The Alexander Rozhenko Conundrum

[od0_ital]

^

Obviously, as a Federation citizen, Worf would have access to medical treatments that may prolong his life. And he probably doesn't eat as much raw meat as a regular Klingon. Plus, he has his prune juice.

 

[clint g]

Okay, am I completely dense here? Because in all the years I have watched TNG, it never even occurred to me that Alexander was the product of Worf and K'Ehleyr's encounter in "The Emissary." I always assumed that he had been born prior to that, and that she had just never told him about it until "Reunion."

You and me both, though it has been years since I've seen either episode.

 

[Timo]

If we ignore the birth stardate given in "Reunion", then this more natural interpretation is still valid.

Yes, in addition, we hear in "The Emissary" that Worf and K'Ehleyr did something for the first time there. But do we really want to know the dirty details? The only thing that suggests that the "first time" might have referred specifically to good old pregnancy-inducing bareback humping is that Worf is painted as the sort of guy to insist on the Oath right after his first such experience, and his attempt at the Oath comes right there and then.

Personally, I'd have been slightly happier with the "natural" version where Alexander already exists during "The Emissary". But with the two pieces of evidence, the explicit stardate and the suggestive Oath thing, I'll rather go with the other version now.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Peach Wookiee]

*Fires up DVD of TNG "Firstborn"* Worf said Alexander was approaching the first Rite of Ascension. According to klingon.org, this means Alexander is nine years and seven months old. So his physiology is seriously different.

 

[Tomalak]

We can explain away Alexander due to his Klingon biology, but what's the deal with Molly, a one-year old baby walking and talking? Unless, of course, TNG seasons five and six are set three earth years apart.

 

[Timo]

A bright kid who only barely falls within the parameters of "not engineered enough to automatically get the parents sent to salt mines"?

OTOH, we never quite learned that Keiko Ishikawa would have been a full human. There might be some speed-up genes in the mix there. Miles O'Brien probably didn't have those, as he went through enough physicals and abduction and torture scenarios that such anomalies ought to have been commented upon.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

As I recall the novel Final Reflection, Klingons are full adults by their early teens, and had average life spans of about thirty-five year, that life span took into account than most die by violence, not old age.

Which is completely disregarded in the TNG era and beyond (Final Reflection was published in the early eighties). Kor, Kang, and Koloth live to over a hundred, and we have nothing that indicates that this is unusual.

 

[Tomalak]

Well, it's years since I read the book, but T'Girl seems to suggest the average life span was short because they all died young in battle, not because they were biologically incapable of living longer.

 

[Bacl]

Klingons are a warrior race, so it makes sense that they would have mature quickly to kick ass and takeover stuff for the glory of their House.

You got that backwards.

Klingons are a species that mature quickly and takeover territory, so it makes sense that they would develop a culture as a warrior race.

Unless you believe Klingons were designed by some higher power with the explicit intent of being a warrior race.

God: "Now I would like to create a warrior race, so I shall design them to mature quickly and take shit over."

 

[od0_ital]

God: "Now I would like to create a warrior race, so I shall design them to mature quickly and take shit over."

Hey, if its good enough for the Founders...

But I bet God came to regret that decision when the Klingons came & killed him.

 

[94253]

God: "Now I would like to create a warrior race, so I shall design them to mature quickly and take shit over."

LOL


I understand sometimes you can equate one season of a show to mean one year of time in the show's world, but for many shows that is just not the case. Life aboard a starship certainly would be exciting, but I doubt the Enterprise crew legitimately had one very exciting experience every week. Some weeks were likely too boring to televise so it is very possible more than 7 years had passed from start to finish, is it not?

I also understand there are a lot of web sites claiming to have decoded the stardate system so we can determine which stardates mean what years, and using that we could figure out exactly how far apart the episodes are from each other...but that doesn't really work. There was the inevitable problem of people in the year 2001 reading a book titled 2001: A Space Odyssey and laughing quietly to themselves. In fact I just had a similar experience with Blad Runner just last week. To avoid this, Trek writers began using startdate numbers to have some sort of timeline without specifying exact dates. (See Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Page 64)

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

Except for the episodes where they mention "2425" or whatever by standard Earth year... I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know they have happened.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Sudden aging of young characters for dramatic purposes is common in soap operas of all sorts.

 

[shivkala]

From Memory Alpha:

Ronald D. Moore addresses this directly when talking about DS9: "Sons and Daughters": "We're pegging Alexander as being roughly the equivalent of a thirteen to sixteen-year-old Human male, although his actual age is much younger. Hey, Klingons mature faster, okay?" (AOL chat, 1997) This was also seen with Toral. This phenomenon is often referred to as Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome.

 

[Timo]

At least Trek has a legitimate excuse. For it is written that space aliens be alien...

I doubt the Enterprise crew legitimately had one very exciting experience every week.

What law has been written against that?

Although to be sure, it's one very exciting experience per two weeks.

And at least one episode per season where they establish that a year has passed since the previous season, or that three years have passed since that adventure 78 episodes ago.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Distorted Humor]

Somehow I am not shocked that a 15 year old Klingon would sign up for the great battles of the dominion war. Nor would the Klingon command decline such enlistments.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I don't remember if it was stated that the Klingons have a shorter lifespan, but that's always been my personal belief.
Shorter-lived races tend to have shorter childhoods.

"The Final Reflection" most definitely did state that Klingons packed a lot of living into very short lifespans, explaining their feisty natures. The book follows the short but successful career of Vrenn, who becomes Krenn when promoted to captain.

This theory wasn't really disproved canonically until DS9's "Blood Oath".

In the book Final Reflection, some of the differences between Klingons and humans were discussed, including the fact that Klingons can't see the blue end of the visible spectrum but can see more into the infrared than humans (this is why their ships seem so dark and red to humans).

In Majliss Larson's "Pawns and Symbols", a Klingon visitor to the Enterprise accidentally ignores a black warning sign on a red door because the colours are supposedly the same to a Klingon eye.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Except for the episodes where they mention "2425" or whatever by standard Earth year... I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know they have happened.

We had no way to date anything until Data mentioned a precise Earth year (2364) in "The Neutral Zone", so suddenly everything was datable.

 

[datalogan]

So it's clear from all the evidence shown on screen that Klingons mature quickly, becoming adults in only about 10 years. And also that Klingons live to be well over 100 years old.

I would still like to "imagine" that the Klingons were once a short-lived race in actual fact, and that that lead to the more agressive natures seen (atleast amoungst warrior cast). That, furthermore, they had some change in their medicine knowledge or genetics that lead them to be a longer-lived race after the culture had already been established. I would like to imagine that that change came about because of the meddling with human Augment DNA as seen in the Enterprise 4th season episodes, but even that is actually contradicted on screen. In the earlier 2nd season episode "Judgment" the Klingon character Kolos stated that he had been practicing law for over 60 years, which would tend to support the idea that the Klingons were already a long-lived race (relatively) prior to the Augment DNA situation.

Ah well, just another time when Star Trek TV writers, while good at character development generally, are not as imaginative when it comes to possible sci-fi aspects of the stories. The books written early on about the Klingons were more interesting that the stuff written for TV later on.