Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story

[Warped9]

Amazing anything decent ever gets made.

 

[Maurice]

My solution to the Klingon issue (pre TNG's exploration of the culture) was that that "Klingon" was the name of the warrior caste, and anyone who was a member of the caste, whether they were from the founding race Worf belonged to or one of the subject races that fell within their spacial "Warsaw pact". Once the Empire had lots of subject planets the founding race made them do all the real work, thus allowing them to become an almost exclusively a warrior race whose subjects grew the food and built the ships, etc. I posited that certain "2nd Klingons" (the ones from TOS) had done things which their masters didn't like, and they were all reduced to subject caste and banished from military service (I figured they'd started trading with the Romulans and opened that whole can of worms).

That's brilliant! And a really nice subversion of the way Trek and most screen sci-fi tends to treat species and culture/nationality as equivalent.

Thank you very much.

 

[Warped9]

My solution to the Klingon issue (pre TNG's exploration of the culture) was that that "Klingon" was the name of the warrior caste, and anyone who was a member of the caste, whether they were from the founding race Worf belonged to or one of the subject races that fell within their spacial "Warsaw pact". Once the Empire had lots of subject planets the founding race made them do all the real work, thus allowing them to become an almost exclusively a warrior race whose subjects grew the food and built the ships, etc. I posited that certain "2nd Klingons" (the ones from TOS) had done things which their masters didn't like, and they were all reduced to subject caste and banished from military service (I figured they'd started trading with the Romulans and opened that whole can of worms).

That's brilliant! And a really nice subversion of the way Trek and most screen sci-fi tends to treat species and culture/nationality as equivalent.

Thank you very much.

Yes, it is indeed a fascinating idea. Well done.

 

[Christopher]

I used to have a similar idea, but I thought of "Klingon" more as a nationality -- like how Americans come from all different ethnic and cultural backgrounds but are all still Americans. The idea of it being a caste or class designation, though, is really clever, and it fits so well with their stubborn insistence on what it means to be a true Klingon and practice Klingon honor and all that stuff. Kind of like the Kshatriya warrior caste in classical India.

I think my "multispecies nationality" idea could still work for explaining things like the two different kinds of Ktarian (the ones from "The Game" and the Naomi Wildman kind).

 

[inflatabledalek]

I imagine it must be quite hard to be the guy listening to the pitches as well, imagine thinking you've come up with a really neat and clever story for your next episode only to have 30 people pitch you the same basic idea over the next month. It must be quite soul destroying over time. Much like how I've seen comedians talk about what a knock to their egos Twitter can be as it reveals 2 million people coming up with the exact same joke as them in regards to any current news story.

 

[Hober Mallow]

My solution to the Klingon issue (pre TNG's exploration of the culture) was that that "Klingon" was the name of the warrior caste, and anyone who was a member of the caste, whether they were from the founding race Worf belonged to or one of the subject races that fell within their spacial "Warsaw pact". Once the Empire had lots of subject planets the founding race made them do all the real work, thus allowing them to become an almost exclusively a warrior race whose subjects grew the food and built the ships, etc. I posited that certain "2nd Klingons" (the ones from TOS) had done things which their masters didn't like, and they were all reduced to subject caste and banished from military service (I figured they'd started trading with the Romulans and opened that whole can of worms). It was a tidy solution which also helped drive the narrative of why the subject planets wanted out, and why the Klingons would never let them go (since their society had become utterly dependent on them).

That is so much better than "they got a virus that made them look funny."

 

[Warped9]

My solution to the Klingon issue (pre TNG's exploration of the culture) was that that "Klingon" was the name of the warrior caste, and anyone who was a member of the caste, whether they were from the founding race Worf belonged to or one of the subject races that fell within their spacial "Warsaw pact". Once the Empire had lots of subject planets the founding race made them do all the real work, thus allowing them to become an almost exclusively a warrior race whose subjects grew the food and built the ships, etc. I posited that certain "2nd Klingons" (the ones from TOS) had done things which their masters didn't like, and they were all reduced to subject caste and banished from military service (I figured they'd started trading with the Romulans and opened that whole can of worms). It was a tidy solution which also helped drive the narrative of why the subject planets wanted out, and why the Klingons would never let them go (since their society had become utterly dependent on them).

That is so much better than "they got a virus that made them look funny."

Agreed. Yet another reason I ignore ENT.

 

[Christopher]

I imagine it must be quite hard to be the guy listening to the pitches as well, imagine thinking you've come up with a really neat and clever story for your next episode only to have 30 people pitch you the same basic idea over the next month. It must be quite soul destroying over time.

I doubt it. Ideas are the easy part. It's a given that other people will have similar ideas to your own. Where the originality comes in, what makes a story succeed or fail, is in the way the idea is executed, the details and angles you bring to it.

And that's what producers are looking for in spec scripts and pitches. They know they're going to hear the same ideas over and over, and I'm sure that does get tiresome. But it's when someone offers them a new angle on that idea, or tells it in a particularly engaging way that makes it feel fresh, that's when you have something. Because it's not about the ideas. It's about the storyteller. The reason very few spec scripts are ever actually bought is because they're not auditioning ideas, they're auditioning writers. They're looking for people with the skill and the style to execute ideas in interesting ways.

 

[Maurice]

^^^This. Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's the ability to find a unique spin AND execute which makes the difference.

I was pitching a producer I've worked for on an idea for a TV series and he cut to the chase by saying "where's the sexy?" And he didn't mean "sex", he meant what's the grabber, what's going to grab the audience. That was a really valuable thing to hear.

 

[Myko]

My solution to the Klingon issue (pre TNG's exploration of the culture) was that that "Klingon" was the name of the warrior caste, and anyone who was a member of the caste, whether they were from the founding race Worf belonged to or one of the subject races that fell within their spacial "Warsaw pact". Once the Empire had lots of subject planets the founding race made them do all the real work, thus allowing them to become an almost exclusively a warrior race whose subjects grew the food and built the ships, etc. I posited that certain "2nd Klingons" (the ones from TOS) had done things which their masters didn't like, and they were all reduced to subject caste and banished from military service (I figured they'd started trading with the Romulans and opened that whole can of worms). It was a tidy solution which also helped drive the narrative of why the subject planets wanted out, and why the Klingons would never let them go (since their society had become utterly dependent on them).

That is so much better than "they got a virus that made them look funny."

I agree this is a far superior concept, but it seems to be written (and correct me if I'm wrong) before DS9 complicated everything and gave the TOS Klingons ridges.

 

[Harvey]

The next chapter of the writing of 'A Private Little War' this week.

Just discussing a Gene Coon memo in this, but since it's 13 pages, and he writes about the geopolitical allegories of the script in detail, it seemed worth an entry of its own.

 

[Warped9]

Awesome, Harvey. I look forward to reading more.

 

[Hober Mallow]

This is the most fascinating stuff yet, Harvey. Thanks again for posting it.

 

[Ssosmcin]

That is so much better than "they got a virus that made them look funny."

It's been a long time since I read it, but back in 1992, Chris Claremont wrote a ST graphic novel called Debt of Honor and he explained the differences as two species of Klingon. I actually preferred that myself, it made good quick sense.

 

[Warped9]

That is so much better than "they got a virus that made them look funny."

It's been a long time since I read it, but back in 1992, Chris Claremont wrote a ST graphic novel called Debt of Honor and he explained the differences as two species of Klingon. I actually preferred that myself, it made good quick sense.

Same.

 

[Christopher]

Actually Claremont doesn't call them different species, but "the two main branches of the Klingon race" (Debt of Honor, page 48, panel 1). Paramount's licensing people probably asked him to avoid anything more specific.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Actually Claremont doesn't call them different species, but "the two main branches of the Klingon race" (Debt of Honor, page 48, panel 1). Paramount's licensing people probably asked him to avoid anything more specific.

And Claremont didn't invent the idea. Wasn't it Roddenberry himself who facetiously suggested that there were different Klingon races? (I recall him saying something about "Northern" and "Southern" Klingons.) And wasn't that way back around the time of TMP?

 

[Christopher]

And Claremont didn't invent the idea. Wasn't it Roddenberry himself who facetiously suggested that there were different Klingon races? (I recall him saying something about "Northern" and "Southern" Klingons.) And wasn't that way back around the time of TMP?

No, Roddenberry asked fans to believe that the TMP design was how all Klingons had always looked, but TOS hadn't had the budget to show it correctly. I think he once joked about the "transmissions from the future" being staticky or something.

The "Southern Klingons" line was from Michael Westmore talking about the different skin colors of Klingon actors in TNG and its successors:

Make-Up Supervisor Michael Westmore explained, "We settled on this strategy: all the natural brown-toned actors were Northern Klingons [....] All the fair-skinned actors were Southern Klingons." (Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts, p. 68)

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Qo'noS#Trivia

 

[Harvey]

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2014/01/unseen-trek-sleeping-beauty-by-robert.html

A re-posting of Orion Press' review of Robert Bloch's unfilmed outline, 'Sleeping Beauty,' with (a little) added commentary at the end.

Enjoy.

 

[Warped9]

^^ I only just started reading and made "The Neutral Zone" connection which, of course, you reference at the end of your article.