Alex Kurtzman: 'Star Trek: Discovery' Will Spark Debate And Adhere To Canon

[Refuge]

Rage? Takes more than that. However, just on a side note seeing The Motion Picture has made me soften toward any cheap shots I might have made about the Discovery uniforms. They are positively dapper compared to those hideous monstrosities they had the cast wearing in TMP. Bones looked like a scrawny Elvis impersonator. Flares I think. Awful.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Rage? Takes more than that. However, just on a side note seeing The Motion Picture has made me soften toward any cheap shots I might have made about the Discovery uniforms. They are positively dapper compared to those hideous monstrosities they had the cast wearing in TMP. Bones looked like a scrawny Elvis impersonator. Flares I think. Awful.

What I am saying is TMP nothing really looked like TOS, the ship styles, klingons, uniforms, interior sets, star bases, nothing. I used to think all trek fans could agree the TMP uniforms never happened, but I ran across someone that actually liked those awful things.....

 

[Galaxy]

Kirks TMP Admirals uniform I really like, and his duty tunic is okay. The jumpsuits in TMP is where it gets problematic.

 

[Tarek71]

Ok, so TMP is a new timeline? This is not sarcasm-it is a genuine question because the Klingons were completely reimagined, multiple times, as @Christopher pointed out in his post. Which design is "canon?"

For me, there is absolutely precedence in reimagining alien species as advances in make up and FX becomes easier to apply. You can create more variation on the skull plates, the hair styles, add piercings, body art, etc, because the effects budget will allow it. Now, the aliens are no monolithic but a culture of individuals.

Kind of like humanity.

Right. The Klingons weren't reimagined that often. There is a TOS look, and then the newer one, which was always understandable on the grounds that TOS had technical and budget limitations. The TMP, TUC and TNG Klingons don't look very different. There is no reimagination there.

That doesn't apply to the Discoverse. They could easily stick to the established look. But they are not, because they say that they thought it would be interesting and fun to change them. That's great. They can change all the aliens if they want and as much as they want. It just isn't the same timeline.

I never thought Enterprise needed to address the only really major change to the Klingons. But they did, and the Discoverse should stick to that. As for the other aliens they say they will change, we'll see when that happens.

 

[Trekkin]

The Klingons weren't reimagined that often.

If 'not often' means 'about half a dozen times', then sure.

Worf alone had his redesigned at least twice.

 

[fireproof78]

Right. The Klingons weren't reimagined that often. There is a TOS look, and then the newer one, which was always understandable on the grounds that TOS had technical and budget limitations. The TMP, TUC and TNG Klingons don't look very different. There is no reimagination there.

That doesn't apply to the Discoverse. They could easily stick to the established look. But they are not, because they say that they thought it would be interesting and fun to change them. That's great. They can change all the aliens if they want and as much as they want. It just isn't the same timeline.

I never thought Enterprise needed to address the only really major change to the Klingons. But they did, and the Discoverse should stick to that. As for the other aliens they say they will change, we'll see when that happens.

Sorry, no that's incorrect.
And, instead of weighing this post down with images, I'll allow this article to expand more, and provide illustrations.

Yes, the Discoverse could easily go with it, but this is also an opportunity to explore variations in Klingon culture, that hasn't really been explored beyond the monolith.

 

[Refuge]

Interesting the Discovery Klingons (what we've seen in the trailer) are the ugliest ones of the lot. The others look vaguely 'humanoid' still. These new guys are miles apart from those examples of TOS but a little like the Into Darkness one (without helmet) and maybe the statue image from TNG.

 

[Christopher]

Even though that is not original intent of the creators?

Fans place far too much importance on the "original intent" of creators. I'm a creator, and let me tell you something: Our original ideas are usually our worst ideas. Certainly we want them to be. We want to get better over time. The idea that the first ideas we have are the best ones we'll ever have is horrific from a creator's standpoint, because it implies we're incapable of improvement, that we have nowhere to go but down. That is anything but flattering. So please, please, stop holding up our "original intent" as if it were some ultimate pinnacle, because that's tantamount to saying you have no faith in our ability to improve. Creativity is all about improving our initial, rough ideas, revising and reworking them to try to make them better, or to replace them altogether with something better. The stories you love are already the end result of a long process of refinement from their rough beginnings. So all this fan reverence for "original intent" is laughably misplaced. Look at what we did most recently. That represents the closest we can get to what we want our creations to be.

Right. The Klingons weren't reimagined that often. There is a TOS look, and then the newer one, which was always understandable on the grounds that TOS had technical and budget limitations. The TMP, TUC and TNG Klingons don't look very different. There is no reimagination there.

Of course there was, and it's an insult to the Burman Studios, Richard Snell, Michael Westmore, and Neville Page to say that their work creating Klingon makeup lacked imagination. Yes, there are similarities in broad strokes, but each artist brought new variations on the theme, differences in detail. The Burman Klingons from TSFS are in fact radically different from the Phillips Klingons of TMP. The TMP Klingons all had identical makeup in the form of a single vertebral ridge down the middle of a smooth forehead. Burman completely replaced that with the idea of full-forehead bony plates that were different for each Klingon, a precedent that Westmore and Snell both followed, though each brought their own variations. Westmore in particular took a radically different approach to female Klingons, abandoning the idea that they had to look more attractive and thus have barely any ridges at all, and introducing the idea that both male and female Klingons had their ridge patterns passed down within their families. There's plenty of imagination -- and reimagination -- at work there.

That doesn't apply to the Discoverse. They could easily stick to the established look.

Actually they kind of are, because I believe the Kelvinverse's Klingon designer Neville Page is also the creature designer for Discovery.

But they are not, because they say that they thought it would be interesting and fun to change them. That's great. They can change all the aliens if they want and as much as they want. It just isn't the same timeline.

Of course it's the same timeline; it's just being interpreted by different artists. Is TWOK in a different timeline from TSFS and TVH because Saavik had a different face and voice? Is Beyond in a different timeline from the previous two Kelvin movies because it uses a completely different warp-drive effect? What about TAS? Did everybody turn into cartoons for a year or so? Of course not. They're just different interpretations because different installments are the work of different creators and performers using different methods. This is art. This is make-believe. These aren't real aliens, they're actors wearing rubber on their faces to convey the impression of aliens. So don't take it so literally. Kelvin and Discovery aren't both in alternate timelines, they just both use Neville Page creature designs.

I never thought Enterprise needed to address the only really major change to the Klingons. But they did, and the Discoverse should stick to that.

Who says it doesn't? ENT never said that all Klingons lost their ridges in the 2150s; on the contrary, "Divergence" stated repeatedly that the number of Klingons affected by the virus was only in the millions, out of an empire with a population presumably in the tens of billions at least. So canonically, the TOS-style Klingons were a minority population. Most likely, they were assigned to serve on the Federation front because they were part-human -- like the Imperial Chinese philosophy "Send a barbarian to deal with a barbarian." The majority of Klingons were always ridged, even during TOS. And we've already seen so many different variations on the ridges that it shouldn't be so surprising that there are more variations we haven't seen yet.

 

[fireproof78]

Fans place far too much importance on the "original intent" of creators. I'm a creator, and let me tell you something: Our original ideas are usually our worst ideas. Certainly we want them to be. We want to get better over time. The idea that the first ideas we have are the best ones we'll ever have is horrific from a creator's standpoint, because it implies we're incapable of improvement, that we have nowhere to go but down. That is anything but flattering. So please, please, stop holding up our "original intent" as if it were some ultimate pinnacle, because that's tantamount to saying you have no faith in our ability to improve. Creativity is all about improving our initial, rough ideas, revising and reworking them to try to make them better, or to replace them altogether with something better. The stories you love are already the end result of a long process of refinement from their rough beginnings. So all this fan reverence for "original intent" is laughably misplaced. Look at what we did most recently. That represents the closest we can get to what we want our creations to be.

That honestly missed the intent of my entire post and question, and while I appreciate the education, I do not believe you are understanding what I meant.

 

[Tarek71]

First off, that doesn't make sense. How do you update something without changing it?

Second, what does "bullshitting" even mean in this context? If you mean telling us something false, that statement doesn't make sense, because Star Trek is a work of fiction to begin with. There is no "truth" to it, just a bunch of entertaining fantasies some people made up. Fiction is BSing.

Also, from what I can tell, BSing also means pretending knowledge of a subject you don't actually know anything about. I know that's not the case on Discovery. A friend of mine, fellow novelist Kirsten Beyer, is on the show's writing staff, and another friend/colleague, David Mack, is writing the first tie-in novel and working closely with the staff. So I am reliably informed that the show's staff is not ignorant of Star Trek continuity; Kirsten's presence alone guarantees that. If they present something differently from what you're used to, that isn't because of ignorance of the subject matter. It's because they, like previous Trek creators before them, are creating a work of fiction and imagination, and they're trying to make it appeal to a new audience so they can bring them into Trek fandom for the first time, because catering exclusively to the pre-existing fans would defeat the whole purpose of creating a new incarnation.




"Look at they did before?" Which version? You've got the first Fred Phillips version with swarthy skin and bifurcated eyebrows. You've got the second Phillips version with just beards. You've got the third Phillips version with a single vertebral ridge running down the middle of a smooth forehead with ridges on the bridge of the nose. You've got the Burman Studios version with individualized bony forehead plates and smooth noses, and barely any ridges on the females (i.e. Valkris). You've got the Richard Snell version with subtler individualized forehead plates, also with much subtler female ridges. You've got the Michael Westmore version with large, individualized bony plates and nose ridges, and with no gender dimorphism in plate size. Honestly, I wish they'd just established decades ago that Klingons are multiple different, perhaps related, species that share a common culture.

And of course other species have been repeatedly redesigned too. Tellarites went through 2-3 makeup variations in their 3 TOS appearances (later background Tellarites lacked the sunken eyes and three-fingered hands, and the dead one in "The Lights of Zetar" didn't even have the nose), then went to a more porcine look with less sunken eyes in TVH, then underwent a massive redesign in ENT. Andorians have had multiple designs across TOS, TMP, TVH, TNG, and ENT, with many variations of antenna shape, size, and position. The Ktarian makeup design changed completely from the big arched forehead ridges in TNG: "The Game" to just a few tiny horns in Voyager (because they needed a simple makeup to put on the baby and child actors playing Naomi Wildman). The Borg underwent a major redesign in First Contact and beyond. And so on.

This is just something Star Trek does. It's not like Star Wars where every tiny detail is religiously recreated. It's always had room for new creators to reimagine its look, to put their own stamp on it. There's nothing happening here that hasn't been done multiple times before. It's just that today's fans are already used to the older changes, or weren't there when they were first made. The new changes always take more time to get used to, and far too many fans mistake novelty for wrongness. But keep in mind that the whole driving philosophy of Star Trek is the opposite of that -- that the new and different are not wrong, that they're something to be sought out with open, welcoming curiosity.

I think if Kruge and Maltz went to Quarks and bellied up to the bar next to Martok and Worf and ordered some blood wine, no one would bat an eye. They would fit right in, easily recognizable as Klingons. As would the TMP and TUC Klingons. I agree that they should have established that among Klingons there are many ethnicities and "races" that show a range of phenotypical attributes, from skin tone, ridge height, and many other features. But one can reasonably assume that. The same goes for the Andorians.

The TOS-TMP change is the only really dramatic change for the Klingons. That was for understandable technical and budgetary reasons relating to a 1960s tv show vs a late 70s major motion picture. That doesn't apply to the Discoverse. This is just them saying they think it would be interesting and fun to reimagine the aliens. How many of them I don't know. We'll see. I love reimaginations and reboots. Viva Reboot! But we already know from their own mouths that they wanted to break from "fetishes" about how the various aliens look and reimagine them.

Great! But that's a reboot/3rd timeline for me. As for the Klingons, ENT decided (unnecessarily IMO) to explain the difference in story. Having done that, Discoverse should follow that, unless it's a 3rd timeline, in which case, it doesn't matter one way or the other. It's not a "fetish" though.

 

[Tarek71]

Fans place far too much importance on the "original intent" of creators. I'm a creator, and let me tell you something: Our original ideas are usually our worst ideas. Certainly we want them to be. We want to get better over time. The idea that the first ideas we have are the best ones we'll ever have is horrific from a creator's standpoint, because it implies we're incapable of improvement, that we have nowhere to go but down. That is anything but flattering. So please, please, stop holding up our "original intent" as if it were some ultimate pinnacle, because that's tantamount to saying you have no faith in our ability to improve. Creativity is all about improving our initial, rough ideas, revising and reworking them to try to make them better, or to replace them altogether with something better. The stories you love are already the end result of a long process of refinement from their rough beginnings. So all this fan reverence for "original intent" is laughably misplaced. Look at what we did most recently. That represents the closest we can get to what we want our creations to be.




Of course there was, and it's an insult to the Burman Studios, Richard Snell, Michael Westmore, and Neville Page to say that their work creating Klingon makeup lacked imagination. Yes, there are similarities in broad strokes, but each artist brought new variations on the theme, differences in detail. The Burman Klingons from TSFS are in fact radically different from the Phillips Klingons of TMP. The TMP Klingons all had identical makeup in the form of a single vertebral ridge down the middle of a smooth forehead. Burman completely replaced that with the idea of full-forehead bony plates that were different for each Klingon, a precedent that Westmore and Snell both followed, though each brought their own variations. Westmore in particular took a radically different approach to female Klingons, abandoning the idea that they had to look more attractive and thus have barely any ridges at all, and introducing the idea that both male and female Klingons had their ridge patterns passed down within their families. There's plenty of imagination -- and reimagination -- at work there.




Actually they kind of are, because I believe the Kelvinverse's Klingon designer Neville Page is also the creature designer for Discovery.



Of course it's the same timeline; it's just being interpreted by different artists. Is TWOK in a different timeline from TSFS and TVH because Saavik had a different face and voice? Is Beyond in a different timeline from the previous two Kelvin movies because it uses a completely different warp-drive effect? What about TAS? Did everybody turn into cartoons for a year or so? Of course not. They're just different interpretations because different installments are the work of different creators and performers using different methods. This is art. This is make-believe. These aren't real aliens, they're actors wearing rubber on their faces to convey the impression of aliens. So don't take it so literally. Kelvin and Discovery aren't both in alternate timelines, they just both use Neville Page creature designs.




Who says it doesn't? ENT never said that all Klingons lost their ridges in the 2150s; on the contrary, "Divergence" stated repeatedly that the number of Klingons affected by the virus was only in the millions, out of an empire with a population presumably in the tens of billions at least. So canonically, the TOS-style Klingons were a minority population. Most likely, they were assigned to serve on the Federation front because they were part-human -- like the Imperial Chinese philosophy "Send a barbarian to deal with a barbarian." The majority of Klingons were always ridged, even during TOS. And we've already seen so many different variations on the ridges that it shouldn't be so surprising that there are more variations we haven't seen yet.

No one said it "lacked imagination". It just wasn't a reimagination. And it wasn't. There are no "radical" changes whatsoever from TMP onwards for the Klingons. Any of the Klingons depicted in the TOS cast movies, ENT or TNG era shows could mix and mingle together very easily. All of them are immediately and readily recognizable as Klingons, and well within the range or normal phenotypical variation that we could expect for their species. They should stick to that with DISC. Which does not mean they all look human, per ENT. I never said that. There may be billions of unaffected ridgy Klingons running aroung. Only that they need to show the humanized or the TMP to TNG Klingons.

DIfferent interpretations by different artists is wonderful. In most cases however, no one insists they cohere together in one continuity. Multiple Arthurian Saga movies and shows over decades involve various different takes on Merlin, the Knights, Arthur, Lancelot, etc. But we don't expect the various iterations to be in continuity with each other. They aren't. That's whats great about it. New iteration, new timeline, new continuity, although in all cases drawn from, and inspired by, the same source material.

No, a change in actor is not a new continuity. But Vulcans with red skin, devil horns and pink mohawks? Maybe then you need to say what the Merlin creatives would about First Knight: derived from the same sources but not in the same continuity.

 

[Tarek71]

If 'not often' means 'about half a dozen times', then sure.

Worf alone had his redesigned at least twice.

No, just one major change. The TMP to TNG era are all easily recognizable as Klingons, could mingle together and there is only the variation that you might expect within a single species. The Disco Klingons genuinely are a radical departure, on the scale of TOS to TMP but with none of the same factors that could apply to it. We already know whats going on. They say so directly. It's fun and interesting to reimagine. Yes, it can be fun and interesting. There are so many Sherlocks, Batmans, Merlins, etc. All are interesting takes. But in those cases we know that these iterations are not all in the same continuity. That's a big difference.

 

[Trekkin]

1. Multiquote. It does the body good.

2. I didn't know there was an established 'scale' for these things.

I mean, beyond our mere personal opinions of 'big' and 'little' of course.

For eg.

You - The STID Klingon redesign was not 'major.'

Half a dozen threads after the release of STID - THESE CHANGES ARE WORSE THAN SOMONE RUNNING OVER MY MOTHER!!!!​

 

[Tarek71]

Ha! No, not an "established scale". But lets take a look at the TSFS, TMP, TUC and TNG Klingons and the Disco Klingon. Hmmm. Not sure there is a lot of room to say "oh this is just like they've done before! After all, look at the forehead ridge shapes and heights!" Yeah, there are differences. We all agree and always have. But they all look immediately and readily like Klingons. They could mix and mingle together very easily. TMP guy could slap Kurn on the back, down some blood wine and they could sing the songs of their ancestors together!

"Radical" changes? No. Not even close. Except for Mr. Disco there. He is very radical.

 

[Trekkin]

And yet, Chang and STID Klingons probably most resemble the last one. Aside from the guys skin colour. Where variety is kinda, you know...expected.

I never before appreciated how much Tony Todd's makeup differed to his predecessors. He seems so fresh faced for a 40-year old Klingon Viking-biker.

 

[Tarek71]

Chang more resembles Disco guy than the others? Even the other TUC Klingon above looks less like Chang than Disco Klingon does? Hmmm. IDK. I don't know what to say to that. Other than baldness they don't even look like the same species. Chang fits neatly with every one else from TMP to TNG. With a long mane and similar hairline, Chang would look even more like the others. If anything Chang looks a bit more like a human than any of the others do. Not more like Disco guy. Although reduced and flatter ridging would make any Klingon look more human presumably. Maybe he had a human mom. ;-) But I have to say, I think the pics speak for themselves on this. I think a lot more people would pick A thru D, and not E if shown a pic of Chang and asked, which of these looks the most alike?

 

[Refuge]

"Radical" changes? No. Not even close. Except for Mr. Disco there. He is very radical.

Pictures paint a thousand words.. They all look vaguely humanoid and similar until the last one.. a hairless ugly freak.

 

[Trekkin]

Chang more resembles Disco guy than the others? Even the other TUC Klingon above looks less like Chang than Disco Klingon does? Hmmm. IDK. I don't know what to say to that. Other than baldness they don't even look like the same species. Chang fits neatly with every one else from TMP to TNG. With a long mane and similar hairline, Chang would look even more like the others. If anything Chang looks a bit more like a human than any of the others do. Not more like Disco guy. Although reduced and flatter ridging would make any Klingon look more human presumably. Maybe he had a human mom. ;-) But I have to say, I think the pics speak for themselves on this. I think a lot more people would pick A thru D, and not E if shown a pic of Chang and asked, which of these looks the most alike?

The lack of hair shows more of the skull detailing at the back. Sure you could argue the guys with hair have it in universe, but in terms of make up it wasn't there.

He also had the 'flatter' and less dolphin-fin-like ridge, like our new guy. Although I could have sworn some of the other leaked photos had the more traditional compressed and pronounced 'line of bumps,' so maybe we'll get some variety.

 

[cultcross]

Looking at the pictures together makes me notice how similar they are, to be honest. The skin tone on that particular character is something we've not seen before although there's plenty of precedent for a range of skin colours in Trek aliens. But other than that, they are humanoids who have forehead ridges and a nose appliance, just like all the others, and dress in stylised armour. The ridges have varied in prominence and design significantly over the years, this is just another iteration. They are hardly a 'radical' departure from the established design. The update of the Trill was more radical than that. The Romulans gained a Neanderthal brow ridge out of nowhere and it was never mentioned!

 

[Trekkin]

I had some fun times on imdb after the first Nero pictures were released.

Smaller brow ridge, tattoos, no hair or shoulder pads. Obviously #notmyromulans