Star Trek Discovery: The Klingon Question

Posted on May 18, 2017May 18, 2017

Judging from the comments I’ve seen on various social media, I would say that the trailer received a mixed reaction. Personally; I loved it. It had some smooth action scenes, cool sets and scenery and some nice uniforms. It had aliens we haven’t seen before and a strong narrator in James Frain who gave a cryptic message about leadership in times of crisis. It made reference to Kirk and Spock from TOS, and I honestly feel that it had enough about it to separate itself from any other Star Trek incarnations.

One common theme in the comments is how close or different it is to the JJ universe, but I think we need to look beyond poor JJ and see Discovery on its own merit. JJ was JJ and we can’t do anything about that now. It happened. Once Discovery goes live, we can then say if we thought it had too many explosions, or if it was too dark or if the characters weren’t likable, but we have to leave JJ in the past. We will have to judge Discovery on it’s own merit. But there is one big debate that the trailer caused..

One big debate that was clear to see was the Klingon question. Why are the Klingons in Discovery so different? The Klingon ship, especially the sarcophagus scene, looks darker and more ornate than we’ve seen before, and whilst the Discovery Klingons might have forehead ridges, they look totally different to what we have ever seen before. It looks as though the much-hyped photo leak was in fact, a real picture of Klingons taking a lunch break on set.

For a more detailed explanation of forehead ridges, check this site.

Some fans, especially those of TOS, the original Trekkies, will hate the Discovery Klingons and will be miffed at why CBS has made them bigger and scarier than before. But therein lies the answer. We have the be honest; Klingons of old aren’t really scary anymore, and hero in a show can only be a truly great hero if he defeats a truly great enemy. Whilst Worf, Kang, Martok, Gowron and B’elanna Torres were great in their own right and their own time, a change is what is needed. I can’t imagine we’d find these guys intimidating, given the huge wealth of content available to audiences nowadays:

And this is not me knocking the characters above, as they were all great in their time. Martok especially stands out for me as a brilliant character. But now we have new Klingons. We have scarier Klingons now than what I have seen before in the Star Trek universe and I hope they turn out to be as awesome as the guys above were in their time.

Although, I think, we did only see male Klingon warriors in the trailer and it will certainly be interesting to see some females, as we do have female Klingons cast.

It will be especially see interesting seeing how this:

Becomes this:

What do you think? Did they need to change the Klingons? Have they made the right choices in production? Let us know in the comments or on Facebook.

Note the evil alien in the last Star Trek movie, turned out to be an angry Black man. He was the only Black man in the movie.

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