The Artifact: The Klingon Bat'leth

0:03Speaker 1:Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

0:10Speaker 2:Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Artifact, a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. Been a minute since I've done an Artifact episode, and it is Star Trek week, so I decided I'm going to pick a signature artifact from that fictional universe. And it is, of course, going to be the iconic Klingon Batleth, or Sword of Honor. I'm almost positive you've seen one before. But to describe it, well, it's actually quite challenging to describe, as is befitting of a non-human weapon. A weapon of non-human origin, completely removed, or supposed to be completely removed from our culture and history. It's like a curved, double-edged sword with three handholds on the rear side. and with either end of the blade curving in like the horns of a bull. Within the Star Trek universe, it's a highly effective weapon in trained Klingon hands, as well as a sacred weapon for members of this warrior culture. According to Mark Orkland, a linguist and creator of the Klingon language, in his book Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, traditions held,

1:26Speaker 2:this is within the world of Star Trek, that the first blade of this type was forged by Qualus the Unforgettable, founder of the Klingon Empire, when he dipped one of his own hairs into molten lava and removed it in the form of a batleth. According to Memory Alpha, the origins of the weapon design itself, we can find this in Worf actor Michael Dorn's desire for a more martial arts-centric fighting style for his character, as well as writer Ronald D. Moore's desire to establish the Klingon culture in The Next Generation, Star Trek The Next Generation, as more space samurai than space barbarian. Visual effects producer and supervisor Dan Curry, who is also a martial arts practitioner himself, then designed the weapon to meld exotic flair with practical believable lethality, ultimately developing multiple Klingon weapons and the martial arts to wield them. I find this sort of thing so interesting. In bringing the fantasy weapon to life, a product of pure imagination, to bring it to life on the screen, it also has to take on a physical life of its own, and in many respects becomes a very real weapon and artifact. Most of these Batleths are,

2:48Speaker 2:of course, unsharpened props, fantasy blades, and replicas, if not outright toys. But fully realized and sharpened Batleths do exist. though they are not always legal, and their practicality compared to weapons with real-world origins seems doubtful when you see people break down the comparisons, which makes sense, right? Because it ultimately still is a weapon born out of fantasy, even if that fantasy is very well designed and well informed. There are, however, similar weapons with real-world origins, with the closest analogs that I could find being some of the more elaborate blades from Chinese traditional martial arts. such as hook swords and crescent moon knives or deer horn knives, with the curved flourishes intended to hook, trap, or catch an opponent's weapon. Be that an opponent like on foot or an opponent on horseback, that sort of thing. So in these cases, there would be some sort of practical reason for these different curves and so forth. Now, as of this recording, as far as I can tell, thankfully, and let's not change this, no human lives have been lost to a sharpened or unsharpened bat lift. Though in

4:01Speaker 2:February of 2009, as reported by Kieran Nicholson in the Denver Post, a man wielding a bat lift robbed two Colorado Springs convenience stores. These crimes remain unsolved as of this recording, but as far as I can tell, the Klingon empire is completely off the hook. They are not suspected at all. In 2015, a Spokane, Washington garbage can alteration allegedly entailed the brandishing of a batleth. Details seem sketchy here, but I'm pretty sure, based on what I was reading, no contact of any sort was made with the weapon. So thankfully, again, this fantasy weapon that is manifested in the real world has thankfully, on the whole, not brought the violence inherent in the fantasy with it.

4:50Speaker 2:So let's just try our best to keep it that way. Tune in for additional episodes of The Artifact, The Monster Fact, or Animalia Stupendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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