this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I am the kind of person who enjoys "big weird" scifi like Stanisław Lem. Stories about trying to relate to and find common ground with something so alien that the prospect of even understanding is basically hopeless. Star Trek usually doesn't do stories that, which makes sense as it often uses alien races as allegories or stand-ins for real-world human relations.

That said- I thought those early Klingons were super weird and scary because they were just so alien. It really made sense thinking about how it took a century before they could get to the events of Star Trek VI, and it made the Khittomer accords feel like so much more of an accomplishment. Like- you made a treaty with WHAT?

And just aesthetically their ships and armor looked like something out of HP Lovecraft or HR Geiger:

This is not to say I dislike how Klingons were portrayed previously, kinda like Mongols in TOS or Vikings in DS9, just that they never felt scary to me. They never felt like warriors. I was never afraid for the gallant crew of the Enterprise D (a science and exploration vessel) going into battle against Klingons. But I really enjoyed the alien-ness Disco tried to go with. Anyone else with me?

EDIT: PEOPLE I SAID WHO'S WITH ME NOT WHO ISN'T CM'ON Annoyed

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[–] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

No.

If STD wanted to do something different, then they should have gone 300 years into the future beyond TNG and done something different.

Since Enterprise I have hated that all the new Trek properties have been prequels. The people who are now responsible for Trek either do not trust themselves enough to come up with original ideas or (more likely) have a significant disdain for the property to begin with and don't want to come up with original ideas, for fear of being taken for someone who might do such a thing (ie: nerds).

Thus they can push the property forward supposedly building on the ideas of others, but in order to foist the appearance of originality on everybody in the face of this, they drastically - and without explanation - alter fundamental aspects of the source material. They do this apparently not imagining there will be a backlash. The inability to imagine a backlash can only come from their own personal dislike for the source material. They either find it so goofy and ridiculous that they can't imagine anyone else would be passionate about it - or (again, more likely) they find themselves so superior to the source material in their own minds that no matter what they do, they are certain it will be seen as an improvement. Even if it isn't seen that way, they don't care, again, because fucking nerds.

Klingons are a thing. Extremely well developed, lots of interesting lore. OK, so these new aliens are more scary. They're more dangerous. They're more like warriors. Fine. Put them on a different planet 300 years in the future and stop shitting on the past. Same thing with their stupid fucking mushroom drive hooked up to tardigrade nipples.

Edit: I feel like I should mention, I like SNW even though it's a prequel. Look what it did: changed an alien species (the Gorn) that we really don't know much about - smart(er)!

[–] Captain_Ender@kbin.social -1 points 2 years ago

This is the correct take. DSC should've taken place in the future, it was screaming to, but they thought they were better than Trek and could do whatever they want.

[–] Trekman10@sh.itjust.works -2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

Yeah, I really think a lot of the support for the Klingon redesign and other revisionist aspects of Discovery/the current era of trek it spawned comes from a "but the Original Series is cringe fail and LAME. We have to make cool science fiction action shows for the modern era and couldn't possibly respect such an old show" mentality.

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[–] Trekman10@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Most of this reasoning is irrelevant to me simply because I don't view each show as seperate. I watch DIS s1 and see this Klingons and can't help but think "so what about Kang, Kor, or Koloth? How do they look right now?"

It doesn't matter how cool or scary these new klingons look, they have four nostrils and elongated heads when before they were more like buff humans with ridges. That's irreconcilable to me, regardless of how the actual aesthetic makes me feel when I watch an episode.

Taking it at face value, the Klingons looked like TNG, then they lost ridges, then regained them with even more than we'd ever seen before, then they lose them, then they go back to TNG? That's annoying.

[–] LibraryLass@startrek.website 1 points 2 years ago

“so what about Kang, Kor, or Koloth? How do they look right now?”

Like Klingons.

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[–] Shisma@startrek.website 1 points 2 years ago

I like the idea of klingons being very diverse.

[–] passinglurker@startrek.website 1 points 2 years ago

I'm not really a fan of "it only looks overdesigned cause its supposed to be alien to you!" That they did with early Disco klingons and have done so far with SNW's Gorn. That line of thinking works for one off antagonists like V'ger, but these aliens are effectively supposed to be recurring characters and and making them and thier ships big balls of (sometimes asymmetric) noise means they all just start looking uniformly chaotic on top of being hard to replicate and recognize outside watching the show.

[–] Ori@sacredori.net 0 points 2 years ago

I feel like it was too much. It 💯 fits Klingon style, but they're almost too foreign.

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I am with you, say what you like, these klingons were at least interesting.

That feeling died down for me over the season, when they became just another warlike race.

The whole arc got muddled, what they did to Tyler was really what broke it, it's like they just wanted to stab you with a drama blade and twist, which was totally unnecessary.

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[–] Taleya@aussie.zone -1 points 2 years ago

I love the design and aesthetic....just not as klingons. Shoulda been an awesome new race of their own

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