TOS Klingons or new?

[GMSkarka]

TOS Klingons, especially when viewed through "The Final Reflection" by John Ford. Kai Kassai!

The entire problem with latter-period Klingons comes from the fact that early drafts of TSFS featured the Romulans, not the Klingons. When the change was made, they kept the "bird of prey" reference and grafted the more Romulan behavior onto Kruge and his crew. It just spiralled from there.

 

[Anwar]

Eh, even if they had used Ford's Klingons as the template for the TNG Klingons they wouldn't have been much better, since the TV medium can't give guys as much depth in 40 minutes that a novel can. They'd have ended up stripped of a lot of the depth and stuff that Ford gave them translated to TV.

 

[GMSkarka]

True enough. They'd have probably over-used the whole "chess" angle, as badly as they over-used the "honor" thing.

"Gahhh....another episode centered around klinzha?

 

[Warped9]

Chuckles said:
Hear, Hear.

Don't give me any of that, good day to die, robble robble, blood wine, robble robble, he has no honor garbage.

I hate modern Klingons.

Ditto.

 

[T'Bonz]

Yeah, they did a Klingon-Romulan swap in newer Trek.

I kinda miss the old Romulans. The newer ones were just so cardboard and villainous, with seemingly no redeeming factors.

And the thuggish Klingons became the honorable ones.

Bah.

 

[GMSkarka]

TBonz said:
Yeah, they did a Klingon-Romulan swap in newer Trek.

I kinda miss the old Romulans. The newer ones were just so cardboard and villainous, with seemingly no redeeming factors.

The Romulans fared even worse than the Klingons -- I mean, the Klingons went from the Fascist Mongol Horde to Samurai Vikings, but the poor Romulans had their concept completely strip-mined to provide elements for the Klingons, and later the Cardassians.

Look back on late TNG and the entirety of DS9, and tell me that it wouldn't have been better for them to just use the Romulans, rather than inventing another militaristic dictatorship modeled on the late Roman period.

 

[Anwar]

The Cardassians weren't based on the late Roman period, they were more like Nazis than the TOS Klingons were.

Plus the Cardassians have better make-up, Uniforms and a more unique ship design.

And we'd have lost a lot of the stories TNG and DS9 told if they used the Romulans in place of Cardassians, like all the DMZ stuff, the whole Bajor thing would've had to have been dropped since the Romulans were supposed to have isolated themselves for the last 60 years in TNG, the Dominion stuff probably wouldn't have happened, etc.

It wouldn't have been worth it.

 

[GMSkarka]

Anwar said:
The Cardassians weren't based on the late Roman period, they were more like Nazis than the TOS Klingons were.

The late Roman dictatorship pretty much directly influenced the Fascist movements, with the supremacy of the state, the cult of nationalism, the militarization of the society, the pageantry, etc. So, yes, the Cardassians *were* pretty much based on that.

Plus, there's pretty much nothing remotely Nazi about the TOS Klingons, so I'm really not sure where you're getting that from. If anything, they were a straightforward Cold-War-era Police State -- more Soviet than Nazi.

Anwar said:
Plus the Cardassians have better make-up, Uniforms and a more unique ship design.

Any of which could have been done with the Romulans -- I mean, they completely re-designed the Klingons, after all.

And we wouldn't have "lost" any stories -- I'm sure the writers would have been able to adapt.

My point was that the introduction of the Cardassians was pretty much unneccessary -- there was a perfectly good enemy race sitting there unused (the Romulans). Made even more irritating by the fact that so much of the Cardassian "feel" was lifted from TOS Romulans.

 

[Anwar]

I dunno, I liked TNG going on and telling more stories with their own creations rather than rely solely on TOS to supple them with everything.

Example, if they used the Romulans we'd have lost the war backhistory with them since the Romulans had been in isolation for 60 years, thus no war in the last 20 years and no submerged prejudice and stuff between the sides. The whole Bajor thing would've had to have been dropped due to the isolation thing, "Chain of Command" probably wouldn't have happened because Jellico was there solely because he negotiated the first peace treaty which now wouldn't have happened since there was no recent war.

So that would mean no DMZ (or in the Romulan scenario, "New Neutral Zone") and no Maquis.

Dropping Bajor would mean no DS9 in its entirety. So no wormhole, no Dominion.

Basically using the Romulans would negate the entire DS9 series since using the Romulans would've required way too much retconning and shoehorning of the Romulans, whereas the Cardassians allowed for these stories since they were a more recent invention and had more background historyhat could be filled in as the story went on.

 

[Unicron]

* shrugs * While I agree the writers made the Klingons into one-note aliens (and used them so often they became overexposed), I don't see a huge difference in the culture between TOS and TNG. I do think TNG handled their culture fairly well, before the whole "honor" thing became overblown. I also prefer the ridged makeup, since it makes them look alien and not like sunburned guys wearing costumes.

I think the Romulans have a sense of honor too, but I also think fans have made the mistake of reading too much into that, because of their hardly appearing at all in TOS. No doubt Mark Lenard's character was very honorable, but that doesn't mean all Romulans are. I believe their concept of honor is different, and they tend to be more opportunists - waiting to see what the other powers do and reacting accordingly.

 

[Anwar]

The implcation in BoT was that the Commander and the Centurion were the last of a dying breed, and most Romulans were more like Decius.

That said, TNG did some really good Romulan stories like "The Defector" and "Face of the Enemy" which showed the Romulans as 3-D.

 

[Vulcanian]

Both in personality and in looks

TOS Klingons I prefer better