I think that's not actually established, and not just by Timo standards. We're told Romulans are using ships of Klingon design, but that doesn't commit the Romulans or Klingons to anything.
TUC - not aged well
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I think that's not actually established, and not just by Timo standards. We're told Romulans are using ships of Klingon design, but that doesn't commit the Romulans or Klingons to anything.
It must have been a leap of faith the Klingons started using cloaking technology after.
Might be Romulans suddenly became friendly when Klingons seemed to be on the brink of launching a war, a most natural development from the UFP point of view - when in fact it was all a devious plot, with the Romulans making friendly gestures out of the left field exactly because they wanted to provoke the Klingons into war, and the Feds into thinking they could win that war.
The mirror of this would probably have happened as well, with Romulans suddenly getting very friendly with Klingons in order to make them likelier to go to war with the UFP. As for already decent relations, though... Kor in DS9 boasts about fighting the Romulans in the mid-2270s timeframe, so that limits the timeline somewhat.
The one thing that may point to the existence of such an alliance is dialogue from "Reunion", where Riker worries about a "new" alliance of this sort. But the word can be interpreted two ways, such a concept perhaps being new as in unheard of...
And in ENT, it's a very Romulan thing for them to use ships of alien design...
"After"? In ST3:TSfS, our heroes are no strangers to Klingon cloaks - indeed, when they see a cloak (well, you know what I mean), they immediately assume it's a Klingon one. ENT shows Klingons getting their first taste of that tech in the mid-22nd century already. And TOS has its share of battles where the Klingons are invisible, most tellingly "Errand of Mercy" where the hero ship, prepared for war, nevertheless gets totally surprised by a vessel that fires relatively potent torpedoes yet succumbs to the first return shot, in classic Klingon BoP style.
Timo Saloniemi
I knew about the speculated TOS alliance, though that was never explored in detail and we don't know how long it lasted. It's possible that that alliance was over by the 2270s, due to a reference from DS9. Nothing wrong with crediting Nicholas Meyer at all though. He provided my two favorite Trek movies. Though I disagree with you that Moore didn't have a clue about Klingons. I thought he did a fine job developing them.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Klach_D'Kel_Brakt
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Romulan-Klingon_relations
I don't think this movie aged badly at all. The racism issue has always been around and it always will be. I never found any thing intentionally racist about Star Trek VI and really no where else in Star Trek either. It is just a realistic portrayal of two enemies mocking each other. They are also pitted against each other because a Human lost his family member and a Klingon lost her family member. But it isn't promoting racism. And at the end of the film it seems they all reconcile.
A few other comments I'd like to make:
The Food Slots were probably not on any starships in the 23rd century. They were probably just giant automatic vending machines capable of making a complete meal served on a plate. This is why the door had to close, like if it was a microwave. Of course it would not be impossible for the visual effects department of the 1960s to create a food replicator, or at least beam food directly to the plate. So a having ship's galley is just as good as having a "Ten Forward". It expanded on The Constitution Class and showed what life was like in the refit starship. More of the ship hasn't really been explored since TMP, with The Rec Deck.
Colonel West using a paper chart and a laser pointer shouldn't ruin the movie. Paper was used all over the place during the 23rd century. "Fax Machines" in The Cage, and also paper books for stealth reasons. Perhaps paper charts are used for stealth reasons.
Shakespeare is overused in this film. That's why Bones said "I'd give real money if she'd shut up."
Also, I love the chronometer above the view screen!
I've been saying it hasn't aged well for years now, which is a shame because I liked it quite a bit when it came out. Though even back then I thought they lost the opportunity to do a much bigger scale story, and that sometimes is a failing of a Star Trek movie series that lacks scope. It's something they corrected in the JJ movies and brought in a lot more viewers.
TUC has a bigger scale than most of the original crew movies. It has events of galactic import, and the story spans Earth, Praxis, Rura Penthe, and Khitomer. That's more scope than any TOS film short of TMP in my book.
Yeah, the budget shows in a couple of places, but I think they got a lot more bang for their buck than, say, TSFS.
But it's a movie with huge social, political and military implications for the whole Trek universe, and they only focus a few moments on Earth in a few small rooms(re-dressed STNG sets), underground caves on Rura Penthe(the caves!), and Khitomer gets a nice but fairly static matte painting. There are no fleets shown poised on the brink of war, there's just a mano a mano between Kirk and Chang. They should have excised the whole kangaroo court and imprisonment and shown us some real intrigue.
I disagree.
Watched this film for the first time recently, and I find it's dated just as well as any of the other original six films.
Watched this film for the first time recently, and I find it's dated just as well as any of the other original six films.
Moore's complete re-imagining of the Klingon culture benefited the tone of stories for TNG and it's bad spinoffs, but beside the Duras family, there was nothing he created that was remotely Klingon from TOS.
The Klingons did not have a cloak in Errand of Mercy. Speaking of ST III; the script's villains were originally the Romulans but Nimoy decided to have Klingons. Just look at the design of the Bird of Prey, everything about it says, "Romulan." The name Bird of Prey was originally Romulan. In the third season of TOS Romulans had Klingon ships but were designed with feather decor. The 2 organizations were affiliated.
Does it have to be spelled out and be on the nose?
Fair enough, but you could say the same for the re-imagining of the Romulans as well. To me the TOS Romulans (honorable) and the TOS Klingons (more cunning) just switched places in TNG.
And to me, TOS Klingons weren't as fleshed out. They were basic totalitarians.There were some good actors that breathed more life into Klingons as opposed to the writers really delving into Klingon culture, but Moore took the Klingons and developed them more, though I wonder if he took cues from Kruge in The Search for Spock.
I also don't think all the Trek spin offs were bad. Deep Space Nine was arguably the best Trek series period. And even Voyager and Enterprise did have some good episodes, etc.
Well, no, no, and no. We can say nothing about what the (invisible!) Klingons had or didn't have in "Errand of Mercy", only that anything short of a cloaked attack leaves our heroes looking like incompetent idiots. Nothing about the ST3 Bird of Prey says Romulans, as the stoop-winged, long-necked, big-headed shape is almost identical to the ship the Klingons flew in TOS instead. And the name Bird of Prey was first used in ST3, with no association whatsoever with how Romulan ships would be called (but since the heroes feel compelled to specify her as "Klingon Bird of prey", it sounds like everybody has those).
Again, not really. There was no feather decor in TOS - that was only added by RPG artists to their miniatures in the following years. And then ultimately applied when the effects for "The Enterprise Incident" were redone for TOS-R.
Never even remotely suggested. There was no mention of Romulans in connection with Klingons, or vice versa (beyond the Romulans operating ships of Klingon design, which is what mortal enemies often do). There were no joint operations or shared dastardly schemes. No Klingon ever spoke to a Romulan until TNG.
A Klingon-Romulan alliance is an allowed fan interpretation of the material. It is by no means a required one, or even a preferable one.
Timo Saloniemi
The Starfleet briefing room was a new set. We also saw new sets for the Enterprise in the torpedo room, the galley, and crew quarters. The Klingon court is very visually impressive and imposing (compare it with what the ENT episode "Judgement" did with a TV budget over a decade later).
Along with some spectacular second unit photography that really lent some extra scope to the picture.
And the huge conference, shot on location in Simi Valley, with tons of extras in alien makeup.
Since this is never referenced in the script, I don't consider this a problem.
TUC has intrigue coming out the wazoo. What movie were you watching?
I do think a bigger budget would have made TUC better in terms of a larger sense of scale. Bigger sets, new model ships, fleets instead of single ships, higher quality film in the cameras...
You are right about the cold war parallel, of course, but there were also some overt references to racism:
- Chekov's line "Guess who's coming to dinner?" is a reference to a 1960s film about a black man coming to dinner with a white family.
- The Klingon woman has the line " 'Human rights.' Why, the very name is racist. The Federation is no more than a 'homo sapiens' only club."
- A nameless Enterprise crewman says of Klingons "What about that smell? You know only the top-of-the-line models can even talk..."
- Uhura says "Did you see the way they ate?", and later admits "I felt like Lieutenant Valeris", i.e. prejudiced against Klingons.
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Also, the Klingon homeworld itself (during the Kirk/McCoy trial-sequence). It was the only time a "major" homeworld other than Earth or Vulcan was shown onscreen in one of the feature film entries prior to Star Trek: Nemesis.
Though to be sure, we do get that one scene depicting the larger Klingon strategic picture in the film (during the Azetbur/Ra-ghoratreii viewscreen-conference, where the peace conference gets relocated to Khitomer), where we're shown maps displaying their fleets' current positions, and their current military readiness.
Another very similar scene also exists in the extended cut, when Colonel West shows the president his "Operation Retrieve" maps, complete with Starfleet ship movements and tactical positions in the event the plan was activated.
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TNG Klingons, like Worf, were not very bright, everything they did seemed reactionary; and they shout a personal cultural code of ethics for whatever they did. They came off as overblown punks who's bark was tougher than their bite. Kruge's retarded band of Klingons could've been the source, but I'd like to give credit solely to Moore in ruining the Klingons and also sh*tting all over Captain Kirk.
If you happen to collect the Eaglemoss ships and magazines, in the issue with the 22'nd Century Bird of Prey (from Enterprise) there is a fantastic article with Ron Moore talking about where the Klingon's went off the rails, and how they were trying by the end of DS9 to bring them back to a fully fleshed out and functioning culture and society. Basically the early TNG Klingon's like so many early TNG adversaries could not function as a civilization. At least not with the levels of Klingon on Klingon violence described and depicted. I think TUC was the beginning of the producers trying to claw the Klingon's back to being a deep diverse and functioning alien civilization. Particularly the trial scenes added something that we had never seen before in the TNG era. Structure formality and a rule of law. Pretty much every appearance of the Klingons before that was some sort of testosterone fueled frat house football nightmare of a species. Which of course was wildly counter to their very structured, cunning and militaristic depiction in TOS.
Though it's not like the Klingons were particularly erudite on the '60s TV show either, however. Apart from specific "lead" Klingon-characters (Kor, Kang, Koloth), the vast majority of them were depicted simply as barking, thuggish bullies who pushed people around just for the sake of it, and much more akin to the post-Season 1 TNG/DS9/VOY-era Klingons in terms of belligerance than to Colicos, Ansara, and Campbell's more subtle portrayals.
This whole notion that Ronald D. Moore somehow drastically changed them as a culture is not in line with previous onscreen evidence -- in fact, it's very much of a piece with it, much moreso than some seem to remember it as being.
Yeah, its what I appreciated from the film a lot, our heroes are only as good if the villains are just as good. The Klingons were Klingons again. Then in the next film Generations ruined that.
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