Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

Dunno, then - mercy doesn't apply to a hero -he died well- it applies to a loser, as close as I can imagine Klingon coming.

"He lost and was not worthy of being finished, instead left to live with his shame", maybe.



-We're talking about post-Star Trek stuff actually, and you know I count nothing after Wrath.  Klingon was created -for the later movies?  TNG?- -the later movies, IIRC- but that's the general drift, as I take it...

[bvanevery]

I thought we had 3 bone head Klingons for Star Trek: The Motion Picture at the very beginning.  Weren't they speaking Klingon?

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, no.  I been a fanboy for way most all of my life and read The Making of Star Trek maybe before you were born.  -If you're less than mid-50s in age.  That wasn't the end of my fanatic study, and I daresay I know my stuff.

No, that was gibberish, though it definitely influenced the sound of what was developed by a real linguist years later - I think it was for The Undiscovered Country?  Possibly as early as Search for Spock.

Also?  I hear Spock's brief conversation w/ Savick in Wrath was not in/consistent with what little has been created of Vulcan/used elsewhere - it must have been Romulan.

[bvanevery]

Dude, my 1st video game console was PONG.  As a kid, I've played that arcade game where the Doomsday Machine eats your ship when you lose.  Only once I think, and I don't know the exact name of the game.  Or where I'd find that arcade cabinet again.  It never appeared in the wild again.  Anyways, you're not older than me.

Cinematically, as a matter of canon, they were speaking Klingon.  And these are the first 3 bone head Klingons we see, instead of the Fu Manchu Klingons of TOS.

Now yes, I totally grant that they spoke Klingon badly, much as someone might speak Cantonese badly in a chop sockey martial arts flick.  Cue many r/WarriorTV discussions about not getting things right.  And what could they get right, when the details of the language aren't even worked out yet?  But I guarantee you, the script said something like "they speak Klingon" or whatever, and then there were to be subtitles.  Someone's nascent imaginary version of Klingon, faked according to evolving world building standards.

Comparison: the Swedish Chef speaks "Swedish".

[Buster's Uncle]

I stand behind my remarks, but not the embedded arrogance.  I'm 60, god help me.

[bvanevery]

Perhaps we can officially agree that they spoke "Klingon".

If we meet in person, perhaps I can regale you with my offensive versions of "Arabic", "German", and "Chinese".

Or you could just watch Monty Python for some class - Finnish, was it?

[Buster's Uncle]

I couldn't honestly give any less poops about the 'real' Klingon language.  That there's a nerd thing I respect almost as little as furry stuff.

-Also goes for pretty much anything to do with turtle-head Klingons and the associated cosplay, though I have to accept that the knobbies are still canon in my personal headcanon, TMP preceding Wrath...

[bvanevery]

The "fish people" they did for Discovery is a dire travesty.  We didn't need someone to completely redo Klingons.  I think they got the message because after S1 they wrapped up all the dangling Klingon plotlines in a hurry.  "Fish people" Klingons were quietly tucked away.

Star Trek is so broad that there are a number of things "kinda retired" like that.  Like the TNG episode that clowns the Fu Manchu Klingons, using footage from TOS "The Trouble With Tribbles".  Whorf states in anger, "We do not speak of it!!"

When Star Trek: The Experience still existed, that one time I went to Vegas, I spent 5 hours reading the timeline.  It was this long walkaround console thing.

[Buster's Uncle]

Uno was pretty impressed with the Klingon cosplay in that show - I have no way of knowing what I would have thought.

[Buster's Uncle]

My long-standing handwave for the knobbies was that they were the first time we saw the Original Klingons -maybe- the Mexican bikers on acid we saw in several flavors on the show -inconsistent makeup- were thoroughly assimilated races in a very big empire, probably the majority in the region bordering the Federation.

The Enterprise encountered multiple parallel Earths, probably projects of the Preservers of This Side Of Paradise, who were maybe Sargon's people, who were maybe also the Organians and/or the Metrons, or related - humanoids often indistinguishable from Europeans everywhere, and many more pure humanoids just colored funny - probably the same is true throughout Klingon space, QED.

[Lorizael]

Like the TNG episode that clowns the Fu Manchu Klingons, using footage from TOS "The Trouble With Tribbles".  Whorf states in anger, "We do not speak of it!!"

DS9, not TNG!

[bvanevery]

I don't like Watsonian contortions, so I'm more inclined to use Doylist perspective and be done with it.

We know that transporters have some technical and cultural holes in them, for instance, because they were a production budget expedient.  It was expensive to do shuttle sequences, they couldn't do that every episode.  So now we've had to live with their various illogics, forever.

Until The Orville came along, in a different era where CGI shuttles are no problem at all.  So they dispensed with teleporters, as bad science, too much on the side of Woo.  There are also no mind powers in The Orville for the same reason.  They have a deliberately secularist subtext and don't abide things that get in the way of it.  Much.  Someone might be inclined to point out an exception but nothing is leaping to my mind.

The Doylist perspective on the "fish people" in Discovery, is it's some brainchild of the J.J. Abrams set.  Writers who don't like Star Trek at all and want to turn it into a Star Wars cash machine.  They managed to sell their dire do-over to some Suits.  I doubt anyone around here is gonna prove me wrong.  One of the reasons I had to bow out of the very large r/startrek community, is I can't abide people who thought Discovery S1 was appropriate or acceptable . Such people don't know and don't care what Star Trek is, or was.

Since then, I've seen a rather long documentary series on one of the streaming services, that lends credence to my point of view.  There was a sort of TNG era with particular show writers.  They got clobbered after CBS bought stuff.  Things had a particular style of writing to them, and subsequent corporate execs didn't care about any of that.  Trek wasn't even basically a cultural fit to CBS execs, is my limited understanding.  Trek was a brand they wanted to make money off of.

Mind you, if you think this is a way of waving a red cape in front of your nose, I am very much a TOS fan.  It's what I grew up with, and I think it's the legitimate thing Trek comes from.  That said, I think the TNG era is perfectly good Trek.  Picard is a real captain, just different from Kirk.  Data is in no way inferior to Spock at all.  I love them both, as basically similar archetypes.  I grew up practicing one eyebrow raises in the mirror until I could do it.

[Buster's Uncle]

Who's waving a cape?  The knobbies are there whether I like it or not, and that's my take.  Making Sense Of It is a game as old as fandom, and I'm no better.

[bvanevery]

I just have no clue why you, or anyone for that matter, would draw some bright line in the sand after The Wrath Of Khan.  Sounds deeply illogical.

Finding fault with some part of TNG, sure.  There's a reason Grow The Beard is a meme.  And maybe some of those original cast movie scripts were clunky and goofy too.  But in the broad sweep, I just don't get your thesis.

Maybe I would if I was old enough, to have firsthand observed arguments about TOS vs. TNG.  You are slightly older than me.  I was in college and busy with my studies when a lot of TNG happened.  No time to dwell on it.  It was the show that packed the communal TV room in my dorm.

[Buster's Uncle]

Wrath is the last thing I really enjoyed, is all.  The rest of the movies followed the things I didn't love in it, w/o any of the being good movies.

First season TNG was nearly pure phail, and then the Berman clique took over, and them cats appear to hold Star Trek in contempt, and they're not very good writers, either.  I actually thought the last season of TNG was getting better, so of course they stopped there.  DS9 was further off-mission, and got way further off halfway through, Voyager was hampered by being bad, Enterprise was inept in all the ways all the previous revivals failed, until the last season got a lot better and they quit making it again.

Nothing since is worth even discussing, and I've only seen the '09 abomination of it all.  Strange New Worlds being an exception, I'm universally told, but haven't seen it.

I done been burned too. many. times.


-This is the flame-bait that has caught your interest, and I don't wanna talk about much.