John M. Ford Klingons! Kai kassai!
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Poll Which Star Trek Series Klingons Love Best
- Thread starter iliescu
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TOS/TOS movies. Devious, war-like, intelligent, powerful. The TNG-era Klingons were idiotic headbangers that required massive suspension of disbelief to buy that they ever would have invented the wheel, let alone FTL travel.
I would have liked to see more of the Abrams versions of the Klingons. The deleted scenes from 2009 held tremendous promise.
I would have liked to see more of the Abrams versions of the Klingons. The deleted scenes from 2009 held tremendous promise.
That's my choice as well. Heavy Metal TMP Klingons for life!
On a side note, why "New Voyages" and "Phase II" are even options, much less separate options, is beyond me.
DS9 surely did the most with the Klingons of any Trek series though. I mean:
- Although Worf was only on from Season 4 onward, he was given a much more weighty role in DS9 than he ever got on TNG (where he was much more of a secondary character)
- Bringing Worf along brought along his arc characters for a few appearances, including Kurn (Yay!), Gowron (yawn), and Alexander (Yuck!)
- Martok was heavily featured from Season 5 onward
- Via Dax we got re-introduced to Kang, Koloth, and Kor, all of which get fond farewells (Kor gets three episodes and his own swan song!)
- Grilka only appears twice, but her little plot arc with Quark is charming.
Voted Voyager since B'Elanna Torres is a very bright and smart as Klingon on and off Screen. Thanks for the summary though, those 9 episodes should be seen again. Did not remember those but they are there so will remember to recollect some time. Yea with that many points can see DS9 in first, thought Voyager might be second though at least.
As I said upthread, despite Torres nominally being half Klingon, I don't think the series did much with it - though it was eventually explained in-show due to estrangement from her mother. There were maybe five episodes across the entire show which actually dealt with her Klingon identity beyond just being pissed off all the time, and aside from Barge of the Dead, I don't think they really added that much to the Klingon mythos/culture.
I do like the idea (first presented with K'Ehleyr) that she was a half-alien who favored her human side. It's the opposite approach from Spock.
I think Torres is a good character. She's just not much of a Klingon character. She's more of a character who happens to be a Klingon. The Doctor and Seven got lots of episodes highlighting their identity. Hell, I think Chakotay got more related to being Native American than Torres did related to being Klingon. Let's see:
Faces - Torres gets split into her human/Klingon halves
Day of Honor - Torres confronts the fact that she has repressed her Klingon identity.
Barge of the Dead - The best Torres "Klingon episode" - but also an obvious rewrite of an episode meant for Worf on DS9
Lineage - Torres wants her unborn child altered to not look Klingon, so as not to experience the painful isolation of difference she had.
Prophecy - We meet some lame, ultra-religious Klingons who believe Torres's unborn child is the Messiah
That's it. That's all the substantive Klingon content VOY had - aside from a few holodeck appearances like in The Killing Game and some one-off comments.
The writing for the TOS Klingons was excellent! In the series we met Kor, a Klingon warrior who looked forward to engaging the Federation fleet at Organia while on Capella IV we met Kras, a cowardly Klingon hoping to obtain mineral rights like the Enterprise and in Koloth we meet a devious, crafty tactitian who wants to prove that Sherman's planet can be better run by the Klingon Empire than the Federation, Krell it seems is a sneaky Klingon officer supplying weapons to the villagers so that they will attack the hill people on the planet Neural, Kang is a Klingon Commander with the same attributes that Kirk has, he demands respect from his crew and gets it while also caring about a Klingon colony on a planet that he believes has been destroyed by Federation aggression and the Klingon Commander that trails the Enterprise in the Tellun star system wants to protect Klingon interests on Elas which is in an area of space that the Klingons claim jurisdiction! So I'd say the Klingons here are more interesting and their own characters rather than the honour shouting barbarians of the TNG and later eras of Trek!
JB
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The writing for the TOS Klingons was excellent! In the series we met Kor, a Klingon warrior who looked forward to engaging the Federation fleet at Organia while on Capella IV we met Kras, a cowardly Klingon hoping to obtain mineral rights like the Enterprise and in Koloth we meet a devious, crafty tactitian who wants to prove that Sherman's planet can be better run by the Klingon Empire than the Federation, Krell it seems is a sneaky Klingon officer supplying weapons to the villagers so that they will attack the hill people on the planet Neural, Kang is a Klingon Commander with the same attributes that Kirk has, he demands respect from his crew and gets it while also caring about a Klingon colony on a planet that he believes has been destroyed by Federation aggression and the Klingon Commander that trails the Enterprise in the Tellun star system wants to protect Klingon interests on Elas which is in an area of space that the Klingons claim jurisdiction! So I'd say the Klingons here are more interesting and their own characters rather than the honour shouting barbarians of the TNG and later eras of Trek!
JB
- You're describing the Klingons as individual people, not as a culture. I guess we get Kahless, but that's about it. Nothing about Klingon mythology, language, cuisine, or any of the other elements which would make them seem "alien." TOS didn't really define the Klingons at all besides "the bad guys." They could have just as easily been from a rebel human colony, and the stories would have been almost exactly the same.
- They're still all antagonists of some sort, even if Kor and Kang had some sense of nobility to them. Where are the heroic Klingons like Martok? The harmless Klingons like the fat chef on DS9? The Klingon lawyers in DS9 and ENT? The Klingon scientist from TNG?
During TOS the Klingons were the baddies so why make them seem overly heroic? To fool the audience perhaps?
JB
JB
The point is the Klingon characters may have - in some cases - been a bit nuanced as characters (though I really only liked Kor and Kang personally) but the Klingons as a race were shown to be pretty one-dimensional. They were just the antagonists - the baddies for the Federation - with a slight sort of "Eastern" cast to them. Nothing else was really there.
Edit: Also, who are the "generic" Berman-era Klingons you're talking about. Name names here.
I'm gonna go TOS/TOS films on this one, just because seeing the arc of Klingon-Human relations from the TOS era through to the Khitomer Accords is one of the more interesting socio-political developments in the franchise, for my money. DS9 had some excellent individual Klingon characters but looking back on Klingons as a whole, not much major development there. TNG had Worf's constantly shifting relationship with the Empire, which was one of my favorite aspects of that series. And I'd say DSC probably has my second favorite interpretation of Klingons -- loved the use of the Klingon language and wish they hadn't stopped doing that, and overall I like the visual modifications.
You're right. That is exactly the point. They were created to give the Federation an external enemy to fight so that the series wasn't just episode after episode of naval-gazing. I personally have no problem at all with that.
Ain't nothing wrong with just a good old-fashioned villain. And I think Klingons in TOS were great villains.
DS9. For several reasons. People say that the Klingons were written like simpletons and stupid. I say that's what the Empire became. After Praxis, so much changed, and for many Klingons it was difficult. They fiercly held on to a warrior culture, since they didn't want to loose that part of themselves. But they twisted it into a parody of what it once was, their military became thugs and their politics a mere shadow of honor.
Enter Worf and Martok. Worf grew up in the Federation, learned about Klingons in history books. What Klingons used to be. How they should be again. Worf understood more about Kahless and the true Klingon heart than modern day Klingons. Martok was a man who also remembered, probably coming from such common backgrounds, he was raised with stories of Klingons of older days, instead of a twisted version of what Klingon honor had become; harrasing allies, fighting amongst themselves because the Empire now knew peace.
Enter Worf and Martok. Worf grew up in the Federation, learned about Klingons in history books. What Klingons used to be. How they should be again. Worf understood more about Kahless and the true Klingon heart than modern day Klingons. Martok was a man who also remembered, probably coming from such common backgrounds, he was raised with stories of Klingons of older days, instead of a twisted version of what Klingon honor had become; harrasing allies, fighting amongst themselves because the Empire now knew peace.
TOS movies and DS9 combined.
I think the odd thing about DS9 is they kinda did Klingons best by just ruthlessly mocking them. The Empire was still portrayed as an excellent fighting force, but Klingons were generally played for laughs. Probably the best choice since Klingons (along with Vulcans and Romulans) had basically become a ridiculous exaggeration of what they once were.
I mean, they basically did the exact same thing with the Ferengi, turning TNG's lowest moment into one of DS9's greatest strengths. Maybe that's why my favorite Klingon episode (by a wide margin) is House of Quark.
I think the odd thing about DS9 is they kinda did Klingons best by just ruthlessly mocking them. The Empire was still portrayed as an excellent fighting force, but Klingons were generally played for laughs. Probably the best choice since Klingons (along with Vulcans and Romulans) had basically become a ridiculous exaggeration of what they once were.
I mean, they basically did the exact same thing with the Ferengi, turning TNG's lowest moment into one of DS9's greatest strengths. Maybe that's why my favorite Klingon episode (by a wide margin) is House of Quark.
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