Each one represented the conflicts the USA faced at the time. Right now the USA's biggest enemy is itself. Star Trek is a mirror and, like it or not, that's what the mirror's telling us.
That mirror also told us that we'll get through it. So here's hoping.
Ok, fair. There were aspects of the Klingons that were trying to preserve their culture in S1, which mirrors some Trump supporters. But I never felt like it even addresses the idea of those who were not considered “deplorables”, but still backed Trump anyways
If there had been a story where say, a group of Vulcans or Andorians or Tellarites defected to the Klingons, and these Vulcans/Andorians/Tellarites jumped ship because for all the faults of the Klingon Empire, they were willing to tackle certain issues important to Vulcans/Andorians/Tellarites head on. For Vulcans, there are lingering concerned of the potential re-emergence of the Romulan Empire, who tried to annex and exterminate Vulcan in the Romulan War after Vulcan publicly denounced reunification and denied being even related to them. For Andorians, fears of an increasing porous Neutral Zone border might lead to the largest abduction of Aenar not seen since the height of the Romulan War and the Federation won’t devote resources to tackle it. For Tellarites, they are still recovering from how the Romulans crippled economics in the region via a devastating kamikaze attack on Coridan that left millions dead and wiped numerous dilithium stores, and with the unprecedented joint Tellarite-Orion partnership to help Cordian to recover from the war through foreign aid expiring, they are turning to the Klingons for support on the advice of the Orions. From the perspective of Vulcan/Andorian, the Klingons had a much stronger defense of their borders and are much more prepared for a future conflict with them. For Tellarites, they think that Klingons would show greater concern regarding their economic issues much better and already have the dilithium stores needed to help Cordian recover and resume trading with Tellar.
As a counterpoint, the Federation is shocked that the founding members of the Federation would defect to the Klingons, as they have intelligence operatives keeping a very close eye on Romulus (Vulcans), that border security on the Neutral Zone has been adequate in their view (Andorians), and that the Orions have proven over and over that their claims of simply being a merchant species and being on good terms with the Klingon Empire cannot be trusted and that’s why the Federation won’t support renewal of the agreement (Tellarites). And the Klingon are known to have committed war crimes after annexing Krios Prime and massacring the Sovereign Dynasty in the early 23rd century, kill dissidents of the Empire that defect, and to have interfered in the electoral process of the Federation, and for these reasons working with the Klingons is a non-starter for the leaders of the Federation.
Then in true Trek fashion, both sides of the argument find a way to resolve the problem together while further fleshing out early Federation history. Instead of the pew-pew-pew nonstop action.
DIS did not "try to erase" anything. They just had their own version of the Klingons they wanted to portray. Following your own muse does not mean you're shitting on someone else's work.
And yet there’s no issues with the redesign of Tellarite, as they have never been fleshed out before, so these variations in physical appearance make sense.
But the Klingons have been fleshed out for over 50 years. Issues over appearance should have been settled long ago. And they were, until DIS happened.
DIS provided all the explanation we need: This is what the Klingons look like on DIS. There is no need for any other explanation, any more than there is a need to explain why the Enterprise-A had over 80 decks in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, or why the USS Voyager couldn't cross the galaxy as fast as Kirk's Enterprise in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
TFF was a production error; in universe, the Ent-A also had a series of malfunctions and probably wasn’t assembled properly to begin with. That includes someone thinking that the Ent-A has 80 decks.
With VOY, that would make for a great sequel episode to “The Voyager Conspiracy”.
Have a different creative aesthetic than you is not a "goof."
No, the goof is not going into great detail into the origins of this side of the Klingons which has never been shown before, and why it was not seen in any other series before. Blindly accepting what’s on screen doesn’t work.
That doesn't make sense to me. Vulcan and Andor are part of the Federation. If the Federation is the stand-in for "us" (whoever "us" might be to the audience), wouldn't that make Vulcan and Andor counterparts to another province/state of one's own country, rather than a counterpart for an allied foreign country?
I’ve always seen the Federation as an allegory for America or NATO/<insert international alliances & partnerships here/>. And the events of ENT showed the history leading up to the alliance.
So, if there was a story about Romulan aggression to Vulcan to mirror China/Taiwan or North Korea/South Korea, or there was a story about a subspace eddy destroying an Andorian moon and Andorian colonists are afraid of returning to the area due to the radiation levels to mirror the Fukushima disaster that would be fine. As would a story of Vulcans feeling they have not yet received an apology from Andoria for various atrocities they did that took place decades prior to ENT, to mirror post-WW2 Japan.
No. T'Kuvma is coded as an allegory for Trump and T'Kuvma-ism as an allegory for Trumpism.
But DIS is also clear that T'Kuvma-ism, with its xenophobia, is not a universal belief held by all Klingons, and even depicts two T'Kuvmaists (L'Rell and the Ash-ified Voq) abandoning T'Kuvma's xenophobia and belief in Klingon supremacy.
Shame DIS killed T’Kuvma off. It would have been interesting to see where they take this character, in light of the past four years in the real world.
Kind of hard for the Klingons to be an allegory for a Soviet Union that has not existed for thirty years. (Also, Klingon culture in TOS had almost nothing in common with the Soviets -- it's not like we ever heard Klingons arguing that class conflict is the driving engine of history, or arguing about what kind of relationship workers should have to the means of production, or arguing that having a vanguard party to lead the people to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat is a good thing.)
TUC very clearly was a mirror to the Chernobyl disaster and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s a known fact that what the movie was an allegory for. Which opens the door for the Lost Era Klingons to be comparable to ‘90s Russia should there ever be a series on that era.
