I've seen those cut scenes, and still don't see a whole lot to go on as to how they would play. Simply don't think there is enough exposure to know.
First look at Klingons in 'Star Trek: Discovery'?
- Thread starter JacksonArcher
- Start date
I've seen those cut scenes, and still don't see a whole lot to go on as to how they would play. Simply don't think there is enough exposure to know.
I'm really not a huge fan of change just the sake of change. I think the recent Star Wars iterations have been really good at maintaining the visual continuity while still introducing new stuff. Now, sure, you could not directly do that with TOS (lets face it, 60s television budget effects were not that great) but this does not mean you have to jettison the entire aesthetic. My ideal mid 23th century Trek show would have some intentional retrofuturism. Go with top notch effect quality and detail, but try to maintain some of that 60s design aesthetic.
That's actually kinda my point.... People want it to be more like TOS. But in TOS, they were underdeveloped simpletons who were sometimes nothing more then mustache twirling baddies. And looked silly. Like them or not, in TNG/DS9/VOY they atleast HAD a culture and backstory. Sure, most of the time that was simplified to the extreme. But a lot more effort was made, including trying to make them look a lot better.
If DIS actually builds and expands on THAT, that's not a bad thing. That's incredibaly amazing!!!
For those who aren't aware, there was an extensive discussion about the stereotyping of Klingons in the TNG era - it might be of interest to some people who don't go into the general discussion forum much:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/did-klingon-culture-become-too-stereotyped-by-the-end-of-ds9.200293/
The discussion started after someone noted that Klingon culture's long downfall toward "bloodwine" and "honor" started in the TNG episode Heart of Glory, where two atavistic reactionary types with a lost cause type mindset were later taken to be typical Klingons. It then went into the way in which no culture on Earth has such a lack of complexity, and how the writers had trapped themselves into it.
Sometimes what is unsaid matters more than what is said; it's better to leave possibilities open than to close them - so the idea that we must fill in every gap in Star Trek history, and explain every part of a culture, can be a destructive impulse, that closes down speculation, exploration and opportunity.
Often, in attempting to describe an alien society, people fall into the trap of over-describing it, over-simplifying it and ossifying it - I think Klingon culture became this way in the later eras of Star Trek.
Writers did not leave enough room for opportunity - they tried to fill in absolutely every question about Klingon culture with the type of answer that closes all further speculation. You can consequently find more interesting examples of Klingon culture in older books and games, from before the time when Klingons became like this. In Star Trek: 25th Anniversary for example, the Klingon government subjects one of it's own colonies, Hrakkour IV, to lethal doses of radiation, in order to put down a rebellion - something that fits perfectly with the fascist period of their society seen in TOS, but which does not jive with the technologically inept barbarians that are sometimes presented:
In some works, every avenue of Klingon culture was explained away systematically and obsessively - but not in a very naturalistic, practical or organic way - leading to a really monolithic and simplistic society, which even the smallest nation on Earth, would seem diverse in comparison to. Take a tiny culture from the Caucasus on our own planet, and it has a hugely diverse history. Sometimes, with the Klingons, it was like the Wikipedia outline article on a culture had been taken as the law on how to write for that culture.
I really like what little we have seen of JJ Abrams Klingons - going back to a less comprehensively understood society, which acts more naturally like TOS Klingons. They are not obsessed with honour, glory and religion - no society on Earth, not even the most obsessive theocracy, would have citizens or military servicemen constantly drop Kahless, honour, bat'leths, etc, into every conversation - it's not natural.
I'm not sure that John M Ford's Klingons are any better, but at least by making Klingon culture more practical and having a multiplicity of viewpoints, you can fit any era of Klingon into it - ENT, TOS, The Search for Spock, The Undiscovered Country, TNG/DS9, or JJ Abrams. The problem is that Klingon culture became less and less organic and practical, and more like a bad caricature.
I would like to see a culture developed that could encompass TOS Klingons, John M Ford Klingons, Bloodwine and Honor Klingons (is it fair to call them Ronald Moore Klingons?), and Abrams Klingons - one more practical and grounded in real modern statehood than DS9 Klingons, but also alien like Ford/RDM's culture.
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/did-klingon-culture-become-too-stereotyped-by-the-end-of-ds9.200293/
The discussion started after someone noted that Klingon culture's long downfall toward "bloodwine" and "honor" started in the TNG episode Heart of Glory, where two atavistic reactionary types with a lost cause type mindset were later taken to be typical Klingons. It then went into the way in which no culture on Earth has such a lack of complexity, and how the writers had trapped themselves into it.
Sometimes what is unsaid matters more than what is said; it's better to leave possibilities open than to close them - so the idea that we must fill in every gap in Star Trek history, and explain every part of a culture, can be a destructive impulse, that closes down speculation, exploration and opportunity.
Often, in attempting to describe an alien society, people fall into the trap of over-describing it, over-simplifying it and ossifying it - I think Klingon culture became this way in the later eras of Star Trek.
Writers did not leave enough room for opportunity - they tried to fill in absolutely every question about Klingon culture with the type of answer that closes all further speculation. You can consequently find more interesting examples of Klingon culture in older books and games, from before the time when Klingons became like this. In Star Trek: 25th Anniversary for example, the Klingon government subjects one of it's own colonies, Hrakkour IV, to lethal doses of radiation, in order to put down a rebellion - something that fits perfectly with the fascist period of their society seen in TOS, but which does not jive with the technologically inept barbarians that are sometimes presented:
In some works, every avenue of Klingon culture was explained away systematically and obsessively - but not in a very naturalistic, practical or organic way - leading to a really monolithic and simplistic society, which even the smallest nation on Earth, would seem diverse in comparison to. Take a tiny culture from the Caucasus on our own planet, and it has a hugely diverse history. Sometimes, with the Klingons, it was like the Wikipedia outline article on a culture had been taken as the law on how to write for that culture.
I really like what little we have seen of JJ Abrams Klingons - going back to a less comprehensively understood society, which acts more naturally like TOS Klingons. They are not obsessed with honour, glory and religion - no society on Earth, not even the most obsessive theocracy, would have citizens or military servicemen constantly drop Kahless, honour, bat'leths, etc, into every conversation - it's not natural.
I've always rationalized Klingon history something like this:
- 22nd Century: They started out as a colonial empire in space or medieval feudal state in space (which had become vastly inefficient by Archer's time - barely held together by coercion - suffering constant instability).
- 23rd Century: They went through a political revolution of some sort (comparable to the rise of fascism in Spain or Italy) in the time after ENT and before TOS. The Klingon Empire was modernized into a centralized military state, abolishing primitive feudalism/levies/landholders, and replacing it with more modern forms of coercion such as conscription, propaganda, a prison system, a technologically improved military, etc.
- 24th Century: They reformed after Gorkon's peace initiative, into a more open society, but the old noble families, medieval ideas, etc, came back to some degree. Romanticism for the past was increased due to the stagnation of society.
Rationality wins wars. Armies are some of the most 'hard rationalist' of organizations. They will make their soldiers do things that might not be glamorous, if it improves the chances of winning and survival. A soldier might have to eat local insect wildlife, in order to survive in conditions where supply lines are poor. Religious dietary requirements and other romantic notions fly right out of the window. They wear practical fabrics, carry practical weapons, and don't do things for glamour. If a Klingon commander tells troops to 'cook' their gagh in order to release more useful protein for digestion, they will have to do it. If they are issued standard bars of field rations, that contain some unpalatable formula, they must eat them.
Roman troops were able to construct an 18 kilometer long 4 meter high double-wall around Alesia in three weeks, in order to starve the Gauls out. But that is why they were the greatest fighting force of their age - the ability to dig a latrine is more important than yelling loud in empire building.
The fact of the matter is that for the Klingons to have ever built a colonial empire in the first place, they must have been practical and disciplined, rather than relying on martial arts. So TOS Klingons were quite realistic, whereas some later episodes that tried to depict them as being strong out of ferocity were missing the mark. Empires are inherently quite opportunist, but even discounting that, like Rome, which would dig a trench round a town and starve the enemy rather than rush in, it requires organization rather than fanaticism.
The British Empire ruled 1/4th of humanity - but among 40 million Britons (vs 400 million Indians) - still 99.9% of Britons were workers. Qo'noS will undoubtedly be the same as England was, with industrial bases like Manchester or Liverpool were in those times.... Except in the 20th century power became even more dependent on science and industry in organized coordination. Modern states cannot survive without a scientific base of researchers and white collar workers.
If Klingons are in fact 8 billion warriors, why haven't they overrun the galaxy? So if they are basically a complete parody of a warrior society, like Orks in Warhammer 40,000 - with an army of billions - the Federation would literally not stand a chance, with its few million servicemen. Not to mention it would be inappropriate to the setting, and boring (another prosaic mindless character-less alien horde, like something out of Halo).
The Klingon Empire cannot function like a Z-canon parody of a biker gang, through extortion alone (thank god no official source has ever suggested this). It cannot simply "get" aliens to research and build D7 battlecruisers for it; it has to understand the principles of duotronic circuitry, and a thousand other scientific concepts. It cannot coerce Mizarian white collar workers to plan how natural resources get from 20 different planets to one shipyard. It cannot order a third species to simply build these things from a blueprint. It needs an industrial/economic/scientific base of its own.
- 22nd Century: They started out as a colonial empire in space or medieval feudal state in space (which had become vastly inefficient by Archer's time - barely held together by coercion - suffering constant instability).
- 23rd Century: They went through a political revolution of some sort (comparable to the rise of fascism in Spain or Italy) in the time after ENT and before TOS. The Klingon Empire was modernized into a centralized military state, abolishing primitive feudalism/levies/landholders, and replacing it with more modern forms of coercion such as conscription, propaganda, a prison system, a technologically improved military, etc.
- 24th Century: They reformed after Gorkon's peace initiative, into a more open society, but the old noble families, medieval ideas, etc, came back to some degree. Romanticism for the past was increased due to the stagnation of society.
Rationality wins wars. Armies are some of the most 'hard rationalist' of organizations. They will make their soldiers do things that might not be glamorous, if it improves the chances of winning and survival. A soldier might have to eat local insect wildlife, in order to survive in conditions where supply lines are poor. Religious dietary requirements and other romantic notions fly right out of the window. They wear practical fabrics, carry practical weapons, and don't do things for glamour. If a Klingon commander tells troops to 'cook' their gagh in order to release more useful protein for digestion, they will have to do it. If they are issued standard bars of field rations, that contain some unpalatable formula, they must eat them.
Roman troops were able to construct an 18 kilometer long 4 meter high double-wall around Alesia in three weeks, in order to starve the Gauls out. But that is why they were the greatest fighting force of their age - the ability to dig a latrine is more important than yelling loud in empire building.
The fact of the matter is that for the Klingons to have ever built a colonial empire in the first place, they must have been practical and disciplined, rather than relying on martial arts. So TOS Klingons were quite realistic, whereas some later episodes that tried to depict them as being strong out of ferocity were missing the mark. Empires are inherently quite opportunist, but even discounting that, like Rome, which would dig a trench round a town and starve the enemy rather than rush in, it requires organization rather than fanaticism.
The British Empire ruled 1/4th of humanity - but among 40 million Britons (vs 400 million Indians) - still 99.9% of Britons were workers. Qo'noS will undoubtedly be the same as England was, with industrial bases like Manchester or Liverpool were in those times.... Except in the 20th century power became even more dependent on science and industry in organized coordination. Modern states cannot survive without a scientific base of researchers and white collar workers.
If Klingons are in fact 8 billion warriors, why haven't they overrun the galaxy? So if they are basically a complete parody of a warrior society, like Orks in Warhammer 40,000 - with an army of billions - the Federation would literally not stand a chance, with its few million servicemen. Not to mention it would be inappropriate to the setting, and boring (another prosaic mindless character-less alien horde, like something out of Halo).
The Klingon Empire cannot function like a Z-canon parody of a biker gang, through extortion alone (thank god no official source has ever suggested this). It cannot simply "get" aliens to research and build D7 battlecruisers for it; it has to understand the principles of duotronic circuitry, and a thousand other scientific concepts. It cannot coerce Mizarian white collar workers to plan how natural resources get from 20 different planets to one shipyard. It cannot order a third species to simply build these things from a blueprint. It needs an industrial/economic/scientific base of its own.
I'm not sure that John M Ford's Klingons are any better, but at least by making Klingon culture more practical and having a multiplicity of viewpoints, you can fit any era of Klingon into it - ENT, TOS, The Search for Spock, The Undiscovered Country, TNG/DS9, or JJ Abrams. The problem is that Klingon culture became less and less organic and practical, and more like a bad caricature.
I would like to see a culture developed that could encompass TOS Klingons, John M Ford Klingons, Bloodwine and Honor Klingons (is it fair to call them Ronald Moore Klingons?), and Abrams Klingons - one more practical and grounded in real modern statehood than DS9 Klingons, but also alien like Ford/RDM's culture.
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Star Wars has the advantage of not having to portray a possible future Earth and its technology. They don't need to have touchscreen technology a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
Wow, just saw the picture and that is a very different look for the Klingons. I have to admit I was expecting them to just go back to the TNG-Ent look, so seeing this is a big surprise. I like that they are keeping the most recognizable elements, like the forehead ridges, but then doing their own thing with it. I'm very happy with this, and I can't wait to see more.
It will be interesting to see if they offer an explanation for them looking like this, or if it's just how Klingons look.
It will be interesting to see if they offer an explanation for them looking like this, or if it's just how Klingons look.
You're making a lot of generalizations.
Who said it's a reboot?
How is this not ACTUAL Star Trek?
How does this not respect its legacy?
I'm sorry, but posts like this really irritate me. Every time a new piece of Star Trek is announced - it doesn't matter what. Not one thing is known, not one picture shown, not a single detail outside of it being made and the entitled Trekkies jump all over it and start finding problems with it. And this springs out of just ONE picture that we're making a lot of assumptions about.
Don't forget, if you watched the Enterprise episode, it was stated that the Klingon doctor (whose name escapes me at the moment), said he could start focusing on cranial reconstruction.
And again, someone stated, we don't know what the full affects of it were. I have a feeling it won't be touched upon in too much detail once the show is on, but we'll see!
True, but that is also the sort of minor detail that is fine to alter. For example, think about the classic Enterprise bridge. Replace those bright coloured buttons and rows of blinking lights with touch screens. Keep roughly the overall shape of the panels and the bright colours. Looks technologically advanced, maintains the overall original aesthetic.
Indeed - you can have quite a lot of fun explaining old technology using modern science:
Since Star Trek: Discovery has kicked off those old arguments again (thankfully to a lesser degree), about what looks "too advanced" to be in a prequel, I thought it would be a nice idea to use our imaginations to explain why TOS technology is actually super-advanced science.
When Enterprise came out, I remember a lot of people objected to the NX-01 supposedly looking more advanced than later ships (presumably just because the CGI model had more hull detailing), but that was missing the point - it's function that makes something more advanced, not appearance - it may well be that technology in 50 years will go back to looking like some sort of Bakelite-phone from the 1950s, but if it's also something capable of direct neural interface with your brain, it is unarguably far more advanced than some glassy designer Samsung smartphone of today. Now a small few have expressed similar sentiments about DSC, it might be time for a reminder of why Kirk's ship would wipe the floor with earlier ones.
This tablet computer might be as advanced in functionality as any TNG-era PADD. We see them sometimes used with a stylus, meaning they have the ability to record text from written input. Their bulky form, aside from just being the Federation's aesthetic preference in this period, may be armored for survival in shipboard battle situations, where things are easily knocked off work surfaces. One may assume that the ship is fully networked via militarily-secure wireless connections, or perhaps the crew connect to the main computer via hardpoints to prevent signal intercept.
The hull armor of a TOS era Constitution class ship does not resemble that of earlier or later eras, being somewhat smoother in appearance. Klingon and Romulan technology of this era also follows the same trend in generational design. In Enterprise, we see an example of a TOS era ship easily dispatching the most advanced starships of Archer's era into oblivion. It's phaser systems, sustained beams of tremendous power, cut through the most advanced Vulcan ships of the era. It's torpedoes are almost one-hit killers. I would speculate that the bright Duranium hull-plating of the TOS era was a very effective leap in starship technology, that improved survivability immensely, even without energy shields. It's almost organic curves may be an indication of advanced material sciences, such as large scale 3D printing. As an aside it also looks very pleasingly NASA-like.
The weaponry and energy shields of this era were utterly devastating by the standards of current science. In ENT, a phase pistol, one of the first directed energy beam weapons, was capable of inflicting minor burns, killing or stunning someone. By TOS, a phaser could outright vaporize a living target with massive levels of directed energy. Phaser wounds and burns were feared by doctors, who would presumably sometimes have to deal with partially vaporized victims, who were still alive, but may have lost entire portions of their musculature, skeletal structure, or skin - which would all conduct the devastating heat along their structure. The systems fitted aboard starships were no less devastating, capable of obliterating continents from orbit. More impressive still, starships were able to project electromagnetic fields around themselves in a bubble, in such strength, that they would literally stop these energy discharges like charge particles entering a planet's magnetic field. The loss of such a vessel, and detonation of it's matter-antimatter reserves posed a radiation threat to entire solar systems.
The "duotronic" computer systems and circuitry onboard a Constitution class starship operated on a new principle beyond "electronic" circuitry, perhaps even combining other forms of charged particles such as antimatter positrons, or perhaps using more than one quantum state of electron (hence duo), to more effectively transmit signals or perform computations at the quantum level. By The Next Generation, they had been further replaced by a new paradigm shift in science - "isolinear" circuitry, with incredible data storage potential on each isolinear chip or rod - and even more advanced Optical Data Networks (ODN), which by the launch of the Intrepid-class, used elements of organic technology, in the form of "bio-neural gel packs".
All in all, the progression across these eras does not look at all bad to me:
When Enterprise came out, I remember a lot of people objected to the NX-01 supposedly looking more advanced than later ships (presumably just because the CGI model had more hull detailing), but that was missing the point - it's function that makes something more advanced, not appearance - it may well be that technology in 50 years will go back to looking like some sort of Bakelite-phone from the 1950s, but if it's also something capable of direct neural interface with your brain, it is unarguably far more advanced than some glassy designer Samsung smartphone of today. Now a small few have expressed similar sentiments about DSC, it might be time for a reminder of why Kirk's ship would wipe the floor with earlier ones.
This tablet computer might be as advanced in functionality as any TNG-era PADD. We see them sometimes used with a stylus, meaning they have the ability to record text from written input. Their bulky form, aside from just being the Federation's aesthetic preference in this period, may be armored for survival in shipboard battle situations, where things are easily knocked off work surfaces. One may assume that the ship is fully networked via militarily-secure wireless connections, or perhaps the crew connect to the main computer via hardpoints to prevent signal intercept.
The hull armor of a TOS era Constitution class ship does not resemble that of earlier or later eras, being somewhat smoother in appearance. Klingon and Romulan technology of this era also follows the same trend in generational design. In Enterprise, we see an example of a TOS era ship easily dispatching the most advanced starships of Archer's era into oblivion. It's phaser systems, sustained beams of tremendous power, cut through the most advanced Vulcan ships of the era. It's torpedoes are almost one-hit killers. I would speculate that the bright Duranium hull-plating of the TOS era was a very effective leap in starship technology, that improved survivability immensely, even without energy shields. It's almost organic curves may be an indication of advanced material sciences, such as large scale 3D printing. As an aside it also looks very pleasingly NASA-like.
The weaponry and energy shields of this era were utterly devastating by the standards of current science. In ENT, a phase pistol, one of the first directed energy beam weapons, was capable of inflicting minor burns, killing or stunning someone. By TOS, a phaser could outright vaporize a living target with massive levels of directed energy. Phaser wounds and burns were feared by doctors, who would presumably sometimes have to deal with partially vaporized victims, who were still alive, but may have lost entire portions of their musculature, skeletal structure, or skin - which would all conduct the devastating heat along their structure. The systems fitted aboard starships were no less devastating, capable of obliterating continents from orbit. More impressive still, starships were able to project electromagnetic fields around themselves in a bubble, in such strength, that they would literally stop these energy discharges like charge particles entering a planet's magnetic field. The loss of such a vessel, and detonation of it's matter-antimatter reserves posed a radiation threat to entire solar systems.
The "duotronic" computer systems and circuitry onboard a Constitution class starship operated on a new principle beyond "electronic" circuitry, perhaps even combining other forms of charged particles such as antimatter positrons, or perhaps using more than one quantum state of electron (hence duo), to more effectively transmit signals or perform computations at the quantum level. By The Next Generation, they had been further replaced by a new paradigm shift in science - "isolinear" circuitry, with incredible data storage potential on each isolinear chip or rod - and even more advanced Optical Data Networks (ODN), which by the launch of the Intrepid-class, used elements of organic technology, in the form of "bio-neural gel packs".
All in all, the progression across these eras does not look at all bad to me:
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As for Klingons, I think the nu-movies had pretty decent look for them. Whilst I'd personally prefer more medieval influences on their fashion, that look had practical military style appearance, which I find quite appropriate for mid 23th century Klingons, who seemed to be more disciplined and militaristic than their later incarnations. The only Klingon we saw up close in ST:ID was bald, and it was a bit weird that he didn't even have eyebrows. It is of course fine to have occasional bald Klingon, and others seen in those films seemed to have hair, so it wasn't like the entire species had suddenly gone bald.
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Sort of like this quick clip of TOS bridge updated with actors still intact. I like the look and would love to see an entire episode done like this.
Yeah, that's pretty good. Should've kept the TOS colours on the touchscreens though, those blues and greens looked out of place.
I can definitely see them doing CGI replacement one day on all of the old series. They'll even map new uniforms onto the characters to match the Post-DSC Primeline.
I haven't seen any of the current remastered versions of TOS yet. I bought virtually all of the originals on VHS and then bought the first DVDs when they were over a hundred dollars a set. That probably adds up to a thousand dollars. Anyone wants to give me remastered blu-rays, though, I wouldn't say no out of any purist impulse.
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