Could someone explain to me the appeal of Blood Will Tell?

[Thrawn]

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm honestly curious.

After hearing a bunch of people I respect and tend to agree with raving about Warren Ellis for so long, I recently bought and read a whole bunch of comics having never read them growing up at all. And I have to say: I'm sold on Warren Ellis. I could not be more excited for the soon-arriving conclusion to Planetary, for instance. But most of the rest of the comic medium that I've tried... I dunno, it just feels like I'm missing something.

Blood Will Tell is an excellent example. I spent like $20-something on this thing, and I read it in just under 45 minutes. It ostensibly shows us some interesting alternate points of view by showing things from the Klingons' perspective, but I didn't learn anything new about the Klingons as a whole or specific characters by reading it. I mean, what new info was there? That some people were adverse to Gorkon's proposal? That Klingons made a big show but were occasionally impressed by Starfleet's willingness to fight? How were either of those not readily apparent from the source material already?

So: nothing new about Klingons. Ok, so howabout character arcs. Well, I don't feel like the length was sufficient to generate characters I cared about, so when the twist came at the end I just didn't care at all and it didn't mean anything to me.

So: nothing new about Klingons, no character arcs that are interesting. How about artwork? That's the one thing comics have that prose doesn't. Well, again - how did this show us anything new? I have a pretty active imagination, and I didn't see anything in here I couldn't have imagined myself, with the possible exception of a couple of pretty beautiful panels after the old dude's fight with the girl towards the end. But that was like 2 pages max.

I basically feel like I spent $20 on storyboards for a bunch of largely irrelevant deleted scenes from the TV show.

So - why is this worth spending money on?

Like, I didn't like Troublesome Minds very much, but I did understand why other people loved it. I honestly don't get why this is appealing to anyone. I am puzzled.

 

[Daddy Todd]

I thought the artwork was really good, and it was kinda fun to see "the other side" of those familiar stories. That's about it.

I suppose I have fairly low expectations from a comic book.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I honestly don't get why this is appealing to anyone. I am puzzled.

As someone who collected this in single issues, I found plenty to enjoy, month after month, anticipating all the "missing scenes" as we see various TOS episodes through the eyes of the Klingons. I'm not sure I was expecting new revelations, just the change of viewpoint. The cover art was excellent! That there was also an ongoing arc was the bonus, although the ending of the arc didn't do much for me.

I also bought the trade. Quite happily.

 

[Christopher]

Does every story have to reveal shocking new truths? Can't it just be entertaining? I'm not even a fan of the Klingons, but I thought Blood Will Tell was very well-done and interesting. And I think it did show us some new things. Like who Arne Darvin was before he became Arne Darvin. I never would've thought he was a ridged Klingon before. I'm still not sure on why they wouldn't have gone with a quch'Ha to impersonate a human, but it's an interesting approach. (Maybe they didn't trust a quch'Ha not to go native?)

 

[Thrawn]

That just seemed like a plot hole to me; like they wanted to do the crazy surgery stuff because it would be Cool and either didn't care or didn't feel like explaining how that made any sense. It seemed especially odd after the first issue made such a big deal out of how they were all Quch'Ha in the first place.

And of course stories don't have to reveal shocking new anything; my favorite of yours, Torrent Sea, certainly doesn't. But this was sold as doing so, so that's what I was expecting. And either way, for it to be entertaining, there has to be some kind of story in it that I care about in some way, and this didn't do that for me.

 

[Stevil2001]

I thought the "Troubles with Tribbles" and "Friday's Child" reversals were very good-- especially the latter, that put a nice spin on a bad episode. Both anchored themselves in characters that I thought were fairly interesting, which I think is what made them work. (I can't believe it took us 40-plus years of Star Trek to get the Arne Darvin story.) The "Errand of Mercy" and "Day of the Dove" stories didn't do anything interesting, though. But I would say that David Messina's excellent art pushed it over the edge into the roundly positive territory.

 

[Christopher]

^You must mean "A Private Little War," not "Friday's Child."

 

[Stevil2001]

Oh, right. I'm always getting those two confused.

 

[EJA]

I never would've thought he was a ridged Klingon before. I'm still not sure on why they wouldn't have gone with a quch'Ha to impersonate a human, but it's an interesting approach. (Maybe they didn't trust a quch'Ha not to go native?)

Don't they use surgery to turn a ridged Klingon into a human in Vanguard as well?

 

[KRAD]

Because if Arne Darvin was a QuchHa, he would have been ridged when we met him in "Trials and Tribble-ations." But he wasn't, so there needed to be an alternate explanation....

 

[Therin of Andor]

Because if Arne Darvin was a QuchHa, he would have been ridged when we met him in "Trials and Tribble-ations." But he wasn't, so there needed to be an alternate explanation....

The original operation couldn't be successfully reversed? Another reason he was so angry with everyone.

 

[KRAD]

^ No, I mean that -- based on the evidence we saw with Kor, Kang, and Koloth (and also based on Forged in Fire's explanation of how the Klingons got their ridges back) -- all the QuchHa' eventually became QemHuch. So in order for Arne Darvin to still be wandering around in the late 24th century without cranial ridges, he had to have been born a QemHuch who was altered rather than a QuchHa', since if he was the latter, he'd have ridges in the late 24th century.

 

[Christopher]

^Except that Blood Will Tell depicts both kinds of Klingon still existing at the time of TUC, which is after the events of Forged in Fire. So if you're going to treat them as being in continuity with one another, it's necessary to assume that, despite what FiF said, the cure didn't take universal effect.

Besides, if Darvin was in Federation custody at the time, when would he have been exposed to the viral cure?

 

[JD]

Didn't they also describe him as being surgically altered to appear human? That wouldn't have been necessary if he was already a QuchHa'.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't they also describe him as being surgically altered to appear human? That wouldn't have been necessary if he was already a QuchHa'.

"The Trouble With Tribbles" makes no mention of surgical alteration. But from the transcript to "Trials and Tribble-ations":

WORF: His real name is Arne Darvin. He is a Klingon altered to look human.
DAX: His surgeon does nice work.

But I'd call that hearsay; Dax is simply assuming the alteration was surgical. Had he been QuchHa', he still would've probably needed his complexion and eyebrows altered to pass as human (although actually the Klingons in "Trouble w/ Tribbles" don't have that makeup anyway). So based on the canonical evidence, it could've gone either way.