How might SNW explain the physiology of the Klingons that have ridged foreheads versus the smooth foreheads that come from the failed augment experiment in ENT? A refresher: during the run of ENT, Klingons attempted to replicate the experiment of Human Augments. It ends up failing, which results in the physiology of the population changing, thus giving a in-universe explanation for why the makeup in TOS varies from how they appear TMP and onward.
How might SNW address this bit of lore? TOS takes place during 2265-2269. SNW first episode “Strange New Worlds” is 2259, six years prior. We already know Klingons with ridged foreheads exist thanks to DIS. We even see some during “The Broken Circle”. Might one possible way of explaining the change be a shift in the military and/or political factions of the Empire that lead to more of the smooth foreheads Klingons dominating?
I’ll stand by the position that the Enterprise augment virus arc was an error, and the “explanation” for Klingon ridges is the same one you should use for the bridge of the Enterprise looking like it was cobbled together from plywood and plastic beads. This issue was best left to Worf’s lampshade in DS9 Trials & Tribleations.
It’s really interesting which visual differences humans will accept unthinkingly and which we will demand answers for. The Klingon ridges thing comes up constantly, but I have yet to see anyone earnestly ask why all the characters in Lower Decks have huge eyes and unnaturally uniform coloration, or why hand phaser beams in TOS go so much more slowly than later phasers and why everyone agrees to stay really still while they are being fired.
This issue was best left to Worf’s lampshade in DS9 Trials & Tribleations.
IMO, that was pushing the line as it was, since it still implies a distinct visual difference. It would have been better for Worf to use TOS-style make-up, and misdirect the remark as referring to the uniform instead or something along those lines.
It’s really interesting which visual differences humans will accept unthinkingly and which we will demand answers for. The Klingon ridges thing comes up constantly, but I have yet to see anyone earnestly ask why all the characters in Lower Decks have huge eyes and unnaturally uniform coloration, or why hand phaser beams in TOS go so much more slowly than later phasers and why everyone agrees to stay really still while they are being fired.
TOS, I think, generally gets a pass because it’s considered a relic of the 1960s, whereas the whole TNG-era was when Trek made it big, and they more or less defined the visual aspects for a lot of the franchise. If you talk about starships, people generally think you’re talking around the time of TNG, not TOS, or 32nd century Discovery.
Animation, meanwhile, gets a pass both because they’re not quite as big, and that any differences can be dismissed as stylistic alterations made to suit the medium. People didn’t care that TAS made tribbles neon pink, instead of the more realistic fur colours that their real-life counterparts had.
The most fuss, in my experience, really tends to happen when a visual alteration is thought of as being a retroactive change that “ruins” the existing image someone might have of something. Discovery’s Klingons and Enterprise get some controversy because there was already an Enterprise and Klingons around that time in-universe, and the new design is taken as replacing the old thing.
By comparison, the Enterprise suddenly changing in TMP, or in TNG accepted not as replacements, but as being spurred by technological development, like with phasers/transporters being massively different. Or, that the change/original characters were minor enough that it’s not considered significant. There wasn’t a spat over Discovery’s revision of the Saurians, since the only prior depiction was as a background character in TMP, and in DS9, Trill/Ferengi were only shown a small handful of times, so changing them was accepted quite well.
Personally, what I also find interesting, is what things people don’t question not changing. Like starships using the exact same technology in the exact same way, for 300 – 900 years. No-one building the human ships in the Federation has thought to significantly change the warp nacelle design, either based on the engine designs of other species, or just to shift it around a bit in all that time? No Vulcan inspiration, different successful engine technology, etc?
It’s only been 100 years since we invented the auto-motive car, and we’ve already had variants of them for decades that aren’t just changing the wheel count, or making them slightly fancier. It seems weird that the Federation, for all its technological prowess and allegedly superiority by co-operation, has barely touched them for all that time, and that everything remains separate and species-linked. You’d expect at least one Federation space-vessel that does have mixed technologies, and a human framework to put them all together into a functional whole.
The revised Trill makeup in DS9 made that show literally unwatchable!
EDIT: In earnest, I do find the hoop-jumping process of trying to find some canon explanations/connections a lot of fun, as long as nobody takes them too seriously (hard mode).
I think it’s great fun to try and puzzle these things out, as a fan. I also think it’s mind numbingly tedious to sit through an entire professionally produced episode designed to do it for us. Trials and Tribble-ations handled the matter perfectly.
Yes, the Klingon augment thing was deeply stupid, both in-universe and out, and I think it’s to SNW’s strength that we’re all just going to pretend it didn’t happen.
I think with Disco S1 they attempted a reset that didn’t work. They all looked the same. Nobody really liked it. So they reverted to giving them hair and there’s a throwaway line in S2 by Burnham that’s tantamount to admitting failure by the show runners. And then we don’t hear anything about it again. My guess is SNW will continue with ridged Klingons and just never explain it.
If they really wanted to go into canon, you could say there was the augment era during ENT, then they fixed their ridges with a hypospray, and then just before SNW reaches TOS times, there was a recurrence of the augment craze on Qronos. Or a COVID like virus escaped from a lab. It would be odd because all the characters we know from TOS never comment on this oddity - Spock, Kirk, Uhura have all seen ridged Klingons, then the smooth kind, and then ridged again in the movies. But stranger plot points have been ignored in Trek. Borg Queen anyone?
If they really wanted to go into canon, you could say there was the augment era during ENT, then they fixed their ridges with a hypospray, and then just before SNW reaches TOS times, there was a recurrence of the augment craze on Qronos. Or a COVID like virus escaped from a lab. It would be odd because all the characters we know from TOS never comment on this oddity - Spock, Kirk, Uhura have all seen ridged Klingons, then the smooth kind, and then ridged again in the movies.
There’s also an in-universe explanation where a lot of the Klingons we saw were supremacists who specifically focused on their Klinginess, and had the technology to genetically engineer themselves. In the aftermath of the augment virus, they could well have overcorrected to exaggerate their Klingon features.
Fair point. It suffers from the same inconsistency issue in regards to nobody commenting on it when I think it deserves a mention. But you’re right. There is another gray area to explore.
With the Borg Queen they have never explained if the different actors are all the same character or different iterations of the Queen.
I think that’s my point. With PIC S2 we even get a second version of the Borgs. What’s that all about? And then dropped and never discussed again. None of it is really reconcilable. They haven’t explained it because they can’t get out of corners they write themselves into. The Klingons are just another dishonorably unfortunate corner.
I feel they already have; the Klingon bridge crew from the musical episode appeared as TNG-ridged.
Truly a subtly unretconning of the Klingon look without even addressing it.
Here is a lot idea just tell a good story and gloss over that stuff remember Klingon’s don’t talked about it with outsiders and that includes the viewers.sorry forgot what com this was carry on
The smoothening virus, as per Phlox, would eventually be bred out of the Klingons. Kang, Koloth and Kor had plastic surgery to restore their ridges. From this, I could only assume that the writers might show a smooth forehead Klingon and give a character, probably a young one, a throwaway line to pay a little fan service.
I really enjoy the lengths that the writers go to connect the many decades of Trek. It just proves that they are nerds themselves, as it should be.
That would work if SNW came after TOS. But in DIS and SNW we’ve seen ridges. But no direct mention of the events of “Affliction”. So by the late 2260s, why would a majority of those alive exhibit one singular trait that is considered a defect and suddenly disappear after 2270?
EDIT: If both groups of Klingons always exist side-by-side then writers would likely want to make it clear in dialogue. I think they should.
I believe this was addressed in an interview somewhere where the Disco writers said they planned to go with Rodenberry’s desire to “pretend the Klingons were always like that” and ignore the Enterprise lore completely. Let me see if I can find it.
EDIT: It was Ted Sullivan in 2017 in an interview with Wired.
That was a great read, thanks.
Kinda surreal to read about disco without also reading about disappointment.
Wildest part is how good it sounded at the time:
“Things are at a fever pitch right now, I believe we can all agree. The devastation, the oppression, the genocide, the division around the world, I think it has reached a fever pitch, and I absolutely think that it’s causing people to lose hope in a lot of ways,” she says. “So yes, I think people are looking for something to hold onto, they’re reaching and grasping for glimmers wherever they may find them. It’s why I feel so honoured and blessed to be a storyteller, number one, and to be telling this story, because I believe it speaks to that. I believe seeing this utopian future, even with its challenges, is incredibly, incredibly hopeful and inspiring.”
The basic story ideas are pretty solid, they just get hampered by the execution (and the mess that was production).
