Make a fist. Look at your knuckles.
Besides, it's canonical that the ridges are part of the bone structure. Here's a prop Klingon skull used in ENT:
http://brblife.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/star-trek-ent-“klingon-skull”-for-auction/
Star Trek IV question about makeup?
- Thread starter Garak007
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Make a fist. Look at your knuckles.
Besides, it's canonical that the ridges are part of the bone structure. Here's a prop Klingon skull used in ENT:
http://brblife.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/star-trek-ent-“klingon-skull”-for-auction/
Well a rhinoceros and a triceratops look similar in many ways, but one's a reptile and one's a mammal. A skink and a salamander look similar, but one's a reptile and one's an amphibian. A shark and a dolphin resemble each other in many ways, but one's a fish and one's a mammal.
^Which is exactly the point I think Jarod was making -- that just because an alien creature resembles a reptile in one or two ways, that doesn't make it logical to assume it must have all the characteristics of a reptile.
(For that matter, dinosaurs weren't exactly reptiles, or at least were their own special category of reptiles. There's increasing evidence that they were warm-blooded.)
(For that matter, dinosaurs weren't exactly reptiles, or at least were their own special category of reptiles. There's increasing evidence that they were warm-blooded.)
I don't recall seeing that prop onscreen. Doesn't mean I'm right, but for the fact that far too many actors moved their eyebrows, which moved their foreheads, which was onscreen, and therefore canon, for me to accept that Klingons have no muscles above their eye sockets. Especially when many of these muscles are used for things other than making faces, like chewing. Besides, I made a fist, and saw more of the tendons for my fingers than the ends of my finger bones, and they weren't clearly defined by any means. Throw 'Canon' at me all you want, I'll throw back anatomical necessity every time. Let's just not get snippy about it, okay?
Oh, you're kidding me! That's because of the limitations of the makeup technology used. It's not something you're supposed to take literally. My God, do you believe that Worf's forehead actually changed shape between the first and second seasons? Of course it didn't! Makeup is an approximation. It's meant to create an impression. These are human beings wearing pieces of plastic and pretending to be aliens. You have to be willing to take it with less than absolute literalism.
The idea that "every tiny little detail that appears onscreen is unshakeable canon" is absurd. It's an erroneous corollary to the statement that nothing offscreen is canonical. (Nothing off Earth is Swedish territory, but that doesn't mean everything on Earth is Swedish territory.) When we see an actor's makeup appliance shifting like a piece of plastic glued to the face, we're supposed to ignore it, to suspend disbelief and look past the reality to the fantasy it represents. It's an error, a flaw, not a canonical fact.
Evolution isn't always about anatomical necessity. Elaborate, individualized traits such as Klingon forehead patterns could only have evolved through sexual selection, as a form of mating display. Where's the anatomical necessity in a peacock's tail? Sexual selection can produce all sorts of bizarre anatomical attributes.
In that case, it's also canon that Scotty sometimes has nine fingers and sometimes ten, often during the same adventure! And that Saavik had plastic surgery and changed her eye colour after the death of Spock.
You're taking "onscreen is canon" to bizarre lengths and it must constantly ruin your viewing pleasure.
I want one of those.
Here's a possible explanation for the variations of Klingon ridges (TMP vs. Other Movies vs. TNG, etc): The Augment Virus acted in duifferent ways based on the various genetic differences from one Klingon to the next. Surely, there must be some racial/genetic diversity in the Klingon race, yes? Perhaps in some genetic lines you got the TMP "extended spine" version of the ridges, while other genetic lines got the ridges we saw in TNG. Some folks, i.e. Chang, had a genetic structure a little more resistant to the virus, and thus show less prominent ridges, etc.
There is no hard line between mammal and reptile, though--mammals evolved from reptiles and it is quite possible that a mammalian species that evolved on another planet could retain reptilian traits we have shed. I don't think this is true of Klingons (I'm with you, I think that the ridges are an extension of the spinal column, which they clearly were intended to be in TMP and, given the fact that Worf's back is gnarled in a way reminiscent of his cranium, in TNG, too) but it is pretty clearly the idea behind the Cardassians, who are hairy and scaly and--in the case of the females we have seen--in possession of rather sweet racks.
EDIT: I see you've already dealt with this. Oh well.
Amongst humans, one skeleton looks pretty much like any other. It would be a radically-different anatomy to have individualized patterns in the bone structure.
(Chang would have liked that detail: "Alas, Poor Yorick! I know him by his crest!")
(Chang would have liked that detail: "Alas, Poor Yorick! I know him by his crest!")
I dunno--the wall of skulls at Philadelphia's profoundly disturbing Mutter Museaum shows a great variety in skulls.
Yeah, I've always thought that all these Klingon differences can be explained through the development of the virus, different reactions to it, various attempts to cure it...all that kind of thing. I like to think that also explains why Klingon blood is pink in VI. And by the time of Next Gen, everything's more or less resolved that way, so they're all as we recognise as standard Klingons.
Such individualized traits as you cite are always surface detail. Anatomical necessity is the only factor nature uses to determine internal structure. Even if the foreheads are supposed to be perceived as unmoving, the elaborate detail is still surface detail, not underlying bone structure.
Skin doesn't conform that tightly, or you wouldn't be able to put your hand on your forehead and move the skin across the underlying skull. Thus, the elaborate patterns are a feature of the surface tissue, or skin, and can be manipulated. Or do you have a better explanation for how many Klingon characters, Korris in "Heart of Glory" for instance, can have scars that cut into their forehead patterns, while not doing damage to the skull underneath? Or, for that matter, a better explanation for how the various knobs and grooves supposedly on the skull can transfer so exactly to surface tissue, which is soft, and pliable, and therefore won't transfer detail?
How can you be so definite in your opinions about alien species that exist in a fictitious world set far in the future.
If you want to pretend that the cranial ridge on a TMP Klingon is a mere skin blemish, then please go on believing it, but most of the rest of us know it's intended to be a bony crest. Made of slip latex, but standing in for bone and skin. And ditto every Klingon to come after that prototype.
This is why I waited so long to start posting here. :P
Well, yes, in stuff chosen for a museum display. But I suspect that two humans with no history of serious injury who died at roughly the same age would produce nearly identical skeletons. You can't tell a male skeleton from a female skeleton at a glance. (The relative length of the fingers are a clue, but you have to get the angles of pelvic bones to be sure.) On the other hand, the Klingon detective could say, "Amazing: Someone murdered old butterfly-skull and old beetle-skull and hid the bones for thirty years!"
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