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To this day, I am consistently impressed with what Trek pulled off on a shoestring budget. Visual FX may have occasionally suffered in the form of a blob of spinning light representng an alien ship, and some of the TOS aliens were hokey, but TOS also showed us some of the best aliens to pop up in any incarnation of Trek.
I like the Bolians (do they have hair or not?) and the Bajorans, but most of the others in later Treks didn't do much for me. And as much as I find myself wishing we'd seen more TOS races in TNG and later, I'm also scared that if we did, they'd suffer as mightily as their cousins who did make the transition...
Vulcans Impressively impassive during TOS and the movies. Elegant and nice, simple make-up. Saavik bugged me with her unhaven eyebrows, but that was allowable considering Kirstie Alley's ego. *chuckle* However, as we move later in Trek, the Vulcans start looking and acting vaguely... wrong. It looks like they start using wigs, and the ears aren't as subtle and graceful as earlier incarnations. The actors hired tend to be about a 50/50 split between those who look good as Vulcans and those who look smarmy . And the colours used for make-up more often than not make them look sickly instead of exotic.
T'Pol is the worst offender, with her catsuit(s), bad hair, and unVulcan features. Okay, we've established that Vulcan is a high-gravity world. How has she escaped without those breasts being pulled down to her knees by now? All those years off-world?
Andorians The ones in "Journey to Babel" were definitive, and wonderful. Simple, but believable, make-up and prosthetics. And good actors portraying them, especially Ambassador Thelev -- love that lisp.
Then Fred started mucking around during TMP. Gone are the graceful cupped antennae, replaced with thin tendrils. The blue face-paint is also rather nasty-looking, failing to cover all the actors' pinkness, and generally making them look ghastly rather than alien.
They got better in TVH, bu the receding hairline on the Andorian Admiral strikes a discordant note, as do his visible ears. In TOS it was assumed their antennae were their auditory organs, as their wigs rather carefully hid the actors' ears. Oh, well.
Then there was the puffball Andorian Lal was considering as a 'look'... Thank God she didn't go for that. The Andorians on Enterprise aren't the best or the worst I've seen, but I would have liked something more in line with what we saw in TOS, rather than turning them into yet more bumpy-forehead victims...
Tellarites What can I say? These guys were cool, and have been utterly ignored since TOS.
Klingons Originally a gang of interstellar thugs during TOS, they acquired some much needed complexity during the films. But they were still devious, cunning, treacherous, moustache-twirling villains. That was their charm. I really, really wish they'd kept the story thread of Kruge's Bird-of-Prey being a Romulan ship stolen for the cloaking device. Klingon ships in my collection are all the proper burnt grey-brown.
I've always liked the explanation that each Klingon House operates their own ships. That nicely explains the consistent "look" to the Klingons in each movie, while being different from movie to movie.
But that doesn't excuse the liberties taken with Kang, Kor, and Koloth. And neither does it cover for the egregious treatment of the TOS Klingons in DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations". "We don't discuss it"... *snort* Kang, Kor, and Koloth should have been given the same sort of subdued ridges Chang had in Star Trek VI. Simple. Elegant. And relatively in line with their smooth foreheads in TOS.
And of course, the whole "honor" thing appeared out of nowhere. I like to think they got the idea from the Romulans during their brief alliance, and after Praxis/Khitomer, found it was the best way to guarantee their survival as a species. Revisionist history as much as Martok's wife's family history. *chuckle* But it works.
Romulans These hurt me the most. What happened to cause them to go from looking exactly like Vulcans to having pronounced Bumpy Forehead Syndrome in only fifty years (remember, Sela has BFS and she was born to a Romulan general of the 2340s)? What happened to cause them to go from being noble and ruthless adversaries to being more treacherous than the TOS Klingons?
I would have much preferred seeing Marc Alaimo's Tebok sporting the same Julius Caesar haircut as Mark Lenard in "Balance of Terror". And Taris would have looked great with hair down to her waist...
And I can't even begin to go into the Remans.
Thoughts? Feedback? Opinions?
--Jonah
P.S. Although not technically a TOS race, I'd love to see TVH's Caitians show up again. Awesome make-up, especially for 1986.
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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Cartman
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posted
"Originally a gang of interstellar thugs during TOS, they acquired some much needed complexity during the films..."
...which promptly got thrown out the window in TNG and (later) DS9.
TOS: the Klingons are an aggressive military superpower with expansionist ambitions. In the Cold War politics of the time, they obviously represented the USSR, while the Romulans just as obviously represented Red China. They appeared little different from us; they could be violent, aggressive, sly, cloying, or deceptive, just like us.
TNG: that same enemy superpower with a mysterious but familiar alien culture is now a farcical one-note alien society concocted around comic-book interpretations of ancient Norsemen. Worf's pathetic obsession with the most garish aspects of Klingon history became the entirety of Klingon culture. It got so bad that we eventually saw the leadership of the entire Empire decided by... a knife fight.
I mean, the Klingons were transformed from civilized (sort of) people into animalistic predators who ate raw meat, growled ferally during lovemaking or when threatened, and treated the act of hunting not as a method of gathering food or as a sport but as an eroticized ritual... I'd call that a pretty lousy lay.
[ August 23, 2003, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: Cartmaniac ]
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posted
Romulans of the TOS era were and to this day are my favorite ST aliens of all time. They had a concept of honor, and a sort of intelligent, ruthless knowledge of strategy. They wanted power, but they didn't want to do it dishonorably.
Through subtlety there was honor. That was the basic theme of the Romulans. They might knife you in the back, but if they did, they let you see them first. They had a certain style that was unique to each.
My final thought is that TOS Romulans have changed into TOS Klingons
-------------------- "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
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Wow. Damn those assholes who remade the Klingons in TMP, and remade them again in ST3, and remade them again in season 2 TNG or thereabouts and kept fleshing them out from there. Damn them to hell. Roddenberry? Total hack. Meyer? He hated TOS and the "TRUE FANS." Piller? Idiot. HE GAVE US TEH INSURECITON!
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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quote:Originally posted by The_Tom: Piller? Idiot. HE GAVE US TEH INSURECITON!
Whatever one's opinion of Insurrection, Piller is one of the few who understood what Star Trek was all about. He wasn't a god . . . even Piller couldn't save Voyager . . . but he was damn good.
I'd give gold-pressed latinum to have Piller helming Trek, with Ira Steven Behr as his sidekick, and Harve Bennett as the wise man they go to for advice.
Anywho, as far as TOS races getting the shaft goes, I would agree that the Klingons got nailed a bit. Kor was not scary because he had a bumpy spiky head and fangs . . . he was scary because he was intelligent, ruthless, and wholly lacking in moral compunction. He was truly the Anti-Kirk . . . I'd love to have seen Kor up against Kirk on other occasions (i.e. the ones that gave us the other two TOS Klingon captains), as was originally intended.
That having been said, though, the Klingons of TNG are also quite interesting. Gone are the wussy moronic TOS Klingon underlings who speak in monotone . . . every Klingon has become a force to be reckoned with, even if they can be moronic from time to time.
I'd say it's the Romulans who got the biggest shaft, though. It takes a very good writer to make a good Romulan story . . . that's why we see so few Romulan stories at all. The levels, the intrigue . . . it's beyond most writers.
And, of course, now there's Enterprise, which almost certainly won't feature many more Romulan stories if Braga has his way. In a surprising nod to continuity (mixed, inevitably, with a confession of stupidity), he's suggested that there won't be any Romulan stories or a Romulan arc of any sort, because (to paraphrase): "We're never supposed to see them. How could that be interesting?"
It takes a true anti-writer to fail to see the story potential in that.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
The pinnacle of science fiction special effects was achieved with those space potatoes from "Catspaw." Oh man.
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posted
The Klingons in the movies and early TNG were not quite there yet. But in DS9, returning briefly to a state of war with them, and characters like Martok and the return of Gowron, I liked what they did with them.
I agree that the Romulan's honor kind of went to the Klingons. But the Romulans were not turned into the thugs the TOS Klingons were. They usually were vaguely mysterious or downright ruthless. That Senator Vreenak was a great Romulan. Too bad though that the Romulans never really played a large role in DS9. I mean, their representative to the Ross-Martok-Sisko-meetings was never even named.
The Tellarites in "Bounty" were disapointing. Not the makeup, because that was great (well.. except they forgot about the three 'hooves'). But they were written like any generic Alien of the Week. Not very interesting.
The TNG Andorians (Lal and the Risa ones) were horrible. I think the ENT Andorians are a good compromise. And you know what.. I've never even seen "Journey to Babel" :0
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I always thought the TOS andorians sucked. They were just another human in obvious skin-paint with a couple of "martian" antenna on their heads. The Telerites were cooler in TOS. Enterprise's Andrians blow me away. Definitely the best update of any TOS race. They really should have shown a andorian on the Nemesis bridge with the new effects. That would have been cool.
The TOS klingons were pretty two dimensional most of the time and the Romulans were downright likable....untill TNG. Romulans became cool and Klingons became boring as hell untill thrid season or so. Kingons became a "real" race for me on DS9. Some were dicks and some were cool: just like any other race.
Vreenak and Tomalok are the best Romulans but in All Good Things, Tomalok might as well be weraing a starfleet uniform as he just goes along with whatever Picard says.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
There were Andorians on Risa? That's news to me. Oh and regarding the new bumps on the ENT Andorians, I rather suspect that those are there to disguise the mechanism for the movable antennae. In which case I think they're forgivable.
I agree that the Romulans have been under-utilised, but in some ways I think this is good thing since preserves the sense of mystery that has always followed them around. For instance why was a Romulan representative doing in the UFP President's office during high level diplomatic talks and a military briefing? What prompted them to turn up at DS9 in force and how did they know the Dominion was coming? They always seam to be a few steps ahead of where we think they should be. So in that regard I think the Romulans have been given their due, although they have been made decidedly sneakier over the years.
The Remans on the other hand were just a bad idea that was poorly executed.
As for the Tellarites, it's not like they had much depth to begin with. All they did was argue and piss people off, at least the diplomats did.
The way the Vulcans are being portrayed on ENT is getting a little tedious and I suspect that the writers are running out of ideas, so they just have them constantly criticise humanity rather than use them in an intelligent or insightful way. If this is the case then hopefully we'll see them 'mature' into the more open minded cosmopolitan race all know and get irritated by.
However, in their defence I suspect that part of the reason for the Vulcan's attitude towards Humans might be born of fear. Perhaps they see in Humanity something that reminds them of what they once were and are afraid that without their logical guidance that the Terrans might develop into a dangerous and aggressive race. Given that mankind very nearly wiped itself out only a century ago (very recently in Vulcan terms) that fear may be quite understandable.
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
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posted
Let's not forget the Gorn! Yeah, the costume might look cheesy by modern standards (who put the glitter in the eyeballs, fer Pete's sake!), but it was definitely not human. When I pitched scripts to TNG back in 1989 I wanted to use the Gorns in one...From their behavior in "Arena", I inferred that they were incredibly xenophobic, and you either had to leave them alone or fight them. There was no middle ground. You couldn't reason with them. That's pretty much what they ended up doing with the Borg (for a while, anyway).
As to the Klingons, I got tired of the way TNG and so on portrayed their culture. I much prefer the approach suggested in the Phase II "Kitumba" story outline, with a caste based system that took a cue from feudal Japanese society. It always bothered be that "all Klingons want to die in battle," Yeah, all those Klingon chefs are itching to die in battle...
The Romulans and Vulcans really did get the shaft. It's obvious that the writers since TOS don't understand them, or how to write them. This isn't helped by a lot of actors who can't figure out how to play them, so you get a lot of Vulcans who either seeth with emotion or are as cold as a dead fish. I recall once reading Nimoy analyzing his own TOS performances, and he said he noticed that while Spock's face and voice were impassive, he was always giving away his underlying emotional state in his body language. Like Spock would swallow/gulp when he saw Kirk in danger, etc. Mark Lenard understood this too. That's how they could play cool without going cold, so to speak.
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
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posted
The problem with Vulcan society somehow 'changing' between ENT and TOS, is that it would have to happen mostly within one generation.
I don't have a problem with Vulcans having an armed naval fleet, since at times, pre-emptive attacks are be logical. The problem is that they seem to be less concerned about being logical than they are about just being right. And that whole new mind-meld story was just weird.
And about the Klingons.. the Klingon solicitor in that ENT-does-STVI episode complicated things by saying that Klingons indeed have (or had) some caste system, with the warriors only recently gaining political power. Well, at least it explains how a they found time to set up a space program.
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