Good point.
Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?
- Thread starter Annorax849
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Well, no, that's not easier at all. Literally any in-story explanation is better than something that explicitly requires the audience to think "this is just a TV show," because stepping outside the story like that by definition undermines the willing suspension of disbelief. Things that happen within a story should make sense within the story, unless you're talking about some deliberately avant-garde experimental fiction.
Although I wonder if there's another level to what you're saying... perhaps the "from the '60s" part is more central to your POV than it initially seems. I have a theory (well, an untestable speculation) that most of the people who find it easy to imagine "Klingons always looked like that" were not actually Trek fans before 1979 (or perhaps not even before 1987!), and never actually developed any personal affection for the original series. It's easy for them to handwave away the whole thing, not just the Klingons.
I'll give you that: the movies sadly took the wrong lesson from the success of TWOK, and most of them have been excessively villain-oriented. However...
Robocop??
But seriously... while you do have a few on-the-nose examples in there, I think quite a few of them are more along the lines of antagonists (often fairly complex ones) as opposed to clichéd villains like Soran, Shinzon, or the Borg Queen. And I really think you're reaching when you characterize entire alien races as villains.
Yes, that is exactly what I'm claiming. Consider TOS season one: the only episodes with traditional "villains" are arguably "What Are Little Girls Made Of" (Dr. Korby), "Dagger of the Mind" (Dr. Adams), "The Alternative Factor" (Lazarus), and "Space Seed" (Khan). In season two, I'd say it's only "Catspaw" (Sylvia and Korob), "Who Mourns for Adonais" (Apollo), perhaps "Wolf in the Fold" (Redjac), "The Gamesters of Trikelion" (The Providers), and "Patterns of Force" (Melakon). That's all of nine stories out of 55... and note, most of these are not exactly remembered as the better episodes. Season three became a little more formulaic, but even there the ratio wasn't much higher. And even among these, most of the "villains" weren't the kind of over-the-top two-dimensional despicable types like the movie examples above... or, for that matter, like Lorca (post-reveal) or Mirror Georgiou.
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Gonzo
Guest
Yeah it was just considered an upgraded and updated version of the D7 specifically designed for the original movies, there wasn't enough detail on the original D7 models for a big cinema screen, same goes for the Enterprise which also received an update at the time.
First of all, that is basically a distinction without a difference. Many of the "antagonists" mentioned fall into all the usual tropes, particularly Sela and Lore, whose actual motives are incomprehensible at best. Maj Culluh at least has the benefit of being POOR, so you could explain away his cliche villain persona as his just wanting to be able to make water whenever he wants (but even then it's pretty thin).
But then there's the Vidiians, a civilization that is literally too stupid to really exist and whose backstory is purely a plot-driven excuse to not have to name any particular villain. It would be one thing if there was a GUY named "Vidiian" who was trying to prolong his own life by harvesting other people's organs or a group of people from a particular species (Kazons, let's say) who were dealing with the Phage like this. But the Vidiians were Voyager's first major "planet of the hats" species which reduced an entire civilization to a handful of characteristics with virtually no variation in behavior or motive (the others being the Malon, the Hirogen and the Ocampa). In other words, "Villainy as a social construct."
That they later tried to apply this trope to Species 8472 pretty much made every Voyager fan throw up in their mouths a little. And I'll again point out that the Borg Queen actually showed up in the TV series as a recurring villain too...
You're forgetting The Keeper, Mudd, Trelane, The Gorn, Ben Finney and Kor. Balok doesn't count only because he was just PRETENDING to be a villain as part of his test, Charlie X doesn't count because he is more of a brat than a villain. Evil Kirk sort of counts, but technically he's just Kirk's dark side so he's not a "villain" so much as a Jekyl and Hyde manifestation.
Either way, that's 10 out of 29 episodes that feature a "villain" in the usual sense.
Unless you (again) include Mudd, the Klingon from "Friday's Child" and M5 from "The Ultimate Computer" although M5 is debatable....
But how you managed not to include Ronald Tracey to this list is a mystery to me; he is easily the most straight-played villain in the entire series.
Either way, that's actually 17 out of 55 episodes right there, 18 if you include M5.
But let's just talk about the first season, since this is the Discovery forum. TOS' first season had those 10 different villains already. Discovery had 5: T'Kuvma, Kol, Georgiou, Lorca, and Mudd. Voq and L'Rell COULD be considered villains but both are actually presented as sort of tragic characters who are both in WAY over their heads and whose various schemes are constantly blowing up in their faces.
And this changes what, exactly? You were just making the case that Villains as plot drivers is not a staple of Star Trek storytelling. This is obviously counterfactual (see above examples).
So maybe what you mean is you don't LIKE when they go with obvious villains instead of just dealing with a force of nature? That's a very different complaint.
I'll be that outlier then in this theory. I have watched TOS on VHS since I was 8 to 11, and read Trimble's concordance front and back, as well as various comics. I didn't get in to TNG until its seventh season, and found it to highly irritating. My favorite Klingon, of all time, is Kor, with Chang as a close second.
I have a strong affection for those iterations of Klingons but also respect the fact that the creators of the show stated there were several species of Klingons, as part of variants seen from TOS to TMP.
I don't need to "handwave it away." It's just another genetic variant.
The Wile E. Coyotes of Trek.
in L'Rell's case, literally
Sorry to be yet another exception to your speculation, but I’m 50 and have been watching Trek since 1973–and I quite comfortably managed without any in-universe explanation until it was offered and have ZERO need to have the current type of Klingon “explained” to me.
Seeing as the Powers That Be have essentially said: "We don't care about the contradiction, we're doing this our way," I'm not holding my breath. Just ignoring the problem doesn't remove the need for handwaving, IMHO; it just draws attention to the fact that things don't line up. (As far as Kor and co. on DS9, that was also "we're ignoring internal consistency" situation and ENT did provide an escape hatch with the suggestion of re-construction. As far as the movies vs/ everything else, they looked like reasonable variations of the TNG onwards design.)
Even TMP didn't bother. So, it clearly wasn't a concern.
Requiring an in story explanation for every make up change, uniform alteration and set upgrade is the worst kind of fanthink and has ruined many a comic book, TV show and any other form of entertainment.
TOS Klingons with ridges and long hair. 
YES! Now that's what I'm talking about!
Yup.
Nah, I liked the short haired ones better. Stood out more.
OMG! With that hair Mara looks like Debra Messing! I wonder if she's up for guesting on DISCO?
Yep, I just go, the Klingons looked like This is TOs and move on. Just like I did with TNG, they always looked like whatever the current version is. No biggy.
Yup.
IMO the gods awful ENT retcon based off a joke was the worse retcon in Trek history. DSC looks to be removing it, which if true, makes me a very happy boy.
I could live with a variety of reasons, including what was proposed in TMP production that it was another species called "Klingon." Or a lot of genetic engineering at some point.
I don't need an explanation but I'm ok with some other ideas too.
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