Your favourite TOS Klingon?

Kang I think but Kor is close behind! The original Klingons were far more impressive than their turtle headed descendants! Why didn't they kep the Mark Lenard ridges from TMP I often ask myelf!
JB

 

He certainly rates better than the dudes from "Friday's Child" and "A Private Little War."

Koloth and his aid were complete jokes. Did they even have any makeup?

 

Kang was the perfect Klingon, but I chose Koloth out of overall entertainment value of performance

John Colicos will always be Baltar for me

 

I voted for Mara, too. I can't remember at what point I started to really appreciate the character, or the idea for her character. She was a science officer, not a typical warrior, yet she still held to Klingon values. Plus, she was married to the captain, which I thought was a nice touch for TOS.

Mara presented to me a very well-rounded Klingon and not some stereotype. I think it took DS9's Blood Oath to help me appreciate Kang, Kor and Koloth as individuals instead of Klingon ciphers.

 

The TOS Klingons were awesome, but I think there have been awesome Klingons since then.

I enjoyed: Kruge (and his crew), Chang, Gowron, Kahless (TNG version), Kurn, and the Klingon Ambassador.

But I digress...

 

Kor and Kang are the best, but I'm having difficulty choosing between them.


I think Kras gets picked on too much. He was a great Klingon, back when the Klingons were dangerous and scheming. Then they kind of turned into something else, but that's much later and can be easily ignored.

I think you could have put Kahless, the Klingon responsible for his planet's tyrannies on the list.

 

Tie: Kor and Kang. Like some real military officers, some play their hand in a plotting, sinister fashion, while others are clearly about force / domination. That said, for the empire as presented, both are crucial for the success of the government they represent. You could not have the Klingon Empire run strictly the Kor or Kang way (one "end" or another) and still be a believable, sensible threat to the Federation.

 

Kor was glooooorious!

 

Personally I do think that the Klingons were never as good as in TUC, where they truly seemed like a believable alien warrior culture. In the 24th century they sometimes went too overboard with them (and evidently they were often played for laughs) and in TOS they were just Soviet-expies in a layer of shoe cream and a Fu Manchu beard.

That all aside I do think that Mara was cool. My favorite Klingon in all of Star Trek is Azetbur and Mara is sorta a proto-Azetbur, someone who's true to her heritage but who's willing to shove it aside and act sensibly when needed.

 

I felt just the opposite, that the Klingons in TUC were the most dull, uninspired Klingons of the bunch. A bunch of Shakespeare-quoting weenies that twirled their mustaches and would have been easily interchangeable with humans. Nothing alien or interesting about them.

One of the reasons TUC is my least-favorite film of the original 6.

 

^Well you and me know by now that we have differing taste in many aspects. The dinner scene is probably one of my favorite scenes in all the Star Trek movies.
Weenies? Hmmm I would say it takes courage to opt for peace when your whole culture glorifies war. I loved Gorkon and Azetbur for this.

I think what they tried in TUC was to show a different side to the Klingons other than war and honour and imperialism. Of course it's up to everybody if they like that "other side" to the Klingons or not. We see it's not just always the death penalty with them but they have a legal system and prisons and all sort of things.

The one Klingon scene I don't like in TUC is when Uhura asks Random Klingon#1 about Shakespear and stops midway because she's so repulsed by his way of eating. That was a bit comic relief again.

I find the TOS Klingons much more interchangeable with humans and mustache twirly a lot of the time.

 

I don't think they were "trying to show another side." I think Meyer didn't have any idea what a Klingon was supposed to be, so he shoehorned in a random, generic villain with a noble (but devious), Shakespearean attitude and away we went...because...well...he wanted to.

You're right about one thing though, we definitely have different tastes. I find the dinner scene in TUC to be a horrendously filmed, cut and edited scene that is confusing and has almost absolutely no flow to it whatsoever. There is actually very little conversation at all. There is usually a line, reacted to negatively by another character, then with no resolution to that disagreement...they move on to another unrelated point-counterpoint between other characters. It's mind-numbing to watch. Especially after you've seen some of the way the scene was originally filmed and flowed before it was hacked to pieces.

TUC has the distinction of having far too many scenes of people just sitting around and talking like this. I think it sets a record for time spent sitting around tables and talking for the film franchise, which is absolutely astounding when you consider that TNG was notorious for sitting around tables and talking, and even those movies did a better job of keeping things kinetic and interesting. Nearly 1/4 of this film is people sitting and talking / doing nothing.

1. The Starfleet meeting at the beginning
2. The dinner scene
3. Multiple scenes in the President's office (Ambassadors yelling about the incident, watching the trial, rescue plan briefing, Azetbur's communique)
4. Azetbur, Kerla and Chang aboard Kronos One
5. Scotty drinking tea

The model for a great "sitting around the table" scene is when Lilly Sloan and Picard duke it out in FC. That scene has fire and conflict and is arguably the best scene in the film (which is saying a lot). The scenes in TUC don't come anywhere near that...and just come off as filler.

Sorry, digression!

 

I voted for Kang...even though Kor is a CLOSE second. Kang is a better match for Kirk, especially in an action / adventure environment. His character was more fleshed out too...he had Mara, his wife, and that whole situation added tremendous dimension to him. He demonstrated cunning and guile, but was also sensible and intelligent enough to overcome the entity with Kirk in the end.

Kang is the model example I go to when I think of the balance of what a realistic Klingon should be. Not a drunken moron who head-butts people (TNG Klingons) and not a devious slime bag (TOS Kras and Krell), but a smart and proud warrior.

Although, I must say, Kras and Krell had their places too. You can tell that the Empire had agents who were very good at manipulating civilizations on various under-developed planets. These were not warriors or battlecruiser captains...they are manipulators and schemers. I think it does a nice job fleshing out the race by showing all different kinds, and not having them all be stereotypes of each other.

 

I find it interesting that the word "warrior" was never mentioned in connection with Klingons throughout the whole series. In Errand of Mercy, Kor describes Klingons as "soldiers," an efficient and obedient military machine. It seems that the later pseudo-Viking Klingons would just haphazardly charge into battle screaming. That's quite a difference.

And I thought it was pretty rude for the Enterprise officers to look down on the Klingons' way of eating in TUC, when there are plenty of human cultures that eat with their hands!

I read somewhere that Nick Meyer didn't really know what to do with aliens... he just treated them like humans with makeup.

Kor

 

Meyer Trek...yeesh.

 

BTW- the "different tastes" thing is not a bad thing. I'm always enlightened when I read posts of someone who sees things differently. It sometimes makes me go back to the material and look through different eyes.

 

Don't get me wrong, Nick Meyer (with Harve Bennett) pretty much single-handedly made modern Trek what it is. And, WOK is my favorite movie of all time.

That said, I find TVH and TUC to be my two least-favorite of the original 6.

 

I think it's interesting that before Kang, we didn't know if Klingons had wives. I don't think every alien out there marries. We've never had Romulan spouses, or Gorn, Tholian, Tellerite, Andorian, or even Tiburonian. It could be because they weren't there long enough to establish it or because they don't have them.

And I like that not every Klingon is a starship captain, and among the three (or 4) Klingon starship commanders, they are not all the same.

 

Kor, with Kang a close second. John Colicos and Michael Ansara were both masterful in their roles.

 

Yikes! You like "The Final Frontier" better than these movies???