The Borg would take a Klingon over a Kazon every day of the week, and it isn’t close. That’s the first question on the pile this time, and there are five more behind it.

If you’re new, the Know-It-All Files is where Mr. Know-It-All brags and shows off how much he knows it all. No, but specifically, I go online to Quora, to Reddit, to the comment sections here on YouTube, and I take the opportunity to answer the questions you have about your fandom. Star Trek, Star Wars, Deep Space Nine, Doctor Who, whatever it is, we talk about it. I haven’t done one about Star Wars yet because frankly I don’t have enough questions about that. If I did, I’d totally do one, and I might get Mrs. Know-It-All involved.

Why the Borg Want the Klingons and Not the Kazon

The question: why are the Klingons worthy of assimilation by the Borg, but the Kazon aren’t?

People might call the Kazon a Klingon-esque species. You saw them in Voyager. However, comma, they’re more like the Pakleds, in that they’re a scavenger race. I don’t believe they ever discovered or developed warp technology. I believe they stole it or bought it. A space-faring species came by and met them, and they either hijacked them, negotiated with them, got it sold to them, or those people were killed and it was stolen. Either way, they’re not incredibly advanced.

Remember, the Borg look for technological and biological distinctiveness. The Kazon aren’t really either. They’re not overly special physically, other than the weird imposing head ridges and the bone structure. They’re not incredibly intelligent, because they steal other people’s technology and piece it together the best they can.

Klingons, on the other hand, are, for lack of a better word, Japanese-style samurai warriors in space. Some people will say they’re the barbarians of space, and I think I might’ve even said it myself at one point, but the truth is they’re more like samurai. You have houses and families and sects and the whole bit, and you have the guy who runs everything.

So when you put the two side by side, there’s no comparison. If I’m the Borg, I want the intelligence and the warrior spirit and the honor-bound. I want what makes them unique. The Kazon don’t have much that makes them unique.

What the Other Several Hundred People Are Doing

Next one: what were the rest of the several hundred crew members doing in Star Trek during each adventure that involved only a few individuals, including dangers to the vessel itself?

Working. I mean, literally. Your average submarine has anywhere from two to three hundred people on it doing exactly that, or take an aircraft carrier, where there’s thousands of people on it. There’s tons of jobs. Sometimes it’s just greasing that one thing, but at the end of the day, if you don’t do that thing, it’s a cascade effect down the line.

You also have to remember each of these vessels is, at its peak, an exploratory vessel. That’s the main thing. To boldly go, explore space, where no man has gone before, the whole nine yards. So there’s all kinds of science experiments going, people are writing reports, to say nothing of the fact that what we’re seeing is just one side. It’s the action side. That’s all we’re seeing. There’s a ton of other people out there, xenobiologists studying things, astrobiologists, a ton of them just doing stuff.

And when it gets dangerous, what are they doing? Surviving. You go to battle stations. You hide. They also had families aboard at the time.

When there’s a coolant leak in engineering and you see 40 people running out of the thing, what do you think they’re all doing? They’re all working. Especially if you have to fix something and it’s not something the computer can readily fix, somebody’s got to walk it. Who’s taking that jaunt through 100 miles of Jefferies tubes? You need at least 100 engineers running around doing all that stuff. Every ship has that many people in support because it needs it.

The Kelvin Timeline Is Not the Mirror Universe

Is there a difference in Star Trek between an alternate timeline, such as the Kelvin timeline, and the Mirror Universe?

Yes. Timelines are exactly that. We exist in the here and now, and you can go to the past or the future of the here. Picard just did it. The fascist, Nazi-esque present day that Q showed them was the result of someone effecting a change to the timeline, timeline meaning this order of events. Someone went back in time and altered that order of events, and somewhere in the past the timeline skewed into this tangent, creating an alternate 1985. Alternate to you, me and Einstein, reality for everyone else, like my good friend Doc said.

Now stay with me. The Kelvin timeline was created as a result of a Romulan mining vessel going back in time and effecting a change to the timeline. Guess what? That’s the timeline Discovery exists in, because Kovich says as much in Discovery. Discovery’s canon, so don’t fight me on this. Whether you like it or not, I don’t care. Discovery is the result of someone changing and altering the timeline.

The Mirror Universe is multiverse theory. It’s an actual universe where events spun out differently, and you’d literally have to go back to creation to find where that path split. People can change and alter the timeline within that universe, but that has nothing to do with us. It runs in parallel. Parallel Earths, parallel universes, the multiverse if you will, sit adjacent to us. Alternate timelines are changes within the timeline.

I love this kind of conversation, because I’m a big fan of that stuff.

Did Star Trek Beyond Actually Fail?

Why did Star Trek Beyond fail?

I don’t know that it failed. I know that it didn’t make as much money.

The Kelvin timeline movies, the Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams movies, were supposed to be a reinvigoration of the franchise in its cinematic form. A version that felt bigger. And don’t take anything I’m about to say as disrespect, because I love them, but the original motion pictures were essentially an extension of the original series. With these, the idea was to take it and roll it into something bigger.

Mind you, there were also some other issues behind why they had to make such radical changes. Believe me, nobody wanted to do an alternate timeline. It came down to all of these contracts and how things were set up, and a lot of it had to do with the CBS and Viacom separation and then the later remerger. Tons of stuff.

So what ends up happening is you get this movie, and they decide they’re going to make it much more in line with how Star Trek is. That’s why you get a lot more of the seek and find, and they have to do some actual detective-style work, hunting down some answers. You still got your fun. You’ve got the part where he’s blowing through these little drone things and playing the Beastie Boys and the whole bit. Whatever, man, it’s fun. It was what it was. It was Fast and Furious in space.

That’s the best answer I can give at the moment.

Bread and Circuses, and the Sun That Was the Son

In TOS, “Bread and Circuses,” why is Son being confused with sun? Is the universal translator broken?

Bro, that is such an asinine question. Now, I’m not going to judge you for asking it. I know everyone’s going, “but you just did.” And I know it’s just the computer’s voice reading it out, but it feels snarky. Was the universal translator not working. Don’t be mean.

No. Remember, this was a Roman civilization that had evolved. What else came up around Rome at the time? Christ. So of course you’re going to end up with something very Judeo-Christian-esque, and even Uhura says so. She says that’s what they meant. That wasn’t the universal translator breaking. They got Rome and they got Christ. That’s what the episode did. It’s trying to tell a deeper story, and I don’t fault them in the least.

How Troi Made Commander, and Why Geordi and Data Didn’t Take the Test

How could Troi be promoted to commander so easily, and why didn’t La Forge and Data do the test?

A couple of different pieces to that. In The Next Generation, I want to say it was season seven, episode 16, and I believe the episode is “Thine Own Self,” she goes to a reunion and she realizes she hasn’t made much of herself. She’s been sort of riding on being the counselor. What are her true ambitions and goals? She decides to finally explore those. That’s why she takes on the blue uniform and starts doing the stuff she’s got to do. She wants a command shift, and she gets it.

Geordi first started in red. He was navigation, he was in command, I believe, and if you remember, he was even given the conn at some point. To be given the conn, he would’ve had to have gone through command training. Now, command training and the rank of commander are two different things. Command training means you have the training to be in command. You know how to drive. You know how to handle the wheel if you’re given the wheel. If you’re given the big chair, you know how to sit in it and not look awkward. So I believe Geordi had it, and then he decided to take a different path in his career.

Data’s been given command too. There was that major battle where they had to assign different ships, and Data was eventually given a ship. I believe firmly that he 100 percent has been given the same training.

So it’s a presumption on your part that they didn’t also get it or didn’t pursue it. They were on different paths. She was already at the height of hers and had to figure out how you go further. The next logical step was, if you want another promotion, get command. You can’t go to that final level without it. Both Data and Geordi could go to that next level when they earned it, because they’d already had command training. It’s officer training school, and then it’s command training school.

We’re going to continue this next time.

Tell me what you thought of how I answered these, and ask your own. I’d love to do an entire episode of the Files answering questions straight from the YouTube comment section, so leave yours in the comments on the video above. Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all!