Konom was a refugee from the Empire that ended up serving on both the Excelsior and the Enterprise under Jim Kirk during the DC Comics run.
Future of Next Gen Lit??
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Konom was a refugee from the Empire that ended up serving on both the Excelsior and the Enterprise under Jim Kirk during the DC Comics run.
I know that. I have the entire run. My question is should Konom be officially credited as the first of many Klingons in Starfleet since the 23rd-Century, or should he be relegated as something that didn't happen...
Kirk's anti-Klingon stance in STVI was born of David's death in STIII, and for all we know it took years to really manifest itself - particularly since Kirk was so pally with the Klingons at the end of STV.
My feeling is that Kirk was fine with Klingons, as long as they were doing their Empire thing and staying on their side of the tracks--that is, in the movie era. During the series he seemed way more open-minded in general.
KingDaniel said:
Was Kirk really pally with the Klingons at the end of Star Trek V? That was also the same film he referred to them as "Klingon bastards." Seems more like Kirk was extending diplomatic courtesy towards them in the same manner he did at the start of Star Trek VI.
And then there's the bit about in his log entry in Star Trek VI about "having never trusted the Klingons..."
It was originally in The Search for Spock that he said that phrase in the singular, in reference to Kruge after he'd ordered David killed. Its use in ST V was no doubt just an attempt by the screenwriters to imitate the earlier film, and in context it's clearly a heat-of-the-moment thing when he thinks they're going to shoot at him. There was never any indication prior to ST VI that Kirk felt any particular bigotry toward the Klingons. Hatred for Kruge as an individual, yes, but there was no suggestion of a broader racial animosity, and the end of ST V definitely showed him having no problem being friendly with the Klingons.
Kirk's bigotry against the Klingons in ST VI was, no doubt about it, a huge retcon, and a difficult one to reconcile with everything we'd known about Kirk prior to that date. Looking back on it decades later, when people have grown up accepting TUC as part of the whole tapestry, it may seem like it fits in integrally with everything else, but trust me -- for those of us who were already Trek fans well before TUC and were seeing it for the first time, Kirk's racism against the Klingons was new, sudden, and unexpected. If you read the novels and comics that came out prior to TUC, the standard approach was to show Kirk as someone who had no particular animosity toward the Klingons and if anything was more open-minded than most about the possibilities of achieving peace and understanding with the Klingons -- even in stories that were set after David's death, such as the post-TFF comics published by DC. The idea of Kirk feeling hatred toward the Klingons as a race was totally new and fairly revisionist when TUC introduced it. It was difficult to reconcile with the character of Kirk as we'd come to know him prior to 1991. It was so awkwardly shoehorned into his characterization that when J. M. Dillard wrote the novelization, she invented a recent Klingon attack that had almost killed Carol Marcus, so as to provide some justification for this otherwise grossly out-of-character attitude on Kirk's part. Shatner himself was very uneasy with the idea of Kirk having such hatred toward the entire Klingon race -- in take after take of the "Let them die" scene, he tried to indicate that Kirk had second thoughts about the line the moment he said it. Because it simply did not fit the character of James T. Kirk.
Yes, in TUC, but the point is that evidence from prior films, particularly TFF, doesn't bear that out. It was a retcon that served the story. Remember, the people who made TUC were not the same people who made TFF. They had only one producer (Ralph Winter) in common and no writers or director in common. It's not like there's a single creative vision uniting them. The people who wrote TFF intended it to end with the suggestion of improved relations with the Klingons, but then the different people who came in and wrote/directed TUC decided it suited their story to start Kirk off in a place of deep hostility toward the Klingons, so they disregarded the ending of TFF and asserted as a retcon that Kirk had been extremely hostile toward Klingons as a race ever since his son was killed.
Regardless if you might consider it a retcon or not, should it simply be dismissed? I mean, is it plausible that Kirk did have a long distrust of the Klingons and that the death of David stoked that into a genuine dislike of them afterward?
Or it simply could be the ramblings of a man angry about growing old with an empty house.
These past years haven't been kind of our favorite sci-fi franchises, lol. Both stargate and BSG have bought it. Star Trek reboot aside, the old star trek that we knew maybe endangered! Seems like DS9 and Voyager series are done.
Actually there is a pilot for a new BSG series, Blood and Chrome, currently in production, though it's not yet known whether it'll be picked up.
This is Star Trek. The simple answer's the right one: Kirk, Scotty, Cartwright, and the rest were made bigots to show them as Cold Warriors having to deal with it being over.
But is it really out of character for them to have a distrust of the Klingons after so many years of crossing swords with them? Still being the 23rd-Century, they probably wouldn't be as forgiving as their 24th-Century counterparts, IMO...
This is Star Trek. The simple answer's the right one: Kirk, Scotty, Cartwright, and the rest were made bigots to show them as Cold Warriors having to deal with it being over.
Gene Rodenberry considered STVI apocraphyl, because he thought his future-humans were beyond the racism Kirk and Starfleet displayed.
That said, Gene's "perfect humans" thing was a retcon itself, and Gene had quite a list of Treks he deemed unoffical (he admitted to being revisionist about Trek). The TOS crew were tolerant and accepting and all that, but they were certainly flawed.
I don't think there are right or wrong answers, just differing interpretations of the Trek universe and it's characters. Wishy-wasy answer, yeah, but... it's just so big and discontinuous. Within the context of VI, Kirk's a racist. In V, they're an annoyance he'll swear and cuss at but happily invite to his ship and share a drink with. Tie-ins, sequels and prequels can follow whichever interpretation they choose.
That said, Gene's "perfect humans" thing was a retcon itself, and Gene had quite a list of Treks he deemed unoffical (he admitted to being revisionist about Trek). The TOS crew were tolerant and accepting and all that, but they were certainly flawed.
I don't think there are right or wrong answers, just differing interpretations of the Trek universe and it's characters. Wishy-wasy answer, yeah, but... it's just so big and discontinuous. Within the context of VI, Kirk's a racist. In V, they're an annoyance he'll swear and cuss at but happily invite to his ship and share a drink with. Tie-ins, sequels and prequels can follow whichever interpretation they choose.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. Characters do change to fit the requirements of a story, and it's a long-held practice. In a best-case scenario, some stories may unlock hidden aspects of a character that the character itself has to discover and confront perhaps...
The problem is that they weren't bigots earlier. They had a healthy antagonism with the imperialist thugs, but what did race have to do with it? Nazi POW got to go to the movies while Japanese-American citizens were interred in camps - that was race motivated, not battle. Kirk and Co read our old history books and did know better and did lust after, and marvel at the great battles of, and drink with Klingons in V.
Then VI? Forget "well a double dumb ass on you" and behold "I bet that Klingon BITCH didn't shed a tear for her father!" Easy writerly filler drama this stuff taking over for real extrapolatory judgements and actions based in previous character histories. Nichelle Nichols refused to speak the line "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and it fell to Koenig. She then refused to speak the like "Yeah but would you want your daughter marrying one of them" - arguing to the great writer/director Nicholas Meyer that she *today* doesn't hold that type of prejudice, and she'll be damned if she's going to take it to the 23rd century.
Then VI? Forget "well a double dumb ass on you" and behold "I bet that Klingon BITCH didn't shed a tear for her father!" Easy writerly filler drama this stuff taking over for real extrapolatory judgements and actions based in previous character histories. Nichelle Nichols refused to speak the line "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and it fell to Koenig. She then refused to speak the like "Yeah but would you want your daughter marrying one of them" - arguing to the great writer/director Nicholas Meyer that she *today* doesn't hold that type of prejudice, and she'll be damned if she's going to take it to the 23rd century.
Well, Scotty was revealed to have some racial prejudices against the Klingons in "Day of the Dove," although it took an alien influence to really bring that out. In that regard, his sentiments in Star Trek VI actually wouldn't really be out of place with that. And I don't think it's that terribly out of place for Kirk to have grown tired of the Klingons over the years and his "Let them die" remark to have surprised him as much as it may have surprised Spock...
