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New Here: Klingon Question

Unfortunately, the (great) DS9 epsiode "Trials and Tribbleations" ruined that - put Worf together in a room with TOS Klingons, and one of the characters is going to say *something*!!! So they had to come up with a canon explanation for it.

No. The glorious thing about that episode is that they didn't come up with an explanation.

But it wasn't glorious because it pretty much said that there WAS a difference rather than just simply not addressing it at all.
 
Anyone notice how old McCoy in TOS was so much more convincing than old McCoy in TNG?

Did you see the test footage of McCoy for TNG? I wish they went with that instead.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/bonus_s1/sdrevisited_2/tng1_stardaterevisited2_211.jpg

Never saw that before, thanks. Yeah, that would've been better than the cross between McCoy and Doc Brown from Back to the Future.
I recall reading that the makeup in "Encounter at Farpoint" was based on what was used in "The Deadly Years".

That test footage looks like De with gray hair.
 
Did you see the test footage of McCoy for TNG? I wish they went with that instead.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/bonus_s1/sdrevisited_2/tng1_stardaterevisited2_211.jpg

Never saw that before, thanks. Yeah, that would've been better than the cross between McCoy and Doc Brown from Back to the Future.
I recall reading that the makeup in "Encounter at Farpoint" was based on what was used in "The Deadly Years".

That test footage looks like De with gray hair.

Sort of, yeah. Remember that the McCoy we see in TNG is supposed to be nearly 80 years older than the McCoy we see in the movies! Some gray hair and a few more wrinkles isn't going to cut it.
 
Never saw that before, thanks. Yeah, that would've been better than the cross between McCoy and Doc Brown from Back to the Future.
I recall reading that the makeup in "Encounter at Farpoint" was based on what was used in "The Deadly Years".

That test footage looks like De with gray hair.

Sort of, yeah. Remember that the McCoy we see in TNG is supposed to be nearly 80 years older than the McCoy we see in the movies! Some gray hair and a few more wrinkles isn't going to cut it.

Maybe he took up plastic surgery in his later years of practicing medicine.
 
Anyone notice how old McCoy in TOS was so much more convincing than old McCoy in TNG?

Did you see the test footage of McCoy for TNG? I wish they went with that instead.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/bonus_s1/sdrevisited_2/tng1_stardaterevisited2_211.jpg

That is probably what they'd use today, since what the novelverse would later establish about the human lifespan - 100 is considered prime physical condition - would make 137 years not anywhere near as ancient as McCoy looked on TNG.
 
Sort of, yeah. Remember that the McCoy we see in TNG is supposed to be nearly 80 years older than the McCoy we see in the movies! Some gray hair and a few more wrinkles isn't going to cut it.

But a face that looks like a jello mold is?


This is convincing:

vlcsnap-2013-01-08-18h26m34s124.jpg


This is not:

tve9210-19870926-322.jpg


The original makeup worked with Kelley's face. The Westmore makeup is "generic old man #12".
 
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I'm not going to argue that the makeup used in the episode was great, it wasn't. I don't think it was terrible but it was certainly lacking. (I thought the old-age makeup used in "Too Short a Season" was far worse, however.) Jut that the original old-age look wasn't far enough to depict a 137-year-old man where they essentially took Kelly and added some slightly grayer hair and some wrinkles. The old-age makeup in the TOS episode is very good, and the old-age makeup used on Pulaski in "Unnatural Selection" was decent, but, yeah, the makeup in EaF wasn't great.

Still, that McCoy looks more like a 137-year-old man than the original test makeup.

Look at the pictures, I also sort of think the difference is less about the makeup and more about the lighting used. The corridor scene is way overlit and makes the makeup look poor, the TOS scene seems to have much more natural and subdued levels of lighting, making things look better.
 
To be honest, I think it's one of those things that most fans would have been happy to accept as a "fact of life" - i.e. we all know Klingons look different in TOS because the budget was smaller, but in our minds we're happy to ignore that. Suspension of disbelief.

Unfortunately, the (great) DS9 epsiode "Trials and Tribbleations" ruined that - put Worf together in a room with TOS Klingons, and one of the characters is going to say *something*!!! So they had to come up with a canon explanation for it.

TBH, I've never watched Enterprise and never will, so I just assume they always had the bumpy foreheads. :P (and just put "Trials" out of my mind)....

No they didn't have to come up with a canon explanation they could have just left it as a mystery.

WORF: We do not discuss it with outsiders

Acknowledge it and move on.
 
It was just a joke in DS9, and should have been left as such. I didn't really like the explanation ENT gave.

But yeah, add me to the chorus who would have loved to have seen Worf as an old style Klingon, but with no one noticing. :techman:
 
To be honest, I think it's one of those things that most fans would have been happy to accept as a "fact of life" - i.e. we all know Klingons look different in TOS because the budget was smaller, but in our minds we're happy to ignore that. Suspension of disbelief.

Unfortunately, the (great) DS9 epsiode "Trials and Tribbleations" ruined that - put Worf together in a room with TOS Klingons, and one of the characters is going to say *something*!!! So they had to come up with a canon explanation for it.

TBH, I've never watched Enterprise and never will, so I just assume they always had the bumpy foreheads. :P (and just put "Trials" out of my mind)....

No they didn't have to come up with a canon explanation they could have just left it as a mystery.

WORF: We do not discuss it with outsiders

Acknowledge it and move on.

Or, again, not acknowledge it at all so that there's no explanation needed. Don't even touch it or address it, treat the Klingons as if they look like present ones, or do as above and have Worf look like a TOS Klingon. But don't acknowledge that there's a difference because that opens the doors for questions! I think up until that point people had already pretty much chalked up the differences just being due to different production values and not indicative or any "real" difference. But DS9 came out and said that there WAS a difference which brings up questions.
 
^ Doesn't the Star Fleet Universe do exactly that?

As relates to the smooth/bumpy forehead issue, no. We are to assume that all Klingons we see on screen are of the same species. Enterprise foolishly decided the "real" answer was a forehead-smoothing plague. :rofl:
 
It's the FASA games that assume that there are several different species inside the Klingon Empire who enjoy the right to call themselves Klingons. The idea also appears in some novels, most notably in the two John M. Ford ones because Ford was involved in writing FASA background material, too.

The FASA species are pretty close to the ENT excuse, actually: "Imperial" Klingons have the full ridges, but people with mixed blood are still Klingons if they have at least a bit of Imperial blood in them. They just lose their ridges if they are tainted with human blood, as the result of interspecies mating or deliberate devious manipulation. And ENT emphasizes the latter means of giving human DNA to Imperial Klingons...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Leave it to the Trek universe to come up with the most roundabout, complicated way to explain something.
 
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