Has the Augment Virus actually been referred to in Discovery and we didn't notice?

[cooleddie74]

The official Twitter account of Kol and other Klingons actor Kenneth Mitchell has posted as part of its cover photo a quote from Kol in Season 1 that says: "All I see is another attempt by humanity to rob us of our identity." This struck me in a way no other dialogue from Kol has that I can remember because it could, in fact, be a reference to the human Augment DNA that resulted in the Augment Virus that resulted in generations of Klingons having altered physical appearances including smooth, humanlike foreheads.

Maybe this was already addressed when the episode featuring that line first aired and I've long since forgotten or never noticed a thread on the subject but it does make me wonder if that line was the creators' way of acknowledging the Augment Virus and its much-hated effect on the Klingon population without violating what was seen as Bryan Fuller's edict that the Klingon makeup be redesigned and they look different. This way the Klingon forehead arc in Enterprise could be referred to and acknowledged without the need to put Klingons in more human-looking makeup that would clash with the new makeup aesthetic developed for the series in Season 1. They could both stick to the Fuller-mandated Klingon redesign but at the same time throw a very subtle bone to the hardcore viewers who were around for and watched ENT.

Thoughts?

 

[Dukhat]

Well, if it was a direct reference to the Augments, why did poor Voq have to go through such torture to look like a human? Couldn’t they have just given him the virus?

 

[AresB]

Because smooth forehead didn't make him human enough to pass the medical diagnostics he would be subjected to.

 

[Michael]

^ Might have saved him some bone breaking and bone grinding, though.

 

[cooleddie74]

That, plus why use the method that you despised so much, the human attempt to rob you of your identity? Also, how Klingon would that be to subject Voq to painful surgery? "There's an easier way of doing this but it's not only from the Earther scum but we have a far more painful way of going about it like true WARRIORS!!!"

 

[FederationHistorian]

It possibly was.

There was a throwaway line by Admiral Cornwell that mentioned that Archer was the last human to step foot on the Klingon homeworld hundred years earlier and that might stir up thoughts about the Augment virus. But they hadn’t set foot on Qonos since the S1 pilot. It was Qu’Vat Colony – the site of the Augment Virus – Archer set foot on before the series ended. Unless there was another visit to Qonos after the events of “Terra Prime” that led to a complete shutdown of relations between Starfleet and the Klingon Empire.

So, considering how DSC likes to refer to events from ENT, it’s likely that line refers to that.

 

[cooleddie74]

Because smooth forehead didn't make him human enough to pass the medical diagnostics he would be subjected to.

It clearly didn't work with Arne Darvin, who was detected as being Klingon as soon as McCoy ran his tricorder scans on him.

 

[Kor]

I dunno, the line is a little vague to me. I think the general idea was this effect of cultural homogenization that Klingons are afraid of, like expressed by Brigadier Kerla in STVI:TUC.

Kor

 

[Timo]

...Although I'm sure the Klingons can refer to a number of very specific instances where the UFP tried to cramp their style.

The UFP might not see those instances quite that way, of course. But the Augment virus might be but one in a collection of heinous acts of obvious cultural oppression that the Klingons remember from their century of direct contact with the UFP. And it would be interesting to learn what other such acts there may have been.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FederationHistorian]

The ridges the Klingons have may be culturally significant to them, possibly religious.

Plus, we have no idea how the Klingons regard Archer historically after the Augment virus. He might not be the beloved figure in the Klingon Empire like he is in the Federation.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It clearly didn't work with Arne Darvin, who was detected as being Klingon as soon as McCoy ran his tricorder scans on him.

Darvin probably got away with avoiding medical scans as much as possible (given his governmental status). Voq/Tyler, OTOH, was posing as a Starfleet officer and would be scanned every day....

 

[cooleddie74]

Althoigh if there were very few direct contacts at all between humans and Klingons between 2154 and 2256 it would take a pretty paranoid and delusional mindset to believe that the Federation and humans had been corrupting you that entire time.

The Augment Virus IS a clear case of human interference in Klingon culture, so direct it even introduced human genetic material into Klingon biology for over a century! And one that likely brought much frustration and consternation to a warrior race whose ridges must have meant something important before many of them dissolved and disappeared. Just a theory but I think it works.

 

[Bollie74]

Well, if it was a direct reference to the Augments, why did poor Voq have to go through such torture to look like a human? Couldn’t they have just given him the virus?

Was it torture or just good times? He is a Klingon

 

[cooleddie74]

Klingons use painstiks during the Rite of Ascension for adolescents, painstiks that create enough vascular pressure to make the head of an animal explode. I'd say that a lot of things we find grisly and violent are just a lazy afternoon of entertainment for some Klingon warriors.

 

[BillJ]

Because smooth forehead didn't make him human enough to pass the medical diagnostics he would be subjected to.

All the broken and misaligned bones should've been a clue something was up.

 

[cooleddie74]

He was a boxer?

 

[Timo]

Well, the obvious interpretation was obvious enough. Even if dead wrong.

It's not as if Klingon bones really could be all that different from human ones. Just remove the redundant ones; the ones in the limbs have to be more or less identical, for the limbs to work identically as seen.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NCC-73515]

Well, the obvious interpretation was obvious enough. Even if dead wrong.

It's not as if Klingon bones really could be all that different from human ones. Just remove the redundant ones; the ones in the limbs have to be more or less identical, for the limbs to work identically as seen.

Timo Saloniemi

I love this picture:

https://images.app.goo.gl/w4wH1p8gG8Hmnr1D9

Ribs are a mesh (harder to slice with a knife), humerus and femur have another bone next to it (more flexibility?)

 

[AresB]

It's not as if Klingon bones really could be all that different from human ones. Just remove the redundant ones; the ones in the limbs have to be more or less identical, for the limbs to work identically as seen.

They also had the body of the real Ash Tyler to use as a model.
Perhaps, instead of crude sawing and chiseling, the Klingon choH'a' method uses transporter and replicator technology to mold the subject's bones to the shape they scanned from his body. Or replace Voq's bones altogether with Tyler's, we saw in TNG: Ethics how the Klingon physiology works around the rejection of foreign tissue.

 

[NCC-73515]

the tissue in ethics wasn't exactly foreign though