Kahless
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Klingons were bad guys in TOS, therefore Kahless was portrayed as villainous in The Savage Curtain. With Klingons as good guys in TNG, Kahless no longer needed to be villainous.
It turns out that Kirk and company were bigoted against the Klingons because of Federation-Klingon antagonism, and were thus unfair in their assessments of Klingon historical figures.
Um, what? Rene Echevarria had nothing to do with the character of Kahless or the episode "Rightful Heir"... What exactly are you talking about?
No he didn't. He wrote a fantasy re-creation of Kahless created by the Excalibans from Kirk and company's ideas about what Kahless was like. He never wrote Kahless.
No, Ronald D. Moore wrote "Rightful Heir," the episode which featured the Kahless clone, from a story by James E. Brooks.
The Excalibans were pretty explicit in saying that they had created those figures by drawing them from the minds of the Enterprise crew.
Indeed,
Abraham Lincoln and Surak were exactly how Kirk and Spock imagined they would be to the point of Surak being a complete pacifist and not even trying to defend himself (which is inconsistent with assertions earlier in the series, that a Vulcan was quite capable of defending themselves if it was necessary). It also seemed that Kirk may have imagined that he could teach Lincoln a few things about leadership and this is maybe why Lincoln was quite content to follow Kirk's lead.
When?
GR's intention was to explore notions of good and evil as represented by Kirk and company's perceptions of historical figures.
If by "that time," you mean, around the time "The Savage Curtain" was written, you're quite wrong. "The Savage Curtain" was produced in 1969. Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, twenty-two years later.
If by "that time," you mean, around the production of "Rightful Heir," you should make your transitions more clear. You were talking about "The Savage Curtain" and gave no indication you had switched to "Rightful Heir;" it took me a minute to figure out what you meant. But "Rightful Heir" was produced in 1993, two years after Gene Roddenberry's death.
I wish. I'd be making more money if I were.
Wrong.
Gene Roddenberry died on 24 October 1991.
"Rightful Heir" first aired on 17 May 1993.
For the record, that's a span of 1 year, 6 months, and 23 days. Or, 571 days.
That's not "about the time" of "Rightful Heir."
Why not? Kirk admitted that he was deeply prejudiced against Klingons in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
I would have liked Worf better if he was an evil guy trying to be good and overcome the stigma of coming from a race that was forced to be evil. That to me would have been dramatically more valuable in the long run than Rightful Heir's cleverness. I would have found a way to make Rightful Heir work given that context instead of sacrificing it for that one episode. The whole character's essence was compromised. IMO.
Wanna have some fun? Go do an image search for a picture of Ronald Reagan meeting with the Taliban back in the 80's. All of history is propaganda.
That kind of writing where you have an entire race be "good" or "bad" is bad writing. It's far more interesting to have different people within a race have different personalities.
(Now where TNG fell down on writing Klingons was in making them berzerker-Vikings instead of the cold, calculating SOB's of TOS. Though one amusing fan theory says that the TOS Klingon's got their butts kicked by Kirk so many times, that it shoved their spines to the top of their heads and made them extra-grouchy in the process.....)
Writers are supposed to stick to the series bible for the stories and the character descriptions and TOS portrayed Klingons as bad guys. What's so hard to conform to? When you start changing things like that you loose the focus of the show and the characters even if the TNG bible said they became good guys, you lose that edge to play off of that Worf is not particularly liked still by other aliens simply because he's Klingon.
They carried on the so called traitor thing, but the audience knew it was a lie. Am I wrong? I would have liked to see some left over animosity/racism from Starfleet personel as well like the Maqui were supposed to have but didn't. After a while the characters became the actors, the writers were so lazy. That's what you get when you have twenty year old's writing ST.
They carried on the so called traitor thing, but the audience knew it was a lie. Am I wrong? I would have liked to see some left over animosity/racism from Starfleet personel as well like the Maqui were supposed to have but didn't. After a while the characters became the actors, the writers were so lazy. That's what you get when you have twenty year old's writing ST.
"It is true that in the future, you and the Klingons will become fast friends. You will work together." - Ayelborne, "Errand of Mercy"
The idea that Klingons are just the bad guys is a stupid idea that shouldn't be conformed to.
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