Guest Cartoonist – Lucas Turnbloom
on September 9, 2015
at 12:00 am
Today’s guest comic comes from the talented Lucas Turnbloom. Click here to check out his webcomic Imagine This.
Bug Martini
Random nonsense three days a week
Today’s guest comic comes from the talented Lucas Turnbloom. Click here to check out his webcomic Imagine This.
See also: Firefly, Reavers.
Nah, Revers were already in part of a space-faring culture when they went crazy. They didn’t have to develop anything, they just steal a ship and use it until it blows up.
Moderately explained by the movie, at least somewhat.
Love your style Lucas!
er … it’s with Honor ? ..
War is always a great motivator for the advancement of technology. That being said, it is difficult to picture a Klingon in a lab, running experiments. I’ve always imagined their dark secret was a slave class that did all farming, manufacturing, and other less honorable work.
There was another comic that went into the dichotomy of Klingon scientists. Google image search ‘smartest klingon whompcomic’ and it should be one of the first results.
I agree; I see Klingons as equivalent to Earth radical muslims. All rage. All war. All “honor”.
There’s a reason the middle east doesn’t have a space program. You can’t get two of them into a small capsule without killing each other.
That comment is very ignorant.
he who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones
Actually, the reason their technology was able to rival that of the federation is twofold. 1. Klingon society has far less office/sneaky political meddling, enabling workers to focus on their actual job and kill off annoying coworkers. 2. no one wants to bother with fighting an engineer when they can fight a warrior instead, so Klingon engineers don’t have as much to fear from all the blood feuds, civil wars and combat related disputes because it’s not their problem. Unlike Romulan scientists or Cardassian scientists, who have to deal with political meddling, experimental crap gone wrong, and lax safety standards, or the Federation Scientists who are always thrown into dangerous experiments with who-knows-what and alien tech from who-knows-where with barely a sidearm handy. If you think about it, being a Klingon engineer is actually the safest job in star trek.
True-day!
Plus, if you’re a Klingon engineer and you are killed in an unhonorable way, you’ll have about 50 guys who will avenge you.
Just going by the movies and series here, never read the books..
In the movies and series the klingons do discuss poetry, art and music, also klingon research labs and field tests are common themes in the series and movies.
To me it all basically boils down to a society where social status are based on warring capabilities but any true leader must be able to also appreciate the finer things of culture as well. However this also hints at a society where any good leader are expected to be a patron of culture and research.
In short basically it is a decadent society with a rich heritage that simply values physical prowess over material wealth – but it’s members are free to not care about such.
…and then again – let’s not forget the immense values of a newly developed cannon against anyone questioning your honor 🙂
“You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” – Chancellor Gorkon
“taH pagh, taH be?” – General Chang
I remember one reference in the books saying that the Vulcans had met the industrial-age Klingons and given them space flight/warp drive(plus medicine, food production, etc). This makes a perfect justification for the Prime Directive, but I’ve got no idea if it’s canon with the movies/shows.
There were other books that mentioned that the Klingons, in their distant past, were attacked by an alien race called the Hur’q, who stole a lot of resources, including the Sword of Kahless. That motivated them to build spaceships using captured Hur’q tech and facilities.
This is a common trope among ST fandom. Like others, I’m not sure how much is canon, but there are several accepted explanations. One is that there is a scientist class, there are Klingons of all walks of life in fact. But the warrior class is the most revered. They’re like the Brahma class. Whether it’s class achieved by birth or whether it’s something an individual can ascend to, I’m not sure, but I suspect the former. They’re big on their family houses and that implies a rigid class structure.
The other part of the equation is conquering and theft. Some spacefaring species landed on Konos and tried to conquer the Klingons… bad idea. The Klingons won and took the ships. They’re not idiots, they reverse engineered them and made more — likely taking on slaves from the conquered race to help with the menial labour.
Yet another part of the equation, is that warriors who do poorly are often punished by being sent to do the menial labour. This ensures there’s always someone to get it done. And they’re motivated to do it well, or else risk being sent even further down the ranks. “What, you couldn’t even scrub a dish properly? Down to the latrines for you!” A Klingon with Honour will do his best at whatever menial task he is given, after all.
Blue Milk Special just did this joke two days ago, at least wait a few weeks before reusing it.
Actually I received this guest comic about a month ago.
Also: Before you go accusing cartoonists of plagiarism, realize that more than one humorist can think of the same joke.
I always assumed that a spacefareing culture encountered the Klingons, accidentally insulted their honor, and were killed and looted for the spoils of war. Then it’s just a matter of reverse engineering.
Qo’noS (the Klingon homeworld) was invaded by the Hur’q in the 14th century (earth time). The prevailing theory is that the Klingons stole Hur’q ships and gained warp travel from them.
Awesome Bat’leth!
Wouldn’t be that far fetched.
Case 1: As long as they have a social system that limits the number of warriors with certain power level(yes, you can add in wits) you will get a certain number of “failures” that cannot be warriors. These people will than have to serve the warriors, including building stuff for them. Also, looking at humans, as long as Klingons still have personal preferences, you’ll get Klingons that do not like to fight themselves(but not pacifists)
Case 2: Improving fighting prowness of the whole civilization is of greatest honour. Depending how you see “Battle” and “Honour”. If they view things less on the “personal” side or at least view “society as a whole” more important, inventing a more powerful vehicle of war will be well honoured.
Case 3: Said civilization can carry their own self-made weapons in combat, and obviously the smart engineer guys brought guns to sword fights((or at least stunners if close combat is a must), Tanking knights, ironclads against wooden sails, battlestars against spacefighters, etc. Brain damaged power type guys are just not smart enough to claim the dishonour in using more advanced weapons, or figured that they can simply use those weapons and be better. At least until some “smart” warrior coming in claiming the dishonour in it.
How they use those bat’leths without dismembering themselves I’ll never know…
The primary motivation for initial Klingon space travel was Kahless the Unforgettable specifically not being killed in battle, but at his last sighting declaring “Wait for me there” while pointing at a particular star in the night sky. Even before that, the gods the Klingons killed only had one commandment “Go forth and conquer all of everything”, which is one of the reasons why they expect everyone to conform to their cultural thinking and not vice versa.
But there’s also the whole pursuit of death in combat for people who can’t ‘force’ an opponent to kill them. If you’re on board a combat ship or at a military target and it then explodes you’ve got an instant ticket to Stovokor. Hence, the society pressures its smart but not strong to be the La’Place to every Napoleon it can find. Add in that only the next new thing becomes a song of honor (sure the first knife fight was a song but the millionth?) and you have another built in pressure to invent new combat (imagine the song about the first Klingon para-trooper). I’ve got no problem with the type of Klingons that were figuring out how to give a battl’eth a sharper edge a thousand years ago are the type that figured out how to shield against Breen weaponry towards the end of the Dominion War.
The bigger question is why a species that puts so much value on honorable combat uses stealth technology to sneak up and shoot their enemies in the metaphorical back.
your point is awfully valid. doth rakis will never can travel thru space
How come in panel 2 the Klingons have no antenna, but in panels 3 and 4 they do?
Because the father lost his in battle (honorably) and the sons’ haven’t “fallen” yet. (?)
My take; Its all posturing – Klingons are the “nerds” of the galaxy, but they try to hide this by convincing the other species’ that they’re all Big Bad Warriors who go around killing each other, let alone the rest of the galaxy. Ultimately it works because they look the part they play, and can back it up with the technology their superior minds have created, but if it didn’t work, they’d find themselves all Romulan slaves.
How would Klingons deal with a smart ass teddy bear?
This is the nerdiest thread I’ve ever read. That is a good thing.
Ok, I am guessing not many people here have seen Enterprise, so I will lay it out.
The 19th episode of season two, 45th overall, is called Judgement. It basically tells us that the Klingons are subject to a very fluid caste system (pretty much confirmed by DS9) in which any Klingon may move between castes. The episode also says that in the 21st and 22nd centuries (earth time of course) that the empire experienced a surge in the number of people wanting to join the warrior caste. So all of the advancement had already been done really. The Klingons basically stalled out barring expansion.
Now, to the people who suggest that Klingons are above backroom dealings… I really have no comment other than to go re-watch Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Enterprise.
Tatty-Bye!
I’m reminded of this: https://media1.giphy.com/media/woqWulxxtUsg0/200_s.gif
Ronnie has his own theory:
http://www.whompcomic.com/2011/08/01/the-smartest-klingon/
I felt this was relevant:
http://www.whompcomic.com/2011/08/01/the-smartest-klingon/
FINALLY someone brought up this issue! I’ve thought this since the 80’s! (I just didn’t have enough honor to say anything.)
Well, feudal Japan turned into modern Japan…
Japan like Germany was more mass effort than scientific understanding. Both nations profited from Americans helping them to get rid of their Tenno/Fuhrer. But have you heared the one about a nation founded by fundamentalist which were so extreme about their crazy faith that they had to found it, because they were no longer tolerated at home? It has been claimed that said nation developed a vehicle to actually go to the moon. Of course I don’t believe a single word of this bullshit.
this.
great comic; great comments.