Star Trek: Discovery · Season 1
[In the Klingon language] They are coming. Atom by atom, they will coil around us and take all that we are. There is one way to confront this threat. By reuniting the twenty-four warring houses of our own empire. We have forgotten the Unforgettable, the last to unify our tribes: Kahless. Together, under one creed, remain Klingon! That is why we light our beacon this day. To assemble our people. To lock arms against those whose fatal greeting is... [in English] we come in peace.
We come in peace, that's why we're here. Isn't that the whole idea of Starfleet?
Hey – I taught you that.
We come from a tradition of tolerance, freedom, and justice.
Ensign Connor, agreement between my senior officers. Note the date and time.
Noted, captain.
When emotion brings us ghosts from the past, only logic can root us in the present.
Members of the Federation, what you call your most remote borders, I call too close to Klingon territory. You only live now to serve as witnesses of Klingon supremacy, to be my herald. We do not desire to know you. But you will know our great houses, standing as one under Kahless, reborn in me, T'Kuvma.
When you first came on board, seven years ago, I worried your Vulcan training might someday trump your humanity. Do you know why Sarek asked me to take you on? I was a human who had seen a life of loss, but still chose hope. What an ego I had... thinking I could pick away the shell the Vulcans had put around you. I was so sure I could do it, even convinced that you were ready for the captain's chair. To think I knew you so little.
You wanna know how I turned on you? I believed saving you and the crew was more important than Starfleet's principles. Was it logical? Emotional? I don't know.
From my youth on Vulcan, I was raised to believe that service was my purpose. And I carried that conviction to Starfleet. I dreamed of a day when I would command my own vessel, and further the noble objectives of this great institution. That dream is over. The only ship I know in ruins, my crew gone, my captain – my friend – dead. I wanted to protect them from war…from the enemy. And now we are at war…and I am the enemy.
My cousin was on the Europa when it went down. She and eight thousand others are dead because of you.
Eight thousand, one hundred and eighty-six.
I was raised on Vulcan, and attended the Vulcan Science Academy.
My Uncle Everett plays in a Beatles cover band, it hardly makes him John Lennon.
Before I was a mutineer, I was a first officer in Starfleet. I'll never bear that rank, or any other, again. But it is who I am, and who I will always be. It is by the principles of the United Federation of Planets that I live. And by them, I will most certainly die.
Your assumption that the Klingons were waiting in ambush at the Binary Stars was predictive. You chose to do the right thing, over and above what was sanctioned, even at great cost to yourself. And that is the kind of thinking that wins wars. The kind of thinking I need next to me. Universal law is for lackeys. Context is for kings.
When I was a kid, after my parents were killed my foster mother on Vulcan used to read it to me and her son. She and I were the only humans in the house. That's how I learned that the real world doesn't always adhere to logic. Sometimes down is up. Sometimes up is down. Sometimes, when you're lost, you're found.
What was her name?
Amanda.
I despise lurkers.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Star Trek: Discovery pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
