Bumpy Headed Klingons to be Explained

There’s no real details in the article, so despite their spoiler warning you still don’t know much.

Well, it’s about time they explained this. It’s been weighing on my mind for lo these many years.

Really. They had the chance to deal with it in “Trials and Tribble-ations” but didn’t seem to have enough time.

There’s a bumpy skull joke there someplace but I’m too tired to dig for it.

I’m not sure this is a good idea or not. I have to confess, I find it darkly amusing to know there are major production discontinuities in the Trekverse forcefully preventing the hardcore Trekkers from pretending the show represents “Reality.”

Oh yeah, like the Star Wars continuity is much better. :stuck_out_tongue: At least Star Trek fans can explain it away by saying that the creator’s dead and the series has been ran into the ground by a couple of nimrods who don’t understand the series. Star Wars fans have had their series continuity ruined by it’s creator, who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone, dagnabbit!

I’m probably about as hardcore Trekker as one might find outside of the dress up in pointy ears people, and I’ve never heard anyone say that Trek represents reality. Who have you been talkin’ to?
I, for one, hope they DON’T explain it. ENT has already given us Movie/TNG style Klingons. Why muddy the waters with some far fetched scenario, Manny?

Besides, maybe we’re reading too much into this spoiler, and it has nothing to do with brow ridges.
:dubious:

I thought that one of the novelists had accounted for it by a race war- the smooth-headed Klingons were the dominant race during Kirk’s youth, but a rather bloody coup had put the bumpy-headed Klingons firmly in control later.

I know the Star Trek novels aren’t canon, but the explanation made perfect sense to me.

Except, of course, for the fact that in DS9, Klingons from Kirk’s era show up and they’re all bumpy headed with no explaination.

If you’d read the link in the OP you’d know that explanation doesn’t work, because three Klingon characters who’d appeared as smoothies in the original series were brought back (by the original actors, no less) in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as bumpies.

It does work that way, in an after the fact type of way. Still, as you already noted, not canon.

The main reason has been written about for several years now by various different people involved in Trek. Gene had neither the mony nor the time to do anything other than what he did for TOS. When he got the money behind him for a second go at things, he made them look alien, first seen in TMP.

No other explanation is needed, really. Greedo shot first and all that doesn’t have to happen here. Would the BBC go back and give the Doctor a fully functioning TARDIS? Not needed, imho.

Perhaps the TOS cameras had special filters on them which adjusted the bumps into smoothness.

There has also been speculation that if Gene had actually got a second series off the ground in the 70s, he had in mind an episode to explain the change. The series idea morphed into TMP, however, and the idea (if, indeed, there actually was one) was shelved.

As a WAG, I’ll say that they do something totally stupid like it being a phage type illness like in Voyager, which really made no sense at all since, if the aliens are advanced enough to work out the anti-rejection factors which would come into play from incorporating the organs of an alien species, they can surely find a cure for a disease.

“For cryin’ out loud, its just a TV show!”

I for one loved the way that DS9 episode made fun of how serious some Trekkies take the whole Klingon forehead thing. They just did a blatant deux ex machina with Worf’s line, “We do not speak of it with outsiders”.

I mean why not ask this: Why is it that in the Next Generation time all Klingons look like African-Americans whereas in TOS they just looked like George Hamilton? :smiley:

By the time Next Gen rolled around, the Klingons were tanned and rested. :wink:

I could of sworn that that british guy who sits at the back of the bridge (his name escapes me) had thought that the Enterprise from the future that was in the past in the E^2 episode was actually the NX-02 or, the Yorktown as he called it. Not the Columbia.

Am I delusional?

I was certain that I saw an episode where Worf saw smoothies and said (words to the effect) “Look what they have done to themselves, it’s dishonorable!” (implying that the smoothies had cosmetically removed their bumps). Anyone else remember this or am I imagining that I saw it.

Having said that, isn’t this just one of a rather long list of discrepancies to be explained? (like how the starships in Kirk’s era abandoned touch screen controls, moody lighting, blue LEDs…)

You’re imagining things. The only smooth browed Klingons to ever appear outside of TOS were in Trials and Tribble-ations, which was set inside a TOS episode itself. And personally, I don’t care either way. If it’s explained, I won’t mind but I won’t care if they don’t either.

Will be nice to have a definitive answer for the periodic thread about it htough so I guess it’s good for something.

I am sure I read in some Star Trek directory or concordance that the explanation is that the Klingon Empire sent scout teams which were, either naturally or through genetic manipulation, a more humanoid breed.

I would have plumped for just ignoring it, the way we ignore the improving of non-personal special effects, but DS9, however amusingly, aknowledged that the characters saw the change. Unless we can just cut anything with ‘tribble’ in from cannon.

Another possibility is that there were two races, or a mutation or something, AND THEN a few klingons a surgery to fit in, who were seen on DS9.

A plague or something would be really shtupid, but I bet that’s what they end up doing.