Because no one cares.
Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?
- Thread starter Annorax849
- Start date
Never to this extent. The Klingons are one of the most developed species and cultures in the franchise. We've seen a huge cross section over the years. We know what they're like, how they look, all that. It's far too late for a reimagining on this level, esp. one that makes no sense and can't be explained away by the passage of time, different eras, tech changes, etc. Once the DSC team decided that they were making a prime universe show, stuff like this was off the table.
They could've done that and still made the show consistent with the franchise. New stuff isn't a problem (and we need it). It's when new stuff that doesn't work is when it's a problem. By the rules DSC undertook, the DSC Klingons cannot exist.
(If I sound hostile to DSC, I do actually want to see the show eventually and think that whether it's good or not will be on the quality, not the internal consistency. However, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the DSC Klingon changes -- it violates the claim that it's a prime universe show and that it would be faithful to canon and changes something pretty basic to the franchise. If, at the end of the day, we're shown, told, or can reason that the DSC Klingons are a racial variant of the Klingons that just never happened to appear in any other installment of the franchise, okay, fine, I can accept it on those grounds (even if the most concrete answer is another "we don't discuss it with outsiders"). Heck, had they shown the DSC Klingons alongside regular and TOS Klingons, I wouldn't've given the new makeup that much thought (save for wondering if it was a little late for another variation).
But the continuity hound part of me is ticked off to know end, esp. seeing how baseless and indefensible the change seems to have been -- although to be fair, the stuff that really cannot work at all has only been behind the scenes comments and so non-canon. I do accept the DSC Klingons as a racial variant -- maybe "technically" normal Klingons who don't trim their nails and shave their heads -- but once we tread to the idea that DSC is retconning this as the one and only kind of Klingon that ever existed, that's were I have to say no. Irregardless of how DSC makes the Klingons, we know that canonically they de facto coexist with the ones that came before. Because of that, I wish that the DSC team would show us the connective tissue rather than ignoring it and leaving us guessing (and making the problem of how this all fits together even worse in the process).
Okay, rant over. Let the show run it's course and see how much of the damage is repaired by the end and what remains unreconciled.)
Yep.
Whelp, why treat it like Prime? For me, but the Klingons of TOS are not as well developed as TNG and forward. I think the idea that Klingons couldn't possibly have other facets to explore, especially in TOS era, strains credibility as much some find the new make up lining up with other TOS designs.
YMMV and all that.
TV being more niche is a good thing. It means shows don't in theory have to dumb things down if they don't want to get everyone to watch and the great thing is you got so much tv that even if haf of the stuff doesn't look good you still got more than enough options to still have lots of tv shows you do enjoy to watch.
As for the idea that fans want a show to fail. I don't think that is the case. I think many fans just want more of the same or they want the new show to give you the same feelings the old shows do which can be kind of hard since people tend to change as the grow older and they are in different places in their lives. The other thing is I believe in that theory that most people don't know what they really want until they see it. There is no way to predict how your going to feel about a new show until you watch it and as cyncial as some people are you also have people who overate a new show just because it's new stuff from a franchise or director or actor you like. I know it's a fact that their was some denial for some with "Phantom Menace" and people didn't want to admit they didn't like the movie because it was new "Star Wars" that you hadn't gotten in 30 years. People tend to adjust their feelings once some time has passed.
Jason
Fair enough. Personally, I think the sociological differences, from what I've heard, do work, since no culture is homogeneous (and the Powers That Be did intent that the DSC Klingons embrace a way of life that the Klingons as a whole had moved away from). Also, since we really only saw Klingon military officers and soldiers in TOS, there is room to see what they were like outside of the navy. The difference is that updates and new info like that fits the franchise and makes sense. Having the Klingons suddenly look vastly different than they did before and would look in a decade or so and generations after does not.
TMP really, truly, did it first. From my reading, the time frame between TOS to TMP is as early as 3 years and as late as 10 years from TOS. So, there is that transition from smooth to bumpy in a very short time. In my humble view, what DISCO does is showcase that smooth Klingons were actually more of an anomaly in the Empire, operating out on the fringes of their territory to make a name for themselves.
The Phantom Menace came out when I was like seven, and I still like it.
TPTB at STD didn't get that memo.
How in the actual Fuck do you interpret this:
as meaning "nobody has noticed or is talking about the show"? You have so massively misinterpreted what was written on such a scale it's causing me to seriously doubt you are accurately reporting the content of your Facebook Feed.
You sir, are clearly someone who sees what they want to with an attitude of fuck everything else. I will keep this in mind in future conversations.
Last edited:
Oh, I agree about this. Appearances aside, I think Klingon culture has lots of interesting aspects that could be explored. That's actually one of the things I was looking forward to about DSC based on the early promotional talk. The show pretty thoroughly failed to do that, though.
That's perfectly legitimate headcanon. I'd be happy if the show gave us some on-screen reason to frame things that way. So far, it hasn't.
'Twas sufficient for me.
DSC has managed to drop the ball on anything about the Klingons that doesn't involve lots of space combat and numbingly incoherent exposition. Even if you don't think the new makeup design is garbage and the ships suck there's some very disappointing narrative development going on with most of the Klingons in the new series.
Largely one-dimensional characters (except for L'Rell and Voq), overengineered makeup that makes listening to the actors' dialogue largely unpleasant or even unintelligible and a war that gets a quick and annoying resolution that borders on "TATV..." levels of disappointing and anticlimactic. For all their flaws with their writing Berman and Braga handled the Klingons a lot better than this show has thus far.
Largely one-dimensional characters (except for L'Rell and Voq), overengineered makeup that makes listening to the actors' dialogue largely unpleasant or even unintelligible and a war that gets a quick and annoying resolution that borders on "TATV..." levels of disappointing and anticlimactic. For all their flaws with their writing Berman and Braga handled the Klingons a lot better than this show has thus far.
I liked T'Kumva and Kol.
Kol was my favorite after Voq and the most like an old TNG-era Klingon, but they just didn't do much with him beyond establish his alpha male dominance over the assembled houses and their fleets. I wish he'd survived to appear in Season 2 so they could have developed his character a little more, but given how poorly most of the Klingons were written in Season 1 I don't know if they would have done a much better job in the next one.
I thought Kol was kind of a Generic Baddie who got "blowed up real good". For what his role was, he worked.
I think they could've done a lot more with T'Kuvma, even after death. I wish they'd built him up more as the Malcolm X of Klingons. Unify the Klingon people and challenge the Federation by any means necessary to stop their advance and homogenizing the Alpha Quadrant. In his own way, he was like Picard to the Federation's Borg. They should've played up how much of a martyr he was after "Battle at the Binary Stars".
I liked Voq better as Ash. Voq seemed like a non-entity following T'Kuvma and being led around by L'Rel.
L'Rel is my favorite of the DSC Klingons because she's open to more ideas, whereas the other three are stuck in their ways, and she was able to force the Empire to bow down to her, at least for now. She gained power through strength and didn't have to kill anyone for it.
I think they could've done a lot more with T'Kuvma, even after death. I wish they'd built him up more as the Malcolm X of Klingons. Unify the Klingon people and challenge the Federation by any means necessary to stop their advance and homogenizing the Alpha Quadrant. In his own way, he was like Picard to the Federation's Borg. They should've played up how much of a martyr he was after "Battle at the Binary Stars".
I liked Voq better as Ash. Voq seemed like a non-entity following T'Kuvma and being led around by L'Rel.
L'Rel is my favorite of the DSC Klingons because she's open to more ideas, whereas the other three are stuck in their ways, and she was able to force the Empire to bow down to her, at least for now. She gained power through strength and didn't have to kill anyone for it.
At least Kol was interesting from a traditional Klingon behavior point of view. T'Kuvma never impressed me much beyond the opening scenes of the first episode. But that's the writers' fault.
Unlike spaceships and aliens, which I see daily...O_o
The Klingons on this series were more one dimensional than the Klingons in most of the TOS movies - here the treacherous power-hunfry villain, there the speechifying religious fanatic. No subtlety, no imagination, no depth of motivation or plausible cultural context.
Similar threads
