Month: February 2005

Do Not Open Until Christmas1960

Y’know how Sr. Lucia wrote on the envelope that contained the third secret that it wasn’t to be opened until 1960? Here’s the straight story on that:

Before giving the sealed envelope containing the third part of the “secret” to the then [1944] Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Sister Lucia wrote on the outside envelope that it could be opened only after 1960, either by the Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of Leiria. Archbishop Bertone therefore asked: “Why only after 1960? Was it Our Lady who fixed that date?” Sister Lucia replied: “It was not Our Lady. I fixed the date because I had the intuition that before 1960 it would not be understood, but that only later would it be understood. Now it can be better understood. I wrote down what I saw; however it was not for me to interpret it, but for the Pope [SOURCE: The Message of Fatima (Vatican doc.)].

The reason the Vatican had to ask Sr. Lucia to clarify this is that the apparition rumor-net had been circulating allegations that Mary herself had commanded that the message be "read to the world" by "1960 at the latest." (The apparition rumor-net is second only to the papal rumor-net in rumor generating capacity.) These allegations were then used to denounce John XXIII (pope in 1960) and every subsequent pope for not announcing the secret to the world "as Mary had commanded."

Now that we know the straight story, it serves as a good caution to all of us to CHECK OUR FACTS INSTEAD OF JUST REPEATING RUMORS!!! (Unfortunately, the advent of the blogosphere may not play the same fact-checking function for the apparition and papal rumor-nets as it does for the MSM.)

That being said, I had a few thoughts recently about why the third secret was best kept under wraps until 1960 (and even after):

  1. The third secret was written down January 3, 1944, in the midst of World War II. Since the third secret contains a vision of a devastated city and a large number of people, including the pope, apparently being killed, if it had been released in 1944 it likely would have been interpreted as a prophecy of the events of World War II instead of the accurate interpretation of it as pertaining to the events of World War III (the Cold War). Indeed, Pius XII already thought that Hitler was going to have him kidnapped, and as we’ve recently learned Hitler did order the pope to be kidnapped (but the general didn’t carry out the order). If Pius had read it in 1944, he likely would have thought (incorrectly) that he would be martyred by Hitler.
  2. Since Sr. Lucia already sensed that the third secret pertains to the part of the second secret where it is mentioned that "Russia will spread its errors," she deferred its opening to 1960, a date that she intuited needed to be reached for it to be properly understood. Indeed, by that time the Cold War was under way and the threat posed by Russia was well understood.
  3. It’s even good that the message was not announced to the world at that time. If it had been it might have resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy of a pope being killed (i.e., some nujob might have taken it into his nogging to off the pope and thus fulfill the third secret).
  4. It’s also good that it wasn’t announced because the assassination attempt on John Paul II did not occur until May 13, 1981. If the secret had been known publicly beforehand then we would not be able as clearly to see this date as linking it to Fatima (May 13 was the first appearance of Our Lady of Fatima) since we wouldn’t be able to be sure that the would-be assassin (or his paymasters) didn’t know this and didn’t engineer it to occur on that date because of the third secret.
  5. It’s even good that, though others had read the third secret previously, John Paul II had not read it before the assassination attempt. At first he did not see the connection between the May 13 assassination attempt and Fatima, but when he read the third secret afterwards, the scales fell from his eyes (figuratively!) and he credited Our Lady of Fatima with saving his life. This helped motivate him to perform the consecration of Russia (and, for good measure, the rest of the world) in 1984.

This consecration, coupled with John Paul II’s role in the end of the Cold War, may have averted a nuclear war that might otherwise have ben the terminus of the U.S.-Soviet conflict (note the third secret’s reference to a angel’s flaming sword about to set the world on fire but stopped by Mary’s intervention).

It’s interesting to observe that the secret of Fatima addressed each of the first three world wars:

  • [Addressing World War I:] "If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end. . . . "
  • [Addressing World War II:] " . . . but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI."
  • [Addressing World War III:] "If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church."

Unfortunatley, it said nothing about World War IV (the War on Terror), which we are now in the midst of. We know this because in the wake of September 11th and the start of World War IV,

The content of the interview held between the Vatican representative and Sister Lucia in the convent of Coimbra, Portugal, where she resided, was made public by the Vatican press office on Dec. 20, 2001.

The text of the document states: "In recent months, especially following the sad events of the September 11 terrorist attacks, articles appeared in newspapers alleging new revelations by Sister Lucia, announcements of letters of warning to the Pope, and apocalyptic reinterpretations of the Fatima message."

"Moreover, emphasis was placed on the suspicion that the Holy See had not published the entire text of the third part of the secret, and some ‘Fatimist’ movements have repeated the accusation that the Holy Father has yet to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary," the document continues.

As a result, the Vatican note clarifies, it was considered necessary that Archbishop Bertone go personally "to clarify and obtain direct information from the visionary."

The meeting was held in the presence of Father Luis Kondor, vice postulator of the cause of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta (the other Fatima visionaries), and of the prioress of St. Teresa’s Carmelite Convent.

The conversation took place on the afternoon of that Nov. 17 and lasted more than two hours. Sister Lucia, then 94, "was in great form — lucid and vivacious," the Vatican envoy said.

The meeting addressed the question of the third part of the secret of Fatima. The Portuguese religious said that she had read "carefully and meditated on the fascicle published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and confirms everything that is written," the Vatican statement noted.

When the archbishop explained that there are doubts that part of the secret remains unknown, Sister Lucia replied: "Everything has been published; there are no more secrets."

"If I had received new revelations, I would not have communicated them to anyone, but I would have told them directly to the Holy Father," the religious added.

There was then talk about the statements of Nicholas Gruner, a Canadian priest suspended "a divinis," who is collecting signatures insisting that the Pope finally consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and alleging that this has never been done.

Sister Lucia told the archbishop: "The Carmel community has rejected the forms for the collection of signatures. I have already said that the consecration requested by Our Lady was done in 1984, and it has been accepted in heaven" [SOURCE.]

Take that, rumor-net!

READ MY PIECE ON THE THIRD SECRET.

READ THE VATICAN DOC ANNOUNCING THE THIRD SECRET.

Do Not Open Until Christmas1960

Y’know how Sr. Lucia wrote on the envelope that contained the third secret that it wasn’t to be opened until 1960? Here’s the straight story on that:

Before giving the sealed envelope containing the third part of the “secret” to the then [1944] Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Sister Lucia wrote on the outside envelope that it could be opened only after 1960, either by the Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of Leiria. Archbishop Bertone therefore asked: “Why only after 1960? Was it Our Lady who fixed that date?” Sister Lucia replied: “It was not Our Lady. I fixed the date because I had the intuition that before 1960 it would not be understood, but that only later would it be understood. Now it can be better understood. I wrote down what I saw; however it was not for me to interpret it, but for the Pope [SOURCE: The Message of Fatima (Vatican doc.)].

The reason the Vatican had to ask Sr. Lucia to clarify this is that the apparition rumor-net had been circulating allegations that Mary herself had commanded that the message be "read to the world" by "1960 at the latest." (The apparition rumor-net is second only to the papal rumor-net in rumor generating capacity.) These allegations were then used to denounce John XXIII (pope in 1960) and every subsequent pope for not announcing the secret to the world "as Mary had commanded."

Now that we know the straight story, it serves as a good caution to all of us to CHECK OUR FACTS INSTEAD OF JUST REPEATING RUMORS!!! (Unfortunately, the advent of the blogosphere may not play the same fact-checking function for the apparition and papal rumor-nets as it does for the MSM.)

That being said, I had a few thoughts recently about why the third secret was best kept under wraps until 1960 (and even after):

  1. The third secret was written down January 3, 1944, in the midst of World War II. Since the third secret contains a vision of a devastated city and a large number of people, including the pope, apparently being killed, if it had been released in 1944 it likely would have been interpreted as a prophecy of the events of World War II instead of the accurate interpretation of it as pertaining to the events of World War III (the Cold War). Indeed, Pius XII already thought that Hitler was going to have him kidnapped, and as we’ve recently learned Hitler did order the pope to be kidnapped (but the general didn’t carry out the order). If Pius had read it in 1944, he likely would have thought (incorrectly) that he would be martyred by Hitler.
  2. Since Sr. Lucia already sensed that the third secret pertains to the part of the second secret where it is mentioned that "Russia will spread its errors," she deferred its opening to 1960, a date that she intuited needed to be reached for it to be properly understood. Indeed, by that time the Cold War was under way and the threat posed by Russia was well understood.
  3. It’s even good that the message was not announced to the world at that time. If it had been it might have resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy of a pope being killed (i.e., some nujob might have taken it into his nogging to off the pope and thus fulfill the third secret).
  4. It’s also good that it wasn’t announced because the assassination attempt on John Paul II did not occur until May 13, 1981. If the secret had been known publicly beforehand then we would not be able as clearly to see this date as linking it to Fatima (May 13 was the first appearance of Our Lady of Fatima) since we wouldn’t be able to be sure that the would-be assassin (or his paymasters) didn’t know this and didn’t engineer it to occur on that date because of the third secret.
  5. It’s even good that, though others had read the third secret previously, John Paul II had not read it before the assassination attempt. At first he did not see the connection between the May 13 assassination attempt and Fatima, but when he read the third secret afterwards, the scales fell from his eyes (figuratively!) and he credited Our Lady of Fatima with saving his life. This helped motivate him to perform the consecration of Russia (and, for good measure, the rest of the world) in 1984.

This consecration, coupled with John Paul II’s role in the end of the Cold War, may have averted a nuclear war that might otherwise have ben the terminus of the U.S.-Soviet conflict (note the third secret’s reference to a angel’s flaming sword about to set the world on fire but stopped by Mary’s intervention).

It’s interesting to observe that the secret of Fatima addressed each of the first three world wars:

  • [Addressing World War I:] "If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end. . . . "
  • [Addressing World War II:] " . . . but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI."
  • [Addressing World War III:] "If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church."

Unfortunatley, it said nothing about World War IV (the War on Terror), which we are now in the midst of. We know this because in the wake of September 11th and the start of World War IV,

The content of the interview held between the Vatican representative and Sister Lucia in the convent of Coimbra, Portugal, where she resided, was made public by the Vatican press office on Dec. 20, 2001.

The text of the document states: "In recent months, especially following the sad events of the September 11 terrorist attacks, articles appeared in newspapers alleging new revelations by Sister Lucia, announcements of letters of warning to the Pope, and apocalyptic reinterpretations of the Fatima message."

"Moreover, emphasis was placed on the suspicion that the Holy See had not published the entire text of the third part of the secret, and some ‘Fatimist’ movements have repeated the accusation that the Holy Father has yet to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary," the document continues.

As a result, the Vatican note clarifies, it was considered necessary that Archbishop Bertone go personally "to clarify and obtain direct information from the visionary."

The meeting was held in the presence of Father Luis Kondor, vice postulator of the cause of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta (the other Fatima visionaries), and of the prioress of St. Teresa’s Carmelite Convent.

The conversation took place on the afternoon of that Nov. 17 and lasted more than two hours. Sister Lucia, then 94, "was in great form — lucid and vivacious," the Vatican envoy said.

The meeting addressed the question of the third part of the secret of Fatima. The Portuguese religious said that she had read "carefully and meditated on the fascicle published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and confirms everything that is written," the Vatican statement noted.

When the archbishop explained that there are doubts that part of the secret remains unknown, Sister Lucia replied: "Everything has been published; there are no more secrets."

"If I had received new revelations, I would not have communicated them to anyone, but I would have told them directly to the Holy Father," the religious added.

There was then talk about the statements of Nicholas Gruner, a Canadian priest suspended "a divinis," who is collecting signatures insisting that the Pope finally consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and alleging that this has never been done.

Sister Lucia told the archbishop: "The Carmel community has rejected the forms for the collection of signatures. I have already said that the consecration requested by Our Lady was done in 1984, and it has been accepted in heaven" [SOURCE.]

Take that, rumor-net!

READ MY PIECE ON THE THIRD SECRET.

READ THE VATICAN DOC ANNOUNCING THE THIRD SECRET.

LIBERAL BIGWIG: Liberalism Is Dead

. . . or dying, anyway.

Thus says Martin Peretz, editor of liberal think-mag The New Republic.

Among many other interesting things, he writes:

Liberals like to blame their political consultants. But then, if you depend on consultants for your motivating ideas, you are nowhere. So let’s admit it: The liberals are themselves uninspired by a vision of the good society–a problem we didn’t have 30 years ago. For several years, the liberal agenda has looked and sounded like little more than a bookkeeping exercise. We want to spend more, they less. In the end, the numbers do not clarify; they confuse. Almost no one can explain any principle behind the cost differences.

It’s much easier, more comfortable, to do the old refrains. You can easily rouse a crowd when you get it to sing, "We Shall Overcome." One of the tropes that trips off the tongues of American liberals is the civil rights theme of the ’60s. Another is that U.S. power is dangerous to others and dangerous to us. This is also a reprise from the ’60s, the late ’60s. Virtue returns, it seems, merely by mouthing the words.

For months, liberals have been peddling one disaster scenario after another, one contradictory fact somehow reinforcing another, hoping now against hope that their gloomy visions will come true.

I happen to believe that they won’t. This will not curb the liberal complaint. That complaint is not a matter of circumstance. It is a permanent affliction of the liberal mind. It is not a symptom; it is a condition. And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics. It does not recognize a genocide when the genocide is seen and understood by all. Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let’s hope we still have the strength.

GET THE STORY.

Star Trek: The Forgotten Series

While we’re talking about Trek, lemme mention something that many may remember but many may have forgot or never known about.

There’s a sixth Star Trek series that is seldom discussed today except in fearful whispers.

Despised and shunned more than Voyager, it is Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS).

It ran for two years (22 episodes) in the 1973-1975 seasons.

To quote H. P. Lovecraft: "It was horrible . . . blasphemous . . . loathsome . . . abnormal."

Or was it?

The series did indeed have clunker episodes, and a disproportionate number of them. But then so did The Original Series which ran 78 episodes and, in the words of Phillip J. Fry were "About a third of them good."

TAS had the advantages of having the original cast members (Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, etc.) doing the character voices. It had the advantage of Star Trek veterans and mainstream sci-fi writers doing scripts (Larry Niven, David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana). Its animated format allowed the creation of aliens, including crew members, who could never have been done in a live-action series at the time. It also introduced the holodeck technology that reappeared and became a fixture starting with Next Gen.

Some of the stories were very well done, including one (Yesteryear) set on Vulcan during Spock’s boyhood that was so well done details of it later became canonical on live-action shows despite the fact that the animated series has generally been ejected from continuity.

Yes, the series is regrettably considered non-canonical by most. Thus (except for events mentioned in Yesteryear) it is not included in Michael and Denise Okuda’s Star Trek Chronology. This is a pity because the two-year animated series could serve as a nice completion of the Enterprise’s famed "five-year mission" which only ran three years in the original series. Instead, the Chronology treats the five-year mission as having begun two years before TOS and ejects TAS from the timeline.

Admittedly, the series wasn’t up to the same standard. It had more clunker episodes, and even the good ones suffered from being only twenty-one minutes long (as opposed to about fifty for TOS) and aimed to a greater degree at children. Still, I have a fondness for it and, as bad as Trek has been on other occasions, I incline toward including it in the canon.

The series is currently out on VHS. Hopefully it’ll be out on DVD.

In the meantime,

HERE’S A SITE WHERE YOU CAN LEARN ALL ABOUT STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES.

Whither Trek? JMS Weighs In

Folks may know that DS9 veteran Manny Coto is serving this year as show runner on the now-final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

He’s doing good stuff.

What folks may not know is that a slot as executive producer on the show was offered to Joe Michael Straczynski (JMS) of B5 fame, but he turned it down.

He did, however, collaborate on a work that was sent to UPN about how to revitalize the Star Trek franchise.

In the wake of Enterprise’s cancellation, just after midnight, he sent out

THIS NOTE TO B5 AND TREK FANS IN WHICH HE OPENLY LOBBIED THEM TO ASK UPN TO LET HIM AND DARK SKIES’ CREATOR BRYCE ZABEL CREATE A NEW STAR TREK SERIES.

Among other interesting things, he wrote:

Bryce Zabel (recently the head of the Television Academy and creator/executive producer of Dark Skies) and I share one thing in common. We are both long-time Trek fans, from the earliest days, who felt that the later iterations were not up to the standards set by the original series. (I’m exempting TNG because that one worked nicely, and was in many ways the truest to the original series because Gene was still around to shepherd its creation and execution.)

Over time, Trek was treated like a porsche that’s kept in the garage all the time, for fear of scratching the finish. The stories were, for the most part, safe, more about technology than what William Faulkner described as "the human heart in conflict with itself." Yes, there were always exceptions, but in general that trend became more and more apparent with the passage of years. Which was why so often I came down on the later stories, which I did openly, because I didn’t feel they lined up with what Trek was created to be. I don’t apologize for it, because that was what I felt as a fan of Trek. That’s why I had Majel appear on B5, to send a message: that I believe in what Gene created.

Because left to its own devices, allowed to go as far as it could, telling the same kind of challenging stories Trek was always known for, it could blow the doors off science fiction television. Think of it for a moment, a series with a forty year solid name, guaranteed markets…can you think of a better time when you take chances and can tell daring, imaginative, challenging stories? Why play it safe?

When Enterprise went down, those involved shrugged and wrote it off to "franchise fatigue," their phrase, not mine.

I don’t believe that for a second. Neither does Bryce. There’s a tremendous hunger for Trek out there. It just has to be Trek done *right*.

Last year, Bryce and I sat down and, on our own, out of a sheer love of Trek as it was and should be, wrote a series bible/treatment for a return to the roots of Trek. To re-boot the Trek universe. Understand: writer/producers in TV just don’t do that sort of thing on their own, everybody always insists on doing it for vast sums of money. We did it entirely on our own, setting aside other, paying deadlines out of our passion for the series. We set out a full five-year arc.

He said that, though he had lots to keep him busy until 2007, he’d set it all aside for the chance to do the Trek series he had in mind.

A few hours later (JMS stays up crazy late at night) he sent out

THIS POST BELAYING THE REQUEST AS HE HAD LEARNED THAT PARAMOUNT PLANS TO LET THE STAR TREK TV FRANCHISE LIE FALLOW FOR A YEAR OR TWO.

He expressed hope, though, that when Paramount is ready to reactivate the franchise that his schedule will be clear and he’d get a shot at doing the show.

I don’t necessarily agree with JMS about the quality of Trek declining after Next Gen. My current impression (this may change after the DVD release of Enterprise) is that the Trek series are to be ranked from best to worst in this way:

  1. Deep Space 9
  2. Next Gen
  3. Original Series
  4. Enterprise (if the fourth season is counted)
  5. Voyager
  6. Animated

I thus feel DS9 rather than TNG was the highpoint.

Nevertheless, I think JMS doing Star Trek could be awesome.

I’m a little cautious about his use of the term "re-boot" in connection with the Star Trek universe. I’d like to see existing Trek continuity stay intact, though I have to admit that I’ve pondered where the franchise might go next, given all that has been established. They’ve written such an extensive backstory that writers may be boxed in creatively. After Voyager closed, their best chance for finding new creative room was in doing a prequel, and they botched that (until the current season). This prevents them from doing another prequel to TOS. If they go further into the future than VOY, they run the risk of having so much technological wizardry that it overwhelms the story. ("Activate a trans-warp conduit! We’ve got to get to the other side of the galaxy before the next commercial break!") So I’m at least theoretically open to the idea of a re-boot.

I suspect that most fans are not, however. Jettison all their beloved stories and intricate continuity and chronology debates and they will be far less understanding than comic book fans were when DC rebooted its universe.

On the other hand, I suspect that JMS may have been using the term "re-boot" in another sense: Just a reinvigoration rather than a complete restart from scratch.

Either way, I’d like to see him get his shot.

I think he could do for Trek what Ron Moore did for Battlestar Galactica. (Though I’m not entirely satisfied with the latter, it’s still several Quantum Leaps [pun intended!] above the 1970s version.)

So Now We Know . . .

. . . the answer to why Klingons looked different in The Original Series (TOS) than they did both before and after this, that is.

Last night’s episode of Enterprise revealed the reason.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil the answer in this post. If you haven’t seen the episode, it may be re-run on Saturday or Sunday night on your station.

CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.

I will, however, talk a little bit about the problem.

First, the offscreen explanation for the change is clear: When TOS was being filmed, they had miniscule makeup budgets, so they couldn’t make the original Klingons look that different from humans given that they were a major race that would be appearing often.

They tried to have a little more elaborate makeup for the Klingon leaders (other starship commanders equivalent to James Kirk), but the Klingons in the background were often just black guys in Klingon uniforms.

Notably absent were the forehead ridges that got introduced . . . in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Offscreen, when Star Trek went from the small screen to the big screen they went from a small budget to a big budget that could be used on all kinds of things . . . including makeup. So the alien race of Klingons became more . . . alien.

When the change was made, fan theories about it prospered, but onscreen there remained no explanation for the change, the producers of the show hoping that the fans would recognize the makeup change for what it was (the outworking of a budget change) and would just "go with them" on this one.

Fan theories about the change included:

  1. The "human-looking" and "forehead-ridged" Klingons were two different races within the Klingon Empire.
  2. The human-lookings were hybrids with humanity, while the forehead-ridgers were purebloods.
  3. The difference was the result of a virus.
  4. The difference was due to Klingons wanting to appear more human in a particular phase of their history (e.g., we know that one character in the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" was deliberately disguised as a human for covert ops purposes).

When ST:TNG kicked in, a Klingon (Lt. Worf) joined the main cast, and in keeping with larger TV budgets (and better makeup techniques), the Klingons on TNG were forehead-ridgers.

The same inevitably replicated on the sequel to TNG, Star Trek: Deep Space 9. But DS9 added new wrinkles to the puzzle.

First, DS9 established Klingon characters who had originally been introduced in TOS. All those old Klingon ship captains who squared off against Kirk–Kang, Kor, Koloth? They were all back now–as old men–and played by the same actors. But they were in new makeup. Thus here’s a comparison of how Koloth looked in the two series:

Koloth1 Koloth2

Okay. Big diff.

It also ruled out one of the popular fan theories: that the diff was due to there being more than one race of Klingons.

A theory that could have explained the difference (but that I don’t know was ever posed by fans) was that the forehead-ridge appearance developed with age, so that all the Klingons seen on TOS were younger, while those seen later were . . . older. The change might even strike different Klingons at different times of life the way . . . baldness . . . strikes different human men at different times.

We have our own forehead changes, see.

Well, events continued to overtake speculation, and in the 30th anniversary episode, "More Tribble, More TroublesTrials and Tribble-ations," Lt. Cmdr. Worf establishe a new onscreen fact about the difference: Klingons are embarrassed about it. Specifically, Whorf looked uncomfortable and said: "We do not discuss it with outsiders."

When Enterprise initially hit the airwaves four years ago, it had the forehead-ridgers that we were familiar with from TNG onward.

So this left the writers of Enterprise, now that it finally got good and got cancelled, an interesting puzzle once they decided to finally do an onscreen explanation of the difference. Specifically, they needed to explain:

  1. Why the difference existed.
  2. Why characters in Enterprise’s time had the forehead-ridge appearance.
  3. Why characters in the TOS period had the human-looking appearance.
  4. Why characters from the beginning of the movies onward were back to the forehead-ridge appearance.
  5. Why characters introduced as human-looking in TOS were forehead-ridgers later on.
  6. Why it seemed to affect the whole race.
  7. Why Klingons were embarrassed to talk about all this with outsiders, and:
  8. Why the human-lookers were so . . . human . . . looking.

To my mind, the answer eventually provided last night by ST:ENT to this long-standing Star Trek mystery was a good one.

Don’t spoil it in the comments box.

I’ll reveal it before next week’s episode.