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ST:Discovery - What do you think of the new Klingons?

Mal12345

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It was traumatic enough seeing Klingons go from this
klingons_star_trek_tos.jpg


to this tough yet effeminate look:
180


But now we are being introduced to this:
Star-Trek-Discovery-Chris-Obie-as-Klingon-TKuvna-1.jpg


I think the change from Kang or Koloth to Worf was explained as being the result of genetic engineering, an effort to make Klingons tougher warriors. They not only changed in appearance, they had internal backup organs just in case an organ was destroyed in battle. Afterward, I believe there was some virus plague that created more changes - and something about an exploding moon.

I don't know. I think I've had just about enough retconning out of Star Trek.
 

Totenkindly

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I don't see the point of them doing this. It just seems dumb and like a ploy to grab new viewers.

If they don't like the revamped TNG+ Klingons, then just create a new species.


EDIT: ... unless they are going to make all the Klingons female and gay and trans and Democrats and from one of those planets Trump has banned immigration from. Then oh yes that is cool.

rocket-raccoon-oh-yeah-oh-yeaaaaah-.jpg
 

Doctor Cringelord

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General thoughts on the Klingons' appearances over the years:

My favorites are the Next Generation/DS9 variety where different families have different ridges. It was a neat little detail, for instance Worf's brother Kurn and his son Alexander had the same type of ridges as Worf, and members of the Duras family all had similar ridges to one another.

I always thought the Enterprise explanation that genetic tampering resulted in smooth headed Klingons was the writers trying too hard to explain something that was best left unexplained. The seed of that is in the episode Trials and Tribbleations where they sort of have to acknowledge the fact that Worf and the TOS era Klingons looked different. Better solution would have been to leave Worf on the station for that episode and pretend the TOS Klingons didn't look any different. Roddenberry himself had stated, when asked if the Motion Picture Klingons were a different race than the TOS Klingons, something along the lines that they were all the same species and race and it was best for the viewer to simply pretend the TOS Klingons had ridges all along, but acknowledge that wasn't possible with their budget. We didn't need an entire Enterprise multi-part arc to explain that visual discrepancy. I personally would prefer an explanation like, smooth headed Klingons were simply a different subspecies, and to have had the guest spots by Kor and Kang and Koloth on DS9 with them showing up with smooth heads. However, the fact they show up with bumpy heads to me is proof that we should suspend our disbelief and go with Roddenberry's answer that the TOS Klingons should've looked that way all along.

I never particularly cared much for the TOS Klingons anyway. Call it blasphemy. That show should've focused on Romulan plotlines more, but I suppose those ears were expensive to produce for a lot of extras.

The change in Romulan appearance bothered me too. They go from looking like Vulcans to having distinct forehead ridges to looking like TOS Romulans again (albeit tattooed and bald) in Abramsverse. I think the ridges were always unnecessary since it had been made clear they were a very closely related offshoot of the Vulcans. I'm just glad there wasn't an Enterprise season 5 because they probably would've come up with some stupid explanation that the ridged romulans were the result of interracial breeding with Klingons.

I thought the Klingons in Into Darkness looked weird, but not too bad--still, they should've stuck with the "classic" TNG look.

The new ones look horrid, like some sort of vampire creatures out of a bad horror fantasy movie or something. Even the costume on that guy looks stupid. He looks cartoon-y. I have a very bad feeling about this new Trek.

I like the Viking-Mongolianesque TNG/DS9 era warriors; both aesthetically and culturally, they were the most interesting version of Klingons in Trek, far more interesting than the TOS era ones which were basically a very loose representation of Asian Communists and were completely boring cardboard cutout baddies

Some retconning is acceptable but there comes a point when you shouldn't fix something that was already perfected, and sometimes with a franchise spanning so many decades, it's easier to just ignore certain discrepancies or pretend they never happened, as the explanations are often more problematic and create more confusion than intended. Most of the visual updates in Abramsverse have been a disappointment. The new Enterprise was garbage, it's like the VW beetle, you don't need to tamper too much with a classic design. It looked top heavy with the giant nacelles and the interior was too bright and shiny. I hope Discovery follows a different design aesthetic that is both an update and homage to the TOS era
 

Mal12345

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General thoughts on the Klingons' appearances over the years:

My favorites are the Next Generation/DS9 variety where different families have different ridges. It was a neat little detail, for instance Worf's brother Kurn and his son Alexander had the same type of ridges as Worf, and members of the Duras family all had similar ridges to one another.

I always thought the Enterprise explanation that genetic tampering resulted in smooth headed Klingons was the writers trying too hard to explain something that was best left unexplained. The seed of that is in the episode Trials and Tribbleations where they sort of have to acknowledge the fact that Worf and the TOS era Klingons looked different. Better solution would have been to leave Worf on the station for that episode and pretend the TOS Klingons didn't look any different. Roddenberry himself had stated, when asked if the Motion Picture Klingons were a different race than the TOS Klingons, something along the lines that they were all the same species and race and it was best for the viewer to simply pretend the TOS Klingons had ridges all along, but acknowledge that wasn't possible with their budget. We didn't need an entire Enterprise multi-part arc to explain that visual discrepancy. I personally would prefer an explanation like, smooth headed Klingons were simply a different subspecies, and to have had the guest spots by Kor and Kang and Koloth on DS9 with them showing up with smooth heads. However, the fact they show up with bumpy heads to me is proof that we should suspend our disbelief and go with Roddenberry's answer that the TOS Klingons should've looked that way all along.

I never particularly cared much for the TOS Klingons anyway. Call it blasphemy. That show should've focused on Romulan plotlines more, but I suppose those ears were expensive to produce for a lot of extras.

The change in Romulan appearance bothered me too. They go from looking like Vulcans to having distinct forehead ridges to looking like TOS Romulans again (albeit tattooed and bald) in Abramsverse. I think the ridges were always unnecessary since it had been made clear they were a very closely related offshoot of the Vulcans. I'm just glad there wasn't an Enterprise season 5 because they probably would've come up with some stupid explanation that the ridged romulans were the result of interracial breeding with Klingons.

I thought the Klingons in Into Darkness looked weird, but not too bad--still, they should've stuck with the "classic" TNG look.

The new ones look horrid, like some sort of vampire creatures out of a bad horror fantasy movie or something. Even the costume on that guy looks stupid. He looks cartoon-y. I have a very bad feeling about this new Trek.

I like the Viking-Mongolianesque TNG/DS9 era warriors; both aesthetically and culturally, they were the most interesting version of Klingons in Trek, far more interesting than the TOS era ones which were basically a very loose representation of Asian Communists and were completely boring cardboard cutout baddies

I hardly think they were boring cardboard cutout baddies.
 

Totenkindly

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...The new ones look horrid, like some sort of vampire creatures out of a bad horror fantasy movie or something.

Yeah like some new hybrid of Underworld batcanthrope....
 

Mal12345

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You forgot the Star Trek Into Darkness ones.

Shouldn't they look like TOS Klingons, given the time-frame as 23rd century Earth? That's the first thing I thought when I watched that movie. But my opinion of that series is that it's not "real," so it doesn't matter what the Klingons look like. Kirk doesn't look like Kirk. Spock doesn't look like Spock. And Scotty - let's not even go there.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I hardly think they were boring cardboard cutout baddies.

initially, no. I liked Errand of Mercy.

Personally, my favorite type of TOS villain were the rogue Captains/Commodores gone insane.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah like some new hybrid of Underworld batcanthrope....

I know right? Or something Wesley Snipes would decapitate.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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Shouldn't they look like TOS Klingons, given the time-frame as 23rd century Earth? That's the first thing I thought when I watched that movie. But my opinion of that series is that it's not "real," so it doesn't matter what the Klingons look like. Kirk doesn't look like Kirk. Spock doesn't look like Spock. And Scotty - let's not even go there.

Everything about the Abramsverse looks like a completely different Universe, not just a divergent timeline. I choose to pretend that universe doesn't exist in the canon.

This is what the Enterprise should have looked like in the reboots: http://img06.deviantart.net/bb5a/i/...gh___reimagined_connie_by_roen911-d5rdtfj.jpg Same classic lines and basic proportions, which were already good, just an update to the details for the age of high definition. What we got instead looked alien and monstrous. I'm still not used to the look of Nu enterprise.
 

Mal12345

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I snipped this from the Star Trek: Discovery trailer. Did they really bring back Harcourt Fenton Mudd?

mudd_zpsngutis3q.jpg
 

Mal12345

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It looks like good old Harry Mudd will be appearing in 9 episodes of this.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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The more I see about this show, the more I think The Orville will be my preferred Sci-Fi, Utopian exploration series this year.

I'm just tired of the rebooting and retreading of old characters and eras. Harry Mudd, really? Isn't one of the themes of Star Trek exploring the unknown and infinite diversity in infinite combinations? All this rebooting and prequelizing they've been doing since Enterprise makes me feel they're just scraping the bottom of a big barrel and not really trying to hard to think of any new or interesting situations and themes to explore. Trek was always a cash cow franchise but that aspect wasn't as obvious prior to the 2000s and especially 2009. Meh. Nerd ranting on my part. It is what it is.

Discovery sounds like it will be a really high budget, poorly written fan series. I might even prefer New Voyages, but I won't know until I see Discovery. No wonder Paramount and CBS have been fighting to shut down fan productions. They don't want semi-professional productions making their new show look bad in comparison.

Anyway, I can't afford this new streaming service so it's a moot point. The owners of the Trek brand have been taking advantage of fans' wallets for years; I remember wanting to buy all of the DVD series at one point but when I went to the store just ONE season of TNG cost over $100.00 USD. And of course then they'll release a "remastered" edition with even more extra features on an updated format like blu-ray, so of course the fans are going to want to update their collection and dump another several hundred bucks on replacing their now obsolete and imperfect set.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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It looks like good old Harry Mudd will be appearing in 9 episodes of this.

They'll probably try to find a way to work in Khan and Edith Keeler too, :laugh: Maybe a cameo by Gary Mitchell or a young General Chang.

Why bother writing interesting and, erm, new characters?
 

Doctor Cringelord

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The new Starfleet uniforms look weird too. They look more like something that would fit into a post-TNG era or ST: online type of game. They don't really seem to fit the transition from the Kelvin to Nu Trek style uniforms either. They just look out of place and time.

I'd assume something like a transitional uniform between the NASA-esque Enterprise Jumpsuits and TOS styles would make more sense. Or maybe a slight update on "The Cage"/"Where No Man Has Gone Before" uniforms if you really want to be historically accurate to the canon.

I also thought that pre-TMP ships featured different emblems unique to each ship's crew, so why is everyone wearing the Enterprise Arrowhead emblem? It would be cool to see a new, yet still "Trekkish" emblem. It would add to a pseudo-military, NASA feel where each crew had their unique mission patch (i.e. during the Apollo Program)

nasa-apollo-program-embroidered-mission-patch-set-1367-p.jpg

13a6230b19b417c1f31b552c772e2d80.jpg


I thought the reason given (behind-the-scenes) for everyone adopting the Enterprise emblem/insignia post-TOS was because Kirk's mission was iconic in that his ship was one of the few original Constitution class cruisers to return and that they made more first contacts and diplomatic successes than any previous Starfleet vessel.

Retcon: The Series
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I realize I sound like a sourpuss or Comic Book Guy, and I think part of my frustration is that I've just never cared as much for the TOS era, and every new Trek thing since 2009 has wallowed in revisiting retro Trek (even the fan films tend to focus on the TOS/Movie era A LOT). I have hoped for something set post-TNG, like a Next Next Generation of sorts, maybe where the Federation has made some inroads into the Delta Quadrant, as I think there were a couple of interesting races encountered on Voyager that would be interesting to revisit. Or perhaps the rejected Federation series or something like it (we've also seen barely any of the Beta Quadrant aside from the Romulans and Klingons, so that would be a good setting that allowed new races and situations without fucking around with the existing canon too much):

Star Trek: Federation | Memory Alpha | FANDOM powered by Wikia

Move it forward several hundred years, because in this way you can sort of reboot things whilst also respecting the existing canon and chronology and not retconning everything already seen....


I like the idea in Federation, exploring a complacent and sprawling Federation Empire that has lost a lot of its founding ideals. That would be a ripe setting for re-exploring humanity and shit, yadda yadda.

Everytime one of these reboot or prequel series adds a new race, I wonder why we haven't heard from them again. Adding the Xindi, for instance, in Enterprise. An interesting species, but it becomes problematic because they're located in the alpha quadrant and yet it adds some problems to the chronology when a very prominent and influential race was never once encountered or heard from in any of the subsequent eras after Enterprise. Not to mention showing the Borg and ferengi, when first contact with either wasn't made until the 24th century in prior canon.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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I'm watching this right now. So far I'm enjoying it, and I'll definitely stay with this. I like how alien they made they Kilngons, and the other aliens. The only thing I don't like is that there's a child actor who I think leaves something to be desired.

As a side note, it's interesiting how fans of long-standing properties get upset when things re-tread things, and claim to want something new, but then when they get something new, they're upset because it isn't what they're used to. You can also see this with some of the reactions to some of the new characters and ships in The Last Jedi. ("...I don't want another retread of the original trilogy...wahh that doesn't look Star Warsy enough.")

This is why I tend to find fandoms annoying, despite the fact that it should be totally up my alley.
 

Mal12345

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I'm watching this right now. So far I'm enjoying it, and I'll definitely stay with this. I like how alien they made they Kilngons, and the other aliens. The only thing I don't like is that there's a child actor who I think leaves something to be desired.

As a side note, it's interesiting how fans of long-standing properties get upset when things re-tread things, and claim to want something new, but then when they get something new, they're upset because it isn't what they're used to.

Of course. I'm used to seeing colorful characters. The characters in STD or not at all colorful. They are drag. The biggest difference is seeing things through the eyes of a non-captain for a change. Another change is the conflict among crew members. So far we have a Vulcan disobeying orders and then assaulting the captain. But she's still just a stale, boring Vulcan.
 

Mal12345

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I believe the Vulcan is actually a human raised on Vulcan, by Sarek it seems.
 

Mal12345

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They'll probably try to find a way to work in Khan and Edith Keeler too, :laugh: Maybe a cameo by Gary Mitchell or a young General Chang.

Why bother writing interesting and, erm, new characters?

I want the Guardian to come back.
 
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