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Klingons Cut From Final Star Trek XI Movie

Posted by timothy on from the gravest-importance dept.

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 ..."

26 of 447 comments (clear)

  1. What's the Klingon phrase for... by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Get a life"?

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:What's the Klingon phrase for... by idontgno · · Score: 5, Insightful

      tlhap yIn!

      (per http://www.mrklingon.org/ ; java applet warning!)

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      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    2. Re:What's the Klingon phrase for... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Especially since the deleted scene will probably appear in the "deluxe director's cut" DVD anyways.

    3. Re:What's the Klingon phrase for... by Criliric · · Score: 4, Insightful

      why hasn't anyone thought of this?

    4. Re:What's the Klingon phrase for... by palindrome · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because the level of irony created in anyone wearing it would destroy time.

  2. Travesty? by cheebie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh dear God.

    The original Trek only rarely dealt with the Klingons. It was more about the crew exploring the unknown.

    This is just a fanboi snit.

    1. Re:Travesty? by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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. And TBH, the Klingons of the original TV series were pretty uninteresting IMHO. The change that they started going into the movies and more or less finalized moving into TNG made them far more interesting. Also, to a whole ton of fans from the TNG-onward days kinda view the Klingons as buddies of the Federation. Seeing them put back into a negative light just wouldn't be interesting to me.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    2. Re:Travesty? by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Weren't the Klingons in TOS basically just bad-tempered humans? They didn't develop the weird growths on their foreheads until much later. They were basically just a poorly fleshed out analogue for the Soviet Union.

    3. Re:Travesty? by timepilot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There was a decent amount of sex and violence in the original trek. It just wasn't explicit.

    4. Re:Travesty? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, closer to the Mongols than the Soviets. One of the ideas floating around in sci-fi of the time was the "space barbarian" or "space mongol", an archetype who could operate space ships, but couldn't build new ones, had to rely on captured peoples, etc. The Klingons definitely look like a stereotype of Mongols, including the warrior culture.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    5. Re:Travesty? by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree. This is, after all, a REBOOT. That means a lot of the cruft from about thirty years of post-ToS development is being dispensed with, and that's fine by me. This is meant to rejuvenate a series that had pretty much become one monstrous cliche of itself. If there's one thing ToS had that, over time, the later series lacked, it was solid, straightforward storytelling. Everything was burdened down by the vast edifice of Everything-That-Had-Come-Before. The last two attempts, the dull Voyager and the increasingly-pathetic Enterprise, showed just how uninteresting it had all become.

      The Trouble With Tribbles was just fine with Klingons speaking English, thank you very much. In fact, and so will this.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    6. Re:Travesty? by guyminuslife · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's a very plausible, reasonable-sounding explanation. Not nearly as plausible and reasonable-sounding as, "Jesus H. Christ! It's not even important! We changed the way they're supposed to look, we didn't even have the make-up budget to do that shit at the time, deal with it, use your imagination, stop worrying about canon and watch the goddamn show!"

      --
      I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
    7. Re:Travesty? by LionMage · · Score: 3, Insightful

      First off, it's rogue. Rouge is makeup you apply to your cheeks (or anywhere else you want a "healthy blush").

      Secondly, if you actually paid attention to the episodes in question (a story arc that lasted 2 or 3 episodes), you would know that the Klingons were going to destroy the research facility to stop the spread of this viral trait. A cure was discovered, and the Klingon powers that be relented. Klingons on a single colony were affected by this trait, and it was implied that the Klingon scientists were going to have their hands full reversing this genetic mangling. It did not spread to the entire Klingon empire.

      Yeah, I know, way too much nit picking about a damn TV show. But I thought the story arc was cool, especially the idea that Noonian Soong's ancestor was actually originally interested in genetic engineering to enhance humans, not robotics or cybernetics.

    8. Re:Travesty? by hey! · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I dunno. I remember the sixties, man. A lot of it was about letting "it" all hang out.

      You thought "Austin Powers" was farcical exaggeration, well, maybe not so exaggerated. Imagine you were born in, let's say 1949. It is now 1967, and you're in San Francisco. You are eighteen years old, it's the "Summer of Love". This is an era where contraception was available, practically all known STDs were curable with penicillin, and free love was royal road to higher spiritual existence.

      I think Roddenberry approved of "sexual liberation"; I think it part of his concept of a future Man (yes "Man") freed from superstitious and archaic limitations on his freedom. The only reason you didn't see more was because this was network television with sensors and sponsors who didn't want controversy. If cable networks existed back then (the way they do now), I'd bet you'd have seen a lot more than babes in sprayed on catsuits.

      I don't know if he was on board with the whole drug aspect of the counter-culture. In any case it would be superfluous in TOS. You see, it's exploration that's the drug that takes you to new experienced you could never have imagined. That's just another facet of liberation: to boldly go where no man has gone before on one hand, on the other do the same where probably quite a few men have gone before.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. And..... why should we care? by SDF-7 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seems like a non-story to me. Wrath of Khan didn't have any spoken Klingon either (closest was Khan claiming the Klingon proverb: Revenge is a dish best served cold.... It is very cold, in spaaaaaaaaaaace.) I don't seriously think anyone missed it there, and while I know little of the plot of this film (intentionally, so no -- I don't want a summary) if the story doesn't really involve Klingons, no need to toss them in just to have them.

  4. No big loss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Saw an advance viewing. Didn't come out of it thinking omg no Klingon.

    Fanboys bitching about the lack of Star Trek, so they produced a movie and the first thing they do is Bitch about it.

    1. Re:No big loss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Fanboys bitching about the lack of Star Trek, so they produced a movie and the first thing they do is Bitch about it.

      You must be new here.

    2. Re:No big loss by mabhatter654 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      of course it does have time travel... which should be shot dead and declared illegal by the sci-fi police.

  5. Spider-Man 3 by XanC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everybody complained that Spider-Man 3 tried to cram too many different characters and plots together. Chill out! This is but the first in a new series of films. There will be plenty of time for Klingons.

  6. As CmdrTaco would put it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No Klingons. Less space than TNG. Lame.

  7. Why do the characters even get to hear Klingon? by Gauthic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know I'll be modded down for mentioning this: Why are the Klingons the only species in the whole movie series that the "Universal Translator" didn't automatically translate to both the audience and the characters while not in private conversation at home planet (i.e. TMP's Spock's failture scene)?

    It should be all or nothing. Romulans should speak Romulan, Vulcans speak Vulcan (unless speaking Starfleet English) due to the technomagical universal translator.

  8. They have done far worse by frovingslosh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    J.J. Abrams was on TV just last night talking about he wasn't a real trekie, and that this movie was aimed at a broader audience (Hollywood talk for "everyone should buy a ticket for my movie and the trekies should buy several") . But from what little I've seen of the previews, this retelling isn't true to the Trek history.

    McCoy was a beloved character in the show and movies. But as anyone who watched the original shows in the 60's (even those of us who don't consider ourselves trekies, don't go to conventions, have never made a starfleet uniform or a tricorder, and who don't live in our parent's basements), he wasn't the original ship's doctor and didn't come on board when Kirk did. There were two other ship's doctors in "Where no man has gone before" (not to mention the earlier failed pilot that was later incorporated into the trek history as a back story). To retell things with McCoy joining with Kirk as he takes command of the ship is just pandering as far as I'm concerned, handy to let the film focus on a bunch of backstory for these characters, and lets just ignore established "facts". After all, it's just a movie. We'll play off the fan loyalty and immense popularity of the franchise where it suits us, but we can ignore it when it get in the way of the film we want to make.

    Yes, I know the file will be a huge hit. That was a given before the first scene was ever filmed or the first characters were cast. But I think it's a shame that Abrams decided just to throw something together based on the Trek franchise, film it in a spectacular way and profit, ignoring the existing trek history when it got in his way.

    And in some ways I think that imposing the Trek franchise on his film making may have been a major mistake. I really think he could have done better if he didn't go for the quick and big bucks that the Trek franchise promises but rather had made something original in the Science-fiction area. In truth he's quite a talented film-maker, and he could have made something truly unique rather than just number 11 in a series. The original Starwars (despite what it has become) was a great movie, and one of the main reasons for that is that Lucas was free to tell an original story (even with all of the cliche's). Imagine how much less of a movie it would have been in the 70's if George Lucas had decided, or been told, that in order to make a science fiction movie and get it onto the big screen he could do all of the great special effects he envisioned and he could pretty much do the same story, but the main character had to be either Flash Gordon or Buck Rodgers, because they were established and no one wanted to risk a big movie on a new story.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:They have done far worse by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's nothing quite as amusing as a pedant trying to sound reasonable and non-pedantic, and yet being so incapable of looking from the narrow rut that they occupy on the subject, that it still oozes from every sentence.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:They have done far worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Look... you've got a few options open to you regarding this movie.

      1) Simply accept it as a reboot and that it therefore doesn't need to conform to every detail of Trek history previously known.
      2) Write off the differences between this movie and previously known history as being a side-effect of one of the many times Trek characters have messed about with time travel.
      3) Treat it like Star Trek V and pretend it doesn't exist, if the movie is really that unpalatable to you.

      Now really, Trek history hasn't always been absolutely internally consistent before, so I don't know why you're expecting it to be so now. And for crying out loud, the timing of when Bones joins the crew is not of vital importance.

  9. Hard Core Trek-fans... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...won't even read this post because they'll start a fight over whether or not they should be called Trekkies or Trekkers. Then they'll argue about how canon this is, even with time travel given Enterprise and what they did with time travel, and whether or not Enterprise should be canon, even though it was by definition, a canon Star Trek show.

    In reality, everyone needs to realize that this will only vaguely look like any Star Trek you know. They hired a guy who wasn't a Trek fan, and asked him to remake Trek in a very different image. Correlations to past Trek incarnations should be kept to a minimum. Frankly, a whole lot of past-Trek sucked. It was the face of sci fi in American pop culture for many, but a whole lot of it did suck. This is what we have. It might very well make more money than all of the TNG-crew movies combined. Brian Fuller is already talking about a Trek TV show in Abram-verse. And you know what, I'm fine with that. Despite the 90210-looking captain, I have faith in Abrams to make an entertaining movie, and spin-off an entertaining TV show. That is far better than anything Trek has done as of late.

  10. Re:can't wait for the sequel- by kahless62003 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Tasha Yar?