Yes, but the comic value makes it worth the price of admission. It's like a Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast episode.
Would you say Picard is prime timeline or part of the Discoverse?
- Thread starter Yes Man the Great
- Start date
You're not gonna bring the Eastern Standard Timeline and Pacific Standard Timeline into this, are you? Not to mention the Daylight Savings Timeline...!
I have no idea what this word salad of a reply is supposed to be arguing.
You seriously gonna try to tell me that this
is not a major redesign from this?
You gonna claim that the Trill going from this
in TNG to this
in DS9 is not a major, major redesign on par with the DIS Klingon redesign?
How is it not a major redesign to go from this in TOS
to this in TNG
to this in ENT?
How is it not a huge change to go from three digits in TOS
to five digits in ENT?
(Funny how the TOS Tellarite's eyes look totally disconnected from his face...!)
Hell, ENT totally redesigned the Coridanites from one episode to another. The Chancellor of Coridan in "Shadows of P'Jem"
has a completely different apparent biology from the Coridanite ambassador in "Demons!"
And hey! The skeletal structure of the Gorn from ENT
is oriented completely differently from the skeletal structure of the Gorn from TOS!
Did the entire Gorn species develop Gorn scoliosis somewhere along the line?
All of of these redesigns are as major as the Klingon redesign in DIS. But only one of them has fans claiming it's a continuity violation or means the later production can't be in the Prime Timeline. Pure hypocrisy.
Viruses do not re-design entire skeletons. It's pure fantasy nonsense, on par with killing someone by pointing a wand at them and shouting "Avada Kadavra" in Harry Potter.
Every Trek fan does that, because if they didn't, they'd have to reconcile the dozens upon dozens of major continuity contradictions Trek has accumulated in its 50-odd year history. What, we're supposed to pretend "The Alternate Factor"'s depiction of anti-matter is in any consistent with the rest of the franchise?
Nothing in "Divergence" provides an explanation for why Klingons went from Fu Manchu/Yellow Peril stereotypes to a single boney ridge along the center of their foreheads. The topic is never addressed.
You mean this guy,
this guy,
and this gal?
Yes, I remember them.
Yes, they are offensive! Especially Marab, who is a virtual re-creation of the racist stereotype that was the Klingon makeup design of TOS. All three of them look like a disturbing combination of brownface and yellowface. It's totally offensive, it has the (I'm sure unintended) impact of supporting white supremacy, and it was a fundamentally bad idea to even go there.
That is a textbook ethnocentric response.
Skin tone isn't irrelevant in a white supremacist society like the United States. You don't get to dress white actors up as a combo of racist stereotypes of Asians, Arabs, and African Americans, and then pretend that that's a totally innocent thing no one else should object to. You really need to read up on the history of racial coding and Blackface/Brownface/Yellowface if you think otherwise.
* * *
You know what the kicker is?
I don't subjectively like the Klingon makeup design on DIS! I wish they hadn't extended the backs of the heads, I think they should have had hair in S1, and I think the difficulty the new lower facial prosthetics gives the actors in enunciating properly outweighs the importance of having a makeup that does not only cover the top half of the head in this era of HD television.
But I damn well respect that 1) it's no bigger a continuity problem to redesign the Klingons today than in the past, and 2) the producers, by giving Klingons a variety of skin tones not present in real-life humans, worked very hard to separate their Klingons from the racial coding that had previously (unconsciously during the TNG era -- the TOS Klingons were consciously designed to evoke Fu Manchu and were described in the script as "Orientals," so, yes, the TOS Klingons were an intentionally racist creation) affected the Klingon designs.
Well, we all have talents...
visualized earlier:
You seriously gonna try to tell me that this
is not a major redesign from this?
You gonna claim that the Trill going from this
in TNG to this
in DS9 is not a major, major redesign on par with the DIS Klingon redesign?
How is it not a major redesign to go from this in TOS
to this in TNG
to this in ENT?
How is it not a huge change to go from three digits in TOS
to five digits in ENT?
(Funny how the TOS Tellarite's eyes look totally disconnected from his face...!)
Hell, ENT totally redesigned the Coridanites from one episode to another. The Chancellor of Coridan in "Shadows of P'Jem"
has a completely different apparent biology from the Coridanite ambassador in "Demons!"
And hey! The skeletal structure of the Gorn from ENT
is oriented completely differently from the skeletal structure of the Gorn from TOS!
Did the entire Gorn species develop Gorn scoliosis somewhere along the line?
All of of these redesigns are as major as the Klingon redesign in DIS. But only one of them has fans claiming it's a continuity violation or means the later production can't be in the Prime Timeline. Pure hypocrisy.
romulans 1 piece changed (watch PIC for the reason), trill 2, andorians 1, tellarites 1, coridanites 1, gorn 1. do you have any that lost and gained 8 things all at the same time?
genes can do a lot of things. biology and magic are very different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_virus
perhaps you should watch it again.
Antaak: "I'll need to find a new specialty – perhaps cranial reconstruction!"
Phlox: "I have a feeling that's about to become very popular."
what is offensive and disturbing about antaak? laneth is the only one that was clearly darkened with makeup. marab is k'vagh's son, so his tone makes sense, and the actor could simply have that tone anyway. all actors should be free to be cast as klingons no matter what their actual skin tone is. what's "yellow" about them?You mean this guy,
this guy,
and this gal?
Yes, I remember them.
Yes, they are offensive! Especially Marab, who is a virtual re-creation of the racist stereotype that was the Klingon makeup design of TOS. All three of them look like a disturbing combination of brownface and yellowface. It's totally offensive, it has the (I'm sure unintended) impact of supporting white supremacy, and it was a fundamentally bad idea to even go there.
what does that have to do with aliens on a sci-fi show? there are all kinds of colors in alien designs, why should the palette be limited? and which other colors would you want to exclude?
do you find worf, gowron, duras, or martok offensive, disturbing, and racist as well? because of their beards?
are the kazon or xyrillians (for example) also offensive or disturbing, and can any actor play them?
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You seriously gonna try to tell me that this
is not a major redesign from this?
When the Romulans were first introduced, it was to show the similarities to the Vulcans, hence why their appearance was so shocking to the crew of the Enterprise that had never seen a Romulan before - since Romulans never wanted anyone to know what they looked like. That later iterations of the Romulans were revealed to have ridges isn’t an inconsistency from the basic idea behind Romulans.
You gonna claim that the Trill going from this
in TNG to this
in DS9 is not a major, major redesign on par with the DIS Klingon redesign?
The Trill were new when first introduced and still being fleshed out. Its not an inconsistency. It just means the Trill on TNG are probably minorities on the Trill homeworld compared to what we consider to be Trill i.e. Dax.
Plus, while we are on how TNG and DS9 handled the presentation of certain species, shouldn't Cardassians grow mustaches on DS9?
How is it not a major redesign to go from this in TOS
to this in TNG
to this in ENT?
The first Andorian turned out to be Orion in disguise.
Otherwise, there’s no inconsistency. Are Andorians not allowed to have their own styles and trends like humans to make them look more dynamic? Or have moveable antennae?
How is it not a huge change to go from three digits in TOS
to five digits in ENT?
(Funny how the TOS Tellarite's eyes look totally disconnected from his face...!)
Tellarites have never been a major focus in any Star Trek series, so little is known about them. And its not a stretch that Tellarites are diverse in appearance in general. The one in PIC premiere was different from the one in TOS and the one in ENT.
Hell, ENT totally redesigned the Coridanites from one episode to another. The Chancellor of Coridan in "Shadows of P'Jem"
has a completely different apparent biology from the Coridanite ambassador in "Demons!"
I think that Coridonite ambassador is wearing a headdress…
And hey! The skeletal structure of the Gorn from ENT
is oriented completely differently from the skeletal structure of the Gorn from TOS!
Did the entire Gorn species develop Gorn scoliosis somewhere along the line?
Or maybe the Gorn, like Tellarites, have never been fully fleshed out in a Star Trek series, enabling more imaginative designs?
Do you want to keep going, since there are varying appearances of Saurians and Caitians as well? Or will we just leave it there?
It’s because its canon that Klingons are different in TOS than in any other time in Star Trek history. DS9 was the wink and nod to it; ENT gave an explanation in the form of an Augment virus when they could have just suggested that the Klingon Empire is diverse and the ridgeless Klingons are used as spies on other species. And then DSC made the Klingons look like they reverted back to a previous evolutionary form of Klingons.
Plus, I don’t recall any of the above species ship designs becoming randomly different. The ENT BoP lacking the bird on its bottom hull that TOS established should be there isn't the same as the radical redesign for the Klingon BoP in DSC.
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The Trill were probably a done in one alien. Not really thought about until DS9 was being developed a couple of years latter. And then they only kept the idea of a symbiont. There were BTS reasons for the changes. And that's really the focus here. Coming up with "in universe" explanations doesn't erase the real world reasons for the changes.
The Gorn update was pretty major, man. Ditto the Andorian and Tellarite updates.
andorians got new antennae (1 part) after 3 appearances
tellarites got new hands (1 part) after 2 appearances
gorn got a new posture (and eyes btw, so 2 parts) after 1 appearance.
the klingons got and lost 8 parts after 384 appearances.
I think you're confusing quality and quantity here. Yes, changing the Trill makeup from one ridge thingie on the head to spots on the side is technically one change, but it also literally takes everything distinctive from the design away and replaces it with something entirely else. If someone were to watch "The Host" and then shown a picture of Jadzia Dax, they absolutely could not guess that she's a Trill, based on that picture. It's is most definitely a major redesgin. The klingon redesign from DSC, while also major, is at least an extrapolation from the Klingon designs we had before, attempting to make them more alien.
changed after 1 appearance.
Yeah, but what does that have to do with my point? If the Klingons had made on appearnce, and that was in their TOS design and then a few years later, appeared like they did in DSC, would you stop calling that a major redesign? All your saying is that the Trill were a minor species at the time DS9 started, it has nothing to do with how major or minor their redesign was.
How many times something was done one way before it was done differently doesn't affect whether it was done differently. It was either done differently or it wasn't.
As for how different is different, well, in "Journey to Babel" it was a major plot point that an Andorian wasn't actually an Andorian because he had a spy transmitter hidden in his antenna. We get to see a close-up of the antenna breaking off his head. There isn't any way around the fact that those antennae are totally different from Shran's. That doesn't make the way the Orion spy looked any less authentically Andorian, because that's what everyone, even the Andorians, thought he was: a real Andorian. So, different Andorian makeup doesn't somehow force ENT into an alternate timeline. Nor does their being in the same timeline trivialize the difference in makeup.
If we're keeping statistics, this is just yet another example in the pile of instances in which the appearance of species has changed within the same timeline, simply because of changes at the production level. None of them "win" the prize for most significant change.
Exactly. Change has been a part of Trek. The Klingon change is definitely in line with past changes, and not as big of deal. It's only a big deal because it challenges preconceived notions, rather than allowing aliens to actually be more alien, whether in make up or ships.
Just because we haven't seen it before doesn't mean that aliens don't have variety in design.
The official position of the studio and rights holder is that DSC and PIC are both in the Prime universe and both canon in that universe. That's the end of it.
But...but muh hed cannon!!!!
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