Speaking of Klingons, I rewatched The Motion Picture the other week (as part of the new 4K/HD set) and it reminded me of how bizarre the Klingons looked at the beginning of the movie relative to the original show. Seeing it as a kid upon release I wasn’t even sure if they were Klingons they looked so different.
Agreed (and I just watched the film from the old Motion Pictures DVD Collection box set myself). Being that fans were seeing them for the first time since the show (and for the first time on the big screen), it was a shocking change....it's like the whole race suddenly evolved over a short period of time. At least they remained basically the same from Search for Spock onward...
Yeah, I was thinking that somehow the new look would be a plot point in the movie (perhaps these were a renegade group that went through some genetic modifications, or something like that). Nope. No explanation until many years later.
I totally forgot there was an "explanation" for this -- when was that attempted, at which point in the film series?
I remember Worf being asked (in either TNG or DS9, can’t recall) why the different look happened and he replied something like ‘we prefer not to talk about it.’ It was a further plot point in the series Enterprise, where the idea was kind of retcon’d when they said/implied the Klingons that Kirk & Co. encountered were a branch of Klingons called Augment. Or something along those lines.
Yeah, in an episode of Enterprise, an ancestor of Noonien Soong (Data's creator) was trying to further the genetic experiments that originally spawned Khan. When the augments were first caught, they escaped the Enterprise on a renegade Klingon ship, with the implication being that they would somehow end up continuing breeding or experiments with these renegade Klingons. However, in the Discovery series, there was some other theory that some Klingons were subjected to painful surgery and genetic alterations to look human. All that to excuse the real-world reason that they had more of a budget in the movies to actually make the Klingons look different!
So, the first acknowledgement of it was in the DS9 time travel episode Trials And Tribble-ations where the crew of the Defiant found themselves in Kirk's time. In the space station bar, Bashir, O'Brien, Worf and Odo see the smooth-headed Klingons and Worf's only response is "we do not discuss it with outsiders". Fast forward a couple years to an Enterprise two-parter, the episodes Affliction and Divergence. This connects the TOS Klingons to Khan and his genetically-altered brethren and descendents, who were called (for the first time) Augments. Augment DNA was intended to genetically engineer super Klingons. That DNA from the experiments also mutated a virus spreading among Klingons; Enterprise's doctor Phlox was able to stop the virus before it became fatal, but after the affected Klingons lost their forehead ridges and adopted some human characteristics. The funny part is, in the DS9 episode, Bashir and O'Brien had theorized that the smooth-headed Klingons were a result of "genetic engineering" or a" viral mutation", both of which the Enterprise writers included in their episode. Yup, which was sort of retroactive backstory for the disguised Klingon from the TOS Tribbles episode.
What's interesting is, in the late 1980's, there was a Star Trek role playing game, and in the one main manual for playing the game, it had both kinds of Klingons, naming the TOS styled Klingons as "Human/Klingon Fusion".
I know! I loved the main RPG and a lot of the spinoffs they did (Starship Combat, Star Trek III-era mini-games, etc.) and I had a lot of the pewter miniatures. Some of the starship designs were really cool, too. Really nicely thought out universe FASA had.
And the Klingons in Discovery looked nothing like the Klingons from any previous series which made all explanations obsolete
I thought the original explanation (or at least, the first one saw) for the different Klingon look in the movies was the best. "This is how we've always wanted them to look. We just didn't have the budget for it until now." No jumping through hoops trying to retcon or explain it.
Best and most logical explanation of it all. But even if none of the films or series that came after TOS mentioned the difference, there'd still be the people who'd try to ret-con it all together. It's just the nature of the beast.
Playing connect the dots is fun. Once you start doing things like having TNG/DS9/VOY in the same connected universe, carrying on from the earlier show, it's only natural to start trying to tie everything together. The problems come when writers dabble in that pool too much and make a very small universe, or when fans draw battle lines where there are canon connections and/or "violations" and say that these changes are in fact Star Trek, and these changes are in fact not Star Trek.
I definitely favor a more outward looking, world of possibility in my Sci Fi. I don't need everything tied together. Some people obsess about that, and it's not something I find attractive at this point in my life.
I think Worf’s explanation in that DS9 episode was perfect and I’ve had been fine if they left it at that. Hey, at least it was acknowledged - it is a very dramatic difference in how an alien race looks, an acknowledgment isn’t an unreasonable ask. But I don’t even mind how far they’ve taken it, IMO it’s been one of the most interesting things on Discovery.
I went to the first ever Star Trek Convention in NYC when I was about 15. My mother was worried sick about me going from PA to NYC (and I did see police gathering around a shot guy in an alley) but it was like heaven. I walked into a room and Sulu was hiding behind a door. He smiled and nodded. Trek heaven. I sewed tribbles for many years.
I heard about that first convention and went to the one the next year. It was quite a scene. I remember seeing a couple of episodes projected on a large screen. It was quite a treat when we were used to a 19" TV.
Very interesting stuff about the Klingon legacy I wasn't even aware of, and I consider myself something of a seasoned fan...however, I never watched any of the post-Next Gen spinoffs, and I only saw a few Next Gen episodes themselves (I recall the ones with Q and some other popular entries). Still, I have to agree with the sentiment that the "best" explanation concerning the race's evolution should just be that they didn't have the budget (during the Original Series) to make them look like they did in The Motion Picture (and onward)... As for conventions and such, I wish I could have gone to that one in NYC (I lived in the Nassau County suburbs all my life up until about 16 years ago) but I do remember the SNL skit where Shatner was doing the "press conference" and exclaimed "It was a show...GET A LIFE!" at the fans in attendance.
Conventions! Saw Shatner twice, actually spoke to him once. Also, got to talk to James Doohan at a meet and greet. Saw Brent Spiner give a talk about his roll as Data. Good times! I think I still have my autographed picture of James Doohan as Scotty.
