into darkness klingons vs disco klingons

The easiest explanation is that it's just normal diversity among the Klingon race. Some have huge heads, some don't. If a subsequent DSC episode showed Klingons more like the ones we're used to seeing, this would all go away.

Although it could also be the result of an attempt to cure the Augment virus - but it went wrong and resulted in "Klingons on steroids". Meaning, it brought back their Klingon traits, but in 'overdrive' so to speak.

 

This has been my head canon, as well as more inbreeding among the upper classes to preserve "pure" Klingons.

 

Man, the STD Klingons are crap.

 

STD Klingons are crap. LOL.

 

Klingons are crap.

 

I also like how the ID Klingons like actual soldiers would look, wearing combat headgear and carrying/using guns (disrupters), as well as wearing jackets (although they use bladed weapons too.)

 

put hair back on Klingons and they'll start to look better

 

I guess I'd go with the Into Darkness klingons; the pictures posted in this thread have convinced me.

Anyway, it seems the klingons are being reinvented again for S2 of STD.

There really just shouldn't be an explanation. The Augment virus comes from the least-watched season of the least watched spin-off series; there's little reason for canon to remain beholden to it moving forward. It should just be assumed the redesign is retroactive (once again) and we're back to there never having been more than one "type" of klingon.

 

I value TOS more than any of the Trek incarnations, and I believed if the original intent were to make the Klingons wolf-men in outer space the producers would have. I wasn't born when any of these re-inventions happened, but when I started watching Star Trek in the early 2000's not once did I ever questioned the differences between TOS versions and Movie versions until that ridiculous episode of DS9 called Blood Oath. I talked to my Dad and my brothers about this and tried to piece together why the f*ck those original Klingons looked like THAT???

When they saw the episode, at the time, they were pissed off because they knew the fans turned pro has showed their ugly little heads. They're prompting the big lie to Trek fans the original intent for the Klingons was not seen because of budgetary restraints. From what I understand through my Dad and my older brothers were Trekfans simply accepted there were two types of Klingons... like they're more than 1 race of humans on Earth. Made sense to me. I agree with you, Bad Robot, but DS9 ruined everything.

 

They used a good mix of weapons, which I really liked.

 

One wonders what sort of an organization they represented. A homeworld SWAT team for policing the ruins of the Praxis explosion, chiefly against Klingon looters? A detachment of Marines usually intended to be wielded on raids and other expeditions offworld? A gang zealously guarding the bit of Ketha they currently hold?

The agile "choppers" they use, with the un-outer-space-like rappelling gear, would nicely befit the SWAT setting. But our heroes are familiar with this "D4", suggesting it gets used offworld often enough. And rappelling gear instead of transporters might support the idea of ragtag gangs low on resources.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Maybe they worked for a particular House that had an interest in that area.

Kor

 

Except Discovery directly tied into "In a Mirror, Darkly" (remember their plan A in the Mirror Universe was to find the USS Defiant?) which came just 2 or 3 episodes before the Klingon augment arc.

Glen Hetrick said recently than House Anntak's Klingons look a little different from the rest (with ridges extending to thr chin) because they're constantly modifying themselves. It still doesn't sync with Whar happened in ENT, but it's a really cool idea that one of the houses are constantly changing themselves in a manner the Federation has banned.

 

...In current retrospect, the gist of "continuity" here would probably be that Klingons had a full century of atypical obsession with body improvement, starting with Antaak's original experiments and culminating in the creation of the DSC and TOS Klingons. After this, there was backlash, and Klingons rigorously returned to the norm, rewriting history so that Bashir would read the amended version only.

DSC would be hard pressed to contradict this take, as the return to norm would come after the show concludes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Which all falls apart when The Picard Show or another 24th century Disco spinoff depicts Klingons in their new style as if the older looks never existed.

 

It doesn't mean they can't pick and choose what else to acknowledge. The Michael Westmore style of make-up is passed, and STD has given the universe a complete visual overhaul anyway. Once you've redesigned the klingons yet again it's silly to acknowledge that they ever looked any other way.

It's too much. We'll see what they do this season, but what they look like now should be retroactive; should be what they've always looked like and what they looked like in Worf's time. You don't redesign them yet again if you're still going to acknowledge not only how they appeared before (TOS) but also in between (Berman Trek). It's too confusing and too fan-exclusive.

I think CBS already knows this and will remain committed to their changes. And fans holding out for Westmore-style klingons in the TNG/Picard sequel will just be setting themselves up for disappointment.

 

I know, I know... It's just what works in "current retrospect".

The thing is, once again, it has never worked like that. Trek is always spinning off new stuff, with visual breakaways, and then crawling back with cross-references, "explanations" and general bridging/backpedaling.

Heck, the very fuss about revamping between S1 and S2 is indicative of the desire to please, rather than to, say, innovate. And pleasing always comes back to coming back. Or at least has done so, so far.

Confusing has never been a problem in Trek. Heck, the interesting bits all stem from confusion rather than from preplanning. And for two or three spinoff cycles now, it's been the fans who write or visualize Star Trek. Fans of the old, to boot, for obvious reasons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Years after we get an official explanation as to why TOS Klingons and TMP, TNG, DS9 and VOY Klingons are so different we then get another Trek show come along and spoil all of that leaving us to decide yet again is it yet another different race of Klingons in their mighty Empire? Klingons during Kirk's time were supposed to be infected with the augment virus, an idea I quite liked considering I don't like the show it was conceived on! So is this yet more proof that DSC is another universe? That way at least we can preserve our Klingon heritage theory for all time!
JB

 

It's just retroactive.

The klingons' make-up was retroactive after TMP, it stopped being retroactive (by necessity) when DS9 wanted to do a Digital Forest Gump on a classic TOS story to highlight their 100th episode. Worf provided the perfect non-explanation and it was brilliant.

The Augments story arc, which I often refer to with derision as the Ruffles Have Ridges arc, has always been for me a pointless fan-service exercise in Couldn't Leave Well-Enough Alone. With only the fourth episode of the five-part dual story actually being good, not counting the cleverly disastrous stand-off crisis at the Cold Station in episode two. The whole arc exists for the seeming purpose of building up to the klingon "explanation"/reveal, and I personally just find the whole thing redundant and fan-servicy.

With STD I like to just assume things are once again retroactive, and that we can just leave the whole Augments thing behind us. The producers can prove me wrong at any time, but I have faith they're mostly of a similar mind.

And anyway classic TOS is full of stories that never got referenced again by any other version of Trek, just because their premises were too silly or weird (galactic barriers, identical planets and "gravity assist" time travel for example). My favorite ST movie The Voyage Home is among them. To me it is normal that every version of ST should clean house, so to speak.

I've also always regarded the production design changes in TMP, the 2009 film and now STD to be retroactive. Even when TOS "homage" episodes of TNG and DS9 implied (tounge-in-cheek, let's not forget) that they weren't.

Creatively speaking, every ST is its own universe. It can't not be when the "primary" source material is 50-plus years old.

 

That episode of ENT where the Klingon starts growing more hair and savagery was fantastic I thought! That TOS Klingon look of the sixties which I always found disquieting as a child was back and I loved the reasoning behind it!
JB