Axanar vs. Discovery

(Author's note: For clarification, I will underline the names of shows, where as the names of events, ships, and characters will appear without underline.)

About two years or so ago, I was introduced to a Star Trek fan film project called Axanar. This production, crowd-funded but with the input of several Hollywood folk and famous genre actors, was to tell the story of the first war between the Klingons and the Federation. A war that concluded with the famous Battle of Axanar, where Garth of Izar (who appeared in TOS) defeated the Klingons and won the war for the UFP.

The released a 30-min short to whet the appetite of their supporters and fans. "Prelude to Axanar" is done up like a History channel documentary, with interviews and "stock footage" and the like to tell the story of what led up to the famous battle. If you have not seen it, click on the video below and DO SO. It's worth your time.

Now, up until this Axanar, CBS had turned a mostly blind eye to fan productions of Star Trek in general. Several have been boasting production design comparable in quality to Axanar (Star Trek: Renegades and Star Trek Continues are both highly recommended by yours truly.) But something about Axanar stuck in their craw and they sued the pants off the Axanar production team.

What stuck in their craw was, as we now know, Star Trek Discovery. A new official canon series that would tell the story of the first war between the Klingons and the Federation.

Eventually,  the suit was settled out of court and the end result is that whatever original Axanar film was planned will now never see the light of day. We may get something, but not the original vision.

I really wanted to hate Discovery because of this lawsuit and how it screwed over so many wonderful creative people. People who clearly love Star Trek and want to tell stories in that universe. People who are not interested in hurting CBS's bottom line but are really trying to encourage people to check out this 50 year old story in all its iterations. Star Trek's biggest and most enthusiastic fans, now screwed over by the Star Trek franchise's owners. Grrr!!!!

Then Discovery came out back in October and it was unbelievably jaw-dropping good. Every episode (with one minor exception) just knocked it out of the park: Amazing story, great characters, beautiful ships (the Fed ones anyway.) I fell in love with Discovery, to the point where it may be my favorite Star Trek series yet and I've seen them all.

As the first season of Discovery progressed, I started to wonder "Is there a way that this and Axanar can co-exist in the same 'universe?'" I became increasingly convinced that yes, they could. They could be parallel stories being told about the same war. There would, of course, require some tweaks, but it could be done.

Canon has not firmly set the date of the Battle of Axanar. We only really know that studying Garth of Izar's tactics at that battle was required reading for up and coming Star Fleet officers at the Academy. (This is established in the TOS episode "Whom Gods Destroy" where we meet a now-insane Garth). It could be set during Discovery's time period (2256 or so), despite the Axanar fan crew setting the date of the battle much earlier (2241).

Of course, the sticky wicket there is how would Kirk have studied the battle at the academy when he was already serving in Star Fleet in 2256 (That was during his time aboard the U.S.S. Farragut as a junior officer). Perhaps he had to return to the Academy for further study after his first starship assignment.

Well, best made plans and all that, as Discovery progressed further yet, this sort of reconciliation became harder and harder. With the first season of Discovery now over and the Klingon War now concluded, ending with a whimper instead of a bang, it's pretty well impossible to place Axanar into Discovery as a parallel story.

So, back to the drawing board...

So, let's put Axanar and the battle thereat back when the people who made it set it: 2241. That's 15 years before Discovery and 25 before TOS. This removes the sticky wicket about Kirk having studied the battle during his Academy days. It again predates his entry into the Academy.

But the new sticky wicket is the Klingons, who have, according to Discovery, been in isolation from the Federation since ENT. Their emergence at the Battle of the Binary Stars comes as a shock to the Federation, who've heard very little from the Klingons for the past century.

The key word there is "very little." Very little is not "nothing" and Discovery itself tells us that Klingon-Federation contact has occurred at other times within the last 100 years, always violently. Not the least of which is the raid where Michael Burnam's biological parents are killed.

Given Michael's presumed age (Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays her, is 32), that raid very well could have taken place within the Axanar storyline's Four Years War.

Prelude to Axanar also establishes a few things that could help us here. It makes the point to show the Klingon battle strategies are really one of massacre and genocide (which also fits with their war strategy in Discovery), less one of occupation. It establishes Kharn, the battle commander of the Klingon offense, as being at odds to some degree with Klingon leadership. This too fits in with Discovery's reveal that the Klingon people are divided and the Great Houses do not get along.

So here's my proposal to reconcile these two amazing high quality Star Trek stories.

In 2241, one of the Klingon Houses, let by Kharn the Undying, launches an attack against the Federation, hoping to convince the other Great Houses that the Federation is weak. This attack goes immensely well, destroying colony after colony and starship after starship. (Among these colonies is the one where a young Michael Burnam lives and she is orphaned in the attack.) Kharn is right, the Federation is weak and vulnerable, but the Great Houses are too busy bickering among themselves to fully commit to Kharn's war effort.

As a result, the Federation gets a brief respite, which they take to appoint new leadership (Adm. Rameriez) and develop a new starship (The Ares class, or perhaps the Walker class, given how similar in appearance they are to one another.) These new ships are able to repel Kharn's raiders, but Kharn learns (by deliberate leak) that the new Constitution class starship is being constructed at Axanar and is vulnerable to attack. He takes the bait and launches an attack, an attack which Garth of Izar repels. Disgraced, Kharn retreats and the war ends.

But the Klingons have learned a few things about the Federation. It is vulnerable and a full scale attack by the entire armed forces of the Empire would be devastating. Enter T'Kuvma, a Klingon visionary who fears the Federation and what it intends to do to the Empire. He calls for the Klingons to unite against this threat. Much like Kharn before him, he is unsuccessful. At least, until he finds the lost legendary Ship of the Dead. He uses this discovery to claim Kahless's mantle and the great houses begin to listen to him. As they gather, Michael Burnam and the crew of the Federation starship Shenzhou discover them at a binary star system. Hostilities ensue and the Discovery story begins.

A couple additional points about this reconciliation. One of the critiques of Discovery (a valid one, I feel) is how bizarre and different looking the Klingon ships are. The show runners imply this is because each House has their own production facilities and builds their own starship designs. That fits with the above. Perhaps the traditional Klingon D-5, D-6. and D-7 ships are those of the House of Kharn and only become more universal after L'Rell unites the Houses (again) at the end of Discovery season one.

Of course, that doesn't explain the bizarro D-7 we see in Discovery episode 5 "Choose Your Pain." The only thing I can say is that perhaps this is a modified D-7 in use by the House of Kharn and now under L'Rell's command. (T'Kuvma and L'Rell's house is not named in Discovery, a curious and convenient omission.)

The second point is how can Discovery be the great first war between the Klingons and the Federation when 15 years earlier there was another equally devastating conflict between those two powers? Here, you'll have retcon a bit of Axanar (since it's not official canon, it's the easier target for this sort of tweaking.) The Axanar "Four Years War" simply cannot be as grand a scale of conflict as is presented. Instead, it's a series of raids and deep strikes into Federation territory, devastating perhaps to individual colonies such as Arcanis IV, but overall not so great a threat to the Federation as a whole. It threatens to ignite into such a conflict, which is why Rameriez and company take it so seriously, but until the other houses and the Great Council align behind Kharn, it remains a lesser conflict.

So, what do you think? Comments and serious critiques are welcome.

Making Star Trek Online into a Star Trek Adventures resource

As my players already know, I'm setting my STA campaign in the STO universe, in the year 2411. The goings-on in the online game are really only backdrop. My players will be exploring a previously unexplored section of the galaxy that is removed from the political situation of the three major powers.

That's not to say that STO doesn't have things to provide for my game. One of my players was kind enough to hand me a "Technobabble generator" last session and it got me thinking. STO has a whole slew of technobabble stuff lurking within the game that we can use to add further atmosphere.

So, I'm going to provide links to the appropriate wiki pages.

Rare minerals, particles, and the like

"Science officer, can you identify that green-glowing gas please?"

"Captain, there's a large deposit of ______ on this asteroid."

"We'll need to absorb some of the ___________ particles from that cloud to fuel the reaction, Captain."

Need a rare sci-fi material to fill in the blank on sentences like these. Look no further than this chart of odd materials used in the STO crafting system.

Engineering Components

"Sorry, sir, but the _________'s shot. It'll need replaced."

"I'm just completing repairs on the _________ now. We'll be up and running in no time."

Engineers, need a better name for the thingamajig you're fixing on the ship? Again, STO comes through with this list of equipment components from the crafting system.

Major Starship Components

"Sir, we can't fire the phasers without a functioning _________."

"I've jury rigged a new _______________. The impulse engines should be back online in moments."

Consider this the step up from Engineering Components. These are the pieces of the ship that make it function and are themselves made up of the above mentioned Engineering Components. These items are more large scale. In STO, they generally appear as consoles and provide various buffs for the starship during play. In STA, I would imagine these machines are pretty universal on starships and are simply part and parcel of how you construct a star-faring vessel.

Engineering consoles are the devices that regulate the power systems of the ship.

Tactical Consoles are devices that support and control the ship's weapon systems.

Science consoles are devices that allow the sensors, shields, medical facilities, laboratories, and the like to operate.

Energy Weapon Types (Space)

A starship laying out the serious pain of an anti-proton volley.

STA is limited to three energy weapons: phasers, disruptors, and polaron. STO has weapons that utilize three others: anti-proton, tetryon, and plasma.

• Anti-proton weapons just plain hit harder. Add +2 to damage after all other calculations are made.
• Tetyron weapons shred shields. For every effect rolled, increase the damage by 1 as long as the damaged vessel still has shields (like vicious 1, but it doesn't do additional hull damage to the ship, only the shields.)
• Plasma weapons inflict a damage-over-time effect. This weapon has the persistent quality.

Energy Weapon Types (Ground)

Vulcan officer with a plasma"mini-gun" assault weapon

As above, only shields aren't as big a deal on this scale of play. The only "shield" available is the Personal Body Shield which gives resistance instead of a Shield value. As a result, Tetyron ground weapons are given Piercing 1.

However, in addition to the new energy types, there is also a new category of weapon in STO. In addition to pistols and rifles, there is also the assault weapon. These are the machine guns and shotguns of the Star Trek universe and I suspect only exist because of the turmoil of the Iconian Wars.

Each assault weapon has the Area, Cumbersome, and Deadly qualities, but otherwise functions as a rifle of the appropriate type.

Torpedo Weapon Types (Space)

Again, STA limits itself (for the moment anyway) to three torpedo types: photon, quantum, and plasma while STO includes three others: transphasic, chroniton, and tricobalt.

I haven't put a lot of thought into how to implement these in STA, in part because there's a big difference between how STO portrays these weapons and how Star Trek canon does in the shows.

Transphasic torpedoes can kill Borg cubes in one shot. I'm not sure how I can implement something that powerful in game. In STO, they're not quite that deadly, but they have higher shield penetration than other torp types.

Chroniton torpedoes bypass shields because of their temporal flux. In STO, they also produce a slowing effect on ships struck by them. Not sure how I'd do that in STA.

Tricobalt torpedoes are basically space nukes and suffer from the same problem as Transphasics. Way too powerful to be easily implemented.

So, I'm not sure what I'm doing with these yet. Consider this a work in progress.

Star Trek Discovery and the Klingons

(Author's Note: I've begun running a Star Trek Adventures campaign with several friends and it's been going well so far. Really enjoying the game system. I thought about starting a new blog for material related directly or indirectly to that game, but then changed my mind. I'll just put it here on Darkhold and treat this blog as my general gaming blog site.)

So what's up with the Klingons anyway?

We went from this...

to this...

and now this...

All supposedly the same alien species. What gives?

The obvious reason is, to paraphrase Dr. McCoy, "I know engineers. They love to change things." And that's the truth. People behind the Star Trek shows and movies have been tinkering with the Klingon design for decades now.

As fun as that might be if you're a Hollywood makeup guy, it produces headaches for those of us interested in the Star Trek franchise's internal consistency. These look like three different alien races, but they're not.

So, do I dare try to reconcile why these three forms of Klingon exist? Of course. That's why I'm writing this.

For simplicity's sake, I'm going to call the TMP/TNG/ENT Klingons "Type 1," the TOS Klingons "Type 2," and the DIS Klingons "Type 3." Why I'm going in that order instead of using real world chronology will become clear later.

Let's establish three things first. One, the change from the Type 1 Klingon (which appears in the earliest chronological series of Star Trek, ENT) to the later Type 2 form has been explained in the canon. In the ENT season 4 episodes "Affliction" and "Divergence," we discover the Klingons have been tampering with human augment DNA and have inadvertently created a virus which threatens the whole of the Klingon people. The virus is cured, but the species is changed. Gone are their head ridges, at least for the time being.

Two, those ENT episodes establish something about the Klingons that we often forget. They are a scientifically astute race, particularly in the areas of genetic manipulation. We're so used to thinking of Klingons as "space orcs," the noble savage barbarians of the Star Trek universe, that we forget just how smart they really are.

Three, the comedic DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" has Worf, the Type 1 Klingon security officer from DS9, travel back in time with others to the TOS period. There, he encounters Type 2 Klingons and is embarrassed by them. Hence, this sequence of dialogue.

So here's what I think has happened over the course of Klingon history.

The original Klingon species (Type 1) tampers with its DNA in an effort to make a superbeing (there's a sci-fi trope, if there ever was one.) This backfires and they end up with a significantly altered genome (Type 2). Never a people to leave well enough alone, the Klingons spend a good portion of the 100 years between ENT and DIS tampering with their DNA further.

That brings us to Star Trek Discovery and the Type 3 Klingon. These new type 3 Klingons are seen as the "cure" for the humiliating human-like Type 2 Klingons. They've lost their hair, but have gained their ridges back. They regard themselves as superior, as close to the original species (i.e. Type 1) that their science can achieve at that time.

Type 2 Klingons are seen as lower class citizens and held in contempt. Likewise, the humans are blamed for the existence of Type 2 and they are seen as proof of human efforts to utterly subvert the Klingon people.

As DIS begins, we are witness to a gathering of Type 3 Klingons, who spend an inordinate amount of time bitching about humans and about how they need to remain pure. This seems to be their manifesto. Hence, the following...

Well, if you've been watching DIS, you know how this goes. The Federation and the Klingons go to war. All hell is unleashed across the quadrant.

(Side note: Our actual first encounter as the audience with a Type 3 Klingon is in "Star Trek Into Darkness", which is a Kelvin Universe story. Probably not coincidentally, the timeline between that film and DIS has them contemporaries of one another. It then makes sense that the Kelvin Klingons of that time are Type 3.)

Eventually, this war ends and while we don't yet know the specifics of it (since DIS is still running), we can guess that the end results are pretty devastating to the Klingons. Those second class Type 2 Klingons now outnumber the Type 3s, who have been decimated by the war with the Federation. Klingons being Klingons, someone launches a coup and the Type 2s emerge on top. They take over. They become the face of the Klingon Empire, a face we then see numerous times in TOS.

But the story doesn't end there. Those wacky Klingon scientists are still working at this whole genetic problem and sometime after TOS, but before TMP (which is only about 3 years in canon) they find the cure. It's released for distribution and all (or at least most) Type 2 and Type 3 Klingons revert to being Type 1 again. (General Chang in TUC is an interesting case. He could be a unchanged Type 3, given he's the only bald Klingon we encounter post-TMP.)

What do you think?

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Addendum. In case you got a bit lost with my alphabet soup...

TOS - the original series. Kirk, Spock, etc. Released in the 60s.
ENT - Enterprise. Archer, Trip, etc. Released in the early 00s.
TNG - The Next Generation. Picard, Riker, etc. Released in the late 80s.
DS9 - Deep Space 9. Sisko, Kira, etc. Released in the early 90s.
TMP - The Motion Picture. First Star Trek theatrical film. Released in 1979.
TUC - The Undiscovered Country. Last Star Trek theatrical film featuring the original cast. Releaed in 1991.
DIS - Star Trek Discovery. Being made right now (2018)