Kronos One

[cwl]

In STVI: The Undiscovered Country the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon meets up wit the the USS Enterprise to fly to Earth. Gorkon's ship was called Kronos One which got me thinking.

That's an unusual name for a Starship and it resembles the name of the Plane/Helicopter of the US President: Air Force On / Marine One.

In the case of those aircraft the name is a Call Sign. It's not the actual name of the aircraft. The 747 that carries the President loses it's Air Force One call sign when the president disembarks and any airforce jet gets that Call Sign when the president is on board it also applies to Marine One.

So with this in mind is Kronos One a call sign or a name of an actual ship? Is Kronos One the call sign of any Klingon ship where the Chancellor is onboard?

 

[Candlelight]

It's implication was analogous to Air Force One, yes, but as far as ship name/call sign goes it was never mentioned in dialogue.

By definition for the duration of the tour and dinner, the Enterprise should've been called Kronos One.

 

[cwl]

Enterprise isn't a Klingon ship.

 

[SchwEnt]

I can see the parallels between the US "Air Force One" and the Klingon "Kronos One", but it needn't be quite so literal.

Maybe it wasn't a call sign, the Klingon ship may well have had the name "Kronos One".

We've heard Klingon ships like "Amar" and "Klothos" so I can believe "Kronos", and then "Kronos One" as being the chancellor's own flagship.

At times, the US had vessels USS America and USS United States, so as another parallel I can understand the Klingons having a "Kronos One" ship.

 

[cwl]

but why 'Kronos One'? I can understand 'kronos' being named after the home world but Kronos One suggests it's the ship of the Chancellor. so either the chancellor has a personal ship or its a call sign transfered to Klingon ship he's travelling on.

 

[USS KG5]

but why 'Kronos One'? I can understand 'kronos' being named after the home world but Kronos One suggests it's the ship of the Chancellor. so either the chancellor has a personal ship or its a call sign transfered to Klingon ship he's travelling on.

It's probably a dedicated ship for Klingon "royalty", given as the Klingons are so warlike it happens to be a badass warship.

It is fairly obviously a reference to Air Force One, a pretty off the cuff idea so they didn't have to think of a ship name I suspect.

 

[Tiberius]

Why can't the chancellor have his own ship? Gowron had the Bortas...

 

[SchwEnt]

Maybe Gorkon did have his own ship, like Gowron.
And Gorkon named it "Kronos One". It doesn't have to correspond to US radio callsigns. Just... Kronos One. That's the vessel name.

Burt Rutan made his own spaceship and called it "SpaceShipOne", so why not?

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I did find it kinda odd that the ship had One after it's name. A ship called Kronos makes sense, but the Klingons aren't American, so why would they follow an American method of naming the ship their head of state is on?

 

[Silvercrest]

Maybe he had more than one ship called Kronos.

 

[NSTrekfan]

Perhaps it was simply the Starfleet designation for the ship? The Feds are big on protocol, the Klingons not so much. Gorkon seemed like a fairly well read sort. Perhaps he appreciated the irony of the ship of a hostile power appropriateting what would usually be seen as a human custom.

 

[Alrik]

EDIT: In reply to Silvercrest.

^

Exactly. Kinda like George Foreman and sons.

 

[T'Girl]

Klingons aren't American, so why would they follow an American method of naming the ship their head of state is on?

Because, everything Americans do is really cool.

 

[Dukhat]

but why 'Kronos One'? I can understand 'kronos' being named after the home world but Kronos One suggests it's the ship of the Chancellor. so either the chancellor has a personal ship or its a call sign transfered to Klingon ship he's travelling on.

First of all, "Kronos" was not the name of the Klingon homeworld until after TUC, when it became a retcon in DS9 with a Klingonese updated spelling (Qo'nos). Before TUC, the planet was only ever referred to as "the Klingon homeworld," or perhaps "Kling" from the first season (which sounded so stupid that it was justifiably forgotten afterwards).

In TUC, AFAIK, "Kronos" was just a random name for the ship, and "One" after it was meant to imply Air Force One (although it probably should have been called KDF One, for "Klingon Defense Force," but "Kronos" sounded cooler...)

Yeah, I'm bitter that the homeworld wasn't called Klinzhai...

 

[Tosk]

First of all, "Kronos" was not the name of the Klingon homeworld until after TUC, when it became a retcon in DS9 with a Klingonese updated spelling (Qo'nos).

While it wasn't stated in the finished film, "Kronos" was the name of the homeworld in Star Trek VI. At the very least, it was named as such in the script.

I don't say that to argue a minor point about the planet, only to show that Kronos One was named very specifically, and not given "just a random name".

 

[Sharr Khan]

The Federation President refers to the evacuation of Kronos while giving a speech at Khitomer.

And I think the "one" part is just a translation for a Klingon number and so it would sound correct to normal human beings watching it. I see no reason the leader of the Klingon Empire wouldn't have a dedicated means of interstellar transport. tToo bad he manned it with a bunch of traitors.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Weren't most of the traitors on a bird of prey?

 

[Timo]

...Indeed, it's possible all of them were. If I were Chang, I'd sure transport over to the attacking ship before the torpedoes were fired, in case something unplanned happened and the battle cruiser was blown to space dust!

My vote goes for "Kronos One" being the callsign of the "flight" rather than the name of the vessel. Individual Klingons virtually never bother to identify themselves anyway, and it's almost unheard of them to introduce their ships by name.

On the issue of the name of the Klingon homeworld, it would sound natural to assume that "Klinzhai" literally translates as "Klingonhome" and is a descriptive term rather than a proper name. TOS and early TNG Klingons aren't in the habit of using the proper name - but the UFP officials don't know the culture well enough and therefore write that name into the President's speech. And by the time of DS9, the Klingons finally resign to the barbaric Feds using the proper name, and start to do it themselves when sharing a room with the idiots, having learned that it's, what's that exclusively human word, "polite"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[wjaspers]

Maybe it was called Qounos one, because it was the first of the Qounos class.

 

[Satyrquaze]

Maybe it was called Qounos one, because it was the first of the Qounos class.

Technically wouldn't it have been "Qo'noS 'wa" according to the Klingon/English dicitonary and memoryalpha.org