“The writing staff were careful to refer to Fek’lhr as being the “guardian of Gre’thor” in order to be consistent with Kang’s statement claiming that Klingons have no devil, in “Day of the Dove”
I was about to say, technically it was correct
Klingon death lore isn’t very consistent. In TNG they yell to warn the afterlife that a warrior is approaching… And then say the body is trash. Throw it out the airlock. All Frank Reynolds.
Then in DS9 Worf is standing some silent vigil over someone who died saying it’s what Klingons do.
Then we have discovery where they build giant ass ships for the dead.
What am I missing
Humans rant about going to heaven but they also believe the soul goes back into a newborn child
The royals stood guard over the queen but the tibetans leave their dead to be eaten by animals.
Then we have the indians who barbecue their dead
Which is it
That’s fair. Humans have diverse cultures.
That being said, especially in matters of after death beliefs, humans won’t say “humans believe…”, they’ll add specificity by saying “Catholics believe”, or drop the universal quantifier of “humans” and just say “I/we” leaving the exact contextual bounds ambiguous in the case of “we”.
At least in the Star Trek I’ve seen, Klingons are pretty fucking happy to say it’s the KLINGON way. The KLINGON belief. The KLINGON tradition. Pretty explicitly setting the bounds.
Entirely possible that every subculture is so enamoured with themselves that they really don’t consider other Klingon cultures “true Klingons”. So that’s an explanation.
But even with that, we even see Worf, the same singular Klingon, giving IMO two contradictory versions. Although as another has said, he might have just made one up to be a comfort to a friend.
Well, one infamous trek instance of a human speaking for all is who mourns for adonais: “Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one sufficient”
Klingons are full of braggadocio and disdain for what they perceive as the sheeplike homogeneity of the Federated planets - the Klingon claims have always struck me as less “this is what my culture is” and more “we are not the fucking federation”
That’s another great point. People do seem pretty comfortable speaking about their species as a whole in Star Trek, not just Klingons.
That Klingon culture isn’t a monolith over their entire history.
I don’t see any inconsistency between the death yell and that the body is trash. The yell is to warm of the Warrior’s spirit’s assent to Grethor. The body no longer has the spirit and is just an empty meat shell.
Other Klingons may acknowledge that the body is empty, but still don’t want the spirit of the dead to be dishonored by having its body eaten by slowly scavengers, something famously uncommon on starships. Just like how some humans believe in Sky Burials and others believe the body must go in a tomb the same day it died.
Or, my pet theory, Worf Lied to make Miles feel better about Enrique’s death. It wouldn’t be the first time he made up a “super serious” Klingon ritual to prove his point.
Oh yeah, the yell+trash bit is internally consistent. Just the trash vs something worth guarding vs worth permanently enshrining.
But honestly that pet theory of yours is probably the simplest way to reconcile DS9. Then let discovery just have its Klingon reinvention and let it be it’s own thing and baby, you got a stew goin’
I think this would be a great topic to place in c/daystrominstitute if it’s still active. It’s been years since I’ve seen this debate online.
Who the heck came up with “Fek’lhr”?! Like, it’s clearly it intended to be a Klingon word and not an Anglicization, but they failed miserably to actually follow the rules of the language.
- “F” is not used for that sound in any major Klingon Romanization system (“f” corresponds to “ng” in xifan hol mapping); “v” is the closest thing.
- “k” is also not used; that should be a “q”.
- The apostrophe usually only comes after vowels, as it denotes a glottal stop.
- “h” is not pronounced silently like it is here; it’s a weird consonant kind of like a soft g.
It’s so bad it looks like Okrand had to fix it in one of his Klingon audio tapes - the official Klingon word is “veqlargh”, leaving the TNG onscreen versiob as a very weird Anglicization with a pointless apostrophe.
So, what you’re saying he’s the Klingon equivalent of a Lovecraftian horror, featuring a name that is unspeakable by any known tongue.
Watch any series other than TNG with subtitles and you’ll see sometimes petaQ is given an Anglicized Earth spelling pethak (IIRC).
EDIT: Obviously not TOS.
I mean, that’s at least a grounded Anglicization that I could see someone in-universe coming up with. Pronunciation-wise, ”Fek’lhr” isn’t so bad either, but still incredibly stupid spelling-wise.
It would make sense that a figure like that could be an example of mythological syncretism. Fek’lhr could be a Klinoneesation of his real name.
It’s certainly not canon, but Star Trek Online, Fek’lhr is part of the Fek’lhri species which I’m still trying to wrap my head around how they’re a space faring species
Worf said they killed them. They probably did.
I thought that was the gods?
Yes, one of which was the Devil.
The forehead & brow ridges on the bottom character do resemble a modern Klingon.
This was from ST; TNG Devil’s Due S04 E13.
That’s Fek’lhr.
