After months and months of waiting, CBS finally released the first trailer for Star Trek: Discovery yesterday (seen above) and one aspect stood out above all the rest: the Klingon’s new look.
The most notable difference between many of the Klingons in Star Trek: Discovery and the look of Klingons in, say, Star Trek: The Next Generation, as seen in the prosthetic makeup on Michael Dorn as Lieutenant Worf is the lack of ridges on the new Klingons’ foreheads. Unlike Worf, seen below, their foreheads are smooth, which has led to many fans theorizing that this is an ancient group of Klingons that slowly died out.
These ancient Klingons belonged to a group of alienated people who encountered humans on the edge of Federation space. In 2154, a group of Klingons managed to get their hands on Human Augments, a genetic material they used to try and improve their own genetic makeup. While this helped the Klingons become stronger and more intelligent, it also degraded their physical makeup. When one of the affected Klingons came down with a Levodian flu, the combination of the sickness and the genetic differences created an airborne, fatal plague that spread from world to world. This is all confirmed in Star Trek: Enterprise, one of the Star Trek series that happens to pre-date the Original Series.
It was in the early stages of this plague that these Klingons lost the ridges on their foreheads. It was only with the help of the Enterprise’s Dr. Phlox that a cure for the plague was discovered. Star Trek: The Original Series takes place in 2364, but again, Star Trek: Enterprise takes place before that. Considering Discovery takes place before the events of the original series, which focused on Captain James T. Kirk and his crew aboard the Enterprise, and just after Star Trek: Enterprise, the timeline allows the theory to potentially come to fruition.
The only counterargument is that the Klingons in the original series most likened humans. We know that because of the genetic mutation, they began to look more normal before a cure was found. If this is the storyline that CBS wants to take Discovery in, that will need to be addressed as these Klingons aren’t as similar to humans as their later counterparts.
One other interesting aspect about the ancient group of Klingons that should be acknowledged is how religious they were. In the trailer, it seems like the Klingons have gathered together for a religious ceremony. Combined with the lack of ridges on their forehead, it seems to suggest that one of the focal points of the series — along with the crew of the U.S.S Discovery — may be the ancient Klingons trying to save their quickly vanishing species.
Former showrunner Bryan Fuller mentioned that Discovery would focus on an important event from the original series that wasn’t ever examined in-depth, but didn’t mention anything specific about the Klingon race at the time.
Star Trek: Discovery will launch this fall on CBS’ stand-alone app, CBS All Access.
Comments
I seem to recall an episode of TNG where the crew runs into the TOS crew and TOS Klingons, who were basically just people in blackface. So they show up on screen and everyone on the bridge turns quizzically to Worf, who sighs and says, "It’s a long story, but yes, they are Klingons." And that’s it, they never explain further.
I mean, I get it; it was a limitation of prosthetic SFX makeup back in the day. But the nerd in me really wants an in-universe explanation! So are the TOS Klingons all supposed to be this subspecies that used Human DNA?
By DesignUtensil on 05.18.17 3:06pm
Are you referring to the DS9 episode: "Trials and Tribble-ations"?
By CoRaMo on 05.18.17 3:11pm
Yeah, I think that’s what they’re thinking about. They are at the bar and don’t recognize the Klingons only to have Worf deliver that line.
By Grubbslinger on 05.18.17 3:13pm
And it was SUCH a good episode. For realz. Discovery looks like a bit of garbage.
By Ando Calrissian on 05.18.17 5:38pm
Yep! That’s the one
By DesignUtensil on 05.22.17 1:34pm
The episode you’re thinking of is from DS9, where Worf, Dax and a couple of others ended up on the original Enterprise during the Trouble with Tribbles.
They basically just hand waved it in that incident.
Enterprise later tried to explain it by saying a group of Klingons had recovered some augmented human embryos from the Eugenics Wars of Earth and were worried about the possibility of humans crewing all of their ships with these augmented humans, so they attempted to recreate the augmentation for themselves with bad results. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Klingon_augment_virus
By MDaniels5 on 05.18.17 3:12pm
An explanation WAS given…though many fans don’t care to acknowledge it…because it was in Enterprise. It was even mentioned in this post. There was a series arc that focused on the eugenics-era Earth augments. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Klingon_augment_virus It’s cited that Klingons lost their ridges due to the augment virus. edit whoops, MDaniels5 beat me to it.
By SNDS117 on 05.18.17 3:14pm
This right here is everything that makes ST great, and which I fear, this new show will completely miss the mark on. Cover very serious subject matter – but dont take yourself too seriously. That is the charm of Trek, we want an Operetta-Novela, not T2 Judgement Day in Space for crying our loud!
By swfox on 05.18.17 4:02pm
There is an in universe explanation. They did it very well in enterprise.
These klingons look very different from anything seen yet.
My guess is this is due to creative liberties the show creators are taking. And I’ll bet money they don’t explain it.
Please CBS. Don’t screw this up.
By eschwiz on 05.19.17 11:52pm
They did explain it a decade later in a entirely different show. Its basically the Augment Storyline from Star Trek Enterprise. Also take note that characters like Kor or Koloth that had the human appearance in TOS but had ridges in DS9 era. So its entirely possible that some of the klingon likely went through gene therapy or surgery to restore the ridges.
By MainComputer on 05.20.17 9:54am
The original series takes place in 2266, it’s The Next Generation that starts in 2364.
By mbarriault on 05.18.17 3:21pm
Between Fuller’s quotation mentioned in the article and the line from the trailer about what’s going on at the edge of Federation space, I wonder if they’re going to tackle the very real question of WHY INT HE WORLD IS THERE A FORCEFIELD SURROUNDING THE MILKY WAY AND WHO PUT IT THERE AND WHY.
I mean, that is a HUGE thing for the entire rest of the franchise to just gloss over and forget.
By Captainfreddy on 05.18.17 3:56pm
Shhhhh, nobody is meant to remember this!
By swfox on 05.18.17 4:03pm
They addressed this in the MMO/books, which had a surprisingly reasonable progression of the prime universe.
By ench on 05.18.17 5:32pm
I must of either not played this mission set yet in the MMO or I completely missed it because I don’t remember it ever getting touched on.
By Kourgath223 on 05.18.17 5:49pm
Apparently I was wrong. It was a book "Q Continuum". I haven’t read it, just the summary of events from Memory Alpha. I had gotten it confused with the MMO, though they aren’t exclusive.
Simple version is: Well in the past, Q was impetuous (surprise surprise), and stupidly pulled an entity into our universe from somewhere "outside", named 0. Eventually the Continuum put up the Galactic Barrier to keep 0 out in dark space, as it was pretty much just a sadistic Q.
By ench on 05.18.17 6:03pm
They discovered a full scale replica of Earth in the opening of "Miri". They then beamed down, cured a disease and left without anyone ever asking why or even mentioning this little detail ever again.
And in "Who Mourns for Adobais?" they discovered that the Greek gods were real beings with incredibly powerful technology. This is never mentioned again.
So there’s some precedent for stuff that should be a huge freaking deal being essentially ignored by the Federation.
By FixtusBlack on 05.18.17 4:13pm
Though I do appreciate they do a sideways reference to Who Mourns for Adonais in the last Trek movie with the reference to the giant green hand.
By thecommonperson on 05.18.17 5:49pm
I actually read once that a lot of those details were actually intended to be followed up on by weaving them into a larger story arc, but that the network frequently changed the airing order of the episodes and as such they had to abandon the idea of doing serialized stories and multi part episodes altogether. The Naked Time (ep. 4), for instance, ended with the ship being thrown back in time and was supposed to be immediately followed by the episode Tomorrow is Yesterday (ep 21.)
If the network was willing to chop up a 2 part story like that, I can understand why they decided they’d need to drop the idea of having an entire arc about discovering duplicates of Earth and transplanted human cultures all forming some massive alien experiment.
By Joseph Reinemann on 05.19.17 10:24am
The behind the scenes reason for the difference in the Klingons was a larger budget and better make-up techniques. When the Klingons were created for the TOS they wanted to make a species of alien that was really easy and low-budget to create for multiple actors. Which is why Klingons looked basically like humans. But when a higher budget and better techniques came the Klingons were made to match Gene Roddenberry’s vision of what Klingons were (Star Trek: The Motion Picture).
I personally never needed an explanation on why Klingons looked different in TOS, TNG, or Discovery. I just understand that things are modernized for the times and always just took it that the Klingons from TOS were the same as the ones in TNG and so on. Discovery just modernized the Klingons to their vision. I get some people need an in canon reason but I just accept things change over the years and go with it.
By TrinPie on 05.18.17 4:30pm
This.
Guess what, guys? They probably weren’t going to make uniforms out of velour, either, because it’s not 1966 anymore.
By Rathe on 05.19.17 12:47pm
I still love how in DS9 they tackled it and then when they circled back to it in Enterprise it actually kind of made sense. I mean, how embarrassing for a Klingon to have to splice in Human DNA to survive? I hope you are right and this is what they are going to touch on and they do it carefully with regards to the source material (in only that Trek fans are one of the more noisy fandoms and I don’t want to have to listen to them yell about this).
By thecommonperson on 05.18.17 5:47pm
The Klingons look like the bad guys from The Fifth Element
By Paul_M on 05.19.17 2:28am
I’m certainly not going to pay for CBS when the show will appear on Netflix as well. I’m not seeing that in a lot of articles mention that.
By NinJustin on 05.19.17 8:27am
Not in the U.S. CBS All Access has permanent exclusive rights to show it in the U.S. You’re gonna be waiting for a looooooooong time for it show up on Netflix.
By byronotron on 05.19.17 9:49am