A Klingon here, a Klingon there, a Klingon everywhere

[Jeyl]

As Roberto Orci has said in interviews, his take is that Starfleet's analysis of sensor readings of the Narada after the Kelvin attack gave them insights into technologies from the future, thus altering the rate of technological progress.

Why should he have to say it in an interview when he could have just written it in the movie? When I see the Enterprise, I don't see "They saw what the Narada looked like and thought differently", I see "JJ wanted to make the Enterprise into a Hot Rod, and we did!".

This whole falling back on "Alternate Reality" is starting to annoy me to no end because there's no effort behind it and it's a weak plot device.

 

[Christopher]

Why should he have to say it in an interview when he could have just written it in the movie?

Because it doesn't matter to the story. It has no relevance to the plot, the characters, or the themes of the film. It's a minor bit of background that's only important to a small number of fanboys who care about such things and is totally irrelevant to the millions of casual and new viewers who made the film a hit.

Roddenberry himself believed that too much exposition got in the way. He liked to say that the hero in a Western didn't stop to explain how his gun worked and the hero in a cop show didn't spend time lecturing on the internal combustion engine of his police car, so science fiction heroes should also just use the technology they have as part of their everyday lives rather than making lectures to justify it to the audience. To the characters in Abrams' ST, this technology and this history was simply their world. It was everyday stuff to them. They didn't need its origins explained, and of course they had no idea how much it might diverge from some other reality they knew nothing about. So it would've been ludicrously bad writing to insert a lecture about the reasons for the differences in design. There's no reason why any character in-universe would bother with such a trivial digression when they're preoccupied with grieving the destruction of an entire planet and racing to prevent the loss of a second one.

 

[Jeyl]

Because it doesn't matter to the story.

So why throw in that "Alternate Reality" crap instead of just settling with an altered time line? Why does knowing this film takes place in an alternate reality matter to the story when nothing is mentioned of it earlier or later on? Sounds like something that's only important to a small number of fanboys who care about such things and is totally irrelevant to the millions of casual and new viewers who made the film a hit. I guess that would be bad writing, but I think the whole entire film was badly written to begin with so I can settle for less.

 

[Christopher]

This isn't the forum for this discussion, and you've obviously made up your mind, so there'd be no point in responding.

 

[Jeyl]

This isn't the forum for this discussion, and you've obviously made up your mind, so there'd be no point in responding.

Thank you.

 

[I am not Spock]

They were overused in the films, yes. I was glad to get a break from them in Trek XI. (Even if some of their ships showed up in the no-win scenario test, and they were in the deleted scenes)

 

[Ssosmcin]

Those ships were even seen in the new Star Trek movie.

Not the Bird of Prey, though. Those were K'tinga class ships from TMP.

Yet, for some reason, they called them "war birds." The movie folks keep mixing up the Romulans and the Klingons (I mean, since the Romulands had the bird fixation and the battle cruisers shown looked nothing like birds...). First Harve Bennett changes the race in Trek III without changing the technology, and it sticks from that point forward. Now the new guys give the Klingons more Romulan tech. I'm sure lots of folks didn't even notice, but it jumped out when I heard it.

The Breen are going to be the focus of one of the novels in next year's Typhon Pact miniseries from Pocket Books, and all those mysteries are going to be explored.

Hmm, I guess I'm one of the few people who feel that the Breen are more interesting if they remain mysterious.

 

[JarodRussell]

Since TMP there hasn't been a movie nor a TV episode not mentioning or showing something Klingon related. Either a cruiser appears somewhere, a Klingon is present (mostly Worf) or they are mentioned (even in the new movie).

 

[Christopher]

Yet, for some reason, they called them "war birds." The movie folks keep mixing up the Romulans and the Klingons (I mean, since the Romulands had the bird fixation and the battle cruisers shown looked nothing like birds...). First Harve Bennett changes the race in Trek III without changing the technology, and it sticks from that point forward. Now the new guys give the Klingons more Romulan tech. I'm sure lots of folks didn't even notice, but it jumped out when I heard it.

It's not "tech," it's just a name. A English-language name used by humans in Starfleet to describe the ships. We don't know if the Klingons actually use that term themselves. For that matter, the term "warbird" was never used for Romulan vessels until the TNG era.

For that matter, "warbird" is actually a term that was originally used for a type of WWII aircraft, and has since come to be used as a catchall term for all military aircraft that have retired from service. So it's a human term, not a Romulan term. It would've been part of the English language for centuries by the time Starfleet is concocting English descriptions for alien spacecraft. Maybe Prime-universe Starfleet did in fact call Klingon ships "warbirds" in the 2250s, but then by the 2260s had dropped it in favor of the more accurate label "battlecruiser." (Not entirely accurate, though, since the Klingon word may'Duj actually means "battle ship.") Or maybe the translator responsible for rendering may'Duj into English was a different person in the post-Nero timeline, a WWII buff who favored the poetic label "warbird" over a more prosaic translation.

 

[JarodRussell]

Why should he have to say it in an interview when he could have just written it in the movie?

Because it doesn't matter to the story. It has no relevance to the plot, the characters, or the themes of the film.

What? Sorry, but wasn't the whole point of the movie that Kirk's life wasn't going as suposed to be because of Nero's time travel? Which is why Spock Prime was actually in that movie, and why they are having a discussion on how their reality is different from what it should be?


There's a lot of stuff in this movie that is only explained in interviews and not in the movie itself, which is simply not well done (for instance how can Nero's ship, being just a simple mining ship, wipe out entire fleets, it's never explained. Now if that isn't relevant to the plot, then I don't know what would be).

 

[Christopher]

Why should he have to say it in an interview when he could have just written it in the movie?

Because it doesn't matter to the story. It has no relevance to the plot, the characters, or the themes of the film.

What? Sorry, but wasn't the whole point of the movie that Kirk's life wasn't going as suposed to be because of Nero's time travel? Which is why Spock Prime was actually in that movie, and why they are having a discussion on how their reality is different from what it should be?

Yes, it's important to know that the timeline has been changed, that the people's lives are different, and that is, in fact, stated clearly in the film. It is not important to know the specific point that the technology of the Enterprise is different because Starfleet reverse-engineered Narada technology scanned by the Kelvin survivors, because the difference in the technology is merely a stylistic point, not a story point. That kind of information is background, so the background material is where it belongs.

 

[DestinyCaptain]

The term "Klingon warbird" is Braga's creation. It didn't exist until he used it in ENT's Broken Bow.

 

[Christopher]

^Ah, okay, so there is canonical precedent for the term being used prior to the 2250s. It could've simply fallen out of favor sometime between 2258 and 2267.

 

[DestinyCaptain]

Well, I guess you could say that. However, it's more of a matter that Braga carred so little about lore of a show and franchise he worked for that he couldn't be bothered to keep things straight. In short Trek was just a job to him. So we have retcon things just to fix what he did. The same thing is going on with the introduction of a K'T'inga class D-7 into the time frame of ENT. Not to mention the tech of those Klingons is EXACTLY like the tech on Klingons over 150 years later. Then all of the sudden a pre-KBOP pops up in ENT. What the heck? The KBOP first appeared in SFS after the switching out of Romulans for bad guys infavor of Klingons. It was far cheaper to use the Klingon uniforms made for TMP then make new Romulan uniforms. At the time (1984) we rationalized this as a result of the brief Klingon-Romulan alliance from TOS. Ironically, the concept of that alliance was also a budgetary choice. The RBOP model disappeared, so the easiest thing to do in the Enterprise Incident was stock footage of Klingon D-7's and say that Rommies were using them. All of that is okay, until we get to ENT. It is then where all this lazyness on the part of Braga and some of the production staff, not all, that intergects late 23rd and early 24th century stuff into the 22nd century. This one of many things that irritate me about ENT.

To solve this, I go with the idea that K'T'inga, the pre-KBOP and the KBOP are leftovers from the time when the HurQ tried to conquer the Klingon. All these designs and technology are HurQ. When the HurQ came to Kronos, the Klingons were in their Middleages. Their culture has never really evolved beyond that. They are not terrible innovative, but they fast learners. They kill off the HurQ and take all their tech. They then use this stuff for a LONG LONG time, until the come into contact with the Humans. Sometime before TOS they aquire some Star Fleet ships and technology. They begin to engineer their own ships based on the model left by the HurQ, but with the innovation of the Federation. This is why the TOS D-7 looks like it does. Eventually, they return to the kind of ships they have been using and buidling for a long time. This why we begin to see the K'T'inga and KBOP pop up again during the TOS-film era. It's a stretch, but thanks to the bunch running ENT ( by that I do not malign the hard woking kids on the art and design staff ) this is what we are left with.

By the way, it's DS9 that provides a fix for all of this. Thanks Ron. Wish you'd been running ENT.

 

[Shazam!]

Because it doesn't matter to the story.

So why throw in that "Alternate Reality" crap instead of just settling with an altered time line? Why does knowing this film takes place in an alternate reality matter to the story when nothing is mentioned of it earlier or later on? Sounds like something that's only important to a small number of fanboys who care about such things and is totally irrelevant to the millions of casual and new viewers who made the film a hit. I guess that would be bad writing, but I think the whole entire film was badly written to begin with so I can settle for less.

It should've just been one massive reboot with no ties to what had come before (or after). No time-travelling villains with terrible motives, no future versions of characters, no alternate reality etc

Loosely tying it in with existing continuity only hurt the film IMO.

 

[Bostonian]

^Agreed. Any film that needs to stop action and go into a flashback/exposition in the middle of it has some deep structural flaws. Plus, I think most people acknowledged it as a total reboot anyway.

Let’s hope for the next film, if the Klingons do show up, they show up in a manner that’s intelligently alternate enough to make them fresh again. As much as I loved Martok & his bands of space Vikings, it did get old after a while.

 

[Shazam!]

Let’s hope for the next film, if the Klingons do show up, they show up in a manner that’s intelligently alternate enough to make them fresh again. As much as I loved Martok & his bands of space Vikings, it did get old after a while.

I'm hoping for short-haired, non-bumpy foreheaded Klingons.

 

[Yug]

Loosely tying it in with existing continuity only hurt the film IMO.

The irony is that, I feel, the reasoning behind the altered reality was to please the hard core fans. Bringing old Spock over was to pay homage to classic Trek and letting 40 years of fans know that THEIR Star Trek is still out there. Fearing maybe that doing a total reboot would alienate Trekkers. Which I totally think would have happened... Remember (way back) when they recast The Lone Ranger for a total reboot movie in the seventies? It ended up hurting that film.

 

[plynch]

You have dishonored this BBS. I must kill you. Or myself. In some ritual with non-translated Klingon words. With red lighting.

Klingons are Johnny one-note. Like the Breen. But stupid and growly.

 

[Bostonian]

But at least the Breen’s one-note act is to keep you guessing.

I’d actually really like to see a reimagined Breen—I’m thinking akin to something of how the Borg makeup and outfits changed from TNG to First Contact.