Klingon change for season 2?
- Thread starter Roald
- Start date
This would fit one of Gene Roddenberry's explanations for the Klingons.
"Just as there are different races of humans, there are different races of Klingons, and the Klingons seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture are not the same race as the ones we saw on the original series."
There's far more detail about the season 2 Klingons here, including--yes--discussion of hair and its role in Klingon culture. EDIT: Looks like this is what Ralphis refers to above.
https://trekmovie.com/2018/08/06/st...r-star-trek-discovery-season-2-hints-at-hair/
https://trekmovie.com/2018/08/06/st...r-star-trek-discovery-season-2-hints-at-hair/
Before the series began airing this is what I expected. They talked about the many different Klingon houses. How they were going to use it as an analogy for the United States. Meaning there are a lot of different subcultures that clash and are in conflict with each other. But we did not see that at all in season 1. We saw one type of Klingons that dressed and looked the same.
I will give them a little benefit of the doubt. Maybe this was the plan all along to reveal in season 2. But why talk about it so much before season 1 if they never intended to reveal it until season 2? Yet are so secretive about everything else.
I am very glad this will be finally explored. Not just because the new designs do not fit previous preconceptions. No, due to the empty hole in center of Klingon mythology for decades. They are an Empire that has conquered many different worlds but we have never seen those worlds. Nor any real diversity that would represent in the Empire. Instead we always get one single style Klingon at a time for whatever is in production.
I will give them a little benefit of the doubt. Maybe this was the plan all along to reveal in season 2. But why talk about it so much before season 1 if they never intended to reveal it until season 2? Yet are so secretive about everything else.
I am very glad this will be finally explored. Not just because the new designs do not fit previous preconceptions. No, due to the empty hole in center of Klingon mythology for decades. They are an Empire that has conquered many different worlds but we have never seen those worlds. Nor any real diversity that would represent in the Empire. Instead we always get one single style Klingon at a time for whatever is in production.
LOL looks like someone frequents this board. They used one of the pics from our Photoshop Klingon Hair thread. Congrats to Burning Hearts of Qo'onos for their excellent hairy Kol. Pity they didn't use my awesome rendition of L'Rell with purple Leia buns. Oh, well, maybe next time.
For those who are curious or just want to have a laugh at our attempts, here's a link to the old thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/photoshop-hair-onto-these-klingons.290838/
It's good when people who make mistakes take responsibilityMy hope isn't that they redesign the existing Klingons, just that they finally plump out their ranks with variations. And hair.
A complete do-over would pretty much admit they fucked up the first time.
[Mostly composed before the TrekMovie link was posted, but I fell asleep! Addendum to follow. Hope it's coherent enough...]
At this point, I am in favor of it being addressed in some fashion, whether directly or obliquely. This is a reversal from how I felt after what I considered to be the rather mediocre and entirely unneeded ENT story that sought to "explain" the TOS Klingons all too patly. (That's not an ENT bash; I actually liked the show a lot overall, and even more so after a recent re-watch. I just thought they went too far on that one, and for not a satisfying enough return. It just left me going "meh.") In restoring some ambiguity to the situation, DSC has actually managed to make me want to find out more, piquing an interest in the subject that I never felt before, and honestly never expected to. So, good on them for that!
Pardon my Godwin here, but one thought I keep returning to regarding T'Kuvma's "Remain Klingon" bit is that it reminds me of how the Nazis had (and some still have, unfortunately) all these distorted and pseudo-historical views of so-called racial purity, of what it meant to be "Aryan" (a term they grossly misused) and how in spite of building this whole killer cult around his obsessions with these twisted ideals, Hitler wasn't even blond.
I also think back to the unused story treatment for the ultimately-unproduced Phase II series back in the '70s called "Kitumba," in which we were to find out that the very term "Klingon" had been misunderstood by Our Heroes™, and in fact referred only to a particular warrior caste within the species and culture. It seems to me to hold some interesting possibilities for inspiration in dealing with the issue. We also know that they've already taken some inspiration from John M. Ford's novel The Final Reflection...IIRC, some of the actors were given it to read as background material in preparing for their roles, and the game played by the Klingons in "Will You Take My Hand" (DSC) finale originated from it. I haven't actually read it myself (yet) but my understanding is that it features a Klingon program of genetic engineering designed to create hybrids between Klingons and species they seek to conquer, as a way of learning more about them, to that end.
Putting together something more or less along the lines of the above (in some substantially adapted and reworked form of course) with the Augment story from ENT and the surgically-altered-infiltrator angle that they have already picked up on from "The Trouble With Tribbles" (TOS) in the form of Tyler's transformation, and perhaps even throw in something to do with the ancient Hur'Q invasion that we've heard of but know little about, and you have a fair mix of fertile ideas to play with. And again, I don't necessarily think it should all be tied up neatly with a single "explanation." I would like to get a better sense of understanding, but not a total one that leaves no unanswered questions or room for differing interpretations down the line. Sometimes intriguing suggestion is better than direct explication.
[Addendum after reading TrekMovie article...]
Pretty cool tease; I like what I'm hearing.
I just hope that if the "Rightful Hair" legend is to play a role in Klingons ritualistically shaving their heads or something along those lines, that they account for the fact that it was supposedly known only to the highest of Clerics in the 24th century. (Perhaps the reason it was supposedly absent from the sacred texts at that point wasn't actually that it had never been recorded, as we were told, but rather that it had been edited out and covered up? After all, history is written by the victors, and all history is revisionist history to some extent.) I'm sure they've figured something out that will fit once the story has fully unfolded. Looking forward to it! Qapla'!
-MMoM
Well, that's certainly consistent with what's said in "Ethics" (TNG):
RUSSELL: Overdesigned...Klingon anatomy. 23 ribs, two livers, eight-chambered heart, double-lined neural pia mater...I've never seen so many unnecessary redundancies in one body.
CRUSHER: Unnecessary? The Klingons refer to it as the brak'lul. Almost every vital function in their bodies has a built-in redundancy in case any primary organ or system fails.
RUSSELL: It's a good design in theory, but in practice, all the extra organs means just that much more can go wrong.
-MMoM
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The thing about comments like this (sorry for using a throwaway comment as an example, I don't mean anything by it), is it assumes there is no action that would satisfy all fans.
But in fact, usually there is, for any given topic, and that's why people are continually surprised by how out of touch Star Trek show-runners can be at negotiating the nuances of their franchise. Take Marvel as a good example, where 95% of their decisions satisfy everyone, fans and new viewers alike, with a few exceptions, i.e. Malekith the Accursed being wasted as a villain, despite being one of Thor's most famous and charismatic arch enemies. I'm no Marvel expert, but the impression I get, is that he was probably meant to be something more like a despotic and militant version of David Bowie in Labyrinth.
In the case of Klingons, giving them some hair and maybe showing some variations in makeup (maybe even a couple of TOS Klingons in the back of a crowd somewhere), would satisfy literally everyone. People liked the Into Darkness designs, despite them being fairly radical. New fans would never notice, or would actually learn a bit of lore by Googling ("who are those ridgeless Klingons in the background crowd"), and old fans would have a way of linking every Klingon, according to their tastes.
Star Trek fandom is not prone to blind criticism and does not deserve to be portrayed as incapable of being satisfied, the fans are not some unreasonable horde that hate without reason (well, some individuals might be in any given group), most critics of DSC or the Kelvin films or ENT would have been largely satisfied by a few key demonstrations of understanding the material.
Just out of interest, let's look at what Doug Drexler, who let's not forget won an Oscar, before taking a pay cut to work on TV for his favourite franchise, thought about the design of the NX-01:
As an Original Series fan, Drexler became concerned with the chosen visual direction the producers had decided upon for the new prequel series, but as former co-worker Mandel stated, "Having been around then, I also know that Doug Drexler and John Eaves did exactly what the producers asked them to," despite the fact that Drexler, while proud of "(…) the NX-01, even though it was a frustrating experience," considered himself "(…) a "canon" kind of guy. I would have liked to have seen the Daedalus style ship. You know…the sphere instead of saucer. The producers wanted it to be a saucer because they wanted it "recognizable"." It hinted at elevated tension levels between producers and creative staffers on what a "proper" prequel visual style or starship design lineage should look like.
Also, on the first two Kelvin Timeline films:
"Technically they are beautiful… the work is stunning… however… and I hope no one will hold this against me… I did not enjoy the last two films, and honest…I really wanted to… but for me, Star Trek has to have a philosophical, humanist bend to it… always making a point, or asking a question. It should be introspective, and self examining. That's the Roddenberry factor. The new films are devoid of Gene Roddenberry, and at the end of the day, I'm not ok with that."
He is a diplomatic and good natured guy as far as I can tell from his Memory Alpha article, and these comments were uncharacteristic, so hope he does not mind his words being used as an example, but this is a person who understands the pretty obvious nuances surrounding Star Trek; that it has a fictional history, that it has a heart. None of what he said about the NX-01 would get in the way of telling a good story. And as for Star Trek's humanist bend, it's as important to the material as spirituality is to Star Wars, neither franchise would be what it is without it, so if that is a shackle on producers, who would rather create a work with a different soul, maybe they should rethink why they want to work on Star Trek specifically.
Why are you here then grendel? If you respect Trek fans so little, seems like a waste of your life and attention talking to them on a forum.
I respect lots of people and discussions here. But the idea that there is ever going to be a new series that isn't at least a little controversial is extremely naive and, imo, displays a total misunderstanding of what 'fandom' is.
There's plenty of room for discussion about the exact extent of the issue - is it really a majority, is it a very small but very loud minority or is it somewhere in between? How much of it fits the troll fan stereotype, ie, totally incoherent rage, versus how much is just a case of different fan groups having fundamentally different ideas about what things should be, or even individual fans having self-contradictory reactions to simiilar creative decisions. But it is unquestionably real and experienced often enough to rather undermine any argument that its somehow insignificant.
It is also remarkably consistent across every major fandom I have experienced, including Marvel. Some people hate almost every marvel villain. Some won't shut up about Scarlet Witch's powers or costume. Some actually claim that MS, not Sony, ruined Spider-man. And you're actually correct that MS does a far better job than almost any other franchise at satisfying LOTS of people simultaneously, yet these complaints aren't even close to being the tip of the iceberg.
The simple truth is, ask ten fans what any episode or show did right or wrong, and you're almost guaranteed to get at least eight or nine different answers, regardless of quality. There is no such thing as a decision that will please everyone.
There's plenty of room for discussion about the exact extent of the issue - is it really a majority, is it a very small but very loud minority or is it somewhere in between? How much of it fits the troll fan stereotype, ie, totally incoherent rage, versus how much is just a case of different fan groups having fundamentally different ideas about what things should be, or even individual fans having self-contradictory reactions to simiilar creative decisions. But it is unquestionably real and experienced often enough to rather undermine any argument that its somehow insignificant.
It is also remarkably consistent across every major fandom I have experienced, including Marvel. Some people hate almost every marvel villain. Some won't shut up about Scarlet Witch's powers or costume. Some actually claim that MS, not Sony, ruined Spider-man. And you're actually correct that MS does a far better job than almost any other franchise at satisfying LOTS of people simultaneously, yet these complaints aren't even close to being the tip of the iceberg.
The simple truth is, ask ten fans what any episode or show did right or wrong, and you're almost guaranteed to get at least eight or nine different answers, regardless of quality. There is no such thing as a decision that will please everyone.
Okay, I see your point of view now. I don't know if I have seen self-contradictory reactions too often however, often I find the criticisms of others understandable, even if I abjectly disagree with them. So I always try to leave a considered response.
In general, I think Trek should aim for a higher standard of coherence, i.e. Marvel's (comparatively) high standards of success in satisfying both new and old fans. I think it falls short at times, and would argue for a more concerted attempt at visual coherence.
In general, I think Trek should aim for a higher standard of coherence, i.e. Marvel's (comparatively) high standards of success in satisfying both new and old fans. I think it falls short at times, and would argue for a more concerted attempt at visual coherence.
True grendel, but there is also something as a ‘general consensus’... like there’s a general consensus that The Empire Strikes Back is better than The Phantom Menace... and there’s a general consensus that DS9 was a good Star Trek series (even though there will always be people that think both Empire and DS9 are the worst of the worst)... Even though it won’t affect my personal love for DSC, I’m hoping the general consensus towards it will become that it’s a damn good series.. my guess is this will happen during season 2..!
There is a tendency these days for very small groups to make lots and lots of noise in an effort to claim their opinion as "general consensus" because everyone wants to argue from majority for some reason...
Take Discovery, haters are gonna say that the general consensus is it's shit, people who like it will say that the general consensus is it's a great success... so which is it?
The truth is, people yelling about it either way on the internet are really a tiny fraction but because everything these day has to be the worst or greatest EVER! and everybody must agree with one of those, the real majority of the people who watch it, those that just enjoy the show and aren't bothered to convince everybody how RIGHT! they are about something, don't even get a say in the debate...
Anyway, my general consensus is that the whole general consensus thing is entirely silly.
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