2009-09-25

Betreka Nebula

In reviewing galactic map details, I pondered the matter of who borders whom.   The Federation, Klingons, and Romulans naturally have mutual borders, of course (though interestingly we've never heard of a "triangle region" outside of the non-canon).  And we've heard explicitly of the Romulan and Cardassian borders with one another, a small bit of rearranging on the part of the DS9 folks to make the area more lively . . . after all, as some had earlier envisioned, Cardassia was to the "west" of the Federation along with the Ferengi, Talarians, and (later) the Tzenkethi, with the old-timer Klingons and Romulans to the "east".

But the question was whether the Klingons and Cardassians shared a border, or whether the Klingons had gone way out of their way to conquer, thus creating a non-contiguous Klingon Empire.  To be sure, there were frequent mentions of the Klingon-Cardassian
border after "Way of the Warrior", but at that point the Klingon Empire
had conquered a section of Cardassian territory so the matter was
unimportant.

The answer, I think, comes from "Way of the Warrior"[DSN4].   Bashir and Garak refer to a "skirmish":  the Betreka Nebula incident sparked an 18-year-long conflict between the Klingon Empire and the Cardassian Union.   This strongly implies the presence of a border or near-border between the two prior to the invasion.

Just a note . . . probably obvious to some, but I just couldn't remember.

3 comments:

Ilithi Dragon said...

I've always figured that the Romulans and Cardassians shared a border 'above' the 'northern' edge of the Federation. Or, in other words, Romulan territory extends 'above' the Federation in the galactic disk, so that it stretches over Federation to some extent, somewhere over the coreward half or third or so of the Federation, while Cardassian territory does the same thing from the other side. A stretch of Klingon territory above or below the Federation could easily allow the same thing for them, as well, while keeping the Klingons and Romulans in the Beta Quadrant on the 'east' side of the Federation, and the Cardassians in the Alpha Quadrant on the 'west' side.

Anonymous said...

You have to picture the galactic atlas as three dimensional not two

rskalski said...

I don't really see the point of having contiguous empires in Space, certainly the Federation is not contiguous in the last bit, as they seem to accept members regardless of location. thus any empire could easily border any other empire, and the need for any region such as a "triangle" is moot.