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Klingons Cut From Final Star Trek XI Movie
darthcamaro writes "Classic era trek was all about Kirk kicking the Klingons' tails. But the new Star Trek XI movie, the reboot, will not have any spoken Klingon in it — a travesty that has some fan sites up in arms already. 'We actually had a sequence that ended up getting cut from the movie that took place on Rura Penthe, in a Klingon prison,' Star Trek co-writer Alex Kurtzman said, explaining the deletion. 'And there was definitely Klingon spoken in the movie, and it ended up getting cut.' Frakkin' Federation ..."
The original Trek only rarely dealt with the Klingons. It was more about the crew exploring the unknown.
That was my first thought as well. Klingons were in, what, 7 or 8 episodes? Out of around 70 episodes total? And the spoken Klingon language wasn't introduced until the movies.
So there's no Klingons -- or at least no spoken Klingon -- in the story. Big deal.
And I say that as someone who's in the middle of rewatching TOS.
Yeah, most of the aliens got "facelifts" in the animated series, as I recall.
I gotta agree. While the MOVIES generated from the original series dealt pretty heavily with Klingons, the actual TV series didn't go much into it.
If memory serves, the Klingons were featured in these episodes:
In addition, the appeared periphrially in "Elaan of Troyius" and "The Savage Curtain" (I don't think the Kahless in that episode even spoke).
So, 5 major appearances in 79 eps, plus a couple small mentions.
And TBH, the Klingons of the original TV series were pretty uninteresting IMHO.
They were certainly one-note, though some of the episodes listed above used them to good effect. There certainly was not the kind of cultural exploration we saw in later series, that's for sure.
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The actual cannon is, I believe, that the growths were always there on the Klingon's foreheads, but during the short time period of TOS (?4 years), there was a fashion trend that was popular among Klingons to flatten their foreheads. Worf says at some point in DS9 (the other tribbles episode) that "we do not speak of it," so it was apparently an embarassing trend that they try to forget (think about all the straight-laced former hippies burning pics of themselves out of embarrassment).
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I think "Enterprise" expanded on this, and had the smooth-headed Klingons resulting from a genetic disease, caused by trying to implement human Eugenics techniques. The disease was cured, but the physical results remained, and took many generations for the Klingons to get rid of them.
It was explained away in the last season of Enterprise. A rouge human researcher in genetic engineering had made some superhumans, and Klingons wanted the tech, too. So they copied/stole the research and ended up implanting themselves with human DNA. The changes went viral, and soon affected the entire Klingon race. They presumably found a fix some time in between TOS and the first movie.
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There was also an episode of DS9 where they go back in time to the 'Tribble' episode and run into Kirk, etc., and either O'Brien or Sisko asks Wharf about why the Klingons look different, and he says something like, "We do not discuss it with outsiders."
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No kidding. Chewbacca always struck me as very dog-like with his speech.
Gee, very strange for a being who's very name is a mixture of words for man (chelovek) and dog(sobaka). Its not a coincidence that in Spaceballs the character was "Mog". (half-man, half dog)
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Since I just got done watching all 5 seasons of Enterprise (hey, I slept with a real girl two weeks ago.. really.. OK!), I think I can clarify this the best.
..really, I am not a geek. I prefer "nerd"
Dr. Soong, the one we know from TNG who created Data has great grandfather, also named Dr. Soong (and played by Brent Spiner). During the time of Enterprise he was a criminal for conducting genetic engineering experiments after they were outlawed following Earth's 3rd World War. He continued the work of creating genetic super humans, raising them on a far planet until he was finally captured and imprisoned back on earth.
One day the super humans, fatherless, decided to leave their planet and hijacked a Klingon Warship, beating the Klingon's in hand to hand combat and sending them out the airlocks. This infuriated the Klingon Empire and almost cost war between them and Earth (no Federation yet) but was defused by Captain Archer of the current Enterprise. However, the Klingon's were extremely dishonored to have human's beat them -- and feared the federation would have Super Humans on all Star Ships, which would spell the end of the Klingon Empire.
The Klingon's stole some of the genetic material from the original hijacked ship (after it was destroyed by Enterprise some containers escaped unscathed that had embryo's the Super Human's were carrying) and started to create Super Klingon's. However, they couldn't separate the Human DNA. Any Klingon made "Super" lost their ridges and other distinctive "Klingon Features".
To make matters worse, a virus infected the Supers and spread to normal Klingon's infecting a good amount of the empire. The virus carried genetic material, which supplanted this human DNA into regular Klingon's. The Klingon's were going to destroy every planet with the disease until the captured Enterprise Doctor, Flox, came up with a cure to the virus -- at gunpoint of one of the factions of Klingons.
In the end, the Klingon's stopped destroying infected worlds because the infection had been neutralized, but a large number of Klingon's were now Human/Klingon hybrids.
That was done in Enterprise to explain the Human looking Klingons in the TOS.