posted
Back from Seattle, refreshed after an anime con, and delving back into the tech! While this episode seems to be a fair rip of "The Undiscovered Country" on the surface, it in fact goes a bit deeper than that in terms of plotting and Klingon culture - the trial, for example, is much less of a farce. There's a bunch of juicy tech to be seen too, so let's get right to it.
-The Klingon coutroom is a fair attempt at recreating the feel of the one seen in ST6. It's smaller, the central platform doesn't rise, but it does feature multiple galleries of angry Klingons stomping those staffs (re-created by multiplying a smaller set a la "Tsunkatse"). The judge is using the familiar robes and sparkling gavel hand thingy from the movie.
-Wow, Klingon architecture is really rustic in this period, far moreso than the neo-futuristic stuff we're familiar with in the TNG era. Doors are wooden even on colonized planets! As for the outfits, I still have yet to see any real Klingon uniforms aside from certain shared patterns and colors in what must be their military outfits. This continues to be a fair indication of the organization (or lack thereof) in the Klingon military. There is a lot of material here about the Klingon caste structure, and it figures into the plot.
-The bad guy is Duras, son of Toral (ironic, no?). He's mentioned to be serving in the Tae'ghoko defence perimeter as a weapons officer following his demotion from Captain. I had originally thought this to be Ty'Gokor, but the closed captioning says differently.
-The incident leading to the tribunal sees Enterprise giving sanctuary to some "rebels" Duras is after. Duras goes in to halt this, and his butt is prompty kicked by what he calls the "Battlecruiser Enterprise" in a VERY cool fight scene through the rings of a gas giant. The transport the "rebels" use seems to be new: a small, boxy ship of light green.
-Duras' ship = a D-5 battlecruiser, the Bortas. I'm not entirely sure, but it seems to be a re-use of the Klingon transport from "Marauders" sans deuterium pods. A combat variant? The bridge set is a truncated version of the tried-and-true Klingon bridge set, with additional greeblies around the familiar consoles and support struts. In Duras' testimony, his tactical officer mentions that their ship is easily superior to Enterprise. The top speed is Warp 6.
-When Archer is allowed to give his side of the story (in yet another instance of using archaic Klingon law to get your way), the rebels are relabeled as refugees and needed to abandon their ship, forcing the Enterprise crew to double up.
-There is mention of Enterprise rescuing the Klingon Raptor "Sam'ra" last year in "Sleeping Dogs". Did that ship have a name before?
-Of course, Archer is not found guilty of abetting criminals, and while his not to be executed, he still gets shipped off to Rura Penthe on general principle. The exterior shot of this place is EXCEEDINGLY cool, and seems to combine the familiar Alaskan scenery of ST6 with a slightly more obvious prison complex of low buildings. The interior is a nicely-done series of ice caves that seem far closer to the surface than before. We get a deja vu of props from the movie as well, and I think the ore carts are re-uses of the ones seen in DS9 "Civil Defense".
-Rura Penthe seems a lax kind of place in this era... Archer escapes from the place almost as an afterthought, after T'Pol bribes a diplomat. Also, while the place is pretty harsh, going there is not an automatic death sentence - Hertzler's character elects to stay behind and serve out his one-year term there, so he can try to effect change in the Empire once he's back. I really hope to see him again.
Mark
[ April 08, 2003, 08:46 PM: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
posted
According to writer David A. Goodman, that was indeed a reference to the same Ty Go'kor as in "Apocalypse Rising"
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Amasov Prime
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Wait a moment. We have a Duras. Closely related to Toral. Commanding Battlecruiser Bortas.
Is this just a really bad hommaje or did they run out of ideas? I like the idea of having an ancestor of "our" Duras on the show, but really, isn't this going a little too far? (On the other hand, I really like the Ty'Gokor-reference)
Interesting bit about the D5 being the fuel carrier ship. Do you think the ship from DS9's "Sons of Mogh" could be a D5-variant? Maybe a D6? There are definitely similarities (I'm talking of the green Promellian cruiser used as a Klingon vessel)
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quote:I'm talking of the green Promellian cruiser used as a Klingon vessel
Which is probably not a Klingon vessel at all.
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Amasov Prime
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quote:Originally posted by Spike:
quote:I'm talking of the green Promellian cruiser used as a Klingon vessel
Which is probably not a Klingon vessel at all.
And it can't be Promellian either. The fact that it's painted green doesn't say anything about its origin, but it was the only ship seen in that sequence and Noggra or whatever his name was probably had his own ship to travel to the station (And I don't suppose it was cloaked or anything). The Intention was clear: the vessel was supposed to be his ship. (If not, it would be like having Sisko say Picard just arrived at the station, an exterior shot of a freighter docked at the station and then the scene where both actually meet. That wouldn't make sense. You'd give us a view of the Enterprise in the exterior shot. Same here.)
Alex. (Supporter of the KNMS-capaign)
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -There is mention of Enterprise rescuing the Klingon Raptor "Sam'ra" last year in "Sleeping Dogs". Did that ship have a name before?
I had it down as "Somraw" at the time, this new spelling is probably the correct one, looks more Klingon to me.
quote: Is this just a really bad hommaje or did they run out of ideas? I like the idea of having an ancestor of "our" Duras on the show, but really, isn't this going a little too far?
Not really. Remember that Worf is the son of Mogh, who is the son of another Worf. Nobel families do tend to recycle names quite frequently, at least the ones on earth do. As for the Bortas, it's no more of a coincidence than having a ship named Enterprise having two of it's crewmembers sent to Rura Pente, or encountering a Klingon named Duras for that matter.
From the looks of it all of these references to previous Klingon episodes are quite obviously intentional, evidently the writing staff still have a copy of the Encyclopaedia.
BTW, is this the first instance of a Klingon vessel baring the same name as previous one, so far as we've seen anyway? It's something they should probably do more often given how often Starfleet reuses certain ship names. (I think Valiant had as many as four repetitions, second only to Enterprise with eight)
Shik
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quote:Originally posted by Reverend: As for the Bortas, it's no more of a coincidence than having a ship named Enterprise having two of it's crewmembers sent to Rura Pente, or encountering a Klingon named Duras for that matter....BTW, is this the first instance of a Klingon vessel baring the same name as previous one, so far as we've seen anyway? It's something they should probably do more often given how often Starfleet reuses certain ship names. (I think Valiant had as many as four repetitions, second only to Enterprise with eight)
Well, seeing as how "BortaS" translates to "Vengeance," it may be their version of "Enterprise," y'know?
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I thought that Scotty or Uhura.. or somebody said that no one has ever gotten off of Rura Penthe.
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quote:Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov: but it was the only ship seen in that sequence and Noggra or whatever his name was probably had his own ship to travel to the station. The Intention was clear: the vessel was supposed to be his ship.
Didn't Noggra tell Kurn that they came aboard a shuttle?
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Well, there goes the theory about the D-5 battlecruisers being the ones seen on TAS. (I guess Kor had two vessels named Klothos during his many years of commanding...)
I have an idea about the alternate spellings of Klingon names. Suppose that, as with Chinese or Russian here on Earth, there are multiple ways of translating words into English because the alphabets used are different. (ie, Mao Tse-Tung and Peking vs. Mao Zedong and Bejing, etc.) So Bortas and Vor'tas, Tae'ghoko and Ty'Gokor, and Somraw and Sam Ra are all just approximations of English letter translations of Klingon characters.
-MMoM
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quote:Originally posted by Spike: Didn't Noggra tell Kurn that they came aboard a shuttle?
He did, but it's unlikely that a shuttle could have made it all the way from Klingon space to DS9 in anything less than a few months. More likely his shuttle was docked aboard that Klingon/Promellian Transport. Sort of like a roll on, roll off ferry.
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