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Heart of Glory
posted by sukhisooSTAFFMOD on March 4, 2018 at 1:26 AM
Worf meets his own kind.
Sadly, he meets rogue Klingons who immediately try to force him to the dark side. He has a crisis of identity and chooses a middle path.
This is one of the better episodes so far. Much is done to pave the groundwork for Klingon culture. They have a death ritual. They prefer to die fighting (though this was established in STIII). Their blood boils for combat.
Impressively, a cliche is averted when a young child crosses the path of the rogue Klingons. One would expect, after watching hundreds of action movies, that they would use this child as a hostage. Heck, the entire Enterprise crew pretty much expects it. They may be hostile and desperate, they don't lower themselves the cowardly act of taking hostages. Bravo!
It is impressive that Worf gives one of the Klingons a battle death rather than turn him in.
As a nice bonus, Wesley was no where to be seen.
Reply by sukhisoo
on March 4, 2018 at 1:28 AM
A brief downside: near the beginning, the writing felt indulgent. They showed us what things look like from Geordi's point of view. This wasn't really relevant to the story and Picard's boy in a candy shop reaction started to grate. Thankfully, Riker cut it short.
Reply by Knixon
on March 4, 2018 at 2:39 PM
The "don't lower themselves to taking hostages" (especially not a child) bit is contradicted in a DS9 episode when Worf says "In war, there is nothing more honorable than victory." ("The Way Of The Warrior") By that, they should have kept the child.
Reply by sukhisoo
on March 5, 2018 at 10:13 AM
It was pretty clear that there was no actual path to victory for the rogue Kingons. Taking hostages would not really work in the long term.
Their best hope of achieving honor was death in battle.
Reply by Knixon
on March 5, 2018 at 6:43 PM
For those particular rogue Klingons, yes. But what Worf said in DS9 seems to be pretty clear that they will take hostages - even children - if they think it will lead to victory.
Reply by revengine
on March 6, 2018 at 5:19 AM
Your argument is not really making any sense. One on hand you have Worf saying "Only cowards take hostages" and then on the other he's saying "In war there is nothing more honorable than victory." So, to achieve an honorable victory, you think it's okay to behave cowardly? Seems self contradictory.
Reply by Knixon
on March 6, 2018 at 8:00 AM
It's not the first time a Star Trek series has contained contradictions. And it's usually assumed that what came later, is more "canon" than what came before. Especially in Season One of TNG versus DS9 going on 10 years later.
Reply by sukhisoo
on March 7, 2018 at 11:18 AM
Yes, as is the case in all long running shows, there are contradictions. I am not convinced, however, that this is one of them.
I have not really watched DS9. I enjoyed it when it was on, but watched only sporadically. When it started incorporating a story arc, there was no way I was going to be able to follow it, so I gave up.
Still, were there ANY instances where Klingons took hostages? Note that their sense of honor could (and should) deviate from what humans think of as honor.
It has been my general impression that Worf started the series with an idealized sense of Klingon honor, but this changed over the years. This seems very natural actually.
Reply by Knixon
on March 7, 2018 at 6:10 PM
Which supports my point, actually. Whether Worf was just idealizing, or then-correct, in season 1 about hostages, it appears he was definitely wrong by the time that DS9 episode came around.
It's also been asserted by some that Klingons would not resort to "trickery" in combat, but they clearly do. They also don't seem to mind attacking an enemy from behind, even literally stabbing or shooting them in the back, and Worf's own brother did that in a DS9 episode too. Also, in TNG they made out that Klingons - and not just Worf - considered the bodies of their dead to be unimportant and disposable. By DS9 they had supposedly developed rituals for "Sitting Shiva" over their dead, which seems like it would have made it impossible for them to pull the stunt that almost led to Worf being convicted in a "court-martial" case. (DS9 episode "Rules of Engagement")
We may not have seen an episode of Klingons taking hostages, but that doesn't mean they never did. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." And Worf's statement that I quoted, suggests that they wouldn't hesitate to do so, if they thought it would help. Which could mean that they wouldn't take Vulcan hostages, for example, because we've been shown (at least in the Enterprise series) that the Vulcans find it "logical" to mount a full-scale attack in such a situation. Humans might be more malleable, but it might not have been an issue during the full run of TNG since they were "allies" during that time.
Maybe the Klingons took hostages during the portion of DS9 where the alliance was "broken" but we just never saw it. That doesn't prove it never happened. But again, Worf's statement suggest that it would be an option, if they thought it would lead to victory. I suspect that most hostage situations, even just among humans, don't carry that likelihood. But desperate humans will do it anyway, just because they're desperate. So taking hostages might be rare even for Klingons, but it would be because they didn't see it as really helping, not because it wasn't "honorable."