this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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Ones with a third different head shape, no less!
And long drawn out subtitled scenes for some reason.
In TNG when Klingons are talking on a Klingon ship I don't think they're actually speaking English. I understand they are speaking their native language and it is being translated for me. I don't know why Discovery thought this was the place to go for "realism".
Fourth. You forgot about the "Kelvin timeline" Star Trek films.
I remember right before Discovery aired they showed a few behind the scenes pictures and one of them included the Klingon uniforms.
Me and a lot of other people started saying “Did they steal those from the Abrams movies?”
Wouldn’t that be 5 then?
Interesting point! Had to look up some screenshots, but it does look like they were maybe trying to "bridge the gap" between the TOS and TNG-era Klingon look in that film, which I am going to be watching again after this meeting in order to verify.
Even if it's an intentional transitory look, I'll agree that it's still unique, and therefore counts. Great call.
I'd say there are up to 8 designs, depending on how much you want to nitpick:
Enterprise also had slightly different looking Klingons and IIRC addressed why (a genetic disorder or disease IIRC)
In Enterprise, they made an augment virus that went wrong, and to avoid going the way of the Illyrians, they made a cure, that basically turned them human/into the TOS Klingons.
This is starting to feel a bit too nuanced.
Yeah, like I say, it's pretty nitpicky. I'd probably collapse everything from TSFS to Kelvin into one, if I were being more lax. I don't find the Kelvin design to be all that different from what came before, but I do find TMP to be really distinct in comparison. But I know some people who seem to be the exact opposite on that, so 🤷
Yeah, how dare those artists do their jobs! I can’t stand this sentiment. Times and technology change, and so designs can change because of that. Yes they ham fisted an explanation witht the ENT arc. But like, should we go back to the racist Asian caricature based look? People who can’t separate the stories from the fact that their real productions that have to actually exist in reality don’t deserve Star Trek.
You can change costumes and makeup without completely changing unnecessary parts.
Klingons went from being established as clearly mammalian and very hairy to a completely different reptilian-in-appearance species (also with an entirely different culture but let's ignore that), then back to mammalian.
They also made significant changes to Andorians. The hair, facial structure, skin tones, and antennae changed, but they were still clearly Andorians, so nobody cared. If they made them red with yellow hair and a rhino horn instead of antennae then it would be rightly ridiculed.
The assertion that if you're against what early DIS did to Klingons then you're a racist who wants Asian caricatures is absolutely insane. What are you smoking?
The designs chosen for alien characters are based on the limitations and of the technology of their time, not just creative wants. You know why Klingons were so hairy up till disco? Because wigs were cheaper and look better on camera than full body prosthetics did. Remember the fish heads?
But now they have a lot better prosthetic technology so let’s reinterpret the designs for this new show. We can maintain the characteristics from the text but we can also change the things we did because they were more practical then.
But then we get to your last paragraph and you completely lose me. How you made that jump from what I said is just, bravo. 👏🏻 that’s some fancy gymnastics right there. Again, people who can’t understand that stories produced in live action actually have to exist in reality and make choices for practical and not just creative reasons are absolutely insufferable.
Maybe it was when you said:
That's less of a jump and more of a.... What's smaller than as step?
That is complete bullshit. Klingons were never designed to be reptilian. There have been reptilian races shown in Trek long before DIS.
Klingon design settled on how they look throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s because that's what they wanted them to look like. They're a hairy, mammalian species.
You can reinterpret without throwing away everything and making a clearly entirely different species. Like going from mammals to reptilians. And again don't try to bullshit is into thinking making a reptilian species was impossible until 2017.
That's exactly what you said. Your mental gymnastics is insane.
Jfc, there's an insufferable person here and it's certainly not me. You are the one who doesn't understand.
Stop with this stupidity and mental gymnastics. It's not impossible to make Klingons mammalian, because we've already done it for decades, and we again do it now.
Why are you lying by saying that the change was done for a "practical" reasons and that mammalian costume design "doesn't exist in reality"?
We’re clearly experiencing two different realities here and this just isn’t gonna work. Sorry, have a good one.