In this discourse, we delve into the intricate dynamics of the ongoing conflict between Starfleet and the Klingons within the illustrious Star Trek franchise, seeking to uncover the virtues inherent in the Klingon culture. Recognizing that the Klingons are often portrayed as antagonists, we endeavor to challenge this perception by exploring their complex societal values, which encompass notions of honor, strength, and resilience. As we navigate through the historical context and cultural intricacies of both factions, we aim to illuminate the profound lessons that can be gleaned from the Klingon way of life, particularly in relation to themes of honor and familial loyalty. Our dialogue, hosted by myself, Joshua Noel, alongside my esteemed colleagues Andy Walsh and Herbie Ramsey, aspires to reveal the multifaceted nature of fandom, and by extension, the broader human experience. Through this examination, we endeavor to exemplify the overarching theme of our series, "Finding the Good," as we unravel the layers of complexity that define not only the Klingons but the very essence of conflict itself.

The third installment in our annual theme series, "Finding the Good," delves into the intricate dynamics between Starfleet and the Klingons, two of the most iconic factions within the Star Trek universe. Hosted by Joshua Noel, Andy Walsh, and Herbie Ramsey, this episode meticulously examines the long-standing conflict between these two groups, probing into the attributes of Klingon culture that may be perceived as commendable despite their often antagonistic portrayal. The conversation unfolds with a focus on the Klingons' warrior ethos, their sense of honor, and the cultural significance of strength and combat. Through a thoughtful analysis, the hosts endeavor to uncover the humanity within the Klingons, exploring their motivations and values that resonate even with Starfleet's principles of peace and exploration. By juxtaposing the peaceful aspirations of Starfleet against the martial traditions of the Klingons, the episode invites listeners to rethink their perceptions of what constitutes a 'good' culture, ultimately revealing that even in conflict, there exist elements worthy of admiration and respect.

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Takeaways:

• The ongoing conflict between Starfleet and the Klingons exemplifies the nuances of differing cultural values and the struggle for understanding.
• Worf's character highlights the complexity of balancing Klingon heritage with Starfleet ideals, representing a broader theme of identity and belonging.
• The concept of honor within Klingon culture, while often seen as aggressive, carries significant weight and meaning for Klingons, promoting loyalty and respect.
• Starfleet's mission of peace and exploration serves as a foil to the Klingon warrior ethos, prompting reflection on the nature of diplomacy and conflict resolution.
• The portrayal of the Klingons has evolved over time, suggesting a deeper exploration of their culture beyond mere antagonism in the Star Trek narrative.
• This episode underscores the importance of engaging with and understanding opposing perspectives, a theme that resonates in our contemporary societal discourse.

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We discuss all this and more in this one! Join in the conversation with us on Discord now!

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Support our show on Captivate or Patreon, or by purchasing a comfy T-Shirt in our store!

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Check out the rest of our "Finding the Good" series as we explore the theme of polarization this year:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/37fa0c3f-55f4-4cd4-b112-ca5476583ffa

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Listen to all of our Star Trek episodes:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/eaa2b4b8-b1cc-4a59-8885-489097aa423e

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Listen to all of Andy's episodes:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/c86f7a67-357b-4324-bf95-e42cedb9932a

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Don't miss any of Joshua's episodes:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/4559ab55-4b6a-4432-b0a7-b61540df8803

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Listen to all of Herbie's episodes:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/6fbca6e7-f712-4b8a-b942-1efe98f305cb

Mentioned in this episode:

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Foreign.

Without the risk of loss, victory has no value.

At least that's according to Worf from Star Trek the Next Generation.

Yeah, today, guys, we're going to be discussing about some disagreements.

We need the risk of loss when we think about Starfleet versus the Klingons.

That's right.

This is one of the Finding the Good episodes.

We're going to be looking at the contrast between Starfleet, Klingons, and trying to find the good in the other side.

Can't wait for this part of our annual theme.

I am Joshua Noel.

I'll be one of your hosts today, here with the one and only Retro Herbie.

Herbie Ramsey and Andy Walsh.

Excited to be here with you guys.

Why don't y'all kick us off?

What have you been geeking out on lately, Herbie?

Well, recently I've been doing yet another playthrough of Skyrim.

I am about done with that.

It's been the.

It's soaked up more time than it should for the last couple months.

No, no, that's a.

That's a worthwhile.

What are you playing on this time?

PlayStation Switch playing on PC.

Ah, nice.

All right, Andy, what have you been geeking out on, man?

My family and I really enjoyed the.

The Electric State over the weekend.

I think that puts us.

I think we might be Four of Nine or something like that.

People who will stick our heads out and say that we enjoyed it.

But yeah, we had a good time with some.

Some robots and.

Okay.

Some moral dilemmas.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's.

That's.

That.

That Netflix movie.

Yeah.

I was trying to get Will to watch it.

I thought that was fantastic.

I was so confused why it wasn't getting good ratings.

Like, this was a really good movie.

Yeah.

Do people just not want to like things anymore?

Is just that not a thing that we do?

I.

I don't know.

I.

For part of it, I was.

I was like.

I was kind of curious if it was just because one of those things where it's making commentary on certain social situations that people are uncomfortable with.

So they're like, I don't like it because it makes me uncomfortable.

But that's also me thinking there were some people, so maybe it's not that, but I don't know.

I thought it was really good.

So I'm gonna say that's what I was geeking out on too.

Cause, yeah, I did enjoy that over the weekend.

It was a fun movie.

So I'm gonna second Andy's and move on.

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I mentioned it earlier, this is part of our annual theme this year is we're doing finding the good in the other.

We're talking about like polarization and that's.

That's our theme this year.

We're going through it.

It's going to be fun.

Today is Starfleet versus the Klingons.

Going through the Star Trek series.

It is known for having this fight come up over and over again.

Nuanced later on after the orig a little bit, but Star Trek, Klingons, very different cultures.

Basically Starfleet is, hey, we're trying to explore.

We're the scientists.

We want to bring everyone together to have, you know, beneficial politics for all the planets kind of deal, sort of.

I'm very oversimplifying it.

Just roll with it.

Klingons are kind of a warrior culture and they're like, what?

What do you mean?

Peace and unity.

What if we just chopped your head off?

Not really.

Again, oversimplifying it.

But we'll get into a little bit more of the nuance here in a little bit.

That's the gist, I guess.

For now though, I want to see if anybody can help me kind of explain a little bit more.

Dig in a little bit with some of the history.

When it comes to this conflict, I'm going to throw it to Herbie.

Herbie, when it comes to like the Klingons, when it comes to like those original Star Trek movies, there were bad guys and there was a war, then there was a treaty.

Could you like what happened?

Could you explain it a little bit?

So I can't remember the lore exactly in how the two started conf.

How the conflict between them started, but you basically had this warrior race of Klingons that were at war for a long time with the Federation.

And then they eventually came to a peace treaty which was more like a tentative peace.

You can kind of think of it as something more along the North Korea, South Korea peace of the day, where there's still a lot of hostility between the two groups, but they've kind of had a ceasefire.

They've got this neutral zone between them that nobody dares go between.

And they basically agree that we're not at war with each other right now because, well, we'll both die.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was interesting.

So the original series and then some of the earlier original movies, there's a lot of those movies just roll with me, guys.

If I remember right, the Klingons were kind of basically just this race is the bad guys.

And I, I'm not sure, maybe Andy knows more of like the behind the scenes history than I do, but it felt kind of like they went, wait a minute, having an entire race be the bad guy seems like we're encouraging racism.

So maybe we should nuance this a little bit.

It kind of feels like retroactively they look back on, it went, wait a minute, this is problematic.

So then they, they try to make like a peace treaty thing happen even though they were all just villains at one point.

Because I was like, yeah, that's not really in the heart of what Starfleet's about.

So we want peace to happen, but then we still need this MacGuffin of like bad guys who are strong.

So now it's like there's peace, but you don't go to that neutral zone.

And then of course everyone ends up stuck in the neutral zone for some reason.

And then fights persist because, well, we still want to have those fights.

We just want to seem like it's not as black and white as it was previously.

Andy, anything to add when it comes to some of this?

Because I feel like still really oversimplifying it.

Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to what the behind the scenes rationale was.

Certainly as a viewer, it felt like, you know, the Klingons were, you know, the Klingon Federation kind of interaction standoff was a, was something of a Cold War metaphor among other things.

Right.

I mean, and it's not a perfect one to one mapping, but there were definitely elements of that.

And certainly it's the, the movies went on.

There was some of that.

And then, you know, with the thawing of U.S.

soviet relations and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Right.

To me, that was what Star Trek 6 was about.

And so I don't know if they all.

There was also an element of recognizing the racial problematic element of it.

And I'm not totally convinced that that's an aspect.

Right.

Because we.

Because you just trade the Klingons for, you know, other alien races who become the, you know, uniformly villainous subsequently.

But, yeah, so it read to me at the time is more about, well, you know, the Soviet Union is falling, the Cold War is ending, and so let's have that reflected in Star Trek as well.

And so, you know, my recollection is the.

This Klingon homeworld or a major population center of the Klingon Empire is blown up and that puts them in.

That kind of creates an existential crisis for the Klingons and puts them on a footing where now they have to contemplate some kind of negotiation with the Federation because they can't go on otherwise.

Their numbers have been reduced, their resources have been reduced.

But I'm not totally convinced that I'm on the same page because I'm not remembering the Neutral Zone as a thing with the Klingons.

I, you know, I remember that as a thing with the Romulans, but I'm not remembering much about the Neutral Zone with the Klingon.

So I'm not totally sure that I'm remembering all the right.

All the right bits.

I think you might be right on that.

I somewhat remember having it there at one time, but it may be where I'm confusing the thing with the Romulans, which is a totally different game, but they definitely had, like, that hard border set.

Sure.

There was definitely.

Yeah, there was definitely a line of, this is Klingon territory, this is Federation territory.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It looks like they both have a Neutral Zone, according to Wikipedia, so take that for what you will.

What's interesting, though, not to make you the old man in the room, Andy, but I think it's like Herbie and I have only watched these, like, retrospect, neither of us were alive when they were coming out, especially with the Cold War stuff.

Well, actually, I think we might have been alive for some of the older.

The newer.

Yeah, the later movies was there for it, but I did kind of come to age with the early Next Generation, so.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that's like.

I would have never had any context for, like, the Cold War stuff.

That makes a lot of sense, though, because you can kind of see similarities between, like, how they're representing Klingon and how, like, we thought of Russians of like, these tough, like, oh, yeah, meat and beer.

And you know, one of the things that's interesting, too, all throughout Star Trek, not just the original series.

Well, especially after the treaty.

I'll say especially after the treaty.

Sometimes it's not just Klingons are bad.

Now we're going to fight them because we were in a neutral zone or we were in some weird space that they didn't want us to be at or something.

Every now and then you have these conundrums because Starfleet, one of their things is like, respecting people's culture and incorporating people on their own terms, basically, which is what I argue the church should do.

But then you have this, like, difficulty with the Klingons because it's like, how do you bring in a culture of war when you're trying to create peace with everyone?

Because, like, you can't bringing them in on their terms because on their terms means we're going to be killing things, you know, which brings a lot of nuance and complications throughout the series.

One of the best examples you see throughout the character of Worf and all throughout, you know, you mentioned Next Gen.

I can never get through Next Gen for some reason.

It's just hard for me.

But he also ends up joining the one that I really do like that my brain.

Deep Space Nine.

There it is.

He also ends up joining Deep Space Nine and I loved him in that one as well.

Andy, I'll let you start.

Do you want to break down some of, like, Wharf and some of these complications we see when it comes to, like, trying to respect Klingon culture even though their values don't necessarily line up with Starfleet.

Sure, yeah.

So, you know, Star Trek the Next Generation begins and we've got a Klingon on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Right.

Which is quite a radical departure from certainly in the original series, you know, and, you know, and I think it was intentionally, a bit provocative, a bit, you know, like, what kind of that what if scenario?

What if.

What if the Klingons were part of.

Could be part of the Federation.

And yeah, over the course of his time on Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, there would be those occasional episodes where some element of Klingon honor culture would come up or he'd have some dispute with other Klingons or other people in the Enterprise.

And from his perspective, the way to resolve that was with some kind of ritual combat or fight to the death or something like that.

There were different elements of the Klingon culture that would come in.

And so, yeah, it would bring up these questions of how does Starfleet honor that?

How does Starfleet respect this other culture when there are some core values that just don't seem to align with the overall Federation mission of resolving things peacefully and being non aggressive and all that kind of thing.

I wish I could remember exact episode titles or things like that.

It's been a while since I watched any of the Next Generation stuff that extensively, but I do remember those being some.

Some engaging episodes and creating some interesting ethical dilemmas of what, what.

When you have values in conflict, which values went out?

Yeah.

With Wharf, it also is important to recognize that he was Klingon, but he was also trying to reclaim his Klingon heritage because he grew up in the Federation.

And that led him to take a very idealized viewpoint of his native culture, which often clashed even with his native cult, where he's like, this is why you're supposed to act.

And the Glingons are like, yeah, but yeah.

And it's like, even then he's struggling because he doesn't fit in here.

He doesn't exactly fit in there.

He's stuck somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, that's a great point.

And you know, I really try not to like, shoehorn church issues into these episodes and let them, like, speak for themselves.

But it's hard for me with Starfleet because so much of it aligns so well that I'm like, oh, man.

Because I do think of a lot of conversations I hear in certain church circles now where, like, people from certain cultures almost feel out of place in our worship areas because, like, we haven't developed a place that makes it easy for certain people who grow up certain ways to be their true selves in the church environment.

You know, I remember this.

I've had several conversations of friends of mine who are black, who are like, yeah, Christianity is a white man's religion.

And I'm like, well, I don't know what to do with that because, like, like, I can't speak to that.

I am a white man, so anything I say is just white man thoughts.

You know, it is like.

But, you know, I do think we do tend to make things easier for the people who are already there, whether church, workplace, whatever.

And then sometimes it's harder for people who want to be brought in to be their true selves in that new environment.

And it's really interesting seeing how Worf does try to figure it out because he's like, I want to keep this part of my heritage, but I also believe in these values.

The Starfleet and it isn't easy.

One of the relationships I really love, though was Wharf and Dax in Deep Space Nine because Dax is also kind of from more of a aggressive race, I guess you could say culture.

So they do have their little combats and fights and it's like he finally has someone who can relate to him and understands the struggle that he's having with Starfleet where, like, I agree with them.

But also somehow, sometimes when they're doing these negotiations I'm like, why don't you just fight that guy?

And you're like, yeah, you know what?

That does sound easier sometimes.

But, yeah.

Herbie, anything.

Anything else to add when it comes to Worf in how he plays a role in this tension?

Well, Worf also has another bit of tension in him and that he is a Starfleet officer meaning he has already chosen that he is on the side of Starfleet.

And that does also come into play because there are times when Starfleet and the Klingons are not at peace and that leaves him stuck in the middle because he's.

He can't betray his own people because that'd be dishonorable but he can't betray Starfleet because that would be dishonorable.

And he kind of has to play that.

I think there was, actually, at one point even has to resign his commission in Starfleet because he can't do what he thinks is right and remain a Starfleet officer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that makes sense.

It's.

It's.

This is also probably a weird parallel but it makes me think of some of the stuff that you hear about Barack Obama's time as president when he was like, there are certain things that he would do and he would hear from the black community like, wait, that's not.

That's not what we would.

You know, you're.

You're going to get your own people.

And then there's certain things he would do that he was, like, speaking the language of his people.

And everyone's like, well, you're just being a black president and you're supposed to be just a president.

And it's like, no matter what he did, he couldn't win.

You know?

So it's like, I feel like Wharf is put in a very similar situation where it's like, sometimes it's like to be true to his heritage makes him seem like a bad Starfleet officer.

To be a good Starfleet officer makes it seem like he's a bad Klingon and it's like, oh, man, it's not easy.

Then there.

I also Remember very vividly another, another episode where he was talking about growing up and this was before he was trying, you know, to really explore being a Klingon.

He learned that he had to be very restrained.

He's for a Klingon, very reserved.

He definitely holds himself back.

And he explains that was, it was because when he was a kid he was playing soccer and he remembered he had head butted a one of his colleagues, one of his fellow teammates, and he didn't understand his own strength and he had killed the other boy.

And at that point he realized that if he was going to live in start in the Federation, he had to, he had to hold himself back, he had to reserve his actions, he had to hold back his emotions or else he is going to kill the people he cares about.

Yeah, man.

You know, there's a lot there and a lot to explore.

And you see these other themes and other shows like that moving off of Wharf because this isn't just a Worf episode.

Although now I'm thinking we might should do that at some point.

You also see like more of the newer shows.

What's interesting is like they're going back to like the older time period in Star Trek, which is still our future, which is kind of confusing.

And you almost see, you see a little bit of this like retroactive nuancing of the Klingons during the early wars.

Specifically.

I'm thinking of like in Strange New Worlds, there's an episode where the one man has PTSD and he remembers one of the Klingons and how he actually murdered all these people and all this stuff that happened.

And it turned out that actually he ran away, everyone was dead, and he just ended up taking credit for it.

And you're like, oh, so not every Klingon is just all, yeah, let me kill everyone.

Some of them do struggle with fear and all these other things.

They're not just one thing, you know, and you're like, oh, okay, okay.

And it's like.

But at the same time, if you've been watching Star Trek for a long time, you realize they're definitely like retroactively trying to nuance this.

If you look at the Undiscovered country, they did a really strong effort to show that the warrior class was not the only class of Klingons.

They had other classes, but the warrior class just took prominence and stayed there because they always found a way to stay at war.

Yeah, I don't remember that reference, but that sounds right.

Andy, anything else to add either about what we've been talking about there or some of the newer stuff when it dealing with the Klingons and more recent Star Trek.

Yeah, I mean, well, you know, the other character we're talking about, you know, Worf coming from two worlds and the tensions there.

The other character that comes to mind is B'Elanna Torres from Voyager.

Right.

Who is not only struggling with being, you know, having Klingon heritage of being a Starfleet officer, but also, you know, trying to figure out being both half human and half Klingon and the tensions that.

The cultural tensions that that creates for herself and for her interactions with everybody else.

Yeah.

Pardon me if I'm.

If I'm mistaken, but didn't at one point she was struggling with it so much when she was having a child.

She was trying to manipulate the DNA of the child so it would have like fewer head ridge, you know, forehead ridges and stuff like that because she knew that this child was going to struggle being in a human, A human civilization there on Voyager.

Yeah, that sounds right.

Yeah.

So dealing with kind of the questions of passing and if you could choose things for your children to represent different things about different cultures.

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

I was trying to remember the name of the.

It's like a parody show that Seth McFarlane did.

Oh, yeah.

I can't remember what it was called, but he had a race that was basically parodying the Klingons and supposedly they were all men.

And then one of them got pregnant and it became a whole thing.

I was like that, you know, not Klingon.

But it is interesting.

You kind of see this, this tension of what does it mean to be a warrior class?

And can you have a culture that's only based on warrior, you know, mentality?

And I'll argue no, I don't think you can have a culture that is on that.

But it does exist in Star Trek for the most part.

You know, their culture is around aggression, war, drinking, anything else, whenever.

Like, if you're explaining just Klingon culture in general.

Before we pick sides, Andy, could you explain it better?

Well, the other thing we have to remember about Klingon culture is that they gave us Shakespeare.

Right.

So it's not all what.

I missed this.

So, you know, not everyone remembers Star Trek Undiscovered country as fondly as perhaps I do.

But that was.

That was the first Star Trek film I saw in the theaters.

And I actually have the replica mug from the dinner scene that's early on in the film.

So Kirk and Spock and McCoy are invited to this.

Are hosting or invited to this.

State dinner with some Klingon dignitaries, one of whom is played by Christopher Plummer.

And they're having, you know, they're having a conversation about their cultural differences and trying to find some common ground and, you know, but also, you know, exposing their prejudices and misunderstandings of each other and so forth.

And at one point, one of the, one of the Starfleet characters quotes Shakespeare and one of the Klingons says something to the effect of, you don't.

Of course, you can't really appreciate Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon.

What that is.

Okay, that's fascinating.

All right.

Oh man.

Okay, so we got Klingons.

Herbie, could you better explain what Starfleet is than I did?

Well, Starfleet mostly is this Federation of planets where people just want to be at peace so they find a way to govern where everybody has kind of like an equal say, everybody's going to be respected.

There's the idea of basically respecting the individual, but also just having the freedom of self rule.

Like every, every planet in the Federation of Planets has its own government and the Federation that kind of binds all of these governments together kind of just deals with the, the affairs of the coalition as a whole.

Also it's very idealized future where things like money don't exist.

There's the idea that we don't have this scarcity of goods because everything is there for you.

And the idea is everybody just does what they feel is right because they don't have to fight and struggle with each other to survive.

Okay, so those are our sides.

We're going to pick a side and we're going to explain why we chose the side we did.

We can all pick the same side if we want.

I think it would be dishonest for me not to pick Starfleet.

As much fun as it sounds like it would be to pick King on just to be contrarian.

But realistically, I have another podcast, the Whole Church podcast.

It's all about ecumenical work.

It's basically just the Christian version of Starfleet, all about peace and trying to respect people's culture and bring them together rather than have us split apart.

And then of course I do.

I much appreciate that passion for exploring and discovering what's out there.

Yeah, I'm all for Starfleet.

So that's where I'm at.

Andy.

Starfleet or Klingon?

Where are you at?

You know, I want to, you know, have some sympathy for the Klingons and, you know, recognizing the difficulties of, you know, the way that they've been portrayed and some of the issues and the problems that perhaps raises and it's, you know, it's hard to have too many beefs with a group that has given, you know, that has given us Shakespeare and Christopher Lloyd and Christopher Plummer, not to mention, you know, the great Michael Dorn that we've already discussed.

But yeah, we, we haven't really had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Klingon scientists.

Whereas, you know, there are lots of great science characters from Starfleet, you know, and scientific research and exploration is a big part of the Stark Fleet mission and a lot of the storytelling that goes around the Star Trek universe.

And so yeah, again, it's hard to not wind up identifying more with the Federation on those terms.

Yeah, yeah.

Also if you're on our Facebook group, please, for the next what if vote, what if there was a Klingon science officer in Starfleet?

I want to talk about that now.

That sounds fun.

Herb, where are you going, man?

Starfleet or Klingon?

Are we have three for three or so?

I really do kind of want to side with the Klingons because there's so much about their culture we don't know.

All you know is that part of it that intersects with the Federation, which is going to be their military side.

But they are that being such a dominant part of their culture and the fact that they tend to expand their empire out of need because they have to continue acquiring people to do a lot of the remedial stuff, like they're known for marauding the deuterium mines and stuff like that.

I can't really side with that because in a long term situation I don't see the Empire being able to thrive.

So I am going to have to go on the side of the Federation.

While they have their own weaknesses, they do show that they kind of do have issues.

When they do have to swap to being militaristic for defense in a time of peace, they do have the upper hand on long term survival.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man.

I, I also, I just gotta say, it would be so hard to fight the Klingons.

I think, I think Jesus's way is the best way to fight the Klingons because like, realistically Starfleet comes up against Klingons and it's like they want to fight and we're like, no, we're all about peace.

Oh, you disagree with us then let's fight.

No, that's not what I said.

It's like, what do you do there?

And I love like, like just in my mind like, just imagine Klingon dealing with like the whole turn your other cheek is like, what do you mean you're not going to fight?

I'll turn my other cheek again.

Just, you know, a lot of humorous antics playing out.

I will say one part that really makes me want to side to the Klingons is you will be dishonored by trying to get ahead using finances as a tool to, to undo another Klingon family to the point where you will be disrespected, thrown out of the courts.

You have no more standing in their culture if you attempt doing that.

We saw that in Deep Space nine where Quark basically married a Klingon and then defended her by showing this other guy was using, using the economy to undo her family.

That's so funny.

I.

Yeah, that's, that's the other thing I guess we didn't really talk much about is like Klingon also is very much of like a honor shame kind of culture.

It's based on like how much prestige your family has or you have and you do things that bring shame on you and your family.

That.

That's a big part of it too which is not something I'm a huge fan of.

Again, I'm with Starfleet, man, that mutual respect for everybody.

Something I, I'm a big fan of.

But the point of the series is to find the good in the other side.

So now what we all have to do, starting with Andy.

Explain why you think, Andy, someone might be on the side of the Klingons and try to defend that position the best you can.

Sure.

So.

This is not an easy one, right?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, so acknowledge, right that, you know, the universe has been constructed such that they are the antagonists.

Right.

We're not meant to identify them.

We're not meant to.

You're not supposed to be doing what.

We'Re doing for them.

And so we're not given a whole lot of basis on which to do that.

You can certainly appeal to the sort of basics of.

Well, you know, they are sapient beings who want to flourish and want to, you know, have their own place in the world and so forth.

And so we can, you know, find some common ground on that sort of thing and, you know, care for family and all that.

All those sorts of things are values that we can recognize that we have in common with the Klingons to some extent or another.

You know, there are there times, you know, have we seen times where the Klingons were right about something and the Federation was wrong?

I I don't have an encyclopedic memory of all the different Star Trek stories.

Nothing's coming to mind.

Which is not to say that it couldn't have happened or that the Federation is infallible, but again, that's not really the storytelling framework that we're working in.

It's not.

But I suppose if one possible criticism of the Federation is the.

Is the tendency towards homogenizing cultures and homogenizing society and kind of subsuming everything, not to the extent of the Borg, necessarily, but there is just sort of a tendency to bring things to the lowest common denominator or the sort of standing off all the.

The rough edges of various people and cultures to fit into the Federation.

And so perhaps that might be a basis on which the Klingons, more philosophically, might critique them as eliminating some of the distinctives that make a culture like the Klingons of value to its members or to the people.

To the Klingons.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, Herbie, same task.

Explain why you think someone might be on the side of the Klingons and defend that position the best you can.

Well, definitely somebody who comes from a culture that does have either a honor shame or a power weakness type of mentality would probably side with the Klingons because it would be closer to their worldview and the idea that if you bring shame to your family, you are in the wrong for bringing in that shame.

So that could be a reason why people might identify with that culture.

Keep in mind that the Klingon culture did actually derive from parts of humanity.

A person who tends to be more aggressive may also side with the Klingons.

The people who say that, you know, you have the right of.

You have the right to rule via conquest.

Somebody who has that type of mentality also might side with the Klingons.

All right, I cheated because I gave myself the most time to think about it.

Here's what I'm gonna go with.

I feel as though Starfleet was too quick to dismiss the Klingon.

Okay, first off, let me say this is not my actual position or argument.

This is me trying to make the argument for the other side.

So Starfleet was too quick to dismiss the Klingon culture because they.

They are so much about peace that they just immediately dismiss this warlike race instead of asking what they could have done is ask, why does this exist?

Clearly, the Klingons are thriving.

So whatever environment that they came up in, biologically, they evolved to be the dominant species.

So it is working for them for some reason.

So I think it would have been beneficial instead of just immediately pushing back to maybe observe.

See, why is this working here?

What can we learn from being more aggressive or having some of these attributes perhaps?

And, you know, even learning from like, shame isn't always a bad thing.

Maybe our culture shouldn't revolve around an honor shame system.

But we do know, evolutionary, you know, kind of speaking especially like, Let me, let me specifically say social evolution.

I'll say we see that shame has, you know, helped in certain areas where like we have.

And I let me asterisk.

No one here supports fat shaming.

However, you can see where a lot of things like that that are physically bad for us.

Shame has played a part in basically peer pressuring people to be healthier, which maybe isn't a great thing, but there might still be something to learn from that dynamic in society or some of these other aggressive behaviors that clearly allow the Klingons to thrive for so long.

That's the best I got.

I don't know.

I feel like all that's still kind of bs, but I tried.

Yeah, man, that's a hard exercise.

All I'm gonna say is in the one of the first Hippocratic missions with the Klingons, Archer totally rejected the Klingon idea of honor and forced the Klingon that had died, that should have died on Earth to remain alive until he could deliver him alive to Kronos, being told that it was their culture to let the man die honorably.

Well, I will say again, I don't like the idea of honor shame culture that being the basis for how we operate.

But there are some things, I can see a little bit of a biblical idea behind it going into more of our themes.

What we can pull from this in real life because there are some things in the Bible of we do honor certain people in the church with the title Elder if they meet certain criteria or stuff like that.

I think that's beneficial so that you know who to learn from, who to respect.

You know, Andy has a doctorate.

We honored him with that degree because he did the work to get that degree.

And having those honorifics allow us to know who to learn from, who to respect.

And I think that's useful.

I just don't think our culture should necessarily be based off of it.

So I'm going to pull the Starfleet.

We respect all people.

But I think Klingon has a good point with, hey, sometimes honor is important.

Andy, do you have any general takeaways from what are we pulling from all these that's useful in real life, or is this just three geeks being dumb?

I think the opportunity to engage with the exercise of how do I relate to somebody who's very different from me is always worthwhile.

It works better when those people are accurately represented.

Right.

And so, you know, to the extent that Klingons accurately represent any actual, you know, human groups that can be worthwhile, to the extent that they are parodies or caricatures or, you know, perpetuate misunderstandings of other groups that we might map them onto, maybe that's not so.

So worthwhile.

Yeah, but, yeah, and I think learning how to negotiate that not everybody is going to be a part of the Federation, that maybe one world system, one world, one universe system, one galaxy system, whatever, may not be the goal to strive for.

There may be value in having diverse institutions, diverse cultures, diverse organizations, interacting with each other and having to engage with each other to mutually improve, as opposed to trying to find the one size fits all solution that may not actually exist.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

Something you said there gonna lean into within and then force Herbie to respond to, though you're not about, like, just.

Just interacting with people who.

We just can't see their perspective, like.

Like, that's why this seems like it's a shorter episode and we're struggling here because it's like, it's just genuinely difficult to see the Klingon perspective.

A lot of people where we live in America feel pretty similarly on different sides of the political aisle or different sides of this issue or that issue, right.

Where it's like, how much Earth could someone think that's right, you know, like, and it's just beyond us to even understand it since that's part of our reality.

Herbie, what can we.

What can we learn from, like, how Starfleet deals with Klingons who make no sense to them, that maybe we're able to apply in our world when we see people who like, yeah, what you think is right seems so wrong to me that I can't even comprehend it.

Well, to an extent, you don't have to understand how they're thinking or why they think that way.

Sometimes you just need to understand that that is how they think.

You don't necessarily need to know how the Klingon culture came to be where it is.

You do just need to know that this is their culture, this is what they believe.

This is how they believe you should act and engage with that, because you don't necessarily need to know why they are the way they are more than you need to know.

This is who you're dealing with.

Andy, any other thoughts or follow ups to that?

Yeah, I mean, you raise an interesting question.

But I think while there are some similarities, I think there's some pretty big differences in the scenarios that we're dealing with.

I would say that the tension between Stark Fleet and the Klingons is largely one of values.

They have very different value systems and so that means that they prioritize differently and have different goals and so forth.

Whereas I think in the current American situation if you sat down and in the abstract asked people to talk about what they value, what they prioritize, I think a lot of us would list the same things.

I think not universally, not in exactly the same order, whatever.

But I think by and large we are talking about the same values.

We do want to accomplish the same things.

There's a very different understanding of how to accomplish that in some cases based on very different understandings of what the reality of the world is that we're living in.

You know, and Star Trek has touched on that at different times.

You know, issues of propaganda and, you know, how do you know what's true and you know, how are you getting accurate information out of the, you know, I think Even Star Trek 6, you know, has a lot about that.

How do we, how do we get accurate information out of the Klingon Empire when we're not there on the ground and so forth.

But yeah, I think, you know, to stick my neck out a little bit by talking about some particulars.

Right.

You know, we're having a lot of conversations about government efficiency and government waste and fraud and so forth.

I think a large portion of Americans would agree that, you know, cutting down on fraud is a good idea, that eliminating waste, if it's true, you know, if we can truly identify what's wasteful is worthwhile.

It's just that we have very different understandings of what the, where our money's actually going and what would constitute fraud and so forth.

But I think we can find common ground on.

Yeah, I think if we can identify fraud and waste and inefficiencies, sure, let's figure out a way to improve on those with the understanding that nothing will ever be 100% efficient.

Sadie Carnot taught us that a long time ago.

But, you know, and understanding that, so what, what the world trade offs will be.

But I'd much rather have a conversation about trade offs and get down to where, where there might be subtle differences in our values and why we therefore would accept different trade offs and have a negotiation on that term than the situation where we seem to be in now, which is just, I describe one reality and you describe a different reality, and they're unreconcilable and we can't really move forward on those terms.

Yeah, well, I'm gonna go back to something else you said, because you kind of did a little bit of a meta analysis earlier.

We were talking about how, like, Klingons were actually kind of a character of something that probably doesn't exist in our world.

Maybe that's the issue, right?

Like.

Like what happens in, in our world is we make this caricature of the other side, right?

Like, like the left sees conservatives as, like, we're all these hillbillies who think Donald Trump's great and we want to kill all brown people or something.

And that's not always the case.

But we make this character and we just assume everyone's that way, then we can't possibly approach them because that makes no sense to us.

And then the other side makes a character of the left going, well, they just want to let anybody do whatever they want and they want anarchy and they don't care about our border or our safety of our families.

And it's like, well, that's, that's not true either.

But we make these characters on both sides, right?

And I'm not trying to do the both sides of them.

I actually definitely think that the side of Donald Trump is just more wrong, personally.

That's just.

I will say that, but I can still see that that happens in our world or meet these characters.

And then it makes it harder for us to ever talk to one another and like Andy says, list out these issues that we probably do agree on a lot of the same values, but because of that caricature, we don't even want to come to the table to talk.

I don't know, does that.

We need to bring the Ferengi into this.

At this point, when you start talking about government spending and.

Yeah, but also to bring them in, in a more direct path.

They also have a governmental system that is very different, has very different ideals than the Federation, and yet the Federation seems to be able to work with them a lot better than they did the Klingons.

Yeah.

It's crazy how people seem to find ways to work with the people who care about money easier than they do people who have other different value issues.

It's interesting.

I don't think there's any parallels to that, to real life, but, Andy, do you have any other Final notes before we jump into our wrap up today?

No, I think, I think I've covered it.

We've talked about Star Trek 6 plenty.

It was a good movie.

Andy just wanted to do a Star Trek 6 episode.

I didn't know that what was gonna happen, but it was relevant.

Yeah, it is a good movie.

If you have not seen Star Trek 6, go watch it.

If you have seen it and it's been a while, watch it again.

Yeah, this has our pre recommendation to the recommendations.

We want you to watch Star Trek 6.

Yeah.

Herbie, any other final notes before we jump into that wrap up?

Nah, I think we're good to wrap it up.

Cool, cool, cool.

Well guys, we will be doing a bonus question very quickly and that's just going to be what would have happened if the Ferengi backed up the Klingons before their treaty with Starfleet?

What if there was a.

What if there was Ferengi money on the Klingon side of that war?

We'll answer that here in a little bit.

But first we are going to give our recommendations.

For me, you know what, The Electric State.

Good movie.

I'm recommending it.

I mentioned it earlier.

I'm going back to it.

I stand by what I said.

Andy, any recommendations for the people?

If you like Star Trek Lower decks.

First of all, if you haven't seen any of Star Trek Lower Decks, the cartoon.

I love lower Decks.

That's a recommendation.

But even more niche than that, Ryan north has been writing Star Trek Lower Decks comics.

And if you've heard me on almost any other episode of this podcast, I've probably mentioned Ryan north and how I would like to be Ryan north when I grow up.

And his Star Trek Lord X comics have not dissuaded me of that notion in any way, shape or form.

So check those out.

Well, I know what I'm doing after this.

Herbie, recommendations.

I would suggest anybody who has not seen the original series, the of the feature length films.

So that's like one through seven, I think.

Six.

Six.

If you haven't seen all of them, watch them.

Knock it out.

It'll take you a week if you do a movie a day.

I really thought there was eight original movies for some reason.

Nope.

Undiscovered country is the last hurrah for the original crew.

Kirk comes back in Generations, which is Generations.

So it's maybe.

Maybe six and a half.

Yeah, I like.

But there are only six films with the whole original crew.

Fun stuff.

All right, well with that great recommendations, hope everybody checks out.

All of them.

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