Rowan, I like how Star Trek Enterprise fills in the gap for us old school fans etc.. It ties into TOS Klingons beautifully and smartly and fills in the holes to the Klingon backstory.
I agree. I liked how more or less every series built a piece of the puzzle around the klingon ridges. That one DS9 episode where Worf says "we do not like talking about it" when he was asked about their foreheads was also a nice piece in the total story. Just made everything fit. I didn't appreciate the " I do not care about the enterprise episode". He might not care, but I found it pivotal and great!
@@rikujoyce7672 FASA had the "Smoothies" and "Bumpies". Sometimes the Bumpies were in control, sometimes the Smoothies. If anything they should've just had Dorn in the SlavOriential TOS makeup for that episode.
Klingons are probably my favorite faction in Star Trek. I love to joke that they spend their whole lives trying to be the most “metal” race in the galaxy. Their captains wear sweet leather coats, they eat their food while it’s still alive, they prefer to die while getting blown up, and so on. They’re the reason I like “monster” races so much in sci fi and fantasy
Eh... no. The Star Trek movie that had Klingons in it (Star Trek 2) had Klingons look different for the first time since TOS. Christopher Lloyd played the Klingon captain and he was the first Klingon to have a pet Targ... also that was the first appearance of a Targ. DS9 was the first to address it and made it an in-canon murmur. Enterprise gave it a full-on clarification.
Way back in the 1980s The FASA Star Trek roleplaying game retconned TOS Klingons with smooth foreheads as a faction of Klingon-human fusions, or hybrids, that held power but then lost it and were replaced by TMP Klingons.
The same author - John M. Ford - wrote the Stars Trek novel 'The Final Reflection', with the Klingons as the central characters. With the material he'd developed for FASA, the characters and culture felt a lot deeper than the sometimes cardboard characterization displayed in the movies. (He also wrote another Star Trek novel, 'How Much for Just the Planet?', a screamingly-funny novel about the settlers on a world that turns out to have massive dilithium deposits resisting the efforts of both the Federation and the Empire to assert control over the planet. Read it.)
On the Discovery designs, I'd argue that the appearance does matter if we're talking in-universe design consistency. One could excuse the Next Gen/movies' redesigns of the Klingons since the original series was a low-budget show from the 60's, updated designs are to be expected. Discovery's Klingons look like a completely different species entirely. It would be like if they changed the Vulkans to look like the Ferengi and just expected you to roll with it.
THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I loved how DS9 explained the different between TOS Klingons and TNG IN troubles and Tribulations!” Word: “we don’t like to discuss it with outsiders.”
I dislike STD kingon redesign. For 2 main reasons. 1) It seem like redesign for the sake or redesign. I would love them if they would be DS9 klingons with more diversity in skin kolor and/or different armor and atire dependent on the house. Or even minor updates to look. 2) This redesign also made them less good because amount of prosthetic made any kind of face expressions on their part almost impossible. Which made paying them less appealing. I kind of liked their culture is different but hated the design becouse it was looking so much more advanced than TNG or DS9 design and was not looking like any kind of their evolutionary predecessor.
@@devinsmith4790 Yep, it's ST:D... not only because of standard abbreviations over the years but because STD is really appropriate for that story arc epoch.
@@joshuaidris9312 Wait... that sounds familiar. "InstaBlaster"... was that an Easter Egg weapon in a Playstation game in the 90s? I also vaguely remember a weapon that instant-killed anything had that name but its refire rate sucked, so use for big guys and not swarms. Am I remembering "InstaBlaster" or something that sounds similar? Hell, I can't even remember the game(s)... it's been decades.
The problem with Discovery's Klingons is that there is no justification for the change. Ot doesn't make sense like before because you can't blame it on budget AND because they look nothing like Klingons from that era that we know thanks to TOS. Another reason why we shouldn't have a prequel.
Alberts Choise well it’s shown in an episode of tng called the chase in s6 the shows that humans romuulans Klingons and carrdassins are all genetics related due to meddling from a long extinct race
There are some interesting design ideas, like the gothic cathedral-like look of the interior of the Klingon ships and their weird marine life/coral-looking armor(which would be better for an aquatic race). But the Discovery Klingons are just too removed from the passion, the warrior joy and the charisma of the Klingons we all know and love. Same with Picard's Romulans, they just don't feel like the real thing to me.
right. The Discovery Klingons could have been done on the budget of past Star Treks, but those old creators had better taste and were not beholden to early 2000's fantasy and horror movies.
It wasn't bad when they changed the TOS Kilingons because they were only in a handful of low budget TOS episodes. In legacy trek they were in hundreds of episodes spanning 4 different shows, two decades, two main characters and several recurring characters. They were obscure villains in TOS. In legacy trek they were redefined and developed. We learned about every aspect of their culture from death rituals, coming of age, marriage, divorce, legal systems, parenting, government, war planning, family feuds etc. By the time discovery was made they had a huge amount of well established canon to pull from and they ignored most of it.
Honestly, I thought ds9 did the forehead explanation best, one simple one off line. It rectifies the very mild continuity discrepancy, without wasting time, or taking the focus of an entire episode, let alone arc.
@@craigtowse4340 This is Star Trek, ofcourse it needs explaining. Everything needs explaining. UA-cam is full of explaining Star Trek. But I agree, DS9 had the best "explaining".
The ENT storyline was entirely unnecessary, and the DS9 explanation was perfectly fine. What STD did was make acting behind all that rubber impossible, so the show was objectively worse for it.
Klingons are so barbaric and their mind-sets are so primitive that it makes it hard to believe that they could ever be smart enough to figure out space travel let alone warp speed. Anyway seeing the Klingon transformation from TOS to the motion picture is understandable, but what they did to them in Discovery is unforgivable in my mind. Here's hoping that Picard will redeem Star Trek. They lost the thing that made all the previous series so compelling "exploration of the unknown" not constant battles. Just my opinion. Thanks for the great video.
The Hur'q (the guys that stole the sword of Kahless) invaded Qo'nos in our 14th century. When the Klingons drove off the invaders, they kept their tech.
John Colicos was actually just "Count Baltar" on Glen A. Larson's original Battlestar Galactica. 'Gaius Baltar' was played by James Callis in Ronald D. Moore's long-lasting Battlestar Galactica re-imagining.
Kor was described by Sfdebris as "Klingon cleaned up good." and was ironically on commen ground with Kirk with their mutual loathing of the Organians for their refusal to resist the occupation of their world. Worf on the other hand represents an interesting concept, a Klingon who embodies the ideal Klingon only because he was never exposed to the real thing, and the concessions that they would have to make to function as a society. Allowing dishonourable types to run around even if the rules say that shouldn't be possible, because it would be politically damaging. Not only that, but Worf's expression of honour is aimed inwards about what he knows is right. Where as Klingons is external, showing and proving your honour, even if the facts say otherwise.
Worf could've worked if they'd leaned into his Russian-Jewish upbringing (go look up the actors who play his parents). But it was all "Waugh waugh Klingon This, Klingon that Kling Kling Kling" no "Oy Meshuggah, that Martok's got some chutzpah."
I like the old Cold War-analogy between the Federation/Klingons, and felt DSC should have consciously reflected it more. Instead there was no arms-race of near-equals or parity between their warships, but quite a sudden disparity that doesn't fit with what was presented even in ENT. A good way to explain their uniforms and militarism in this period would be that they went through some kind of authoritarian revolution.
@@RowanJColeman This is a problem with creating prequels inside an established written history, but then choosing to largely ignore that very context. Perhaps setting such an allegory in the future of Star Trek, say the 25th Century, would have been wiser.
@@LazarusRemains Honestly both allegories work side by side. The TOS allegory set up the relationship between the Federation and Klingons. Whereas Discovery used a different allegory to dive into the motivations of the Klingons.
They are actually supposed to be in the midst of a civil war, STD is happening near the end of it. The radically different ships in STD and TOS and later is due to the great houses no longer having access to imperial shipyards during the civil war. Some may be Hurq ships, some may be quickly built on Hurq designs. This is also why things feel so different is that they are fighting a massive civil war and the House Mokai, and their allied houses being the most powerful of the factions before being exterminated were in some ways physically different. That at least is how they are trying to explain it away after many fans called them out for their compete divergence.
The discovery allegory doesn't work at all. There's being considered and relevant (ST VI) and there's being a parody of your intentions, setting up strawmen for a preachy bit of self-indulgence (STD).
While I would tend to agree that the Enterprise episodes that explain what happened to the Klingon forehead ridges were unnecessary, I would argue that the discussion of this change within DS9's "Trials and Tribbelations" rendered this change in-universe canon, rather than just a fan complaint stemming from a manifestation of budgetary changes. They didn't *have* to explain the change, but there was legitimate precedent for the existence of an explanation within the Star Trek universe around which a story could be crafted, enough to render the story legitimate in my book.
From someone who likes Discovery, I found the Klingon redesigns off-putting. I'm not opposed to a good redesign, but these left little to no subtlety in the actors expressions and performances. Feel like it was a good idea in theory, but in practice it missed the mark
Old comment, I know, but if they were so determined to make klingons more "alien," they should have made a new alien. What they did was take a species whose design has been the same for the past 35 years and change everything except their names.
Me too.. My biggest issue was the acting not coming through. The prosthetics hindered the performances. The fake teeth made them sound ridiculous. Not good if I want to laugh. But I didn't hate them. But damn. Less can be more. The Axanar fan stuff was far more effective because the actors could act. The Discovery Klingons had about the same amount of movement as a Muppet. I think Picard did a great job with the Romulans. Honoring the old and new and giving us far more diversity in their looks.
@@Majima_Nowhere I thought the same. Maybe they remember how the Kazon were taken. I think the Kazon looked bad but they could have been interesting if they focused on them as being rebels in a war that have to remain nomadic cause they're enemy is superior. The other problem is the idea that dis isn't a reboot or in the reboot timeline ect. And you can get away with changes like TOS did because there wasn't video recording at the time and the show was old. And even the TOS movies were the ones that changed it. TNG followed it.
@@Majima_Nowhere It's kinda weird to make sentient alien races in the Star Trek universe. Obliviously it's budget reasons, but it's pretty established that in space we'll encounter aliens that look like us but with face bumps.
@@devinsmith4790 i think you have missed the point of ST.because its not about realism, its about the story, though the STD klingons look realy stupid.
@@RowanJColeman We can disagree. But it was a step in a less monolithic image of the Klingons. Also, the moderns Klingons had too much of an iconic look to screw with. Since Discovery has been revealed to be Prime and not Kelvin it actually is not fucked with.
@@johnkelly7757 That is a good one, too. I would have laughed at that and been satisfied due to it being a cultural issue and a contrivance. However, I like the eugenics explanation. I wonder if Rowan cries over explanations for why superheroes choose the colors they wear.
Enterprise handled it far better than a bad joke in an otherwise good episode of DS9, plus the Enterprise episodes gave us a very overdue explanation of the Klingon appearance, one of Trek's worst sore-thumbs. Also Enterprise showed how early well meaning contacts with the Klingons lead to hostility, although none of that was the early contacts that lead to a policy of studying a species before contacting them, as the Vulcans also a Federation founding world had already contacted the Klingons, and also developed protocols for first contacts.
I have to *strongly disagree* with you...the entire explanation given in Enterprise as to why Klingons looked different in TOS was brilliant. Especially after they sent up a forthcoming explanation for this continuity issue in DS9. That arc was really well written and thought out and was one of the best episodes of the series to my opinion. But I do agree that the Klingons could've been utilized a little better in earlier episodes of Enterprise.
When you answered the "what science fiction or fantasy novel would you like to see adapted into a movie or tv show" it would have been funny if you had said Paragon by Rowan J Coleman. Anyway, I would like to request Stargate Command for the next Lore Evolution. You've already done the Goa'uld, but i wouldn't mind hearing your take on the evolution of the human characters from pluck underdogs facing insurmountable odds with present day Earth technology to essentially becoming a major galactic power with the inherited knowledge of the Asgard, Ancients, and others.
Rowan J Coleman I think one book which I personally would LOVE to see in Tv show form, is Fahrenheit 451, if you haven’t read the book, I would implore you to give it a read, in the simplest turns, it’s reverse Star Trek, and it is glorious...
I think the more interesting aspect of Lore Evolution is that it can cover the behind-the-scenes aspects of that evolution. As such, I think Stargate Command fairly boring tbh, because most of its evolution is actually in universe. It‘s not like the Borg or Goa‘Uld Where concepts changed drastically over time to a point when their earlier incarnation doesn’t always make sense. Jaffa would be more interesting. I would love to see a Lore evolution on the Cylons or maybe an aspect of Babylon 5.
It's not a question of if Star Trek takes a position on something. It's a question of if they get too heavy handed in it, and/or turn the opposite position into a cartoonish strawman. Everyone understands and accepts that Star Trek has always taken sides. But there's a difference between taking a position, and beating your audience over the head with it
As far as I know, John Colicos (the first Klingon ever to be seen) expicitly requested to be made to look "like a space-age Genghis Khan". And you can seee that some elements from his initial styling made it into the later Klingon designs also, most notably the goatee and the eyebrows. And with his acting style, Colicos is a worthy precursor of Chang in The Undiscovered Country - both times you have an actor who clearly relishes in playing a villain, and both times with the smile of a piranha, and both insisting on their own unique design.
Thanks for always bringing such a level-headed and realist take. It's exhausting wading through all the hyperbole and vitriol that permeates modern sci-fi Hot Takes. All the videos from creators like you and Spacedock are always such a nice breath of fresh air. So thank you. (And that's why I would love to see your take on Mass Effect Andromeda at some point)
Since Klingons are such fan favourites CBS should be brave enough to make a show where the leads are all Klingons and the dialogue is all in the Klingon language. It probably needs to be animated
I think your point that changes made to the Klingon in Discovery doesn't ruin the franchise because they were changed already from their initial appearance is very unreasonable. Those changes were made at a time when Klingon lore, characters and culture hadn't solidified itself in the franchise. Heck Trek franchise itself hadn't solidified. The Klingon characters in TOS were frankly just not memorable enough. But how should I look at this Klingon and not think of how Worf, Martok, Gowron, etc. actually looked.
In Enterprise the Klingon lawyer did say that some time not that long before it did actually do honour that some of the others in earlier shows seem to do
The thing about Enterprise, that I think people overlook, is that it is an alternate timeline series. Think about it, from the beginning they are thrust into a Temporal War. A Time War has to play havoc with the established history of the canon. It allowed them to rewrite certain things, like Starfleet's first contact with the Klingon's. Would it have actually happened the way it was depicted in Enterprise if the Sulabon...agents of those future Time War people, not interfered with whoever that first "Klingot" was? On the orders of those from the future, at that.
I agree with all your video except for your take on the Enterprise arc explanation of why they looked human and why they look different in Discovery. The weaving of the Enterprise explanation was done amazingly well and fit every piece together from a decades long storyline. That needs to be acknowledged i believe.
Have you read Starcarrier? Whole book series is like a game, not a page turner, but the aliens, oh man the ideas and exectution in first 4 was the reason I've read them. That I would like to see on a screen.
Agreed. I approached this series as a cheap and generic scifi to read once and forget it ever existed, but it surprised me with a lot of great ideas. It could work well as a TV series, since the books are rather short, but full of action sequences.
I was pretty fond of the Klingon Court system. It really shows the issues with a culture who only defines themselves by worriers and warmongering. The Enterprise one has a certain pain to it when you release that a century later by the time of ST6 those issues still hadn't been resolved.
How strange a sexual preferance would a human need to produce B'Elana or K'Ehlir with a disco Klingon? I honestly don't think they will bring back any established Klingon characters Worf and Martok for example, because they would have hell of a time reconciling the classic look with the disco makeup.
I LOVED Discovery Klingons. I wish they had more developed lore about why they're different in multiple ways than previous iterations but only to flesh out the lore.
I love how DS9 handled the effects differences between TOS and the Paramount era Klingons: Worf simply begrudgingly says "We do not discuss it" and it's never brought up again.
TNG a little bit, but mainly DS9 also established the clear differences between the various Klingon houses in the shapes of their ridges. There was a lot of work done to establish a consistency in the design. It was never haphazard. STD is a good example of taking down old fences without knowing why any of them were put up to begin with. The STD creators fundamentally did not understand anything that came before, and arrogantly set out to arbitrarily change pretty much everything. There was no continuity, because they didn't bother hiring any of the people who made the design decisions that came before. And the so-called artistic decisions they made are bad because they are objectively flawed. Putting more rubber on an actor's face makes an actor's performance worse. Making aliens look less human makes it harder for the human audience to empathize and care about the aliens and their stories. Audiences just tune out. These are technical flaws, not valid artistic choices. It is the equivalent of failing to light a scene well enough for the audience to see what's going on, or a bad recording of the dialogue that never gets fixed in ADR. The people running Star Trek now don't believe in any sort of objective truth or reality, and it's very obvious. They carry that same attitude towards design, rejecting well-established objective standards of beauty, objective standards of good writing, or objective standards of any other aspect of production. They are like children who know nothing, but think they know everything, and nobody has ever told them "no".
One theory I heard after ST:TMP was that the smooth head Klingons and the ridge head Klingons were from different castes or that the smooth heads were from worlds conquered by the Klingons. The "augment virus" is also a valid theory that has been canonized.
Like you Rowan I don’t care all that much about the why and how of the Klingon’s physical changes over the years. My big problem with the STD look, is that the makeup is far too heavy, to the point that it nullifies the actors’ performance ! You said it yourself, we’ve had so many great Klingon performances over the years : John Colicos, Michael Ansara, Christopher Lloyd, John Schuck, David Warner, Christopher Plummer, and of course Michael Dorn. Some of the better acting in all of Star Trek has come from Klingons. Can you name me one STD Klingon that makes you go « wow, the actor is bring such humanity, such complexity ther » ? Probably not, but that’s not even their fault ! It’s impossible to convey anything other than superficial and surface-level with costumes and makeup that quite simply don’t allow it. That’s why, imho, the post-2012 Klingons are but a shadow of their former self
Completely disagree, the Enterprise arc added a lot of depth to klingons and as a fan it was very entertaining finding out how that happened. STD is appallinggly bad, and there's no point in getting stuck there, its nice that Klingons are... diverse? (if you consider having "pale" and "black" as being diverse), but it doesnt make up for terrible writting and non-characters, which STD has in spades.
@@pderham26 I didnt particularly cared about the designs, but they paired it with... well, everything about STD and it was just one more thing to complain in a series that had few, if any, positive points. A good script could've saved the appalling designs, obviously that didnt happened.
@@pderham26 Agreed. Discovery's fatal flaw is it's writing... Makeup , art, and costuming are pretty bad, but good writing could've saved that, but it was not to be had. Its' a shame too because they wasted all that talent they have in their cast.
@@mrsaltyauthor5992 don't listen to the radicals, I too have many MANY issues with STD (too many Mary Sue first season number one). But they are doing better, the writing is improving (I think due to the huge failure of Star Wars) and CBS wants to avoid that. TOS and ENT suffered the same issues with writing, TOS only the first few episodes but they had some of the greatest writers of the time working on the show so it quickly improved. ENT took until nearly the third season before it felt like anything more than a weak copy of TOS. Discovery had a few bad ones, Voyager and ENT both had some issues but took the time to address fan critiques. I imagine STO including STD into the game, and how good they are at making things flow and work (gamers are vicious critics and will walk with their money if things don't make sense) it will improve STD. I keep hoping they go with the whole "the ships are different due to the civil war" which is the only thing that makes much sense.
It is reasonable to assume that given how diverse (gad, I despise myself for using that word) Klingon tribes are, that throughout their history one segment of the species would decline in power to be superseded by another. Just as on our world, one political faction would rise to power while another found itself corrupted into a minority. That process often repeats itself for those in power permit the same factors of corruption to continue onto a following generation even worse than before until the governmental structure is rendered unrecognizable from the ideals that brought forth great nations. Human history is rife with this cycle and we may be in the process of such in our lifetime. In this regard, Rowan has nailed the Klingon Empire reflecting our "uncertain times" (another platitude I've come to despise).
I know Voyager didn't do much, only a few Belanna episodes, so i understand why it was skipped over, but i still had a wtf moment when the vid jumped from ds9 to ent
The Design in ToS is understandable due to low budget like you said... Who knows if Klingons should have looked from the GET GO like in TMP/TNG!? But the Discovery Klingons have no RATIONAL reason for being different... Just that they should be different for the SAKE of being different! Lol no... While you are right that the premise and display of the different klingon houses was well done, the physical appereance was a disgrace and that for I continue to call them KlingOrcs.. Thanks
I haven't seen Star Trek Discovery so I can't say if I like or not, but yeah the new look for Klingons doesn't really work for me. Cool they made distinction between individual houses, but I wish that was the only change because they look like a completely different alien race.
I wish Disco had just started in the 31st c instead of the 23rd, the change in the Klingons would have made more sense and been a cool addition instead of a bizarre alternate version.
I personally quite like the experiment gone awry explanation of how come the Original Series Klingons lacked forehead ridges. It is a nice explanation! But how they will explain away those hideous looking Klingons in Discovery is anyone's guess!
Production incompetence. That's the explanation. It's a technical flaw, not a legitimate artistic choice, to make alien characters so alien that human audiences can't empathize with them, and put so much rubber on actors' faces that they can't perform as actors under it. It's like failing to record the audio in a scene, or cutting a character's head off when framing the camera shot.
Behold my very important comments on a video from 2019! I appreciate your constant dismissal of continuity hounds in general, and as a Doctor Who fan, I understand the need to just enjoy story. However, Star Trek does follow a more linear storytelling style, and as of the second Trek movie, did eventually rely upon fans to follow said stories, so I say it's fair to care a little about continuity. That being said, I never needed an explanation for the forehead ridges. That also being said, I enjoyed the heck out of the explanation of the visual change in Enterprise. It was absolutely ludicrous but I thought it was enjoyable and a little nice bit of trivia, plus made those obsessed with a need for seamless continuity a little happier. Also, it amused me that in Tribulations, O'Brien and Bashir posit if it was a viral mutation or genetic engineering before Worf says it is not discussed with outsiders, and Enterprise ran with that. It was an embarrassment for the Empire, so they do NOT discuss it, and it was both. Love it! Re: Discovery, my only issue with the redesign was how stark it was, and the naivite that you set your show in the Prime timeline and NOT expect Trek fans to notice such a radical departure? Redesign some of the cultural elements, the armor, maybe some physical diversity, and only the most hardcore would notice, but these guys did an almost complete physical redesign. I would also say the original change was almost more seen as welcome, as the TOS design had racist undertones and was an underwhelming look, wheras the modern Klingon designs have slowly grown into classic and beloved elements of Trek lore. And Trek fans do love their lore. tl;dr I have opinions that differ from the video and that makes me important! Grr!
They simply don't know why things were done the way they were done before, and they don't care to know. They arrogantly think they know better, but produce an objectively worse, technically flawed result because they've never done the work themselves and never hired any of the people who could explain it to them. The make-up on Star Trek was an evolution, where lessons were learned as they went along, designs were developed in logical ways and standardized. Klingons especially underwent significant development in their visual language, arguably more than any other alien species. Probably hundreds of man hours went into every detail of the Klingons in the TNG-ENT era, so that audiences would immediately recognize them, understand them and the different factions, and have the appropriate emotional reaction on a subconscious level. STD's designers went: "eh, they're aliens so let's make them look weird" and called it a day. The audience backlash was predictable and correct. Human audiences respond better to human-like aliens more than alien-like aliens. Humans only care about human stories. You can anthropomorphize non-human characters, and get an invested audience, but you cannot go the other way without falling into the uncanny valley, and making people tune out and stop caring about the story. Nobody cares about a zombie and what happens to them. They're just a monster, their motivations and trials are irrelevant. Actors also can't act as well with a bunch of rubber covering their face. Wearing a mask hides the performance. It cripples it. The product is objectively worse. The idea to go for "realism" just demonstrates the utter incompetence of the showrunners and their design staff. These people do not understand storytelling, they don't understand that design needs to serve a function for the story, and they don't understand any of the visual language and performance that goes into a prosthetic appliance. They are amateurs, and they will always be in the shadow of the giants who created Star Trek. This is a technical flaw, on par with failing to light a scene so the audience can see it, not recording the audio correctly, so that it comes out too quiet to hear, or too garbled to understand, or an actor failing to get an actor in frame so their head is cut off and all you see is their torso. It's not a legitimate artistic choice, it's an error.
I actually appreciated the Enterprise writers taking the time to explain why TOS Klingons and the ones from TNG and the movies looked different. It showed they cared about the canon and lore. Discovery Klingons hardly look like Klingons at all ... although I suppose they do bare a resemblance to the JJ'verse Klingons which makes sense considering Bad Robot was involved in creating Discovery. But they were so overworked the poor actors could hardly speak and they certainly couldn't emote through the layers of prosthetics.
"But they were so overworked the poor actors could hardly speak and they certainly couldn't emote through the layers of prosthetics" - the fact that the prosthetics makes the actors sound more alien, job done - much like sarus makeup makes him sound more nasally and alien - and as i said in another post rewatch the lrell/voq scene aboard the shenzhou and tell me they cant emote - and most of time all they need to emote is "arrgh war/arrgh honor"
Changing the look of the Klingons is one thing but STD changed almost every aspect of the Klingons to the point that if they where not specifically pointed out as Klingons you wouldn't know they where. The original series gets a pass because almost nothing there was fleshed out. I didn't like the change in the Kelvin timeline either. There is no need to fix something that's not broken.
I know this old but TOS Era Klingons will always be my favorite. I love the grey skin color too. The fantasy novels I would like made into a movie is The chronicles of amber.
Right off the bat please forgive me for vague references, it's been decades since I've seen the works I'm about to cite. I realize this is non-canon but really good explanations for differences have existed since the late 70s and early 80s. I once owned an anthology of short Star trek stories, I believe published by Bantam Books. One story, "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited," featured a freak accident that placed the TV cast on board the real enterprise where they had to play their roles for real. Upon encountering real Klingons they were amazed at the variety of looks on a single starship and commented on complaints the TV show had gotten from fans for getting the makeup wrong on different episodes. In the same era there was an oversized picture book about races of the Star Trek universe. It placed the TMP Klingons at the center as Imperial Klingons and showcased TOS Klingons as deliberate hybrids to be stationed in positions adjacent to the federation believing the hybrids would better deal with the expansion Star Fleet. The same book also put forth the idea that there were klingon/romulan hybrids along the romulan frontier for the same purpose. The same article stated that the hybrid program had been abandoned as unsuccessful by the 24th century. Sorry for being so long but I always liked these tales on the appearance situation.
The issue I have with Discovery's version of the Klingons. The Klingons are always kind of a xenophobic society. However, the Federation an outside power is trying to force change upon them. It makes the Klingons come off as weak and reactionary. Where the Klingon Empire is a fully separate space nation. There is nothing wrong with nationalism as the Federation had to deal with that very issue. The difference is that the Klingons are more like the Japanese and doesn't like foreigners mixed in. The Klingons having to deal with the Federation comes off as a fight of say the Japanese against western Imperialism. Yet, the previous lore always showed the Klingons as a major faction in space that is an equal to that of the Federation. The writers turn the Federation to be more like the Terran Empire, but more diverse. The Federation is trying to impose its ways on a species and peoples who should be as advanced as the Federation. It is a very imperial sense to think that the Klingons should have to conform to the Federation. The Federation is diverse, but the Klingon Empire has never been a diverse set of people. They are all just once species. If you like the Klingons in STD, but I can't see them as the same.
Discovery is a good sci-fi show but it has its flaws. I have two major changes how show could've been better and maybe more accepted among the fans. 1. Set it 100 or so years after the TNG/DS9/Voyager era. That would explain the more "modern" looking technology, uniforms and such. Remember that one TNG episode where warp speed was ripping the space apart. Here comes the spore drive. 2. Replace Discovery's Klingons with Breen. We don't know anything about the Breen culture and haven't seen any Breen without helmet and we all know that they're extremely powerful. There. I do like how the DIS Klingons look, I just don't like the fact that they're Klingons. That's all.
Don't think the redesigns ruined Star Trek but I hated them and it took me out of the show and only reinforced the idea that Discovery could have been set in any time period and that setting it before TOS was a mistake and they should have moved past the 24th Century. The changes to the culture as well was just to much just make a new race and set it in the future instead of trying to shoe horn the show into the pre TOS period which I just didn't like and honestly turned me off on the show.
'Elaborate and DIVERSE costumes What I like about these new designs is just how DIVERSE they are The Klingons themselves, while being one race are incredibly DIVERSE Seeing such DIVERSE group of people' We get it, you like people knowing you're fond of saying the word 'diverse'.
FASA Games created a table top RPG for Star Trek, and they had a really interesting take on the different looking Klingons. Those with the ridged foreheads were the original race, Imperial Klingons. The ones with smooth foreheads were Klingons who'd been genetically spliced with Human DNA (Fusion) so they could pass for Human and infiltrate the Federation. The one's that couldn't completely pass, are the ones we saw in the TV show. They had also made a Klingon/Romulan Fusion, that would be used for infiltration of Romulan Space, or as Vulcans. Since the Orion's were Neutral and traded with all 3 powers, there were even Klingon/Orion Fusions. Personality wise, they were a cross between Samurai and Vikings, but sometimes willing to stab each other in the back for personal gain, but that was extremely frowned upon. This gives the Klingons extremely more depth and range. Too bad this idea wasn't ever explored on the screen.
I had no issues with the Discovery Klingons but I do think it was a missed opportunity to show all 3 Klingon designs side by side. As a prequel just retroactively acknowledge itself and the other 2 eras.
Rowan, maybe you don't care about how these changes came about, but some of the more die hard Star Trek fans would like to be able to discuss the various theories.
ST:Discovery is controversial mostly because of the controversial times in which we live in. Do I hate almost all of how they changed Klignons, its simply a conduit for a larger societal earthquake...an earthquake that is very much touched on in its changes.
If the Klingons rule vast areas of the Beta quadrant and have an empire that's similar to the size of the Federation, it only makes sense that they have different-looking factions, with the various Houses possibly having developed off-shots on colonies over the centuries.
I think Discovery should've kept the older designs as one of the noble houses kinda adding more to the diversity of the species in more ways than just you know clothing & skin colours.
Given that the writers knew they were going to take the Discovery into the future, they could have debut the "new" Klingons they wanted to use in the show as what happens to the Klingon race centuries from now. Then simply tie it into what we learned on Enterprise and have this honestly bizarre look be the final result of the virus.
It's a bad adaptation of the Asian 'shame' culture - where Western culture is a 'guilt' culture (you're expected to feel guilty about improper behavior), Asian cultures are more about shame - it is not as important that you _are_ an upright, moral person as long as you are _seen_ by others as being one; So you get the Klingons _talking_ duty and honor, while they're double-dealing in the back rooms, and you see the knives come out when someone is caught doing it and their violations are dragged into the light.
Two things, one I wasn't expecting such an in-depth analysis, good work. Second, Discovery is here too? Well like any discussion that involves that show and Star Wars TLJ, R.I.P comment section.
Yes, I’ve been enjoying his videos but I found that a little off-putting. Obviously that’s his prerogative, he made the video; but I think the Discovery/modern Trek controversies do tend to divide people more often along political lines. Who knows how fans will see things 30 years from now, but personally I found the attempt by the writers to compare Klingons to nationalists a bit trite (especially when everything’s trying to win ‘woke’ points these days).
Since TNG when Data had an infatuation with Sherlock Holmes. I've always thought that a series about a space P.I. in the Star Trek universe would make for a good show.
I see the Discovery Klingons having similar issues to the Godzilla (Zilla) of 1998. From 1954 to the present, you can put every version of Godzilla next to each other and say "Yeah those are Godzillas", all except for '98 Godzilla. They wanted to make that version new & unique, but in doing so they took away its Godzillaness. People don't have a problem with the subtle changes in the other versions, because no matter how many back plates, or teeth, or bulk they added or took away, it was always essentially Godzilla. '98 'Zilla just felt like a different character & species, which he eventually became. Klingons have a similar evolution. Although movie Klingons looked different, there was enough similar to make them feel the same. Same dark skin tone, facial hair, militaristic uniform. However too much was changed in Discovery. Skin tone, facial structure, hair, clothing. Nothing about them feels Klingon. They seem like they were going to be a completely different race, but they just changed the name to Klingon. They could have still done differences to the various houses, making each unique, but still been closer to what a Klingon is in the fans mind.
Rowan, I like how Star Trek Enterprise fills in the gap for us old school fans etc.. It ties into TOS Klingons beautifully and smartly and fills in the holes to the Klingon backstory.
I agree. I liked how more or less every series built a piece of the puzzle around the klingon ridges. That one DS9 episode where Worf says "we do not like talking about it" when he was asked about their foreheads was also a nice piece in the total story. Just made everything fit. I didn't appreciate the " I do not care about the enterprise episode". He might not care, but I found it pivotal and great!
@@rikujoyce7672
FASA had the "Smoothies" and "Bumpies".
Sometimes the Bumpies were in control, sometimes the Smoothies.
If anything they should've just had Dorn in the SlavOriential TOS makeup for that episode.
Klingons are probably my favorite faction in Star Trek. I love to joke that they spend their whole lives trying to be the most “metal” race in the galaxy. Their captains wear sweet leather coats, they eat their food while it’s still alive, they prefer to die while getting blown up, and so on. They’re the reason I like “monster” races so much in sci fi and fantasy
After The Motion Picture, Roddenberry said, the Klingons always looked like this (i.e. ridges et al), they just didn't have the money to show us.
Enterprise’s writes did not create the idea of the Klingons in TOS being different then modern ones.That was DS9 when they went back in time.
Yeah, but it was in an extremely tongue in check way for an (admittedly funny) one off joke in an episode that didn’t take itself too seriously.
Eh... no. The Star Trek movie that had Klingons in it (Star Trek 2) had Klingons look different for the first time since TOS. Christopher Lloyd played the Klingon captain and he was the first Klingon to have a pet Targ... also that was the first appearance of a Targ.
DS9 was the first to address it and made it an in-canon murmur. Enterprise gave it a full-on clarification.
Way back in the 1980s The FASA Star Trek roleplaying game retconned TOS Klingons with smooth foreheads as a faction of Klingon-human fusions, or hybrids, that held power but then lost it and were replaced by TMP Klingons.
@@dang7799
At least FASA's one worked better.
Or That Tribble episode should've had Dorn in the SlavOriental TOS makeup.
The same author - John M. Ford - wrote the Stars Trek novel 'The Final Reflection', with the Klingons as the central characters. With the material he'd developed for FASA, the characters and culture felt a lot deeper than the sometimes cardboard characterization displayed in the movies. (He also wrote another Star Trek novel, 'How Much for Just the Planet?', a screamingly-funny novel about the settlers on a world that turns out to have massive dilithium deposits resisting the efforts of both the Federation and the Empire to assert control over the planet. Read it.)
On the Discovery designs, I'd argue that the appearance does matter if we're talking in-universe design consistency. One could excuse the Next Gen/movies' redesigns of the Klingons since the original series was a low-budget show from the 60's, updated designs are to be expected. Discovery's Klingons look like a completely different species entirely. It would be like if they changed the Vulkans to look like the Ferengi and just expected you to roll with it.
I'm surprised the DS9 episode where they go back to TOS and Warf's reply to why they look so different was, "It's something we don't talk about it."
THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I loved how DS9 explained the different between TOS Klingons and TNG IN troubles and Tribulations!” Word: “we don’t like to discuss it with outsiders.”
I dislike STD kingon redesign. For 2 main reasons. 1) It seem like redesign for the sake or redesign. I would love them if they would be DS9 klingons with more diversity in skin kolor and/or different armor and atire dependent on the house. Or even minor updates to look. 2) This redesign also made them less good because amount of prosthetic made any kind of face expressions on their part almost impossible. Which made paying them less appealing. I kind of liked their culture is different but hated the design becouse it was looking so much more advanced than TNG or DS9 design and was not looking like any kind of their evolutionary predecessor.
@Levy Panik
Gee, I wonder why.
@@devinsmith4790 Yep, it's ST:D... not only because of standard abbreviations over the years but because STD is really appropriate for that story arc epoch.
@Levy Panik STD sounds right because watching it is like getting a STD !!!
InstaBlaster...
@@joshuaidris9312 Wait... that sounds familiar. "InstaBlaster"... was that an Easter Egg weapon in a Playstation game in the 90s? I also vaguely remember a weapon that instant-killed anything had that name but its refire rate sucked, so use for big guys and not swarms. Am I remembering "InstaBlaster" or something that sounds similar? Hell, I can't even remember the game(s)... it's been decades.
The problem with Discovery's Klingons is that there is no justification for the change. Ot doesn't make sense like before because you can't blame it on budget AND because they look nothing like Klingons from that era that we know thanks to TOS. Another reason why we shouldn't have a prequel.
Hey at least they TRIED to make the aliens look... You know... Alien! Something the rest of the franchise (besides Kelvin) sorely lacked.
Alberts Choise well it’s shown in an episode of tng called the chase in s6 the shows that humans romuulans Klingons and carrdassins are all genetics related due to meddling from a long extinct race
There are some interesting design ideas, like the gothic cathedral-like look of the interior of the Klingon ships and their weird marine life/coral-looking armor(which would be better for an aquatic race). But the Discovery Klingons are just too removed from the passion, the warrior joy and the charisma of the Klingons we all know and love. Same with Picard's Romulans, they just don't feel like the real thing to me.
right. The Discovery Klingons could have been done on the budget of past Star Treks, but those old creators had better taste and were not beholden to early 2000's fantasy and horror movies.
It wasn't bad when they changed the TOS Kilingons because they were only in a handful of low budget TOS episodes. In legacy trek they were in hundreds of episodes spanning 4 different shows, two decades, two main characters and several recurring characters. They were obscure villains in TOS. In legacy trek they were redefined and developed. We learned about every aspect of their culture from death rituals, coming of age, marriage, divorce, legal systems, parenting, government, war planning, family feuds etc. By the time discovery was made they had a huge amount of well established canon to pull from and they ignored most of it.
Honestly, I thought ds9 did the forehead explanation best, one simple one off line. It rectifies the very mild continuity discrepancy, without wasting time, or taking the focus of an entire episode, let alone arc.
Exactly how I felt. Some things just don't need 'explaining'.
@@craigtowse4340 This is Star Trek, ofcourse it needs explaining. Everything needs explaining. UA-cam is full of explaining Star Trek. But I agree, DS9 had the best "explaining".
The ENT storyline was entirely unnecessary, and the DS9 explanation was perfectly fine. What STD did was make acting behind all that rubber impossible, so the show was objectively worse for it.
Klingons are so barbaric and their mind-sets are so primitive that it makes it hard to believe that they could ever be smart enough to figure out space travel let alone warp speed. Anyway seeing the Klingon transformation from TOS to the motion picture is understandable, but what they did to them in Discovery is unforgivable in my mind. Here's hoping that Picard will redeem Star Trek. They lost the thing that made all the previous series so compelling "exploration of the unknown" not constant battles. Just my opinion. Thanks for the great video.
The Hur'q (the guys that stole the sword of Kahless) invaded Qo'nos in our 14th century. When the Klingons drove off the invaders, they kept their tech.
John Colicos was actually just "Count Baltar" on Glen A. Larson's original Battlestar Galactica. 'Gaius Baltar' was played by James Callis in Ronald D. Moore's long-lasting Battlestar Galactica re-imagining.
IMO the Discovery Klingons look awful. They look like space vampires. A race of nosferatu clones.
Yes, THAT'S what they remind me of. I couldn't quite pkace my finger on it before now. Thank you
I think they look like Mass Effect aliens. I wouldn't be so offended if they weren't Klingons but were instead a completely different race.
Kor was described by Sfdebris as "Klingon cleaned up good." and was ironically on commen ground with Kirk with their mutual loathing of the Organians for their refusal to resist the occupation of their world.
Worf on the other hand represents an interesting concept, a Klingon who embodies the ideal Klingon only because he was never exposed to the real thing, and the concessions that they would have to make to function as a society. Allowing dishonourable types to run around even if the rules say that shouldn't be possible, because it would be politically damaging.
Not only that, but Worf's expression of honour is aimed inwards about what he knows is right. Where as Klingons is external, showing and proving your honour, even if the facts say otherwise.
Worf could've worked if they'd leaned into his Russian-Jewish upbringing (go look up the actors who play his parents).
But it was all "Waugh waugh Klingon This, Klingon that Kling Kling Kling" no "Oy Meshuggah, that Martok's got some chutzpah."
@@hellacoorinna9995 That's the point, he overcompensated for being raised by humans by obsessing over his birth culture.
I like the old Cold War-analogy between the Federation/Klingons, and felt DSC should have consciously reflected it more. Instead there was no arms-race of near-equals or parity between their warships, but quite a sudden disparity that doesn't fit with what was presented even in ENT.
A good way to explain their uniforms and militarism in this period would be that they went through some kind of authoritarian revolution.
I get what you mean, but Discovery was going for a more modern allegory with its Klingons rather than the whole Cold War thing.
@@RowanJColeman This is a problem with creating prequels inside an established written history, but then choosing to largely ignore that very context. Perhaps setting such an allegory in the future of Star Trek, say the 25th Century, would have been wiser.
@@LazarusRemains Honestly both allegories work side by side. The TOS allegory set up the relationship between the Federation and Klingons. Whereas Discovery used a different allegory to dive into the motivations of the Klingons.
They are actually supposed to be in the midst of a civil war, STD is happening near the end of it. The radically different ships in STD and TOS and later is due to the great houses no longer having access to imperial shipyards during the civil war. Some may be Hurq ships, some may be quickly built on Hurq designs. This is also why things feel so different is that they are fighting a massive civil war and the House Mokai, and their allied houses being the most powerful of the factions before being exterminated were in some ways physically different. That at least is how they are trying to explain it away after many fans called them out for their compete divergence.
The discovery allegory doesn't work at all. There's being considered and relevant (ST VI) and there's being a parody of your intentions, setting up strawmen for a preachy bit of self-indulgence (STD).
First time I saw the Klingons in Discovery I thought they had stolen the Wraith from SG Atlantis. 🤔
Enterprise was awesome and I really like how it explained the loss of ridges .it took over 40 years to pay off questions we all had .
While I would tend to agree that the Enterprise episodes that explain what happened to the Klingon forehead ridges were unnecessary, I would argue that the discussion of this change within DS9's "Trials and Tribbelations" rendered this change in-universe canon, rather than just a fan complaint stemming from a manifestation of budgetary changes. They didn't *have* to explain the change, but there was legitimate precedent for the existence of an explanation within the Star Trek universe around which a story could be crafted, enough to render the story legitimate in my book.
From someone who likes Discovery, I found the Klingon redesigns off-putting. I'm not opposed to a good redesign, but these left little to no subtlety in the actors expressions and performances. Feel like it was a good idea in theory, but in practice it missed the mark
Old comment, I know, but if they were so determined to make klingons more "alien," they should have made a new alien. What they did was take a species whose design has been the same for the past 35 years and change everything except their names.
Me too.. My biggest issue was the acting not coming through. The prosthetics hindered the performances. The fake teeth made them sound ridiculous. Not good if I want to laugh. But I didn't hate them. But damn. Less can be more. The Axanar fan stuff was far more effective because the actors could act. The Discovery Klingons had about the same amount of movement as a Muppet.
I think Picard did a great job with the Romulans. Honoring the old and new and giving us far more diversity in their looks.
@@Majima_Nowhere I thought the same. Maybe they remember how the Kazon were taken.
I think the Kazon looked bad but they could have been interesting if they focused on them as being rebels in a war that have to remain nomadic cause they're enemy is superior.
The other problem is the idea that dis isn't a reboot or in the reboot timeline ect.
And you can get away with changes like TOS did because there wasn't video recording at the time and the show was old. And even the TOS movies were the ones that changed it. TNG followed it.
@@Majima_Nowhere
It's kinda weird to make sentient alien races in the Star Trek universe. Obliviously it's budget reasons, but it's pretty established that in space we'll encounter aliens that look like us but with face bumps.
@@devinsmith4790 i think you have missed the point of ST.because its not about realism, its about the story, though the STD klingons look realy stupid.
GOD! This just reminds me of how much I love DS9 and how, for me, it's the BEST Trek!
They had to explain the forehead issue. Remember DS9's Troubles and Tribulations?
Yeah and in that episode they played it for laughs with a simple, "We do not like to talk about it." Which is really all it needed.
Yes, and Worf indicated that it was a sensitive issue--perhaps Klingons went a period of envying alien looks and used plastic surgery.
@@RowanJColeman We can disagree. But it was a step in a less monolithic image of the Klingons. Also, the moderns Klingons had too much of an iconic look to screw with. Since Discovery has been revealed to be Prime and not Kelvin it actually is not fucked with.
@@johnkelly7757 That is a good one, too. I would have laughed at that and been satisfied due to it being a cultural issue and a contrivance. However, I like the eugenics explanation. I wonder if Rowan cries over explanations for why superheroes choose the colors they wear.
Enterprise handled it far better than a bad joke in an otherwise good episode of DS9, plus the Enterprise episodes gave us a very overdue explanation of the Klingon appearance, one of Trek's worst sore-thumbs.
Also Enterprise showed how early well meaning contacts with the Klingons lead to hostility, although none of that was the early contacts that lead to a policy of studying a species before contacting them, as the Vulcans also a Federation founding world had already contacted the Klingons, and also developed protocols for first contacts.
I have to *strongly disagree* with you...the entire explanation given in Enterprise as to why Klingons looked different in TOS was brilliant. Especially after they sent up a forthcoming explanation for this continuity issue in DS9. That arc was really well written and thought out and was one of the best episodes of the series to my opinion. But I do agree that the Klingons could've been utilized a little better in earlier episodes of Enterprise.
When you answered the "what science fiction or fantasy novel would you like to see adapted into a movie or tv show" it would have been funny if you had said Paragon by Rowan J Coleman. Anyway, I would like to request Stargate Command for the next Lore Evolution. You've already done the Goa'uld, but i wouldn't mind hearing your take on the evolution of the human characters from pluck underdogs facing insurmountable odds with present day Earth technology to essentially becoming a major galactic power with the inherited knowledge of the Asgard, Ancients, and others.
I want to do the Paragon adaptation myself haha
Rowan J Coleman I think one book which I personally would LOVE to see in Tv show form, is Fahrenheit 451, if you haven’t read the book, I would implore you to give it a read, in the simplest turns, it’s reverse Star Trek, and it is glorious...
I think the more interesting aspect of Lore Evolution is that it can cover the behind-the-scenes aspects of that evolution. As such, I think Stargate Command fairly boring tbh, because most of its evolution is actually in universe. It‘s not like the Borg or Goa‘Uld Where concepts changed drastically over time to a point when their earlier incarnation doesn’t always make sense.
Jaffa would be more interesting.
I would love to see a Lore evolution on the Cylons or maybe an aspect of Babylon 5.
Romulans next.
Mayhaps ;)
God that lovely klingon battle theme...
Small gripe, Colicos played Count Baltar in Battlestar Galactica, he wasn’t given the first name Gaius, til the Ron D. Moore series.
It's not a question of if Star Trek takes a position on something. It's a question of if they get too heavy handed in it, and/or turn the opposite position into a cartoonish strawman. Everyone understands and accepts that Star Trek has always taken sides. But there's a difference between taking a position, and beating your audience over the head with it
Meanwhile in Star Trek Online we have time traveling Klingons from Discovery fighting OG looking klingons in the current timeline
As far as I know, John Colicos (the first Klingon ever to be seen) expicitly requested to be made to look "like a space-age Genghis Khan". And you can seee that some elements from his initial styling made it into the later Klingon designs also, most notably the goatee and the eyebrows. And with his acting style, Colicos is a worthy precursor of Chang in The Undiscovered Country - both times you have an actor who clearly relishes in playing a villain, and both times with the smile of a piranha, and both insisting on their own unique design.
Thanks for always bringing such a level-headed and realist take. It's exhausting wading through all the hyperbole and vitriol that permeates modern sci-fi Hot Takes. All the videos from creators like you and Spacedock are always such a nice breath of fresh air. So thank you.
(And that's why I would love to see your take on Mass Effect Andromeda at some point)
Since Klingons are such fan favourites CBS should be brave enough to make a show where the leads are all Klingons and the dialogue is all in the Klingon language.
It probably needs to be animated
It’s almost like the TOS Klingons became the TNG Romulans...
I think your point that changes made to the Klingon in Discovery doesn't ruin the franchise because they were changed already from their initial appearance is very unreasonable. Those changes were made at a time when Klingon lore, characters and culture hadn't solidified itself in the franchise. Heck Trek franchise itself hadn't solidified. The Klingon characters in TOS were frankly just not memorable enough. But how should I look at this Klingon and not think of how Worf, Martok, Gowron, etc. actually looked.
In Enterprise the Klingon lawyer did say that some time not that long before it did actually do honour that some of the others in earlier shows seem to do
The thing about Enterprise, that I think people overlook, is that it is an alternate timeline series. Think about it, from the beginning they are thrust into a Temporal War. A Time War has to play havoc with the established history of the canon. It allowed them to rewrite certain things, like Starfleet's first contact with the Klingon's. Would it have actually happened the way it was depicted in Enterprise if the Sulabon...agents of those future Time War people, not interfered with whoever that first "Klingot" was? On the orders of those from the future, at that.
I agree with all your video except for your take on the Enterprise arc explanation of why they looked human and why they look different in Discovery. The weaving of the Enterprise explanation was done amazingly well and fit every piece together from a decades long storyline. That needs to be acknowledged i believe.
Justin Trudeau should have just told everyone he was playing a TOS Klingon.
2:48
Rowan J Coleman That's actually an upgraded version of the the older D7's Battlecruisers known as the K'Tinga class Battlecruiser.
My props to you, you're the first fan that has excepted the real world cause of one of Star Trek's continuity issues.
Have you read Starcarrier? Whole book series is like a game, not a page turner, but the aliens, oh man the ideas and exectution in first 4 was the reason I've read them. That I would like to see on a screen.
Agreed. I approached this series as a cheap and generic scifi to read once and forget it ever existed, but it surprised me with a lot of great ideas. It could work well as a TV series, since the books are rather short, but full of action sequences.
HOLY SHIT YOU SAID MY NAME RIGHT! THANKS MAN!
I was pretty fond of the Klingon Court system. It really shows the issues with a culture who only defines themselves by worriers and warmongering. The Enterprise one has a certain pain to it when you release that a century later by the time of ST6 those issues still hadn't been resolved.
it's interesting to see wider culture of SciFi shows
How strange a sexual preferance would a human need to produce B'Elana or K'Ehlir with a disco Klingon? I honestly don't think they will bring back any established Klingon characters Worf and Martok for example, because they would have hell of a time reconciling the classic look with the disco makeup.
I LOVED Discovery Klingons. I wish they had more developed lore about why they're different in multiple ways than previous iterations but only to flesh out the lore.
Klingon Commander Kor is also show as an Anti-Hero sometimes.
I love how DS9 handled the effects differences between TOS and the Paramount era Klingons: Worf simply begrudgingly says "We do not discuss it" and it's never brought up again.
TNG a little bit, but mainly DS9 also established the clear differences between the various Klingon houses in the shapes of their ridges. There was a lot of work done to establish a consistency in the design. It was never haphazard. STD is a good example of taking down old fences without knowing why any of them were put up to begin with. The STD creators fundamentally did not understand anything that came before, and arrogantly set out to arbitrarily change pretty much everything. There was no continuity, because they didn't bother hiring any of the people who made the design decisions that came before. And the so-called artistic decisions they made are bad because they are objectively flawed. Putting more rubber on an actor's face makes an actor's performance worse. Making aliens look less human makes it harder for the human audience to empathize and care about the aliens and their stories. Audiences just tune out. These are technical flaws, not valid artistic choices. It is the equivalent of failing to light a scene well enough for the audience to see what's going on, or a bad recording of the dialogue that never gets fixed in ADR. The people running Star Trek now don't believe in any sort of objective truth or reality, and it's very obvious. They carry that same attitude towards design, rejecting well-established objective standards of beauty, objective standards of good writing, or objective standards of any other aspect of production. They are like children who know nothing, but think they know everything, and nobody has ever told them "no".
Maybe it’s me, but I’m glad Enterprise took on the task to explain the TOS Klingon appearance
One theory I heard after ST:TMP was that the smooth head Klingons and the ridge head Klingons were from different castes or that the smooth heads were from worlds conquered by the Klingons. The "augment virus" is also a valid theory that has been canonized.
There was no need to give them a redesign in STD and furthermore they all would’ve been affected by the augment virus so why the ridges at all?
Like you Rowan I don’t care all that much about the why and how of the Klingon’s physical changes over the years. My big problem with the STD look, is that the makeup is far too heavy, to the point that it nullifies the actors’ performance !
You said it yourself, we’ve had so many great Klingon performances over the years : John Colicos, Michael Ansara, Christopher Lloyd, John Schuck, David Warner, Christopher Plummer, and of course Michael Dorn. Some of the better acting in all of Star Trek has come from Klingons.
Can you name me one STD Klingon that makes you go « wow, the actor is bring such humanity, such complexity ther » ? Probably not, but that’s not even their fault ! It’s impossible to convey anything other than superficial and surface-level with costumes and makeup that quite simply don’t allow it.
That’s why, imho, the post-2012 Klingons are but a shadow of their former self
Poor writing. More pewpew, more lens flares, more in your face current day politics rather than nuanced narrative. Pick one
I like you. Star Trek is large enough to encompas any and all variations on a theme. Stories are stories, and one can enjoy them or not. Easy peasy.
Completely disagree, the Enterprise arc added a lot of depth to klingons and as a fan it was very entertaining finding out how that happened.
STD is appallinggly bad, and there's no point in getting stuck there, its nice that Klingons are... diverse? (if you consider having "pale" and "black" as being diverse), but it doesnt make up for terrible writting and non-characters, which STD has in spades.
It also doesn't make up for why every Klingon in std looks like an anthropomorphized alien xenomorph.
@@pderham26 I didnt particularly cared about the designs, but they paired it with... well, everything about STD and it was just one more thing to complain in a series that had few, if any, positive points.
A good script could've saved the appalling designs, obviously that didnt happened.
@@pderham26 Agreed. Discovery's fatal flaw is it's writing... Makeup , art, and costuming are pretty bad, but good writing could've saved that, but it was not to be had. Its' a shame too because they wasted all that talent they have in their cast.
@Species 443764 Breen so someone who gets into star trek through discovery isn't a star trek fan then? Good to know.
@@mrsaltyauthor5992 don't listen to the radicals, I too have many MANY issues with STD (too many Mary Sue first season number one). But they are doing better, the writing is improving (I think due to the huge failure of Star Wars) and CBS wants to avoid that. TOS and ENT suffered the same issues with writing, TOS only the first few episodes but they had some of the greatest writers of the time working on the show so it quickly improved. ENT took until nearly the third season before it felt like anything more than a weak copy of TOS. Discovery had a few bad ones, Voyager and ENT both had some issues but took the time to address fan critiques. I imagine STO including STD into the game, and how good they are at making things flow and work (gamers are vicious critics and will walk with their money if things don't make sense) it will improve STD. I keep hoping they go with the whole "the ships are different due to the civil war" which is the only thing that makes much sense.
Excellent work here Sir.
So you won't care in the next incarnation of Klingons when someone makes them all 4 feet tall & makes them all yellow?
I think it would be hilarious if Disco Season 3 showed the Klingons in the TNG design and them just never explain why
Par for the course
Wow so nice to hear about you listening to Lost Fleet. It's my go-to comfort scifi series.
Love your videos but it was hard to stay attentive with the four mid-roll ads in this video ..... was that YT's doing or your decision?
One word... Adblock.
Wait, CoinOpTV? That’s not a name I’ve seen in a long time. I used to watch your Skylanders videos all the time back in 2013
@@AzraelAngel945 Portal Master rank up :)
Watch youtube on a browser with an adblocker. It’s like night and day
It is reasonable to assume that given how diverse (gad, I despise myself for using that word) Klingon tribes are, that throughout their history one segment of the species would decline in power to be superseded by another. Just as on our world, one political faction would rise to power while another found itself corrupted into a minority. That process often repeats itself for those in power permit the same factors of corruption to continue onto a following generation even worse than before until the governmental structure is rendered unrecognizable from the ideals that brought forth great nations. Human history is rife with this cycle and we may be in the process of such in our lifetime. In this regard, Rowan has nailed the Klingon Empire reflecting our "uncertain times" (another platitude I've come to despise).
8:00: I'm 80% sure that they did that as a sort of tongue and cheek ironic thing, not a legit retcon.
THE TOS NON HEAD THING WAS NEAT I LIKED IT
I know Voyager didn't do much, only a few Belanna episodes, so i understand why it was skipped over, but i still had a wtf moment when the vid jumped from ds9 to ent
The Design in ToS is understandable due to low budget like you said... Who knows if Klingons should have looked from the GET GO like in TMP/TNG!?
But the Discovery Klingons have no RATIONAL reason for being different... Just that they should be different for the SAKE of being different!
Lol no... While you are right that the premise and display of the different klingon houses was well done, the physical appereance was a disgrace and that for I continue to call them KlingOrcs..
Thanks
I haven't seen Star Trek Discovery so I can't say if I like or not, but yeah the new look for Klingons doesn't really work for me. Cool they made distinction between individual houses, but I wish that was the only change because they look like a completely different alien race.
I wish Disco had just started in the 31st c instead of the 23rd, the change in the Klingons would have made more sense and been a cool addition instead of a bizarre alternate version.
I personally quite like the experiment gone awry explanation of how come the Original Series Klingons lacked forehead ridges. It is a nice explanation! But how they will explain away those hideous looking Klingons in Discovery is anyone's guess!
Production incompetence. That's the explanation. It's a technical flaw, not a legitimate artistic choice, to make alien characters so alien that human audiences can't empathize with them, and put so much rubber on actors' faces that they can't perform as actors under it. It's like failing to record the audio in a scene, or cutting a character's head off when framing the camera shot.
Behold my very important comments on a video from 2019!
I appreciate your constant dismissal of continuity hounds in general, and as a Doctor Who fan, I understand the need to just enjoy story. However, Star Trek does follow a more linear storytelling style, and as of the second Trek movie, did eventually rely upon fans to follow said stories, so I say it's fair to care a little about continuity.
That being said, I never needed an explanation for the forehead ridges.
That also being said, I enjoyed the heck out of the explanation of the visual change in Enterprise. It was absolutely ludicrous but I thought it was enjoyable and a little nice bit of trivia, plus made those obsessed with a need for seamless continuity a little happier. Also, it amused me that in Tribulations, O'Brien and Bashir posit if it was a viral mutation or genetic engineering before Worf says it is not discussed with outsiders, and Enterprise ran with that. It was an embarrassment for the Empire, so they do NOT discuss it, and it was both. Love it!
Re: Discovery, my only issue with the redesign was how stark it was, and the naivite that you set your show in the Prime timeline and NOT expect Trek fans to notice such a radical departure? Redesign some of the cultural elements, the armor, maybe some physical diversity, and only the most hardcore would notice, but these guys did an almost complete physical redesign. I would also say the original change was almost more seen as welcome, as the TOS design had racist undertones and was an underwhelming look, wheras the modern Klingon designs have slowly grown into classic and beloved elements of Trek lore. And Trek fans do love their lore.
tl;dr I have opinions that differ from the video and that makes me important! Grr!
They simply don't know why things were done the way they were done before, and they don't care to know. They arrogantly think they know better, but produce an objectively worse, technically flawed result because they've never done the work themselves and never hired any of the people who could explain it to them. The make-up on Star Trek was an evolution, where lessons were learned as they went along, designs were developed in logical ways and standardized. Klingons especially underwent significant development in their visual language, arguably more than any other alien species. Probably hundreds of man hours went into every detail of the Klingons in the TNG-ENT era, so that audiences would immediately recognize them, understand them and the different factions, and have the appropriate emotional reaction on a subconscious level. STD's designers went: "eh, they're aliens so let's make them look weird" and called it a day. The audience backlash was predictable and correct. Human audiences respond better to human-like aliens more than alien-like aliens. Humans only care about human stories. You can anthropomorphize non-human characters, and get an invested audience, but you cannot go the other way without falling into the uncanny valley, and making people tune out and stop caring about the story. Nobody cares about a zombie and what happens to them. They're just a monster, their motivations and trials are irrelevant. Actors also can't act as well with a bunch of rubber covering their face. Wearing a mask hides the performance. It cripples it. The product is objectively worse.
The idea to go for "realism" just demonstrates the utter incompetence of the showrunners and their design staff. These people do not understand storytelling, they don't understand that design needs to serve a function for the story, and they don't understand any of the visual language and performance that goes into a prosthetic appliance. They are amateurs, and they will always be in the shadow of the giants who created Star Trek. This is a technical flaw, on par with failing to light a scene so the audience can see it, not recording the audio correctly, so that it comes out too quiet to hear, or too garbled to understand, or an actor failing to get an actor in frame so their head is cut off and all you see is their torso. It's not a legitimate artistic choice, it's an error.
I actually appreciated the Enterprise writers taking the time to explain why TOS Klingons and the ones from TNG and the movies looked different. It showed they cared about the canon and lore. Discovery Klingons hardly look like Klingons at all ... although I suppose they do bare a resemblance to the JJ'verse Klingons which makes sense considering Bad Robot was involved in creating Discovery. But they were so overworked the poor actors could hardly speak and they certainly couldn't emote through the layers of prosthetics.
"But they were so overworked the poor actors could hardly speak and they certainly couldn't emote through the layers of prosthetics" - the fact that the prosthetics makes the actors sound more alien, job done - much like sarus makeup makes him sound more nasally and alien - and as i said in another post rewatch the lrell/voq scene aboard the shenzhou and tell me they cant emote - and most of time all they need to emote is "arrgh war/arrgh honor"
Was hoping for space above and beyond, oh well one day I will find someone talking about it, just subscribed 🖖
I have plans to do a video on that show
🖖😎👍Very cool and very well nicely done and very well informatively executed and explained very nicely indeed 👌.
i love the lost fleet books, i could easily see it as a lower budget scifi show.
fox five up 23 degrees at time 20.
Changing the look of the Klingons is one thing but STD changed almost every aspect of the Klingons to the point that if they where not specifically pointed out as Klingons you wouldn't know they where. The original series gets a pass because almost nothing there was fleshed out. I didn't like the change in the Kelvin timeline either. There is no need to fix something that's not broken.
I know this old but TOS Era Klingons will always be my favorite. I love the grey skin color too. The fantasy novels I would like made into a movie is The chronicles of amber.
Right off the bat please forgive me for vague references, it's been decades since I've seen the works I'm about to cite.
I realize this is non-canon but really good explanations for differences have existed since the late 70s and early 80s.
I once owned an anthology of short Star trek stories, I believe published by Bantam Books. One story, "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited," featured a freak accident that placed the TV cast on board the real enterprise where they had to play their roles for real. Upon encountering real Klingons they were amazed at the variety of looks on a single starship and commented on complaints the TV show had gotten from fans for getting the makeup wrong on different episodes.
In the same era there was an oversized picture book about races of the Star Trek universe. It placed the TMP Klingons at the center as Imperial Klingons and showcased TOS Klingons as deliberate hybrids to be stationed in positions adjacent to the federation believing the hybrids would better deal with the expansion Star Fleet.
The same book also put forth the idea that there were klingon/romulan hybrids along the romulan frontier for the same purpose. The same article stated that the hybrid program had been abandoned as unsuccessful by the 24th century.
Sorry for being so long but I always liked these tales on the appearance situation.
You said it, explaining visuals is not important, stories are.
The issue I have with Discovery's version of the Klingons. The Klingons are always kind of a xenophobic society. However, the Federation an outside power is trying to force change upon them. It makes the Klingons come off as weak and reactionary. Where the Klingon Empire is a fully separate space nation. There is nothing wrong with nationalism as the Federation had to deal with that very issue. The difference is that the Klingons are more like the Japanese and doesn't like foreigners mixed in. The Klingons having to deal with the Federation comes off as a fight of say the Japanese against western Imperialism. Yet, the previous lore always showed the Klingons as a major faction in space that is an equal to that of the Federation. The writers turn the Federation to be more like the Terran Empire, but more diverse. The Federation is trying to impose its ways on a species and peoples who should be as advanced as the Federation. It is a very imperial sense to think that the Klingons should have to conform to the Federation. The Federation is diverse, but the Klingon Empire has never been a diverse set of people. They are all just once species. If you like the Klingons in STD, but I can't see them as the same.
Discovery is a good sci-fi show but it has its flaws. I have two major changes how show could've been better and maybe more accepted among the fans.
1. Set it 100 or so years after the TNG/DS9/Voyager era. That would explain the more "modern" looking technology, uniforms and such. Remember that one TNG episode where warp speed was ripping the space apart. Here comes the spore drive.
2. Replace Discovery's Klingons with Breen. We don't know anything about the Breen culture and haven't seen any Breen without helmet and we all know that they're extremely powerful.
There. I do like how the DIS Klingons look, I just don't like the fact that they're Klingons. That's all.
You’re dead right. I really don’t like much of the show, but I think those changes would improve certain aspects of it greatly.
Don't think the redesigns ruined Star Trek but I hated them and it took me out of the show and only reinforced the idea that Discovery could have been set in any time period and that setting it before TOS was a mistake and they should have moved past the 24th Century. The changes to the culture as well was just to much just make a new race and set it in the future instead of trying to shoe horn the show into the pre TOS period which I just didn't like and honestly turned me off on the show.
'Elaborate and DIVERSE costumes
What I like about these new designs is just how DIVERSE they are
The Klingons themselves, while being one race are incredibly DIVERSE
Seeing such DIVERSE group of people'
We get it, you like people knowing you're fond of saying the word 'diverse'.
I love that he reprised his role as Kor!
Discovery Klingons: almost great. Like the whole show.
"3.6 roentgen, not great. Not terrible."
Okay, you got a sub for that one. I would love to hear an a lore evolution on the Vulcans
I'm already in love with you, mate.
Keep up!
*Blushes
Devious, sinister and megalomaniacal. But somehow so charming, even when threatening to drain Kirk's brain like a slurpy.
FASA Games created a table top RPG for Star Trek, and they had a really interesting take on the different looking Klingons. Those with the ridged foreheads were the original race, Imperial Klingons. The ones with smooth foreheads were Klingons who'd been genetically spliced with Human DNA (Fusion) so they could pass for Human and infiltrate the Federation. The one's that couldn't completely pass, are the ones we saw in the TV show. They had also made a Klingon/Romulan Fusion, that would be used for infiltration of Romulan Space, or as Vulcans. Since the Orion's were Neutral and traded with all 3 powers, there were even Klingon/Orion Fusions.
Personality wise, they were a cross between Samurai and Vikings, but sometimes willing to stab each other in the back for personal gain, but that was extremely frowned upon.
This gives the Klingons extremely more depth and range. Too bad this idea wasn't ever explored on the screen.
I had no issues with the Discovery Klingons but I do think it was a missed opportunity to show all 3 Klingon designs side by side. As a prequel just retroactively acknowledge itself and the other 2 eras.
Rowan, maybe you don't care about how these changes came about, but some of the more die hard Star Trek fans would like to be able to discuss the various theories.
ST:Discovery is controversial mostly because of the controversial times in which we live in. Do I hate almost all of how they changed Klignons, its simply a conduit for a larger societal earthquake...an earthquake that is very much touched on in its changes.
If the Klingons rule vast areas of the Beta quadrant and have an empire that's similar to the size of the Federation, it only makes sense that they have different-looking factions, with the various Houses possibly having developed off-shots on colonies over the centuries.
I think Discovery should've kept the older designs as one of the noble houses kinda adding more to the diversity of the species in more ways than just you know clothing & skin colours.
2:18 wait, the center Klingon in that picture wasn't as mutated as the rest, heck, he almost had a nice ridges in he's forehead... 🤣🤣🤣
Given that the writers knew they were going to take the Discovery into the future, they could have debut the "new" Klingons they wanted to use in the show as what happens to the Klingon race centuries from now.
Then simply tie it into what we learned on Enterprise and have this honestly bizarre look be the final result of the virus.
STD has no Klingons just Orcs calling themselves Klingons with uniforms from the Spiderverse.
It's interesting that you mention Picard, because... I'm now curious to see if they reintroduce Worf or Martok with the updated makeup.
i realy hope they doint.
Worf was the only klingon with real honor. Every other klingon seemed to use it as a shield to stab eachother in the back.
It's a bad adaptation of the Asian 'shame' culture - where Western culture is a 'guilt' culture (you're expected to feel guilty about improper behavior), Asian cultures are more about shame - it is not as important that you _are_ an upright, moral person as long as you are _seen_ by others as being one; So you get the Klingons _talking_ duty and honor, while they're double-dealing in the back rooms, and you see the knives come out when someone is caught doing it and their violations are dragged into the light.
The appearance effects the relationship between the factions.
Two things, one I wasn't expecting such an in-depth analysis, good work. Second, Discovery is here too? Well like any discussion that involves that show and Star Wars TLJ, R.I.P comment section.
Your tone when you spoke about nationalism sounded a little derisive, Rowan
Yes, I’ve been enjoying his videos but I found that a little off-putting. Obviously that’s his prerogative, he made the video; but I think the Discovery/modern Trek controversies do tend to divide people more often along political lines. Who knows how fans will see things 30 years from now, but personally I found the attempt by the writers to compare Klingons to nationalists a bit trite (especially when everything’s trying to win ‘woke’ points these days).
Since TNG when Data had an infatuation with Sherlock Holmes. I've always thought that a series about a space P.I. in the Star Trek universe would make for a good show.
David Warner is from my home city
I see the Discovery Klingons having similar issues to the Godzilla (Zilla) of 1998. From 1954 to the present, you can put every version of Godzilla next to each other and say "Yeah those are Godzillas", all except for '98 Godzilla. They wanted to make that version new & unique, but in doing so they took away its Godzillaness. People don't have a problem with the subtle changes in the other versions, because no matter how many back plates, or teeth, or bulk they added or took away, it was always essentially Godzilla. '98 'Zilla just felt like a different character & species, which he eventually became.
Klingons have a similar evolution. Although movie Klingons looked different, there was enough similar to make them feel the same. Same dark skin tone, facial hair, militaristic uniform. However too much was changed in Discovery. Skin tone, facial structure, hair, clothing. Nothing about them feels Klingon. They seem like they were going to be a completely different race, but they just changed the name to Klingon. They could have still done differences to the various houses, making each unique, but still been closer to what a Klingon is in the fans mind.