I think that Klingons should've stayed as they were in TOS.

Kor is one of the coolest, and more interesting Klingins, both in TOS, and DS9. I thought Koloth was pretty boring in both shows, and Kang was way cooler in TOS.

 

Calling a race other than ourselves "grotesque monsters" because they look different is kind of sad at this point. I think part of the point of Trek is that if we can accept these as our equals or even more, then we've really come a long way. Now mind you, you also have to judge otherworldly aliens by how they act, and in our terms, they don't act particularly nicely, but there are plenty of those on ST that do. Hopefully you do not judge these differences as harshly.

RAMA

 

I meant identical to Vulcans, not Klingons. I misspoke. In the TNG series they look different to Vulcans, with triangular foreheads

 

Star Trek is a television show, for entertainment. Some of the messages like "robots like data are equal to living creatures" and "there is no difference between monstrous aliens and humans" are stupid to me, and I ignore them for entertain


The use of race is weird, because races are like humans — Black, White, East Asian, South Asian, American Indian etc

I don't think there is anything wrong with thinking that aliens are monstrous beasts, when they look like monstrous beasts.

The virtue of tolerance depends on what it is to be tolerated.

 

And yet TNG allowed the audience to take that alien looking character of Worf and embrace him as part of the crew. Michael Dorn breathed life into that character and allowed us to see past the Klingon turtle-head and see his humanity.

 

Born? I think you mean rose to power. They had to have been born in the '60s and '70s, with the ones that Arik Soong created a century later being further modifications of their DNA.

 

It's a brilliant book and If I'm not mistaken Ron Moore cited it as one of his sources when writing the Klingons for TNG, but iif so it was garbled in the translation, with only some broad strokes surviving intact the concept of family lines become the Klingon great houses, and Ford's intelligent and even refined Klingons, are lost in a crowd of Viking Bikers

 

Yeah totally. On first watching Heart of Glory the few nods to TFR gave me a lot of hope for how TNG was gonna portray Klingons. Needless to say that soon died as the viking bikers were increasingly unveiled.
My two biggest disappointments are that firstly you cannot logically trace a line from how TOS Klingons are portrayed to the TNG ones. But with Ford's you can trace back to the TOS portrayal.
And secondly that the TFR Klingons are an actual threat to the UFP, and you can easily see how they manage to rule a stellar empire. The childish temper tantrum TNG ones couldn't organise a drunken party in a brewery. And as for fighting against ranged energy weapons with ancient blades - no wonder they lost to the Federation!!

 

Although, the majority of Romulans seen in TOS wore helmets, so who is to say they didn't have ridges on their foreheads? Indeed, there must still be Romulan without ridges in the 24t century, otherwise how could Spock publicly walk the streets of Romulus without anyone wondering "why doesn't he have forehead ridges?"

 

Tellarites.

 

I prefer the 1979-2005 look of the Klingons with a bone thrown that, yes, there were Klingons who looked like the ones in TOS but, "We do not discuss it with outsiders".

I never saw the Klingons as grotesque monsters (and I still don't). Sometimes they've been depicted as adversaries but it's never been anything more. I never had any problem seeing Worf and Torres as people who, by the way, were main characters.

And, yeah, to judge a race solely by their appearance goes against everything Star Trek is supposed to stand for.

 

That's okay.

 

Ask your mother sometime if she would have killed to save you, if you had ever been endangered by unthinking others who didn't recognize you as a sentient being.

It doesn't even take that much to prompt a parent to do whatever it takes for the well-being of their offspring. Anyone who has been a parent, surrogate/adoptive parent, caregiver, pet guardian, etc. could identify with the Horta.

I recommend checking out some of the '80s TOS novels by Diane Duane. At least two of her Rihannsu series (haven't read all of them yet) have a Horta as a member of the Enterprise crew. Ensign (later Lieutenant) Naraht is a valuable member of the crew and if memory serves, he mentions that his mother still thinks highly of Spock (and still admires his ears).

I can just imagine the weird looks I'd get from people if I said, "You are brightly greeted!" instead of "Hi."

Some of the dialogue was so horribly awkward, like the writer had just picked words out of a thesaurus (I came to hate the word "glimpse" because of that episode).

Whut?

B'Elanna Torres is part human, part Klingon. She has mammalian biology, and a mammalian reproductive system.

Yes, Tom Paris did have lizard babies. But that was with Janeway and they were both lizards at the time. B'Elanna was never a lizard. She gave birth to Miral the same way any mammal does.

All the peoples you describe are human, as in one species, able to reproduce with each other.

Some "monstrous beasts" just happen to be humans with a reprehensible political agenda.

I have a tape of filk music, and two of the songs are about the Salt Vampire and the Horta. After listening to the one about the Salt Vampire - "Many different faces is a part of what I am..." and the creature expressing remorse for having to kill in order to survive - I ceased to think of it as a monster. It was simply another sentient lifeform, trying to survive and not having the luxury of doing so without causing other sentient people to die.

 

Perhaps tangential to this topic, but given recent comments on DSC's Klingons, that they are from different worlds and therefore evolved differently are these perhaps the first near-Klingons we've seen in the franchise just as we have numerous near Humans Deltans, Betazeds,Bajora. Capellans, etc. perhaps these outlyer Klingons are the product of Preserver or Hur'q transplantation, brought back into the empire as it expanded, so they are culturally Klingon, while being distinct aesthetically and ethnically

 

This is actually utterly irrelevant. She's a Klingon. Reptiles from Kronos (speculation on) give live birth, and breastfeed their young. Klingons are therefore reptiles. There are reptiles on Earth that incubate their eggs inside and give live birth, like Garter snakes. Who are we, mere fans, to say that Klingons don't do likewise? B'Elanna was never a lizard. Her ancestors were dinosaurs.

Now, Worf, on the other hand, his ancestors were Dungeness crabs. That spit venom.

 

I recall saying B'Elanna was never a lizard, so why are you arguing that?

As for the rest of this... I have absolutely no idea where it's coming from.

I just have a problem with the notion that a mammal and reptile can mate and produce viable offspring. If you have any links that say otherwise, please post them.

 

Wrong. The rest of us did come to identify, that was the point. DitD was about overcoming the impulse you're claiming as natural and unavoidable. Klingons and Romulans looked like monsters because of things on their foreheads?
--------------
The only reason I'd have wanted TOS Klingons to continue was that the later Klingons were so different that they qualified as a different people. We should have had both, with newer Klingons under a different name.

 

And with that... out would come the pitchforks aimed at Joseph Merrick (AKA The Elephant Man) The creature, who upon witnessing the appearance of an intelligent being, sees only a beast, is the beastlier.

That is one of the core ideals at the heart of the Star Trek experience, imho

 

There are monsters in Trek, but they don't often look like monsters.

I wouldn't describe any aliens as "beasts." That word makes me think of cattle, or some other animal.