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

[Lord Garth]

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?

Good catch. That's what I'll go with from now on.

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?

No, because that's for softies. You have to think like them. To quote Randy Savage, "Taste the pain, brutha!"

Whatever the most macho thing you can think of is out there, they'll do.

 

[Nerys Myk]

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

That the Klingons don't treat prisoners like pampered guests?

 

[thribs]

Discovery use canon? Don’t be ridiculous.

It wasn’t mentioned. I would have noticed.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Discovery use canon? Don’t be ridiculous.

It wasn’t mentioned. I would have noticed.

Sometimes they don't use neon signs.

 

[cooleddie74]

Nor even hand signals. But this time the reference actually works and if planned works brilliantly.

And even if it wasn't planned it still works.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Sometimes they don't use neon signs.

Mot and Quark go neon on Freecloud by Ian McLean, on Flickr

 

[Phoenix219]

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.

The main, overlooked reason why they couldn't have used the Augment virus to make Voq more human? *because it still wouldn't have made him look like Ash Tyler, an identity they could infiltrate while using* .....

 

[Timo]

...Also, even Phlox a century prior could tell at a casual glance (at his biobed monitor) that an Augment Klingon was still a Klingon. Perhaps Arne Darvin and Kor were of that sort, but neither would have to face Phlox in their day-to-day business of fighting the Federation.

Making faces is easy, for Klingons and Feds alike. Fooling scanners and specialists takes a bit more.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[AresB]

...But then, since the Klingons apparently have the means to imprint one person's identity in another's brain, why they didn't copy-paste Voq's mind into Tyler and be spared of all the body remodeling? L'Rell could still have kept the original at her side.

Perhaps they know only how to operate on Klingons, since the Hur'q meddling left them adaptable, as I theoretized before.

 

[Timo]

Hard to tell whose brain it was in Tyler's noggin, really. We didn't exactly learn of "mind transfer", only of Vulcan-style mumbo jumbo where chanting and finger gestures make a difference in whose mind is dominant. The heroes used terminology relating to brainwashing, suggesting the Tyler identity was plastered over the Voq ground truth somehow, so perhaps it really was a Klingon brain in there. And keeping a Klingon brain happy within a human body would probably indeed require a bit of grafting of other Klingon bits, too...

As for the Hur'q, considering them "invaders" is already a bit much, let alone having them as "conquerors" or "occupiers" or "meddlers". From onscreen references, they were mere raiders instead, running away with their loot rather than sticking around.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[AresB]

In Errand of Mercy, Kor said that the Klingon mind sifter would reach directly into a subject's mind and record every thought and bit of knowledge within. It would leave the subject a "mental vegetable." That's probably what they used it to imprint Tyler's identity in Voq's brain. How the Voq identity was deleted was indeed rather easy. Not to mention un-Klingon with the lack of physical brutality.

You're probably right about the Hur'q, though IMO genetic meddling knowledge and tech left by them would be a viable excuse for the Klingons' flexible looks, culture and knowledge of such things as gene splicing and mind sifting.

 

[Timo]

The Klingons could have come up with that tech all on their own, though. In both ENT and DSC, we learn offhand that these seeming iron age barbarians actually wield powerful biotech and nanotech as a matter of routine: they carry messages embedded in Klaang's blood, or smear nano-spies onto the fingers of unsuspecting victims. The tech level disconnect really strikes home the alienness of the culture.

As for the mind sifter, I'm partial to the short story where it's revealed to be a scam, a box with blinkies used for intimidating the interrogation targets. After all, it utterly fails on Spock. Kor's team would have zero reason to stop before the device extracts the truth out of the Vulcan, yet they are satisfied with the lie in the end, despite supposedly indeed having applied the device... Why would they be more willing to believe that they haven't captured a spy than that their victim is good at resisting? Are they inexperienced in interrogating Vulcanoids? (There go a dozen fun stories about them and Romulans!)

But if there's another way around that issue, then yeah, the sifter might well be a related technology, and a trade secret still unknown to the Federation a decade after the Voq incident.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[urbandk]

Great catch and cool thread.

I wonder if the TNG era Klingons can be understood in part as a synthesis of the DSC and TOS Klingons, like that's what a couple generations will do.

I know this doesn't account for the ENT non augment Klingons.

 

[Amasov]

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

I actually thought Lorca's tribble was going to be key in finding out that Tyler truly was Voq. I'll confess, I was a little disappointed that didn't happen.

Which reminds me, what happened to that tribble?

 

[Nerys Myk]

I actually thought Lorca's tribble was going to be key in finding out that Tyler truly was Voq. I'll confess, I was a little disappointed that didn't happen.

Which reminds me, what happened to that tribble?

snack

 

[Ralphis]

My headcanon is that the Disco Klingons are augmented augments. They're descended from victims of the Klingon augment virus, but DNA from another species was used to overwrite the human DNA in the augment virus, perhaps an archaic Klingon species (like Earth's Neanderthals or Homo erectus), or even another living species on Qo'nos that's a close genetic match to the Klingons (like how a chimpanzee is a close match to a human). Or maybe a little bit of both.

Again, that's just my headcanon. I'm NOT trying to suggest that that's what actually happened, or was the writers' intent.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Disco Klingons are from the north. TOS Klingons are from the south. The rest come from points in between.

 

[cooleddie74]

"We do not share driving directions with outsiders."

 

[Ovation]

Disco Klingons are from the north. TOS Klingons are from the south. The rest come from points in between.

Why naturally. Lots of planets have a north.

 

[cooleddie74]

And based on Luke and Leia kissing a lot of galaxies have the South.