That's the one, thank you!
Star Trek II TWOK Parallel Universe??
- Thread starter Lt. Tyler
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Interesting that Cushing would use "The Celestial Toymaker" to justify his version's inclusion, because the producers were considering replacing Hartnell as the Doctor in that very story. The Toymaker turned the Doctor invisible for most of the story since Hartnell was ill and needed the time off, and the producers talked about just having the Toymaker change the Doctor's appearance at the end as a final prank, so they could recast the role right there. It's just as well they didn't go that route, since that would've been a one-time thing and it would've been harder to justify changing the Doctor's appearance again in the future.
Some people I talk to have suggested that the Cushing doctor is the partly human semi-regenerated Tennant Doctor ('Handy') that moved to one of the parallel universes. Just after many, many years on Earth he finally grows his new TARDIS, has had grandchildren and sort of forgotten most of his old life. Then starts having adventures again and runs into the Daleks.
I recall the anthology 'Short Trips and Sidesteps', published by the BBC themselves, featured one story featuring the actual cast of characters from the first Cushing movie.
Kirk being benched for some offense is a very intriguing concept, but I'm not really sure if it fits with what we see in TWOK. Kirk's conversations with both Spock and McCoy seem to imply that the only thing holding Kirk back from commanding a starship again is himself, not some outside edict from Starfleet.
I like this explanation. Simple and elegant. And it fits nicely with Chris Claremont's theory in the Debt of Honor graphic novel that the entire smooth-headed Klingon race was discommoded.
Well, just to play Devil's Advocate here, isn't is possible that the Organians developed their distaste for corporeal beings sometime after the ENT episode? I realize that 100 years isn't very long to beings as long-lived as the Organians, but it's possible they could have had some changes in their society over that time.
Until you get to DS9 and we find that the three most notable smooth-headed Klingons (to the viewers) all have lumpy foreheads, especially the very Klingon Claremont used as his chief antagonist, Kor. And I liked Debt of Honor.
For a while, I had a theory that the TOS Klingons belonged to a subspecies that only grew ridges relatively late in life. General Chang, who had only very faint ridges, would've been a middle-aged member of the subspecies, his ridges just starting to grow in.
It is plausible to have an in universe explanation that after ST ENT Observer effect their distaste for corporeal beings began.
For beings like the Organians, the 113 years between those episodes would be a change of seasons at most. A culture that conservative and hidebound wouldn't change that rapidly.
In my novel The Buried Age, I handwaved the "Observer Effect" Organians as a fringe group that didn't share the majority's attitudes and was seen by the majority as rather gauche for taking an interest in such distasteful matters.
An equally viable theory is that post TMP, when they started growing the ridges again, many Klingons didn't actually like them, and sanded them down to a minimal size and shape, so they could look Klingon without having this plate grafted to their forehead. Which could actually account for most of the Klingons in the movie era, as their foreheads are uniformly smaller, and with less pronounced ridging. Not to mention that the Ambassador in STIV is the last Klingon in the movie era that had a nose piece.
Maybe Klingons biology ethnic diveristy is expressed via their ridges, ignoring the ST ENT canon reasons. However my theory falls down when you consider Kor, Klang etc in DS9 with ridges. Or maybe it was fashionable to be ridgeless in TOS times.
I would've loved it if they'd established that "Klingon" was not the name of a single species, but of a multispecies imperial culture, or maybe of a community defined by a common belief system. Then the different types of Klingons we saw could've been different species within the empire. That would've been good, because empires should be multicultural by definition -- one state ruling over a bunch of other states -- so the tendency of sci-fi to depict alien "empires" consisting of only a single species is pretty ridiculous.
Although why several of the species had forehead ridges of various types would've been hard to explain. Maybe there was a lot of interspecies breeding. But if they'd gone that route, it would've opened the door for other "Klingon" designs that weren't based on forehead ridges.
The FASA RPG had three types of Klingons. Imperial Klingons (the 'real' Klingons with the ridges), Klingon-Human fusions (Klingon stock cross-bred with Humans to create a sub-species that would find it easier to interact with Humans), and Klingon-Romulan fusions with the same purpose except for Romulans.
I always found that a fascinating concept, but a little difficult to justify that amount of effort. After all, the Federation are a myriad of species. This level of genetic modification would probably take decades, and what of the Andorians, Vulcans and numerous other Federation races?
I always found that a fascinating concept, but a little difficult to justify that amount of effort. After all, the Federation are a myriad of species. This level of genetic modification would probably take decades, and what of the Andorians, Vulcans and numerous other Federation races?
Yeah, that's because John M. Ford worked on the game and used the same concepts he used in The Final Reflection. TFR had Klingon fusions with humans, "Roms," and other species.
You can't exactly blame Debt of Honor for not jibing with DS9 when Debt of Honor was published two years before the series even premiered. Canon is a constantly-moving target.
That was my point. 
Or that they still explored even though they had a distaste for corporeal beings. With species expanding their way, they would still want to keep an eye on any potential threats.
I basically consider TOS as the standard and "true" depiction of the Trek universe (besides much of S3), with both TMP and TWOK reinterpreting Trek in opposite directions and not quite lining up right with the standard. That doesn't mean they're not good in their own right, though.
Kor
Kor
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