I am the kind of person who enjoys “big weird” scifi like Stanisław Lem. Stories about trying to relate to and find common ground with something so alien that the prospect of even understanding is basically hopeless. Star Trek usually doesn’t do stories that, which makes sense as it often uses alien races as allegories or stand-ins for real-world human relations.
That said- I thought those early Klingons were super weird and scary because they were just so alien. It really made sense thinking about how it took a century before they could get to the events of Star Trek VI, and it made the Khittomer accords feel like so much more of an accomplishment. Like- you made a treaty with WHAT?
And just aesthetically their ships and armor looked like something out of HP Lovecraft or HR Geiger:
This is not to say I dislike how Klingons were portrayed previously, kinda like Mongols in TOS or Vikings in DS9, just that they never felt scary to me. They never felt like warriors. I was never afraid for the gallant crew of the Enterprise D (a science and exploration vessel) going into battle against Klingons. But I really enjoyed the alien-ness Disco tried to go with. Anyone else with me?
EDIT: PEOPLE I SAID WHO’S WITH ME NOT WHO ISN’T CM’ON 
I remain amazed that many people insist that T’Kuvma and company are irreconcilably different from the TNG era portrayals. These are big, carnivorous-looking aliens with prominent forehead ridges and significant individual variation in appearance. They’re different in some small details, like the extra nostrils, but outside of the most extreme visually literalist stance, is it really that hard to square these guys against Chang, Martok, and Worf? Replace the shine and detail with a classic rubber mask, silicon makeup, and matte brown body paint in exactly the same head and body shape, stick them at a side table in Quarks circa S6 of DS9, and I challenge you to notice anything amiss.
What this rework did do was make them feel so much more alien, and so much more dangerous. They outright eat people, which was occasionally hinted at but is noted far more literally in Discovery, and very, very easy to believe looking at these guys. I wish they hadn’t backpedalled so hard with a return to the 1980s makeup in SNW 2x01, because I would have loved to see these monsters chumming it up with Spock: that scene would immediately have been slightly more unsettling, bringing the audience closer to what Spock and his crew are likely feeling about their momentary drinking buddies, instead of the much more casual feel we got from Klingons who look just like our old friends from DS9. These guys are still dangerous aliens whose friendliness is tenuous and temporary; they would literally eat Spock if circumstances were slightly different. We shouldn’t forget that.
Absolutely, well said. To quote Kirk “People can be very frightened of change.”
because I would have loved to see these monsters chumming it up with Spock
Augh I didn’t know I wanted this until now. Now I’m upset all over again!
Replace the shine and detail with a classic rubber mask, silicon makeup, and matte brown body paint in exactly the same head and body shape, stick them at a side table in Quarks circa S6 of DS9, and I challenge you to notice anything amiss. I think that is true for how they looked s2 Discovery with the hair and normal skulls I stead of the elongated Crystal Skull shaped look we got in s1.
For me, having them look like TNG Klingons doesn’t even solve the problem because ENT had implied that shouldn’t happen until the TOS movie era. They could have rendered explicit the implication that not every Klingon was infected by the virus, but that still doesn’t support making the Klingons look how they did in s1 DIS.
The augment virus was a really dumb idea and I’m perfectly happy for them to ignore it and never feel the need to write a plot to explain the fact that designs will change over time in a 60 year old sci fi franchise.
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Then I think you just want a totally different thing from star trek than me. imo Star Trek has always contradicted itself a lot, and I’m much more interested in the stories and characters, and I’m fine with the world being somewhat vaguely defined. There are so many things that don’t really make sense that people just gloss over, like Balance of Terror claiming that Romulans somehow have an empire in the 23rd century without having warp drive. Star Trek has been retconning stuff so much since it started that it’s weird to me for people to suddenly start caring about it when Discovery came out.
>change over time in a 60 year old sci fi franchise.
This common refrain is so condescending, as if we’re being ridiculous expecting consistency in a piece of narrative media! It doesn’t matter if the Klingons, at the time of TMP, were intended to be a total retcon, because DS9 made lines of dialog that make that impossible. I understand that there isn’t a cohesive narrative across all of Star Trek, and I don’t expect writers of an episode of 1990s television to be cognizant that maybe a prequel will come along and show anachronistic Klingons, but what I do expect is the producers of Enterprise to make better decisions than “but da klingons have ridges, how will people recognise the klingons if they look like how they did in TOS?” (IDK Berman, guess you should have thought of that before doing a prequel series).
And today, in this day and age where everyone at least knows about secondary worlds (IE, a setting distinct/irreconcilable from the real world) if not in name than be experience, I absolutely do expect a level of consistency above what we got in the 80s and 90s.
Obviously, advances in real world technology will impact how TV and movies are made, but we’re not talking about Matte Paintings vs CGI. It’s not like when the shows in the 90s made the switch from physical models to CGI, they randomly decided “hey, lets make the Romulan warbird a completely different looking ship”, they recreated the physical model. When they started to be able to show more activity or detail in establishing shots of the ship or station, they didn’t then also decide to give DS9 an extra pylon, or make it yellow and act like it always was like that.
> It doesn’t matter if the Klingons, at the time of TMP, were intended to be a total retcon, because DS9 made lines of dialog that make that impossible
are you talking about Worf’s “we don’t talk about it with outsiders” line in Trials and Tribble-ations? Because I also think it’s ridiculous that people took that line so seriously. It’s a little meta joke in a comedic episode that solely exists to celebrate nostalgia for TOS. I don’t get how you can take it as serious confirmation that Klingon’s appearance changed in universe in that context.
> I don’t get how you can take it as serious confirmation that Klingon’s appearance changed in universe in that context. Because it was said by a Star Trek character in a Star Trek episode and words have meaning? I don’t get to pick and choose which lines of dialogue matter and what lines of dialogue don’t, no one does.
Frankly, I don’t get how someone can watch a whole scene and go “well that didn’t actually mean anything for the characters that just experienced it”. It makes more sense to assume that words have their intended meaning, and that Worf’s friends were genuinely shocked to see flat-headed Klingons than it does to pretend Worf, Bashir, and company never actually had that discussion. Like, yeah it’s all fake but main characters are supposed to be real people, the situations are supposed to be real to them…
For me, having them look like TNG Klingons doesn’t even solve the problem because ENT had implied that shouldn’t happen until the TOS movie era.
That Enterprise arc was clearly intended to apply a (totally unnecessary) in-universe explanation for why Kirk’s adversaries were just guys in vaguely asian facial makeup, but there’s no reason we have to extrapolate that the Augment virus was a widespread and incurable until the late 23rd century. It could easily have been a relative blip on the radar; aggressively quarantined and/or cured much earlier than anticipated.
The idea that they also needed to make an explicit reference to the augment virus being cured, or explicitly point out “hey, these guys would look less different if they weren’t shaving their heads!” strikes me as absurd. These are not difficult conclusions to reach for someone motivated to find them, and there were people mentioning those possibilities pretty much immediately after the first Discovery trailer dropped.
Not to mention the augment virus does not account for why the Excalbian recreation of Kahless in “The Savage Curtain” was still a TOS era Klingon.
It really is the most flimsy plot and, as you say, completely unnecessary.
All that needed to be maintained was that the Klingons we see Kirk face in TOS were all afflicted by the virus - while it’s still reasonable to assume that, the presence of these hitherto unseen 3rd variant of Klingon complicates instead of simplifies, which is what ENT’s arc did. Now what, it’s ANOTHER coincidence that THESE klingons are even ridgier than we’ve seen before, but the other ones are still out there? To borrow your parlance, the Discovery redesign was intended to overwrite and replace what came before, because apparently Star Trek, unlike every other fantasy and science fiction thing I like, is Forbidden from being treated like a secondary world that should have its own internal consistency.
I was completely content to accept it was a coincidence that Kirk only saw augment virus-impacted Klingons in TOS, just like how ST Picard ended up establishing for Romulans (northern vs southern to explain the v shape bone ridge they had through TNG-ENT).
because apparently Star Trek, unlike every other fantasy and science fiction thing I like, is Forbidden from being treated like a secondary world that should have its own internal consistency.
How many other Science Fiction properties out there sprung out of a low budget TV show from the 60s but are still producing content in the same continuity without some kind of explicit reboot?
Star Wars is the classic comparison in all sorts of ways, and for better or worse Star Wars avoids this problem entirely by 1) having a much higher budget relative to the number of sets and costumes required for it’s initial installment, 2) having picked an aesthetic that is crude, gritty, and seemingly practical which escapes looking dated many years after the fact, and 3) not being set in our future where the advances of modern tech make obviously retro elements look ridiculous.
There is Doctor Who, and that’s it.
Actually, DW is a good example, because the continuity of that show is a mess, and very intentionally so. That show thrives in its inconsistencies. There are three different explanations for why the Doctor can change faces when he dies, for example. And each one contradicts the others. There is also no beta canon, every tie in is considered canon. So the doctor has officially met Batman, Gandalf and Picard. That’s canon.
In the end IP is a playground and continuity should enhance story. Nobody gains anything from lore for the sense of lore. What does the Klingons always looking a certain way say? Not all that much. It’s a nice to have, because it allows you to recognise them quickly and make connections. But if the look is constricting for the creative team, then they should be able to change it.
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I mean… not that much. Daleks have gone through three redesigns just since the show went back. Sontarans went from the world’s most unconvincing rubber masks to makeup. And how many eyes do Silurians have-- two, or three?
Doctor Who has faithfully recreated sets, props, and costumes from as far back as the 60s as recently as 2017. Continuity is a different story - there’s literally no doctor who canon - as the constant time traveling impacts things. Even the smaller TARDIS exterior from the Classic series is referenced as an actual, visual difference by the revival series. The current powers that run Star Trek would just pretend it was always that big.
I’ll never accept the idea that it’s okay to update a design but not properly reboot it and set it in a completely different and seperate continuity just because what you’re making a spin-off of is old enough that it doesn’t deserve to be treated legitimately. How many more years before the crude, gritty aesthetic of Star Wars suffers the same fate as the crude and campy aesthetic of Star Trek?
Whole series of television shouldn’t be ignored by their own spinoffs just because their set designer and marketing teams decided something was lame or uncool.
How many more years before the crude, gritty aesthetic of Star Wars suffers the same fate as the crude and campy aesthetic of Star Trek?
People complained about exactly that during the Prequel Trilogy.
To give credit where it’s due, RotS and many of the Disney-era Star Wars products have gone a long way to fitting the glamorous, shiny prequel aesthetic into the gritty, used, “lived in” aesthetic of the OT. I’m not the biggest fan of The Last Jedi, but I actually think the implicication of the shiny galaxy just being a property of the rich inner rim planets was a great move in unifying everything.
because apparently Star Trek, unlike every other fantasy and science fiction thing I like, is Forbidden from being treated like a secondary world that should have its own internal consistency.
Nonsense-- other long-running universes encounter retcons and visual redesigns all the time. Quick, how old was Dick Grayson when he first became Robin? What color is Superman’s S? How old was Magneto during the Holocaust? What happened to Luke’s father? Did James Bond fight in World War 2, or participate the Cold War?
As far as I know, those examples all either explicitly exist or are treated as seperate and distinct when you look at their wikis. Comic book continuity sometimes is something the characters are aware of too, so differences are also explained. Crisis on Infinite Earths comes to mind.
Then as someone who does know a lot about this stuff I can tell you that you are making a lot of assumptions that are not the case.
Any example I can think of I have an answer for that solves any sort of continuity issue. Events change because of actual meddling in events and in-universe continuity resets. Events contradict each other between comics and TV and movies because they for all intents and purposes, are as seperate from each other’s continuity as Star Wars and Babylon 5.
James Bond, for instance, is a different person from each actor to have played him, in addition to the version from the novels by Ian Fleming. His backstory can change between them, drastically. It doesn’t make it in the same category as Discovery Klingons.
Perhaps it implied that.
But it only ever implied that, and meanwhile we had other evidence that implied a separate conclusion, in the form of Kor, Kang, and Koloth.
Which is more likely-- that every Klingon Kirk encountered during his five-year mission was a survivor of the augment virus (edit: Including Kahless, who lived and died centuries before Archer!) and no Klingon encountered outside of that time period was; or that the Klingons ruthlessly quarantined or even executed carriers of the augment virus and wiped it out before it got too far, and TOS’s visuals aren’t literal?
Well that’s the thing that I don’t like - we got 40+ years of TOS looking like TOS across three examples in three shows, and when it was done it was fun as heck on all three, and all managed to include modern sfx for their time alongside authentic TOS visuals. That’s all I wanted from Discovery when it was announced to be between The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before.
It’s one thing to do as a one-off gag or a nostalgia bit. It would not have been possible to take seriously for an ongoing series in 2017, except for hardcore fans that don’t need to be sold on it.
Thats an assumption. It was okay barely 12 years earlier? It’s pretentious to act like it wouldn’t have been possible, and if that’s really the case, then why the hell is it being set in the oldest production era? It’s not a problem for modern Doctor Who to faithfully recreate sets from the 60s, and those weren’t even in color originally.
Making a series in the 2250s I would expect sets to at least feel like they fit together. They had to extrapolate what a jefferies tube looked like in ENT, since we never saw that set in TOS. The new things should look spiffy (so the Crossfield class, and aliens like Kelpiens are a-okay in my book since we never saw either of those things before and can therefore exist alongside each other), but older things should be recreated with better quality (like the ENT modernisations of Tellarites and Andorians, for example) as much as possible, and I’d argue most of the time that is the default in shared universes.
And the DIS s1 klingons look broadly like the TNG klingons, just exaggerated.
For me, having them look like TNG Klingons doesn’t even solve the problem because ENT had implied that shouldn’t happen until the TOS movie era. They could have rendered explicit the implication that not every Klingon was infected by the virus, but that still doesn’t support making the Klingons look how they did in s1 DIS.
Folks forget the klingon’s made that Augment virus which then got loose in a lab breach. If they could do that to themselves on accident imagine what they’d do to themselves on purpose to try and compensate as the implications of the augment virus turn thier society upside down. There’s much I don’t like about Disco Klingons but the face redesign intrigued me as a potential reaction and over correction to the augment arc in ENT, and how past exchanges like that ultimately lead to federation vs klingon hostilities. Unfortunately Disco didn’t capitalize on this probably cause if they start explaining things they’d ultimately have to admit they can’t get away with haveing the longest heroship in canon…
I thought it was all a bit confusing - it was introduced with no explanation, which felt like it was setting up some big reveal that never came.
I like the, as you say, Giger-esque design but felt it was such a departure that they may as well have introduced a new species.
it seems like the kind of thing that’s obviously an out of universe design choice. it’s like asking for a lore reason why the male Enterprise crew members stopped wearing eyeshadow after Kirk’s five year mission.
I’ll never understand why it’s treated by some people as some ridiculous expectation that things that couldn’t change so drastically over the course of 5-10 years (the entire biology of a species, for example) shouldn’t do so, and that we’re the odd ones for saying “but wait how is this supposed to take place in the same timeline?”
we’re the odd ones for saying “but wait how is this supposed to take place in the same timeline?”
I just think it points to a failure of imagination more than anything else.
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…That’s literally what happens in the Dune books.
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Hmm yes a very apt comparison, and not at all a complete strawman.
I mean, I can IMAGINE plenty of workarounds, the problem is that even the most practical way to explain them is illogical. It made far more sense that the NCC-1701 looked like how it did in the Cage (2254) up until sometime after Where No Man Has Gone Before (2265), before getting a refit for how it looks the rest of TOS (and again for the movies). Now, if I’m supposed to take the show at it’s word, the ship went through a massive, complete refit by 3 years later in Will You Take My Hand? (2257), only to revert one time to it’s 2254 appearance for 2265, and go through another refit by the Corbomite Maneuver (2266)? Is it really a lack of imagination here or is it actually that my imagination thinks about these things and fictional implications?
On the viewer’s part or the creator’s?
If the former, how far do you take it? Instead of Picard’s complicated, diplomatic solutions to complex problems, what if he just used mind control to resolve every conflict? What if they just made the Enterprise’s shields invincible to damage so there’s never a risk of the ship getting damaged? The show has to exist within a framework of rules and ‘truths,’ for lack of a better word, or everything becomes meaningless because nothing matters and there are no stakes.
If the latter, I’d have to agree. It has to be difficult to jump into a franchise with so much history, but it feels like they changed the Klingons just so they could put their own “stamp” on the show. What reason is there to change them in the first place? Humans and Vulcans still look the same.
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I very much enjoyed that in season one, each Klingon house had their own uniform, and customs. In the TNG era there is a uniformity to the Klingons, which flattens them to monoculture. Even the simple touches of having House Mo’Kai engage in facial scarification, or House Kor wear war paint implies an expansion to their culture that makes me far more interested in them.
Also, I’ve always enjoyed the scheming Klingons, like the ones we see in TOS, or the Duras Sisters, so Kol really appealed to me as an antagonist.
The new prosthetic seemed like a natural progression of what we saw from TOS, to TMP, to “The Search for Spock” and TNG. I do think the decision to make them all bald in season one was a miss, but it’s otherwise a good design that effectively communicates the ferocity the species is supposed to have.
I wonder if they wanted them to all be bald if it wouldn’t have made more sense to have T’Kuvma’s followers be bald, and the others that arrive after he lights the beacon engage in tonsure once T’Kuvma becomes a martyr.
Oh, and the elongated craniums on the women was also an odd choice that I’m glad was walked back for season two.
I’m going to be honest, Klingons in the TNG era always felt too goofy to me. They weren’t a proud warrior culture so much as borderline clownish space vikings who spent more time getting drunk than actually conquering anything. A redesign and change in how their culture(s) present on screen was welcome for me, and I think Discovery did a great job. I even liked the way they recontextualized the Klingon language, to make it sound more alien and more threataning than the staccato, oft-mispronounced mess that we got in the TNG era.
That said, I also think there was a missed opportunity with them. For a long time, I’ve had a head canon of the different looks of Klingons throughout all of the eras could be chalked up to these all being distinct peoples from within the Klingon Empire. It stands to reason that over a long enough time scale, an empier spanning multiple stars would start to consider people not originally from their homeworld “Klingon,” even if they might be genetically different. I always thought it would be cool if the TOS smooth forehead Klingons were actually just one species that were culturally Klingon, where the Worf-type were another, and the General Chang type was yet another. It would provide a way to smooth over the aeshetic differences with an in-universe explanation that doesn’t require any retconning except for a handful of episodes from ENT that die-hards didn’t like anyway.
But oh, well. One can dream.
I didn’t like the Disco Klingons. It was too much of a change to an established race for me. But, I like your idea and I think I could have been more on board if they had done it that way.
I thought those early Klingons were super weird and scary because they were just so alien.
Absolutely. And the costuming choices they made, and the different aesthetic approaches to each Great House, show an amazing amount of thought and care. They’re one big, scary, alien, fractured family.
Yes! Was a bit bummed to see that walked back and the Klingons brought more in line with the TNG-era ones, though I was happy to see some “big weirdness” arise again in S4 with the Ten-C.
Discovery was my “gateway” Trek which led to me watching everything else (except TOS yet) so I had no expectations or anything for what Klingons should look like.
So I didn’t think they looked “off” until I started watching the TNG era shows. Even then, I just attributed it to artistic differences.
All that said, I do like how they refined what they did in DSC for SNW. Those look more like TNG but upgraded
I’m just hoping for a Kang/Kor/Koloth cameo in SNW where they have flat foreheads.
The nice thing about snw is that they aren’t afraid of callbacks and they do them well, so I’d like to see curzon tooling around too.
It’s a early for Curzon Dax.
The recent Georgiou tie-in novel paired her up with Emory. Not sure which host Jadzia mentioned had paired up with the young McCoy…
I think Emony was actually the one that hooked up with McCoy. IIRC Enmony was the gymnast and dancer and she was comparing her capabilities with McCoy’s “hands of a surgeon”.
Ok then, that consistent with the tie-in novel “Die Standing” which has Georgiou teamed up with Emony.
I liked seeing Emony having a secret career in Starfleet Intelligence and being charged with keeping Georgiou on a leash.
Klingons have had two totally consistent design elements from TOS all the way through Into Darkness that DSC didn’t incorporate. The first is that the majority are fairly hairy, and the second is that their tech is very industrial and bare-bones looking. I can totally buy Klingon factions that stray from either of those things, such as a group that shaves their heads or has more elaborate tech, but the entire species being that way doesn’t work. The facial redesign could have worked, but ultimately the masks were too thick for anyone to emote in and they hindered the acting. Season 2 thinning the masks a bit and adding hair was a huge improvement and showed that the concept could work, but the organic looking tech just doesn’t do it for me at all as the predominant look in the empire.
Overall, I get what they were going for, but they lost what little consistent design language the Klingons had and it just did not work for me at all.
My main issue was less about how they looked and more about what they were capable of. The idea of being able to essentially species change a Klingon into a Human with TOS-era Klingon medical tech sounds impossibly advanced for what the Klingons are known for. Their scientists are few and far between, and even in TNG it’s elaborated on that treatments for disabilities aren’t even looked into, they just tell you to kill yourself. That doesn’t sound like the kind of species that 100 years prior is going to be able to do this insane medical procedure.
The whole deal with that is that they did it, in TOS, without any sort of explanation. We just had that dude, who McCoy discovered was really a Klingon, even though he looked just like a human. That whole thing is just adding an explanation for something that was long-since already there.
Also, you sound like you’re talking about the Orions. Do Klingons even have scientists? Somebody has to build the ships!
I liked the way they talked about science from a warrior race in Mass Effect. The Krogans have scientists but they’re mostly focused on making bigger bangs and booms. I would probably assume the Klingons are similar.
I know we have a few episodes showing other sides of the castes but generally we only interact with the warrior caste and occasionally see arbiters like in Rules of Engagement (DS9) or Judgement (ENT).
The only time we saw an actual Klingon scientist was in a TNG episode where they had figured out meta-phasic shields or something that allowed shuttles to get closer to a sun than ever before. Crusher was even dealing with some prejudice regarding Klingon scientists and has a few lines about how it feels weird to be working with a Klingon not focused on war and battle.
There was also a Klingon scientist in the Enterprise 2 parter about how the Klingons got smooth heads. He even talked about what it was like being a scientist in a society of warriors.
The idea of being able to essentially species change a Klingon into a Human with TOS-era Klingon medical tech sounds impossibly advanced for what the Klingons are known for.
It’s also something that literally happened in a TOS episode that almost everyone saw and liked.
The Bird of Prey design looks… imposing. The Armor, despite being very impractical, looks good. The Alien Race is well-designed, but it’s not what I would think Klingon would be. But yeah I kind of like how they’re portrayed, as a serious threat instead of some goofy alcohol-addicted space Vikings with a kind-of interesting way of life.
They would have been fine with hair. The whole thing where everyone is bald was the point that made it look bad.
I have pictures of T’kuvma photoshopped with hair and he looks great.
Another thing I want to mention is that Gene himself never held the series up to visual continuity. When the budget got better, the sets got better and so did the makeup. It was just a natural progression of the series. I don’t feel like it’s a stretch to keep trying to improve on alien appearances, especially as the aesthetic for the show changes and evolves. I like the SNW bridge update. I like that it’s all metal and glass and feels substantial.
The only huge issue I had with them was their makeup was so thick the actors clearly struggled to act through it. Contrast to such expressive Klingons such as Kor, Gowron and Martok which was very difficult to do when you can barely move your face.
If that hadn’t hamstrung the actors so much, I think they would have been more enjoyable than people found them.
I thoroughly enjoy most everything about DSC Klingons. With their appearance, I didn’t like or dislike their look when I first saw it so much as I was surprised. Klingons have a history of looking very different throughout Star Trek. I’ve rewatched DSC so many times, I’m used to how the Klingons look. However, I absolutely love the depiction of Klingon society. I still marvel at the Klingon armor and sets. The dichotomy of such a combative society and the intricate beauty of their ships, armor, everything. Their artistry goes beyond simple functionality. I think it adds depth to the Klingons.
I like the idea of klingons being very diverse.
I dug 'em. It was a good experiment in pushing Trek’s aliens beyond a forehead and an accent.
I don’t mind that they tried. And tried to link them with TOS and later Klingons. I just thought the makeup was too heavy. You never really got any memorable Klingon character faces. And I’m just taking about their faces. I enjoyed their costumes and ships.
