Why is Earth not a subjugated colony of the Klingon Empire?

IIRC the Klingons were a spacefaring people with FTL capability at least a century or two before humans. At that kind of tech disparity it would be a very easy takeover.

And Earth is less than a week away from Qo'nos at low warp, apparently. It seems almost impossible they missed Earth. And yet they somehow did, obviously.

 

Because there was no honour in attacking Earth. I'll take my No-Prize now.

 

They are retards, too busy headbutting each other in bars or dying in glorious battle to make much progress. The humans outpaced them.

 

The Klingons had other matters to deal with. They didn't necessarily have the *time* to waste attacking Earth. It wasn't until first contact with Archer's crew that they even met face to face, and after that, Earth occasionally even proved itself useful to them. So there was no real need to attack, because Earth wasn't a threat.

 

I don't buy this. I much preferred the setup in John M. Ford's excellent novel The Final Reflection which had Earth and the Klingon homeworld several months apart at about Warp 4. And Ford sets the first time Klingons and humans first knowing of each other only about fifty years or so before the TOS era.

 

That fits better with TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY. Enterprise doesn't make to much sense if you think about it.

 

It's best just to accept ENT as an alternate timeline or continuity or whatever and divorced from what has come before. Otherwise lies madness.

 

Pure twaddle. Enterprise's "problems" are no worse or insurmountable than the others. One solves these "problems" the same way fans have solves similar problems with various movies, episodes and series, through thought and rationalization. To pretend they can't indicates hidebound thinking and a double standard. If one was to apply that standard franchise wide, TOS alone might have close to 70 "alternate timelines".

As for the problem at hand. Earth falls under the Vulcan sphere of infuence and the Klingons do not wish to incur their displeasure.

 

The Klingons would've spent more time fighting other genuine threats like warp-capable species, and probably lots of in-fighting between the Houses.

By the time the Humans became warp-capable, they were also friends with the Vulcans who were more advanced than the Klingons thus keeping them away.

 

Some like to say this, but it isn't at all true.

 

This - I'm unconvinced that modern klingons could sail a rowing boat let along travel the stars.

 

Only one of those, however, is canon.

 

Two words: weak and unworthy! LIke Worf always say: "there is no honor in attacking the weak"!

 

Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks that the Klingons never developed advanced tech on their own? I'll bet they took it from someone else, most likely the Hur'q.

 

Well apparently they have only been like that since the early 22nd century - they used to be more balanced, but they were also a caste society - and in the early 22nd, the warrior caste took power and have dominated Klingon life ever since. (Yeah I know, this is from Ent...)

Strangely some of the things seen throughout the series do kinda make sense in light of that though. When you let warriors run everything safetey practices in engineering and industry tend to go out the window... next thing you know the moon explodes.

Before the warrior caste came to dominate they would have been rather more competent - but were still an expansionist empire. So Earth should have been extremely vulnerable.

 

The Klingon homeworld being less than a week away at Warp 5 in the ENT premiere has always bugged me. I tend to completely disregard that point.

 

Weak and unworthy like the Organians? There wouldn't necessarily be need to attack if they could just beam down to a less advanced society and enforce martial law. Klingons were more frightening and devious enemies in their original incarnation, with no apparent qualms to using more primitive cultures to their advantage (unless this was all Federation propaganda)

 

It probably was, after all the Feds also thought the Ferengi ate people too.

 

They seemed pretty hungry in "The Last Outpost"

 

What possible benefit could Earth have provided the Empire in the nineteenth or twentieth century? The planet doesn't hold quantities of dilithium, at least as far as we know. The Klingons didn't appear to be interested in interstellar commerce in Earth's vicinity.

About the only thing they could have used Earth for was as a strategic outpost against the Vulcans or Andorians. The Vulcans were more advanced than they were and were also known to be willing to use their force when needed, so they probably didn't want to pick a needless fight with them by setting up a listening post in their backyard.

Or, maybe Earth was just too primitive even for the Klingons.