r/startrek • u/Additional_Fall7053 • 10d ago
Praxis
So I'm unsure of the exact timeline here, but in Yesterday's Enterprise, the federation was 6 months away from losing to the Klingons. But in Star Trek 6, the klingons were at such a disadvantage due to the destruction of Praxis they were ready to sue for peace, that they were unable to wage a war against starfleet any longer? I know writers use creative liberties to make up stories for episodes im just wondering if there's any way to square this, the destruction of enterprise c would have been WELL after star trek 6.
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u/TimeSpaceGeek 10d ago
Because the battle of Narendra III was 50 years later, and the war with the Federation, even later still.
The Undiscovered Country is set in 2293. The Battle of Narendra III, where the Enterprise C is destroyed, happens in 2344. And the year the alternative Enterprise D encounters the Enterprise C in 2366.
Given that, even without something like the Genesis device, Federation terraforming technology is incredibly sophisticated, and given that Qo'nos looks pretty much fine in the TNG and DS9 episodes we see it in, we can assume it probably only took a few decades to tidy up. Let's say maybe 30 years, 40 tops? That still leaves a decade for relations to sour in.
Now, lets look at the metaphor.
Undiscovered Country wasn't just an interesting sci-fi story. It was a deliberate parallel to real world events. Praxis was Chernobyl. The Klingons were the Soviet Union. The Khitomer conference was the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the the USSR, which the Chernobyl incident was a significant nail in the coffin for. The Federation helping the Klingons recover was the United Nations passing a resolution to create the Chernobyl Trust Fund and dispatch Red Cross and United Nations support to Ukraine in 1990. Nicholas Meyer and Leonard Nimoy were very deliberate in their metaphor, even if there were tweaks to the weighting to make Praxis a little more significant.
Well, the Chernobyl incident happened the year I was born, and I turned 40 a few months ago. And look at how tense the west's relationship with Russia is these days, and how much of a threat, in many ways, it is. Imagine they didn't have as much corruption and as much of Putin's hubris over the next decade. Imagine how much more of a threat they could become. It may have been an accidental parallel, since Yesterday's Enterprise was released before Star Trek VI, but it still sort of works.
There's plenty of time between Praxis and Narendra III for the Klingon Empire's fortunes to turn around.
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u/Additional_Fall7053 10d ago
Nice analogies! I of course was already aware of the parallel with the wall, but i never made the connection of praxis with chernobyl! Given it was so paved over quickly in the movie.
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u/stierney49 9d ago
Yeah, disregarding the TUC and YE difference in production times, in-universe I always took it as a sort of affirmation that the Federation would help the Klingons and were willing to die an honorable death on their behalf that led to a stronger alliance. Until DS9, of course.
But, again, that’s sort of a realistic ebb and flow from sides that had and have been enemies over time.
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u/SamRonin 10d ago
ST6 happens and starts the process of warming relations between Klingons and the Federatiion. Klingons still need more sources of power and dilithium and won't accept Federation "charity". It is safe to assume they use those last six months supply to track down and militarily secure more for long term survival. Enterprise B service happens. Enterprise C enters service. Near Nerendra 3 they pick up the emergency calls about Romulans and go to investigate. Their sacrifice then moves the empire to better secure an alliance and relative friendship with the Federation. Without the events at Narendral it is safe to say the Klingons turn their eyes onto Federation worlds and push inwards, with or without more references to WW2 leaders in the process. The Federation likely tries to appease them and callm things down in a similar way as we see with the Cardassians and so on. Klingons seeing weakness and more room for expansion go into full invasion mode and flip the balance before the Federation could militarise again and fight back enough. Projects like Galaxy still happen, but seemingly as a last ditch battleship rather than explorer and finds herself unable to stand against multiple Klingon cruisers.
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u/Additional_Fall7053 10d ago
True, the progressives like Gorkon were a lifetime before people like Gowron come about looking for war again. Times change and then history repeats.
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u/AnnihilatedTyro 10d ago edited 10d ago
There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the Empire's disparate Great Houses were never aligned with peace (aside from, you know, their entire history and culture) and had always operated with a great degree of freedom, up to and including open defiance of the High Council that only led to discipline of individual commanders and not an entire House. Several factions were always strongly opposed to the peace, however necessary it may have been at the time.
Captains Kruge and Klaa both went rogue in attacking Federation targets without authorization. Chang assassinated his own chancellor.
In TNG, Captain Kargon is immediately willing to assume the Enterprise attacked his ship with no evidence at all, and used it as a justification to attack the Enterprise. Riker is the only one who even bothers to point out that they are allies and it makes no sense - even though his second officer had been firmly established as a sensible and thoughtful Klingon who had grown to respect Riker.
The Kriosian independence movement was being supplied knockoff Federation weapons by Romulans, and the Klingons governor and security forces didn't even bat an eye. They're completely willing to believe on the flimsiest of evidence that the Federation is playing cold war/sphere of influence games to undermine the Empire's control of Krios, right up until the Chancellor gets involved and forces them to listen to the Enterprise's evidence (while exposing the governor's corruption, putting self/House before the Empire).
The House of Duras' primarily anti-Federation platform (that has lasted over 200 years, by the way, and I wonder if there is a connection to T'Kuvma in there as well) has enough fervent support within the Empire to start a civil war over the chancellorship even though there is nothing apparently objectionable or illegitimate about Gowron's claim to leadership. Even with reams of evidence and millennia of laws and traditions against Toral's baseless claim, countless instances of Federation aid against repeated Romulan aggression and exposing of Romulan subterfuge, civil war - with the end goal of attacking the Federation - was inevitable. That is how strongly a large minority of the Empire hates the Federation peace. Or is the Empire just so restless and directionless in an age of peace that they don't care who they fight, they just want to fight?
The Great Houses retained a tremendous amount of independence under weak chancellorships such that some were willing to betray allies and invoke the wrath of the High Council whenever they felt like it. A major war that required bringing all of the Houses' fleets together under the Chancellor's control and replacing their House loyalty with Empire loyalty may have been the only way to rein them in - whether it happened much sooner in the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline, waited until the prime timeline's DS9.
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u/TERRAxFORMER 10d ago
Praxis was destroyed in 2293. The Enterprise C entered the temporal rift in 2344 and emerged in an alternate timeline in 2366.
A lot can happen in that time and it’s worth noting that the “six months away from defeat” is from the alternate timeline.
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u/AnnihilatedTyro 10d ago
Narendra III (the Enterprise-C's battle) was 50 years after Praxis. Yesterday's Enterprise was another 22 years after that. ~72 years is a very, very long time.
The Federation did most of the work repairing the Klingon homeworld and propped up their economy in the interim. Besides humanitarian concerns, having formal, non-hostile relations with the Klingon Empire helped both remain protected against the Romulans, who were implicated in the Gorkon assassination and almost totally withdrew from galactic affairs (give or take a few border skirmishes with the Klingons). Remember that in TNG S1, it was clearly stated that the Federation had had no direct contact with Romulans for 70 years - almost exactly lining up with The Undiscovered Country.
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u/Character-Tap-565 10d ago
For the same reason that we defeated the fascists once and for all and a hundred years later, they are back and building an authoritarian coalition right before our eyes. The Klingons got stronger.
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u/JonseyJonseyJonsey 9d ago
The timeline is key. ST6 is set in 2293, the Ent C was destroyed in 2344, 51 years later.
It's reasonable to assume at their current rate of expenditure the Klingons had 6 months in 2293. The events of ST6 fundamentally changed the galactic power struggle and both Federation and Klingons will have reduced their military spending.
From the Klingons point of view this would have achieved 2 things:
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Lengthened the 6 month window as they focussed on averting the environmental catastrophe
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Allowed them to industrialise alternate resources
The destruction of Praxis was therefore a temporary issue for the Klingons and one that they'd overcome by the time the Enterprise C was destroyed.
I see no contradiction between ST6 and YE.
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u/KathyJaneway 10d ago
The thing is , Yesterday's Enterprise was released pre-Undiscovered country.
TNG writers didn't know that Praxis would be destroyed and that the Klingons would be even weaker. That's usually what happens when you have two separate crew set at different time close enough to affect the other.
Like how Scotty thought Kirk was saving him from the Dyson sphere crash, and in Generations he does in front of him. Writers forget stuff and contradict themselves. That's the official reason.
Timeline wise, if Praxis was destroyed and Federation and Klingons didn't sign peace treaty, who's to say Klingons do dnninvade dozens of worlds for resources to repair Qonos and then wage war against the Federation that didn't want to help ? What if in that timeline the coup succeeded and General Chang was in charge at the beginning by killing Azetbur and the Federation president at Khitomer? Or what if the last straw was the Federation cowardice at Narendra?
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u/Zucchini-Kind 10d ago
Pretty sure that the timelines were identical up until the Ent-C incident, and that was the point of divergence and hostilities. I thought the episode made that pretty clear.
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u/MindlessNectarine374 10d ago
That's the most important point. I have the impression that Early TNG implied the peace and alliance had happened in the recent past/most of the crew's lifetime.
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u/Carnilmo21 9d ago edited 9d ago
The short version is that "Yesterday's Enterprise" was written and released before TUC. Early TNG tended to treat the peace between the Federation and Klingons as being fairly recent and YE strongly implied that Narendra III (~20 years before TNG) was the catalyst for that peace.
The TNG writers had no way of knowing in 1989 that the Soviet Union would fall and that Nick Meyer and Leonard Nimoy would decide to use that allegory as a sendoff for the TOS crew in 1991. So peace got retconned to Khitomer.
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u/Jonas0804 10d ago
They got better. They made peace, fixed their problems and went back to war. In the original TNG timeline, they do well enough tonight a civil war, then attack Cardassia and the Federation and still fight in the Dominion war.
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u/Dazmorg 10d ago
Two very different stories with different intentions. Star Trek VI was meant to parallel the fall of the Soviet Union (The Klingons were always analogous to the Russians at least during TOS days). The Klingons at least claim they can't afford the hostilities anymore, but there are questions even on screen about whether that can be trusted.
Yesterday's Enterprise was just to show that yeah, they were in a losing war and they needed to send the "C" back to stop that war. More dramatic to have the Federation losing. (Discovery repeats this dramatic impact with their Klingon War, depicting a bunch of warships barreling to earth uncontested until called off at the last minute.) That all said, I don't think it contradicts Undiscovered Country, they could have easily built back up leading up to TNG time.
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u/MagosBattlebear 10d ago
I think the Klingons were in trouble after Praxis because they'd put so much into their military that they couldn't handle a disaster like that.
My guess is the Federation helped them get back on their feet. Once their economy recovered, they started building up their military again.
There's 51 years between Praxis and the Enterprise-C incident. Plenty of time to rebuild.
So the irony is that the Federation may have helped the Klingons recover, only to end up fighting the military they helped rebuild in Yesterday's Enterprise.
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u/Helmling 8d ago
Best rationale I’ve heard is that Romulans were probably up to shenanigans behind the scenes to prop the Klingons up and undermine the Federation.
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