. . . 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.
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:
- The "human-looking" and "forehead-ridged" Klingons were two different races within the Klingon Empire.
- The human-lookings were hybrids with humanity, while the forehead-ridgers were purebloods.
- The difference was the result of a virus.
- 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:
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:
- Why the difference existed.
- Why characters in Enterprise’s time had the forehead-ridge appearance.
- Why characters in the TOS period had the human-looking appearance.
- Why characters from the beginning of the movies onward were back to the forehead-ridge appearance.
- Why characters introduced as human-looking in TOS were forehead-ridgers later on.
- Why it seemed to affect the whole race.
- Why Klingons were embarrassed to talk about all this with outsiders, and:
- 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.
Just a correction…the 30th anniversary episode was “Trials and Tribble-ations”. One of the best episodes of DS9. Super cool!
Boy did I squeal at last night’s ST:ENT episode, and I can’t wait for next week! I’m so glad they’re finally explaining these things (Klingons, Vulcans, etc.). I’ll be so sad when the series ends, it’s really gotten good this year.
Yeah. I was real pleased with the way they explained it. It’s a shame we won’t be able to see what else Manny Coto has up his sleeve….
After reading this my husband is now going nuts and wants to know when this episode airs next.
Does anyone happen to know if there will be another airing of this episode before the next one?
It depends entirely on what your local UPN station is doing. As Jimmy said, check your local listings.
I don’t understand why people feel the need to come up with an explanation for this discrepancy in Klingon appearance — it’s obvious that it’s just because the original series was low-budget. Are they next going to try to explain why the computers on the original series looked as if they were made in the 1960s, while the computers on ST:ENT look modern? Again, the (off-screen) answer is obvious.
If they really want to explain something that never made sense from the original series, I wish they would explain why every alien race that the Enterprise meets for the first time already knows how to speak perfect English.
I wish they would explain why every alien race that the Enterprise meets for the first time already knows how to speak perfect English.
They already have. It’s called the Universal Translator. Now if you could only get the Stargate people to make a similar explanation…
I’ve been ambivalent about this series from the beginning, and now with less than ten episodes to go, they start getting all interesting. Can’t wait for the mirror universe episode!
Are they next going to try to explain why the computers on the original series looked as if they were made in the 1960s, while the computers on ST:ENT look modern? Again, the (off-screen) answer is obvious.
Actually, the computers on TNG *don’t* look that modern. Check out the screen that Capt. Picard has sitting on his desk sometime. It’s a huge, bulky screen that is way thicker than the laptop screen I’m using right now.
(Of course, one can rationalize this to oneself by postulating that it’s a holographic screen and need to be thicker, but then one also has to rationalize the fact that it doesn’t appear to be holographic.)
I think that the fans are more willing to cut slack on stuff like computers & special effects than on Klingons (a) because they aren’t in-your-face the way living, moving characters are and (b) because we expect technology but not races to change in appearance with time, and (c) because the Klingon transition was so sudden and they didn’t immediately establish that old Klingon characters had the new appearance, inviting speculation about two races.
Just a correction…the 30th anniversary episode was “Trials and Tribble-ations”. One of the best episodes of DS9. Super cool!
You’re right! My mistake!
“More Tribbles, More Troubles” was the David Gerrold-penned episode from the Animated Series.
They already have. It’s called the Universal Translator. Now if you could only get the Stargate people to make a similar explanation…
You can pretend
a) that they really do spend extensive amounts of time learning each others’ languages and they just don’t show us those parts (like Alfred Hitchcock’s dictum that a movie is just a person’s life with the boring parts cut out) or
b) that after eight years the main characters have all become fluent in one or more galactic common tongues and they’re just showing the actors speaking English for our convenience (the way German soldiers talk to each other in English in WWII movies or the way aliens on B5 talk to each other in English when we’re meant to pretend they’re talking in their own language) or
c) Both.
Just repeat to yourself: “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.” 😉
Just repeat to yourself: “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.” 😉
I know. It doesn’t bother me (except in episodes like “Revisions” in which an alien woman, who has no way of knowing English, helps Daniel translate her own native writing or when Hathor spoke English as soon as she woke up, having been in stasis since before there was English), but I think nevertheless that they should have had SG-1 find a crate full of Goa’uld universal tranlator ear plugs (or some such thing) in the second or third episode (Teal’c of course would have already been wearing one when they met him). It would have been sooo easy to do. But it’s just a show, just a show, just a show. It doesn’t bother me one bit. 🙂
Anyone want to try to save this incarnation of Star Trek, as folks tried (and failed) to save ST:TOS?
After all, this one has finally gotten good after the disaster that was last season.
I concur with Paul H. The answer to the wrinkled foreheads was given: low budget in the early episodes. There’s no reality behind that.
Cornelius,
If there was no reality to that in the first place, the DS9 episode Trials and Tribble-ations gave it reality. True, it would have been easier to say the events in that episode never happened, but I like the solution they came up with better. Besides, the Orb of Time was used in another episode, so you’d have to say some parts of the episode were “real” and others were fabrication, which is always a messy enterprise.
One of the great mysteries of the universe solved!
Namely why Klingons lack forhead ridged in the time period of Star Trek: The Original Series and have them in every other time period before and after…
+J.M.J+
Okay, so they’ve finally explained the changing face of Klingons on the series. But can they explain the effect the virus evidently had on Klingon women?
We only see one female Klingon in TOS: Mara, the wife of Kang (Day of the Dove). In the scene where Chekov nearly rapes her, she stands there like a frightened doe and does nothing to defend herself. Kirk actually has to rescue her; then she stays by his side for the rest of the episode.
I can’t imagine later Klingon women acting so helpless. If Chekov tried to rape Lursa or B’Etor, they would have put him through a wall! Even B’Elana probably wouldn’t have taken such crap from a man, and she was half human.
So Mara is a bit strange as Klingon women go – stoical, perhaps, but not violent. Another effect of the SPOILER DELETED????? We may never know….
In Jesu et Maria,
Sorry, I think I partially revealed the plot of that episode (though not entirely; I didn’t go into the intricate details). Well, I hope everyone has seen that ep by now; it was broadcast again in my area last night – but every region may be different.
Anyway, here’s an interesting page that discusses the Klingon forehead problem, written before ST:ENT resolved the problem (and not updated since, so no spoilers there!):
The Klingon Forehead Problem
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies1a.htm
It’s interesting to read some past Trekker speculations, and compare them to the “full truth” we know now.
In Jesu et Maria,
We only see one female Klingon in TOS: Mara, the wife of Kang (Day of the Dove). In the scene where Chekov nearly rapes her, she stands there like a frightened doe and does nothing to defend herself. Kirk actually has to rescue her; then she stays by his side for the rest of the episode.
I’m afraid I don’t remember that episode, so forgive me if the answer is really obvious in it: are we absolutely sure that Mara was a Klingon in the first place? Could she possibly be from some other humanoid species (a trophy wife for Kang in a sense other than the usual)?
If she is certainly Klingon, then perhaps she was just an oddity among Klingon women (she is the only TOS example we have, after all).
I recently watched “Day of the Dove” on DVD (thank you Netflix!) and Mara is definitely Klingon. Since the same virus that made their cranial ridges disappear also made them somewhat more human emotionally, that is probably enough to explain Mara’s rather un-Klingon behavior. So Rosemarie’s deleted analysis was correct. (Since the second part of the episode in question is now a week old, I hope my comment won’t draw Jimmy’s wrathe for its slight spoilerity.)
about chekov and the duras sisters like someone said they would have killed him or did him till they killed him!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yeah more than likely it would have been b’etor and chekov she seemed the more seductive of the two lursa was the brains of the duo
yeah but what away to go between two hot klingon women !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yeah both of them all hot and sweaty all over you bitting and other things it would be a good day to die…………..
Are Klingons saved?
personaly i would love to have the duras sisters with me lursa sucking while i nibbled on b’etors breast
personally i wan’t to t*t f**k b’etor