this pushed the Klingons to occupy that planet ("Rightful Heir"). Note that this was probably done with warp drive as the monastery was implied to not have a full colony associated with it ("Through the Valley of Shadows"), and the notion of coming to the monastery to ask questions of Kahless would be a bit absurd if it could only be reached with a generation ship.
The addition of the Temporal War and Temporal Accords ("Die Trying") indirectly suggest that the timeline seen in Star Trek is not our timeline, and in fact may reflect significant tampering from the "real" human history. If that is true, why wouldn't this be true of the Klingons too? If in the original timeline there was no Eugenics Wars, perhaps the Kllingons were a poor, backwater power with a long history of barbarism and no clear ethos to guide their culture in that timeline. A time agent could have been sent both to give them cultural guidance and push them to occupy a planet that would be probably one of the most strategic locations in the Temporal War, potenitally even giving early Klingons warp drive technology to accomplish that goal.
I think they basic warp when the hur'q invaded, then reversed engineered their advancements. That would also explain why Klingon have Disruptors (plasma weapons) when the rest of the quadrant chose Phasers (beam weapons).
In the video game, “Star Trek: Klingon Academy”, it explains that the Klingons acquired warp drive and other technologies from the Hur'q, a vicious race of conquerors who attempted to plunder the Klingon homeworld, Q'onos, around the time of Earth's 14th century.
i'm surprised you didn't mention the Fek'lhri and the Founders having possibly introduced warp drive technology to the Klingons. also, the baghdad battery was almost certainly not a battery as the only evidence that it was is that it contained an acidic substance, which could have just been some kind of alcohol.
I'm going with Quark ment the warp 5 drive, without that it takes a long time to get anywhere but possible.
Funny. Shortly after The Motion Picture-there was a history of Star Fleet published. In it we learned that Coccerin was from Alpha Centuri. And Humans made the first trip there at sub light.
Humans and Centuians created the warp drive together.
Perhaps the reason why the Klingon Empire is not as expansive as it could be despite existing since at least the 9th century AD at the earliest is in-fighting among all the houses. I imagine it'd be difficult to focus on expanding the Empire if it's an Empire in name only, each house acting more or less on its own, and not only having to worry about threats from outside the Empire but their neighbors as well.
Thanks
Considering it seems, atleast to me, that they got alot of technology and ideas during their alliance with the Romulans it leads me to think they got warp drive from another race, with the possible exception of a primitive version similar to Cochrane's version. I will admit Im not totally sure on all the details of the alliance, probably know the behind the scenes details better then inuniverse details.
Robotech would have been a better comparison than ID4 2.
Klingons used to have awesome warp capability. While far from home they had a run in with the H'urq and because of their warrior nature, they attacked. That's how they knew of the Klingons. After they repelled the H'urq, the Klinon High Counsol agreed that if they didn't draw back warp tech that, due to that warrior nature, that the H'urq wouldn't be the last species with superior tech to come knocking on the front door.
"If his words hold wisdom and his philosophy is honorable, what does it matter if he returns? What is important is that we follow his teachings. Perhaps the words are more important than the man."
-Kahless the Unforgettable
In my head-canon, the Klingons developed warp-drive during the lifetime of the original Kahless. Certainly, uniting a planet requires a certain level of advanced infrastructure that would facilitate the construction and research into FTL-systems. And I believe that the Klingons were able to colonise a few nearby systems, but this expansion drew the interest of the Hur'q, who invaded, plundered and ravaged all Klingon planets. Keep in mind that we know that the Hur'q never settled long-term, only plundered and stole artifacts. We also know that the Klingons "killed their gods" around the same time.
After the Klingons fought the Hur'q back and erased their gods from existence, they likely used the remains of the Hur'q ships and technology to powerboost their own for a rapid expansion. Far more rapid than before, because now the Klingons were driven by both vengeance against these invaders and the want to create a multi-layered buffer-zone around Qo'noS. This lead to the subjugation of several neighbouring civilisations and their assimilation into the Klingon Empire.
We also know of the Aldean, who cloaked their entire planet against "their enemy" (TNG: "When the Bough breaks"), which could be the Hur'q, giving a rough approximation of the reach of these pillagers.
When an advanced alien race enters space above Quo'nos: "Let’s lock the hatches, this is a bad neighborhood"
I don't follow non-canon sources and I distinctly remember them having warp drive since the 1600s.
If warfare drives technology, Klingons tech should have been advancing at much faster rates than most.
No they didn't steal it the Star Trek Writers gave it to them ]:P