DS9: Tacking into the Wind

[Archanubis]

Then there's the historical contradiction of how the Romulans, "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", somehow lost a civil-war against what boils down to being a bunch of vulcan hippies? What? How? How exactly does the warlike faction loose a war against a sect that doesn't want to even take up arms?

Remember that weapon from "Gambit"?

The proto-Romulans probably had other weapons to fall back on when that weapon became useless. They still lost because, while the Vulcans definitely prefer to find peaceful solutions, what many viewers forget is that Vulcans are not absolute pacifists - or as TVTropes calls it, "suicidal pacifists." They will fight if there is a sufficient reason to, and even after adopting logic as a central belief (itself a "racial hat'), they didn't completely dismantle their means of defending themselves. That wouldn't be logical, after all.

[Madner Kami]

Then there's the historical contradiction of how the Romulans, "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", somehow lost a civil-war against what boils down to being a bunch of vulcan hippies? What? How? How exactly does the warlike faction loose a war against a sect that doesn't want to even take up arms?

Remember that weapon from "Gambit"?

Explain please, I can't follow your train of thought.

[Dînadan]

Then there's the historical contradiction of how the Romulans, "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", somehow lost a civil-war against what boils down to being a bunch of vulcan hippies? What? How? How exactly does the warlike faction loose a war against a sect that doesn't want to even take up arms?

Presumably it was the same way as how the Son'a got booted out by the Bak'u.

In fairness, the Vulcan-Romulan conflict is more believable than the Bak'u-Son'a one; unless I'm misremembering, the adoption of Surak's teachings was only a recent thing when the proto-Romulans were ousted, so the Vulcans of that time weren't necessarily entirely 'hippie pascifists'. Presumably they were only just getting their aggression and other emotions under control so were still capable of violence. In fact it's possible initially it benefited them as instead of going off half-cocked on an emotional whim, they were able to control and direct their emotions to be most efficient, in turn gaining the upper hand and forcing the proto-Romulans off world. In that case, it was only after then that they fully embraced pascifism. And as AdmiralX says, they also still had the emotion reflecting weapons then.

As for not coming back for several centuries, I vaguely recall an offhandedly mention of a two hundred year war between Vulcans and Romulans (think it's mentioned as one of the things Q caused when he was out causing mischief), so if that's not the war where the Romulans got kicked out, there was a conflict between then and the eras covered by the shows. It's also possible that the Earth-Romulan War was intended as the first move in a new conflict with Vulcan, but it went badly with Earth either winning or (more likely) a stalemate. After that the Romulans retreated to lick their wounds and rebuild, but within a few years was the founding of the Federation with Vulcan as a charter member and thus the game changed such that a war with Vulcan now meant a war with all the founding worlds of the Federation and thus it took til TOS before they were condfident enough to try again.

[Dînadan]

Then there's the historical contradiction of how the Romulans, "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", somehow lost a civil-war against what boils down to being a bunch of vulcan hippies? What? How? How exactly does the warlike faction loose a war against a sect that doesn't want to even take up arms?

Remember that weapon from "Gambit"?

Explain please, I can't follow your train of thought.

He means that the Vulcans had a weapon that reflected the aggression back at its user's enemies; against the proto-Romulans it would be devastating as it'd reflect their unbridled agression back at them whereas against Surak's followers it'd be useless; just like how in "The Gambit" it was used to kill the mercs who were acting aggressive but against Picard, Worf and some gold shirts it did nothing because they followed Picard's order to calm themselves and empty their minds of aggressive thoughts.

[CareerKnight]

I should also point out that "Star Trek Online" perhaps is overly disposed to conflict because it is an MMO. Whenever the writers had two directions to chose from they would pick the one that had more possibilities for adventures in the context of factional gaming. So the idea that Martok lost out years later and the Empire is in Turmoil is a possibility, but to point to it as an eventuality or reason that Worf was somehow wrong in this instance is not really fair to the characters or show. It is projecting the worst possible outcome not necessarily the best or most likely.

I can't speak for the person who brought it up by I didn't talk about Martok's death as any condemnation of Worf's decision. I do think that Martok will likely not die of old age if for no other reason than I suspect that a lot of chancellors got there by challenging the previous one.

It's just such a shame that so often the writing lent itself better to cliches than to nuance. I'll always remember that scene in Redemption: Part 2, where Worf is trying to tally up all the damage to their ship that needs to be repaired, and Kurn is like, "Who fucking cares if the ship works? We're warriors, let's get drunk!" As if there's room for warriors to actual address all the important stuff first and make sure their weapons work before they get drunk.

I never saw it as "Who fucking cares if the ship works?" but instead "This is a party, work can wait. We just fought a battle and need to unwind."

Lots of true stuff

I would saw we don't know how Klingon society works as oppose to it can't (which is still pretty bad considering how much time we spend on them). As you said we never really get to know any who isn't a high ranking politician or general or see any part of their society besides that. I assume that the rest of Klingon society had a very different mindset than those higher up and in power (kind of like how in Medieval Europe chivalry was something that mostly mattered to the knights and lords). I kind of suspected a lot of them probably had a similar disdain for those in the upper classes of Klingon society as they had shown towards them. "Oh great and mighty warrior eh? Lets see how great you are without any food to eat or spaceships, dumbass."

[Durandal_1707]

Then there's the historical contradiction of how the Romulans, "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", somehow lost a civil-war against what boils down to being a bunch of vulcan hippies? What? How? How exactly does the warlike faction loose a war against a sect that doesn't want to even take up arms?

Remember that weapon from "Gambit"?

Explain please, I can't follow your train of thought.

He means that the Vulcans had a weapon that reflected the aggression back at its user's enemies; against the proto-Romulans it would be devastating as it'd reflect their unbridled agression back at them whereas against Surak's followers it'd be useless; just like how in "The Gambit" it was used to kill the met s who were acting aggressive but against Picard, Worf and some gold shirts it did nothing because they followed Picard's order to calm themselves and empty their minds of aggressive thoughts.

There was a video game back in the 90s, Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury, with the story written by D.C. Fontana no less, whose plot apparently centered around some kind of ultra-powerful weapon that the Vulcans had used in the Vulcan-Romulan War. Sadly, the game got stuck in development hell and was never completed. :/

[Admiral X]

Then there's the historical contradiction of how the Romulans, "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", somehow lost a civil-war against what boils down to being a bunch of vulcan hippies? What? How? How exactly does the warlike faction loose a war against a sect that doesn't want to even take up arms?

Remember that weapon from "Gambit"?

Explain please, I can't follow your train of thought.

He means that the Vulcans had a weapon that reflected the aggression back at its user's enemies; against the proto-Romulans it would be devastating as it'd reflect their unbridled agression back at them whereas against Surak's followers it'd be useless; just like how in "The Gambit" it was used to kill the mercs who were acting aggressive but against Picard, Worf and some gold shirts it did nothing because they followed Picard's order to calm themselves and empty their minds of aggressive thoughts.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at. I'm sure that type of weapon would let the pacifist types to tell themselves that they didn't really kill anyone, too, since it's simply reflecting back their enemies' own aggression back at them.

[Madner Kami]

Then there's the historical contradiction of how the Romulans, "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", somehow lost a civil-war against what boils down to being a bunch of vulcan hippies? What? How? How exactly does the warlike faction loose a war against a sect that doesn't want to even take up arms?

Remember that weapon from "Gambit"?

Explain please, I can't follow your train of thought.

He means that the Vulcans had a weapon that reflected the aggression back at its user's enemies; against the proto-Romulans it would be devastating as it'd reflect their unbridled agression back at them whereas against Surak's followers it'd be useless; just like how in "The Gambit" it was used to kill the mercs who were acting aggressive but against Picard, Worf and some gold shirts it did nothing because they followed Picard's order to calm themselves and empty their minds of aggressive thoughts.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at. I'm sure that type of weapon would let the pacifist types to tell themselves that they didn't really kill anyone, too, since it's simply reflecting back their enemies' own aggression back at them.

I'd like to point out, that the Romulans could not have been "Romulans" at the time of the split, thus this weapon could not have been used against "Those who march beneath the Raptor's Wings", as they did not have settled on Romulus before the diaspora. The Romulan-Vulcan-War must have happened after the split and after the TWMBRWs settled Romulus (and also, logically, after the Debrune civilization).

[Independent George]

I think the fundamental problem with the Klingons comes down to:

1. One hat per species
2. Klingon promotion.

#1 is true of literally every species in ST, but when that aforementioned hat is #5, it becomes really untenable. Any society whose leadership can be usurped purely by their skill at arms and willingness to kill everyone around them is not going to survive long. There is just no logical way for that to work, especially on that scale, based on what we've seen it on screen.

[Dînadan]

I think the fundamental problem with the Klingons comes down to:

1. One hat per species
2. Klingon promotion.

#1 is true of literally every species in ST, but when that aforementioned hat is #5, it becomes really untenable. Any society whose leadership can be usurped purely by their skill at arms and willingness to kill everyone around them is not going to survive long. There is just no logical way for that to work, especially on that scale, based on what we've seen it on screen.

A good example of why this type of society wouldn't work also comes from Trek; the Enterprise Mirror Universe two-parter where everyone was trying to murder the guy above them at the first opportunity. The only way that society could feasibly survive to the TOS era is if 99% of those asshats murdered each other leaving the more shrewd people behind to carry on over the next hundred years.