Well, between Tos and Tng, the klingons had to come to a realization.. Praxis exploded, and there wanting of new planets etc. had to end, so instead of going out in a blaze of glory, they turned inward, done more of compitions, tradtions etc. than being Kill everything in my way...
I never did understand how the explosion of just one moon (however important to energy production) should so profoundly affect a star spaning empire? Yes it devastated their homeworld too, but I don't see Klingons as being a nostalgic people, it is, to them, just one planet out of hundreds in their Empire. The loss of any one planet will not kill the people or the Empire. I always found this plot point rational quite unimaginative at best. And I don't see how TNG Klingons can be called less aggresive. They don't seem to go conquering other planets as much (or so they show us on screen. They need to be portrayed as goodie two shoes now, since joining the Feds), but have gone from a cohesive, pragmatic, structured society to some crazy, disorganised biker gang who only knows violence and couldn't organise a drunken party in a brewery, let alone run an Empire. All that because of one moon.........
It's a bit of a shame that after 50 years, we still don't know that much about how Klingon society actually functions. (That said, we probably don't know for any alien race). I mean, certainly their society cannot exist solely or even mainly of this larger-than-life warrior class that seems to prefer getting drunk and getting into senseless fights, just to defend "honour", supported by the stray engineer or scientist, so I'll have to go with the explanation that's simply the side Our Heroes get to see most often. Even then, seeing "ordinary klingons" would have been nice for a change. And I agree that they were portrayed a lot more sensibly in TOS, as cunning, crafty soldiers.
In the interest of not criticising without offering an alternative... Kruge actually was a agent of the Empire and fully transmitted all the Genesis data (protomatter included) before encountering the Enterprise. Part of Praxis (with it's readily available energy) was turned into a secret lab to develop this new weapon. TPTB wanted a way of delivering the effect across multiple star systems at high warp speed so easily taking out an enemy empire quickly. Scientists warned against risks but were overuled. Pushed the experiment, far too far, one day, and it rushed out at high warp speed, decimating Praxis and the rest of the Klingon home system in milliseconds, then raced outward, decimating the Empire in all directions. Klingons ask for Fed help to stop the wave (an explosion just caused by experimental energy production, you understand.). Feds soon recognise it is Genesis but assist anyway. Effect finally reaches its end and fizzles out but most of the Empire is gone. Only Klingons left are frontier ship crews and outpost commanders ("Warriors" all). And so we are left with TNG style Klingons in command......
I just don't understand how someone can watch an episode like Soldiers of the Empire and think that Berman-era Klingons were one note. There's like five different Klingon characters in that episode - all of whom are "culturally Klingon" to some extent, but all of which display completely separate personality traits at the same time.
It seems like "Day of the Dove" is when we really started to see hints of what Klingons would become. Before that they were mostly an evil militaristic space empire that was a metaphor for the USSR.
Yes DS9 made some effort to give the Klingon characters distinct personalities (and appearances, wasn't that the episode that featured a redheaded Klingon lady as a side character and another Klingon who had blond hair?) but Berman era Klingon Culture is still pretty Flanderized. As I wrote in earlier messages, every bloody (pun not intended) thing in their culture is about war, "honour", death and either enduring or inflicting pain . Even their "tea ceremony" involves the participants deliberately poisoning themselves. Their culture is pretty one note.
Like all races on Star Trek I feel that a lot of valuable character development hasn’t been addressed so I suppose you could say that I agree with both characteristics of Klingon characters. By that I mean that I like the more primeval and Neanderthal aspect to the characters but also like the complexities. I would have liked to see a character extrapolation of those core elements into strategies and philosophies. One thing that always struck me as jarring was that they appeared as simpleton warriors that had a great deal of technology at their disposal. This seemed stranger the more they increased the Neanderthal fighter type caricature. A bear can take me in a fight but he has a lot of trouble fixing my computer.
What's funny about that episode is we see that the entity is influencing our heroes to be vicious and bloodthirsty, but then assume the similar attitude being displayed by Kang and his crew is just normal Klingon behavior.
I had to google “Flanderisation”...I feel I’m no longer down with the kids or the nerds I have to agree though. I’m not a fan of Berman Klingons. They’re not only one note but almost a self parody. in TNG especially they came across almost as dumb and annoying as the Ferengi. Needless to say, I wasn’t happy when DS9 went into Klingon overdrive in it’s fourth season, yet that somehow ended up being one of the single strongest seasons in Trek history. I think the Klingon arc worked because it was in context of the Dominion storyline. Also, DS9 helped redeem the Klingons and give them some nuance courtesy of two great characters — Martok and Kor.
Klingons are very political in TNG. When it’s just Worf, yeah, it’s all honor and pain and aggression. Any other Klingon in the show comes off a cynically political and using honor as a political slogan while not practicing it themselves.
Looking back, I would say that I began to lose interest in Klingons as they were Flanderized. On the other hand, I understand that the Ferengi were supposed to be the new bad guys in early TNG. That didn't work very well. However, I thought their portrayal was much more interesting in TNG. The Ferengi became less one note, and more complex.
The Ferengi had potential as villains. They had cool looking ship and makeup designs by Andrew Probert that both looked intimidating. "Ferengi" is a cool and somewhat fearsome-sounding name. The electro-whips they had in their first appearances were unique weapons. Greed was an interesting, unique motivation and we had ominous hints of them being cannibals. I think the Ferengi were ultimately sunk by debuting in a not very strong story (Let's face it, "The Last Outpost" is no "Errand of Mercy" or "Balance of Terror", that's for sure) and from their totally UNintimidating crouching and scampering in that episode. As soon as we saw the Ferengi in the flesh, they could no longer be a credible threat, and the show had to scramble to find new villains. But kudos to Michael Piller for realizing that the Ferengi could be reinvented instead of just forgotten about. He said in some interview or another around the time of TNG's third season, "They're weasels, and they're room for weasels in space." And then Ira Stephen Behr and his team on DS9 came up with the Rules of Acquisition, which gave Ferengi society some structure and raison d'etre. And Armin Shimerman did a great job making Quark alternately humorous and dangerous. So I admire the reconstruction effort they went to there.
It's weird how Klingons are the only Trek aliens that get so frequently redesigned. There still seems to be no settled way on how they look, unlike Vulcans, Romulans, Borg etc.
I always thought the Ferengi could have been more villainous on their own if they had been something more like Mr Morden from Babylon 5 and how he would pursue deals, as opposed to how they are driven by accumulating profit. The more I think about the idea of these Ferengi going around enforcing contracts on entire civilisations behind the scenes feels like good foils to the Federation. I think there's some kind of story there at least.