posted
Regarding mixing human looking Klingons with the modern turtle-head variety, they could take the tack I did with a script I submitted (through an agent even) to TNG in 1989.
The story was about several "subject planets" who decide to rebel and withdraw from the Klingon Empire. One of these planets had an old Klingon Battlecruiser...
I answered the whole bumpy/smooth issue as follows, when the commander of a rogue Klingon battlecruiser is brought aboard the Enterprise...
INT. ENTERPRISE - TRANSPORTER ROOM (OPTICAL)
Worf, still in dress uniform, watches the transporter as COMMANDER KAGH materializes. Kagh wears a klingon-esque uniform. Worf's expression sours.
WORF (under his breath) tlhInganqoq.
KAGH Is it Starfleet protocol to greet representatives of foreign governments with curses?
Worf takes a step towards Kagh. They size each other up.
KAGH (smooth but insulting) A Klingon in Starfleet. How the mighty have fallen.
WORF You dare to wear the traditional uniform of the cha'DIch tlhIngan? You are forbidden to wear the uniform or use the name.
KAGH And what are you to tell us who we are and what name we may use?
WORF When you were stripped of warrior status you lost your fleet as well. How did you get a warship?
KAGH You did not manage to confiscate all our weapons, Klingon. We have hidden away many such things. (he smiles insultingly) But enough of this amusing banter. Where is your commander?
In a later scene, Kagh explained something of his history to Picard and Co.:
KAGH In the case of my people, the Klingons simply seized control of our system. At first they found us useful... made us warriors. We were the cha'DIch tlhIngan, the "Second Klingons."
Worf gets a disgusted expression on his face at that.
KAGH (oily smile at Picard) We fought many battles... some with your Starfleet. (glares at Worf) Later, the Klingons turned on us. We did nothing to deserve this.
WORF Nothing? You established relations with the Romulans and gave them advanced warp technology!
KAGH And the Empire profited, because in return we obtained the secret to the Romulan cloaking device!
...At which point Riker interrupted...
So, my idea was that "Klingon" was a caste name...that anyone who is a warrior of that culture is Klingon, and a certain group of swarthy bushy eyebrowed humanoids were once that, but they screwed up in the eyes of their superiors and were "demoted" to subject status.
By a quirk of bad luck, I submitted my script right after the time that "Sins of the Father" was in production, and that script went in different directions than mine, especially where Klingon history was concerned.
They could go this way on Enterprise...except that they brought back TOS Klingons on DS9 and made them bumpy, so that screwed that up.
[ September 08, 2001: Message edited by: mrneutron ]
-------------------- "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
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Without getting into why Klingons don't talk about the difference, by far the easiest explanation for it is that some Klingons don't develop the ridges until middle age, and others are born with them. Occam's Razor at work: this doesn't posit additional subject species, nor mutations, nor viruses, nor any of the other proposed solutions. It just confirms what we already know, and it doesn't get any more simple than that. No unneccessary assumptions needed.
posted
I like the ideas of bringing Klingons in! I'm just saying that some things in Enterprise don't fit. That's all. Get off my back. Go back discussing. Oh, a minor note-- ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$) Is the place where the Klingon ship crashes (I think), Broken Bow, in Nebraska? Has a script said so or something? I found a "Broken Bow" on my US map, in Nebraska. Minor, minor...
posted
mrneutron: not a bad idea, but also probably why the script was never accepted. IIRC, one of the things you were told NOT to do in script submissions was to try and answer some continuity problem in Trek history. Or to say anything about major Trek history at all.
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quote:So, my idea was that "Klingon" was a caste name...that anyone who is a warrior of that culture is Klingon, and a certain group of swarthy bushy eyebrowed humanoids were once that, but they screwed up in the eyes of their superiors and were "demoted" to subject status.
There was a Star Trek: Phase II script which had this as its essential premise. "Klingon" was not the race name, but the name of the warrior caste of the species. It's really too bad this episode was never translated as a TNG or DS9 script, because a race entirely of warriors is a bit hard to accept (and seems to be refuted in "RoE" -- I think that was the title -- when the Klingon prosecutor, describing the Klingons allegedly killed by Worf, lists "poets, children, students..." etcetra, instead of lumping them all as "warriors")
posted
Apology accepted, Wes. I guess it would make more sense to make up a city rather than crash it in an existing one... No, wait. According to my 1999 RandMcNally atlas, there is a very small town of "Broken Bow" near the southern right corner of Oklahoma. I guess we sould be glad it wasn't "Broken Arrow." We'd have Christian Slater and John Travolta shoot it out with the Klingons.
posted
Or, Tim's, ever-so-cleverly posted immediately after I started typing mine...
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posted
No, I read The_Tom's post, but I thought the script said it was in Oklahoma. And I thought the writers made it up until I looked in my atlas and found a small town called "Broken Bow" in Oklahoma. This told me it was a real town.
There was a Star Trek: Phase II script which had this as its essential premise. "Klingon" was not the race name, but the name of the warrior caste of the species...a race entirely of warriors is a bit hard to accept."
"Kitumba", by John Merideth Lucas. I read about that. Anyway, the script I wrote materialized in part because of a line (I'm forgetting who uttered it) that said that every Klingon wishes to die in battle. Which got me thinking...do Klingon nursemaids and carpenters want to die in battle? And if you take it at face value, and you have an entire civilization of Warriors, who does the unglamorous work of building ships and making blood pies? So, the idea I had was that as the Klingon Empire grew in power, they subjugated various worlds and made THEM do all the infrastructure stuff, and thus all the "Klingons" became warriors...their whole race became the "caste".
That was a mechanism I used to explore what these Empires would have to be like. That there are usually other civilizations under the thumb of the Imperial power, and how does the Federation justify allying itself with a nation that would conquer, exploit and perhaps destroy entire cultures.
-------------------- "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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