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"Choose Your Pain" Klingon ship (Visual spoilers?)

I am confused...which looked like a cheap goofy fan film?
For the record I am not arguing for emulating sixties Trek in TOS on a week by weak basis...the interiors are pretty good and sit between ENT and TMP nicely. The exteriors, in my opinion, should have aimed for the same approach. The DIscovery herself is sort of there...the Klingon ships are really not.


The stuff you listed. The TOS look does not fit or work. It needs an update.
 
I have tried my absolute best to be neutral toward the new Klingon ship aesthetic, and not express any strong opinions one way or another, especially when it comes to trying to reconcile them with what we have seen before.

Although I think the D7 controversy is another avoidable mess that needlessly cleaves the show's fan-base, I don't mind some aspects of the redesigned Klingon technology - even preferring modernism, and wanting to preserve the stark militarism Klingons were known for, I don't mind some occasional baroque artisan-crafted stuff here and there.

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Although jarring at first, because there was no previous suggestion Klingons had any respect for insects, the insectoid shuttles, for example, are fine by me and make enough sense (just a small shuttlepod like a Federation 'work bee'). Maybe the sarcophagus ship alone would have been alright. But like you say, having the entire fleet look like that was pretty extreme given 200 years of Klingon ships, and about 20 separate vessels, were all utilitarian and submarine-like.

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The new bat'leth looked a bit shit to me, the disruptions were not great, and I don't particularly like the multicolored fluted-armor-uniforms of T'Kuvma's followers as a standard attire (might be okay ceremonially), but the d'k'tagh above is pretty good, as was the baroque space suit. A couple of pages back I wrote something about where producers these days might be coming from - in a world of video game aliens that are 8 ft tall, with four arms, and eight eyes, some producers feel casual audiences would be more attracted to exotic looking aliens:

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....I think, basically, that the producers of the show think that they are making the Klingons more alien and intricate for an audience used to less humanoid aliens in video games, and other modern media - like say, the Covenant from Halo, the Krogan from Mass Effect, or the Fallen from Destiny. They feel that new audiences, raised on the less constrictive media than television, wont take alien antagonists seriously unless they are visually quite exotic, and packed with filigree suggesting high budget. I personally disagree and feel that Star Wars, Star Trek, etc, do quite fine with humanoid aliens, or plain minimalist Stormtroopers as antagonists, and much of the interest in a society comes from how it is written, not how it looks - I'm a video gamer as well as a Trekkie, and often (not counting the esteemed and incomparable Mass Effect) video game aliens are quite bland culturally anyway. But as part of this thinking, which also lay behind a lot of the choices in the Kelvin movies, some of which were controversial, they feel they have to authorize vast departures from established designs, for the sake of attracting a new audience, and being artistically novel.

But the other part of why they might have chosen to re-design the Klingons, that I didn't mention as much, was probably a sense that by giving them a 'crafted' feel (for lack of a better term), they would be moving away from having aliens in Star Trek be humanlike in terms of material culture, and suggesting an exotic developmental disparity between races. The idea Bryan Fuller seems to have had, based on a vaguely remembered article, is that Klingons should be shown to have a notion of beauty - their own 'Faberge Eggs' and 'St. Peter's baldachin' by Bernini.

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When Gene Roddenberry was presented with the redesign of the Klingons for The Motion Picture, one of the worries he raised was that by making the Klingons too alien, (i.e. he probably meant 'making them hollywood monsters'), he would lessen the central message of a lot of Star Trek, that all life has common ground. But the producers of the new show, have chosen to uncouple their Klingons from that stricture of having aliens act as stand-ins for human nations - to have them be presented as something casual audiences can think is exotic, imposing and alien.

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On occasion, Star Trek has leaned toward fantasy indulgence in the exotic before, such as Star Trek III with it's Vulcan rituals, bird shaped starship, exploding planet, and Klingon monster pets.

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Woof, son of Muurrrg

The main worry of this is that you don't want Star Trek to make their aliens into mere video game antagonists who are weird for weird's sake. That particular trope also comes with it's own set of negative stereotypes every bit as bad as the ones Klingons became by the end of DS9, so I hope the producers are careful not to make Klingons into a fantasy race. So far I haven't seen enough on the Klingons themselves to know if I like them - its just the starship side of stuff I'm disappointed about - I liked the Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness Klingons a lot though, so would have rather they used that makeup, and show the plain speaking tone of the Klingon Interrogator in the deleted scene.

The main controversy here is perhaps just that the producers are again not making their intentions clear, like with controversial aspects of Star Trek: Enterprise, and the Kelvin Timeline all over again, despite the bad faith aspects of those previous media caused due to the mixed messages that were given. If this is a full reboot of the Star Trek property (and yes, utterly replacing a famous ship with a distinct design would make it one), then make that clear. If it is not, then throw fans a few bearded Klingons and K't'inga-class battlecrusers, and everyone is happy.

There is one major species they could play with almost to their heart's content - the Tholians.
 
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The stuff you listed. The TOS look does not fit or work. It needs an update.
Seriously why? It worked just fine from 1966 up to 2005? What's really changed in the last 10 or so years to suddenly say: "OMG! it looks so dated/retro"...ESPECIALLY for a series that is taking place in the original era fist depicted back in 1966?
^^^
I'm honestly very curious as to why you honestly feel this is the case?
 
Sorry this makes zero sense. Both Voy and Ent were full of new alien and ship designs that tried to be new and modern looking at the time. They still sucked.
Right. "New" does not equal "good" which is the other half of the equation. The Temporal Cold War was a relatively new idea, but it was horribly implemented and not particularly interesting. A few very great moments on the show (E.G. "Minefield" and "Dead Stop" were split by preposterous stories that ran straight back to the episodic TNG formula (e.g. Dear Doctor, Shadows of P'Jem) and some episodes so forgettable that half of us struggle to remember what even happened in them.

The Xindi Arc had potential too, but ran into the same problem: bland filler episodes dominated by unlikeable characters and largely forgettable dialog.

Sure. Except this 'being terrible' has zero connection to not redesgnig Klingons radically enough.
That remains to be seen (cautiously optimistic here).

People still watch TOS.
Sure. But people don't still PAY for TOS. You can only sell so many boxed sets of a 50 year old TV series, yes?

It's been the case since 1979 that fans of TOS want the studios to just plain MAKE MORE EPISODES of TOS. We have fan films trying to do exactly this, we had fans angry at TNG for failing to do this (speaking of "going with something new!") and we have fans angry with the reboot films for not being similar enough to it. But that was never going to happen in the first place; Phase II never would have been THAT similar to TOS, and no TV series is ever going to return to what TOS was or had. Whatever new series that produce is going to have to stand on its own and survive on its own. The more it has to lean on "What came before" the less it can perform on its own merits.

Naturally, they still have to put in the effort of actually being good. But in storytelling, trying to lean on past continuity is more often a crutch than an asset, especially in television.

But I want you to answer this. What was gained by calling this radically different ship D7?
I'm sure you're not going to like -- let alone agree with -- this answer, but it seems to me the intention is clear:
It's a series reboot.
 
Seriously why? It worked just fine from 1966 up to 2005?
Did it, though? Even when they did "In a Mirror Darkly" they had to heavily update the special effects to make it work. While the design of the SHIP worked in the context of what they were trying to do, the bridge and engineering sets wouldn't have survived more than a couple of episodes once the novelty wore off. It's the kind of thing you can do ONCE IN A WHILE, but that's a far cry from running the entire series that way.

I'm not even sure the original TMP bridge design and sets would have worked for an early 2000s TV series. They were good enough for prime time when TNG appropriated them, but even the production team on First Contact thought the old sets weren't good enough and started over from scratch. By the time Voyager started using them they'd been modified to the point of being completely unrecognizable.

And yet, the huge changes in FX style and set design that made TNG stand apart wound up being STANDARD for another 20 years after the fact. The same effects, the same conventions, the same dialog style, some of the same storylines recycled again and again...

What's really changed in the last 10 or so years to suddenly say: "OMG! it looks so dated/retro"
Nothing's changed, that's the point. "OMG it looks so retro!" is actually FUN once in a while. But you can't really do a whole series on "retro" can you?

ESPECIALLY for a series that is taking place in the original era fist depicted back in 1966?
The series isn't taking place in 1966, so it sure as hell shouldn't look like it was FILMED in 1966.
 
I'm sure you're not going to like -- let alone agree with -- this answer, but it seems to me the intention is clear:
It's a series reboot.
That indeed seems to be the case. Which means they blatantly lied to us.

But that was not what I asked. I asked what was gained by calling it D7, instead of calling it something else and letting people who care about such things imagine that original D7's exist somewhere in the background? How does this specific letter/number combination help in attracting new viewers who do not know what it refers to?
 
With all these complaints about a ship we haven't even fully seen yet, I am reminded of the interview with the producers where they said that we may see things that don't look like they fit into canon but it will be explained. So personally I'm not going crazy over this yet until we see this D7 fully in action. They may still have some surprises for us
 
Seriously why? It worked just fine from 1966 up to 2005? What's really changed in the last 10 or so years to suddenly say: "OMG! it looks so dated/retro"...ESPECIALLY for a series that is taking place in the original era fist depicted back in 1966?
^^^
I'm honestly very curious as to why you honestly feel this is the case?


Because it never worked. Really its a 66 impala. It looks like what it is. Which, was fine(of so sixties camp) before ENT killed it. Now, it does not fit, really has it since TMP.

Look at it this way. The NX is a 92 impala, the Walker is a 2008 impala. The Crossfield is a 2015 impala. Now the Constitution design should set between 08 and 15. If you stick a 66 impala in there, the looks do not fit.

Look at the ships here, the design forms and shapes. Take the rose tinted lenses off and really look at the forms and shapes.
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Can you honestly say it belongs where it is and not before the Intrepid?

The shape of the D-7 is still fine for today. Just upgrade it, like the K't'inga or the Klingon Warbird from ST'09.

No, the very vague body layout kinda works. But the shape is classic 60's and looks so very much like the TOS ship it could pass as a human designed ship. Heck if you put it next to the phase II design( which with more detail because the TMP design) it looks even more like a human design.
 
Alright, let's revisit the Klingons some more, won't we. I looked at it closer and it's safe to assume the "D7" mentioned in beginning, and the "Prison" ship on which most of the action takes place is one and the same ship:

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Same roughly triangular wide spear head shape, same blue stuff sticking out the bottom. It's one and the same ship.
It looks like red deflector dish is sitting in front of the (only) one warp engine. And those red engines in the back are impulse? Maybe? If you call it anything but a D7 it could work as a klingon ship, in this STD universe. Just D7 feels oh so very wrong for this ship.
 
I think that is meant to be a torpedo tube, not a deflector.

That is just going by how T'kuvma's ship worked and Klingon designs from other series.
 
No, the very vague body layout kinda works. But the shape is classic 60's and looks so very much like the TOS ship it could pass as a human designed ship. Heck if you put it next to the phase II design( which with more detail because the TMP design) it looks even more like a human design.

Not at all, the design is absolutely fine. You're the only person on here that seems to disagree. I don't think the audience would mind either.
 
Alright, let's revisit the Klingons some more, won't we. I looked at it closer and it's safe to assume the "D7" mentioned in beginning, and the "Prison" ship on which most of the action takes place is one and the same ship:

W5eBD81.jpg

pk2w62P.jpg

KIQPYN7.jpg

WHnTgXU.jpg

i3WurL5.jpg

ai7GEiN.jpg

7f4G7AS.jpg

o1NHsbU.jpg


Same roughly triangular wide spear head shape, same blue stuff sticking out the bottom. It's one and the same ship.
It looks like red deflector dish is sitting in front of the (only) one warp engine. And those red engines in the back are impulse? Maybe? If you call it anything but a D7 it could work as a klingon ship, in this STD universe. Just D7 feels oh so very wrong for this ship.

Really this is a pretty classic Klingon shape. without neck. This is where the design style was headed 20 years back. look at the two below, wack the neck off and remove the Nacells and tell me you honestly do not see the resemblance.
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Not at all, the design is absolutely fine. You're the only person on here that seems to disagree. I don't think the audience would mind either.

I am not saying the base shape would not fit, just the TMP/TOS design. It looks its age and would not fit in thi in any way. It would be a massive disconnect in art style.
 
The Federation ships still look remotely federation, they have nacelles and saucers.

None of the Klingon ships in Discovery look remotely Klingon in any way.

No, they look where the ships were headed. I am not disagreeing they likely should have kept the neck( I would have). But this is kinda where it has been going for a while. Klingons never had a style until late TNG/DS9. It was reused Romulan designs and really it showed. Heck even the Bird of Prey ( so ironically klingons) was not designed for them.
 
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