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Klingon change for season 2?

Hmm... the Klingons have retractable talons? And in all other shows they were always retracted. :P
Oh my...you just reminded me of something, another minor Klingon anatomical curiosity, but not from DSC. This medical chart, incorporating a painting by Dan Curry (which may or may not also have shown up on DS9, can't remember) called The Visible Klingon, appeared in the background of Antaak's lab in "Affliction"/"Divergence" (ENT):

klingon_anatomy.jpg


GGGly.jpg


It seems to depict the raptor talon as a biological feature corresponding to the little spikes on the traditional Klingon boot design, despite us earlier having seen that removed as part of the death ritual in "Heart Of Glory" (TNG):

vlcsnap-2018-08-10-14h54m46s048.jpg

heartofglory_hd_228.jpg


And Worf's bare feet in "Ethics" (TNG) with just a nub there:

ethics-hd-365.jpg


But I think you have exactly the answer there! It is indeed a retractable talon! And no doubt it recedes automatically upon death. Pretty cool little detail!

It's interesting as I can't even remember if there were any 'African' Vulcans before Tuvok (and now Terral on Discovery).
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier...

star-trek5-movie-screencaps.com-8463.jpg


One would think that Romulans would also have various races, but how come we haven't seen them?
"The Pegasus" (TNG)...

thepegasus263.jpg


(I don't know if either were the first such examples...they were just the first that came to my mind.)

-MMoM:D
 
In all fairness, the phenotypic diversity of Klingons shown is far, far greater than between human "races." It's not like some humans have talons instead of fingernails, for example. Or craniums which bulge out to an absurd degree in back.

DIS Klingons look even less like Berman-era Klingons than Neandertals look like modern humans.
The entire human population is less genetically diverse than a single troop of chimpanzees due some early event that dropped our population down to possibly a thousand mating pairs, likely it was a supervolcano eruption. It would make sense that alien races would show a greater diversity than we do, especially if they had spread to other planets before we did and had time for some adaptations to occur. Maybe even due to genetic engineering since that only seems to be a taboo with humans.
 
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier...

star-trek5-movie-screencaps.com-8463.jpg

I don't remember her, but the actress who played the Romulan ambassador Caithlin Dar is Chinese-American. There have been very, very few Asian (or Latino) actors and actresses cast as aliens in Trek in general.

Also, for the Cardassians, Legate Broma (from the last two DS9 episodes) was played by a black man, Mel Johnson Jr. That said, they caked him with the typical Cardassian grey and gave him the typical slicked back straight hair, so it was fairly hard to tell.

The entire human population is less genetically diverse than a single troop of chimpanzees due some early event that dropped our population down to possibly a thousand mating pairs, likely it was a supervolcano eruption. It would make sense that alien races would show a greater diversity than we do, especially if they had spread to other planets before we did and had time for some adaptations to occur. Maybe even due to genetic engineering since that only seems to be a taboo with humans.

The Toba supereruption hypothesis is now frowned upon.

Regardless, genetic diversity is not the same thing as phenotypical diversity. Yes, it's true that we are far more genetically related to each other than different groups of Chimpanzees are. This is to be expected considering our most recent common ancestor (discounting archaic admixture by Neanderals, Denisovans, and other groups) was less than 300,000 years ago. However, despite genetically diverging for a longer period of time, different populations of chimps don't show the same sort of dramatic surface variation (height, skin color, eye color, hair color, hair texture, etc) that humans do. Basically chimp genetic divergence has been essentially neutral drift. In contrast, the comparably minor genetic differences between different human population groups - including those we use to identify different races - are very noticeable in terms of phenotype because different human groups underwent natural selection in the relatively recent past.

Extrapolating this to Klingons and other Trek aliens, genetic diversity is not enough - you also need to have different population groups undergo selection for very different physical forms. For the most part the modern human "races" took shape over the last 50,000 years (with the last 10,000 in particular being important). Big physical differences like the Klingons show would require substantially more time. Or meddling by the Hurq or something. Though admittedly, Trek has always been very dodgy in its understanding of genetics.
 
Extrapolating this to Klingons and other Trek aliens, genetic diversity is not enough - you also need to have different population groups undergo selection for very different physical forms. For the most part the modern human "races" took shape over the last 50,000 years (with the last 10,000 in particular being important). Big physical differences like the Klingons show would require substantially more time. Or meddling by the Hurq or something. Though admittedly, Trek has always been very dodgy in its understanding of genetics.
Since it is a multi-planet spanning empire there would be different environments at play as well. Plus whatever genetic manipulation was conducted, both by the Preservers and Klingon scientists.
 
Since it is a multi-planet spanning empire there would be different environments at play as well. Plus whatever genetic manipulation was conducted, both by the Preservers and Klingon scientists.
Preservers? Their MO is drop you on a planet and wave good bye. (Okay they might set up an asteroid defector)
 
I don't remember her, but the actress who played the Romulan ambassador Caithlin Dar is Chinese-American. There have been very, very few Asian (or Latino) actors and actresses cast as aliens in Trek in general.

Also, for the Cardassians, Legate Broma (from the last two DS9 episodes) was played by a black man, Mel Johnson Jr. That said, they caked him with the typical Cardassian grey and gave him the typical slicked back straight hair, so it was fairly hard to tell.



The Toba supereruption hypothesis is now frowned upon.

Regardless, genetic diversity is not the same thing as phenotypical diversity. Yes, it's true that we are far more genetically related to each other than different groups of Chimpanzees are. This is to be expected considering our most recent common ancestor (discounting archaic admixture by Neanderals, Denisovans, and other groups) was less than 300,000 years ago. However, despite genetically diverging for a longer period of time, different populations of chimps don't show the same sort of dramatic surface variation (height, skin color, eye color, hair color, hair texture, etc) that humans do. Basically chimp genetic divergence has been essentially neutral drift. In contrast, the comparably minor genetic differences between different human population groups - including those we use to identify different races - are very noticeable in terms of phenotype because different human groups underwent natural selection in the relatively recent past.

Extrapolating this to Klingons and other Trek aliens, genetic diversity is not enough - you also need to have different population groups undergo selection for very different physical forms. For the most part the modern human "races" took shape over the last 50,000 years (with the last 10,000 in particular being important). Big physical differences like the Klingons show would require substantially more time. Or meddling by the Hurq or something. Though admittedly, Trek has always been very dodgy in its understanding of genetics.
I don’t think comparing the races of a species confined to a single planet to those of a species spread to multiple planets over generations or why it would be limited to skin color just because it does for us.

Not that I even think the TNG Klingons are another race we just haven’t seen on Disco. These are supposed to be the same exact Klingons we’ve always known, they just made the design more alien to avoid the guy with latex forehead piece we saw for years. There’s no story reason, it’s just the way it is. Even the changes are going to be on the armor and maybe adding hair. The heads will not be changing.
 
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