Why don't Disco Klingons sing?
- Thread starter The Wormhole
- Start date
Not all of them.
Because it never fit the plot or scenes. Its not like they sing all the time.
DISCOOkay, now I want to see DSC do a musical episode.
This is a bit of an aside, but I have seen people on this forum complain about what the Berman era (which really means mostly Ronald D. Moore) did to the Klingons - making them into some sort of Viking/biker stereotype. The thing is, however, that in TOS the Klingons weren't really defined as a culture much at all, other than being some sort of vaguely-defined rival that could be used as a stand-in for views of Russia and/or China at the time. Virtually everything of interest that enriched the depiction of the Klingons came out of TNG and DS9.
I disagree. TNG and DS9 were ultimately responsible for the approach of homogenizing / stereotyping entire species and cultures of billions. The values and behaviors of entire races were just "they're warriors" or "they're greedy capitalists" or "they're smart and logical" or whatever. The Klingons were the ultimate example of this. The Romulans and Ferengi were pretty damn close as well.
They probably got it most "right" with the Bajorans, who had a far more believable and diverse culture (probably one of the best alien cultures represented in the franchise), but made up for it by the fact that they were a "latex nose appliance of the week" stock race in terms of physical appearance.
Heh!
Perhaps too on-the-nose?You're right that the Klingons weren't terribly well-defined beyond the allegorical level in TOS, and were begging to be fleshed out in TNG (especially with one among the regular cast). That's not to say that RDM's take did a particularly good job of fleshing them out, though. Instead, we got a version of Klingons that all but invited its own Flanderization, with endless lip-service rhetoric about *HONOR!* and seldom a hint that the culture involved anything beyond a giant warrior caste. (In a sense, it was actually less politically realistic than the aggressively colonizing imperial power depicted in TOS.) TNG/DS9 Klingons honestly just never much captured my interest.
For my part, I'd have much rather seen them fleshed out more along the lines John M. Ford set out in The Final Reflection. He really seemed to have given them some serious thought.
And yet, DISCO isn't expanding enough upon Klingons from the TOS era?
Truly baffling at the fact that the TNG era were too monolithic and "Honor" driven yet TOS Klingons are perfect just the way they are?
I feel like I miss so many things on this point.
This as well. The monolithic culture is absolutely ridiculous, especially with interplanetary powers.
Not at all what I'm trying to say. There was (and is) plenty of room to flesh out the TOS-era Klingons. In fact, that's one of the things I was looking forward to about DSC based on the early promotional material. I was hoping to see a deeper dive into the culture, more variety and diversity, credibly serious motivations, real political intrigue.
That is not what we got. We didn't even get a plausibly coherent war story.
I thought we did...
I thought we got some more expansion on Klingons, and their society. I found their motivation for fighting the Federation to be consistent with TOS Klingons, as well as introducing more religious and cultural elements.
We got a view of the Klingons in DSC, not a deep dive, but some of what made them tick and we saw many looks and houses. Not just one single culture. Hell we saw some houses were willing to use suicide ships.
T'Kuvma was a standard-issue religious fanatic, Kol was a standard-issue conniving megalomaniac, and Voq was a standard-issue useful idiot. L'rell might've had some potential for depth, but was whipsawed around too much in service of plot contrivances. We got nothing but brief glimpses of the "24 houses" and learned nothing whatsoever about them or their internecine political machinations. Most of the conversation among Klingons, all season long, was fairly perfunctory expository dialogue.
Honestly, the closest we got to any interesting insights into Klingon culture came from the visit to Q'onos in the (otherwise mostly disappointing) season finale. We see that they aren't xenophobic — they have diplomatic relations with non-Klingon societies, like the Orions, to the point of allowing an outpost on their homeworld. We see that they allow religious/political diversity — not everyone worships Kahless (either figuratively or literally), given that there's a recognizable cult of Molor whose adherents feel free to toast him openly in the street. We see that a lot of them use the term "Federation" as synonymous with "human"... and yet, despite being at war with the former, don't necessarily see the presence of the latter on their homeworld as a security threat.
Granted all this is still just scratching the surface and I don't know how much of it was really thought through, versus how much of it was just "let's do a Blade Runner-style street scene," but it at least has potential for more in-depth development. Unfortunately, I don't think we should hold our breaths waiting to see that happen.
When I think about alien races really explored in interesting depth on TV? I think about Babylon 5 and what it did with the Minbari and the Narn and the Centauri.
Honestly, the closest we got to any interesting insights into Klingon culture came from the visit to Q'onos in the (otherwise mostly disappointing) season finale. We see that they aren't xenophobic — they have diplomatic relations with non-Klingon societies, like the Orions, to the point of allowing an outpost on their homeworld. We see that they allow religious/political diversity — not everyone worships Kahless (either figuratively or literally), given that there's a recognizable cult of Molor whose adherents feel free to toast him openly in the street. We see that a lot of them use the term "Federation" as synonymous with "human"... and yet, despite being at war with the former, don't necessarily see the presence of the latter on their homeworld as a security threat.
Granted all this is still just scratching the surface and I don't know how much of it was really thought through, versus how much of it was just "let's do a Blade Runner-style street scene," but it at least has potential for more in-depth development. Unfortunately, I don't think we should hold our breaths waiting to see that happen.
When I think about alien races really explored in interesting depth on TV? I think about Babylon 5 and what it did with the Minbari and the Narn and the Centauri.
This is more than we got from TOS man. We got single point of view and a single look. We saw at lest 10 looks for the Klingons here, we got some limited views of which houses sided with the House of Kor. And then you pointed out yourself the other insights we got to see. True it was not a deep look, but we did get a look at a living culture and not a single view.
On The B5 thing, they had 5 seasons and it was often very much focused on those two races.
On The B5 thing, they had 5 seasons and it was often very much focused on those two races.
