I’m willing to give them a pass on that. In an TNG episode on a captain who suspects the Cardassians are secretly preparing for war, Chief O’Brien demonstrates that it is much easier to bypass the shields of your own ships. The Klingons would have had all the necessary information on shield frequencies, harmonics, power cycles, etc.
Re Cranial Ridges
I would have preffered that they left this unexplained. I hate the changes Lucas made to Star Wars while claiming ‘This is what I always wanted to do.’. But, in the case of Klingons, I think it’s the truth. Rodenberry and everybody else wanted aliens who looked alien. They could only afford generic make up-eyebrows, beards, some bronze greasepaint, black bodysuits, and what seem to be metallic curtains. When TMP was made, science and budget had advanced to the point of cranial ridges and detailed, exotic uniforms. I continue to have a problem with any TNG episode in which Data uses a contraction (It’s beyond his programming to say “It’s me!” when patching Manheim’s hole in space-time). But, I’m willing to accept that Klingons were always meant to have ridges.
Wow, what a disapointment. I really liked last week’s installment and was looking forward to the conclusion, but it stunk. I just laughed at the whole tether thing-- pathetic.
[sub]{Just when I get to feeling better then the kids get something and here we go again.[/sub]
[sup]Can’t think enough to post in the “Finish the Western…” but creative thought isn’t too necessary for Enterprise these days.}[/sup]
The episode felt cobbled together quickly.[ul][li]I love the space climbing visuals and it reminds me of a breeches buoy. However, this technical/dramatic event was just done with no regard for technical details or drama. Reed is not trained enough to do a transport at warp so he has to use a winch? If the warp bubble is so nice that Trip in a spacesuit can float across, why can’t the transporter work? It works to snatch Archer when he’s blown into space or running through a Suliban corridor. Okay, so it can’t work. So Trip needs to pull himself across? Why not use a jetpack? And he rotates halfway. Well, when does the artifical gravity take hold? I would pick one orientation and stick with it until I had to rotate.[/li]
Oh, and the tether itself. It is strained to the breaking point and the winch is shearing out of the ceiling - And it’s vibrating loosely as Trip is coming over. And when the winch is sheared off and falls out - why does it shoot (okay, let’s say stop) and exit upstage and out of the warp field? If there was such “pressure” then wouldn’t Trip have been “blown” away?
What was needed were the warp fields to have difficulty matching. Lightning and particle discharges. Trip would have to suit up in heavy gear with extra shielding. He uses a jetpack and we go with him as he zooms across. We cut away to see lightning strike him and he spins around the tether as he jets into the bay. We see him in the bay afterwards with scorch marks and part of his jetpack melted away.
[li]Enterprise is racing along at Warp 5+. Columbia then … catches up to her. Not only that, but she has to fly across the parsecs to get close enough to even begin to catch up. I don’t think she’s that fast.[/li][li]And I wish they would stop messing up Phlox. The actor is doing such a great job of giving him character and most of the time they make him ethically consistent. But then they need him to be a mensch and so it’s okay for him to threaten with a biological weapon as long as he’s either bluffing or got the antidote?[/li][li]And then we come to necessity. everything’s always so contrived. A) Phlox is the greatest and only doctor. How about some other kidnapped scientists, even if they’re “in the back room”? B) Trip is the only one to pull the lever and restart the ship. Trip’s engineering could have been commed in. They could have gotten the engines down and back up sooner (or more safely) if they hadn’t wasted time getting Trip over. C) Malcolm’s the only one to … pull the lever and start the winch. Now either Enterprise has only fifty meters (okay, maybe sixty) of tether, or maybe Archer should take Malcolm fishing. Apparently Malcolm has never heard of the idea of letting out/reeling in the slack in a line to maintain proper tension.[/li]Oddly, if it had to be explained, the Incident at Brow Ridge seems the most logical fit. The hardest thing to swallow is Klingons trying to biologically improve themselves. This goes against their code of honor. But a son who disowned his family’s warrior tradition to become a doctor is the most logical one to try to use his medical career to gain favor with his warrior heritage. But he creates a virus that affects the DNA and lots lose their brows. I see the population either breeding it out or the effected just going into self-segregation. Since they are true Klingons and every family probably has affected members, they are not cast out, but rather congregate together in their own communities and on their own ships. The unspoken prejudices would have some relegated to colonizing worlds of sheep like the Organians.[/ul][sup]I’m sure there’s more but I left my notes at home … again.[/sup]
This one’s really easy to answer. Enterprise turned around. They can make course corrections at warp. Columbia’d only need to “catch up” as they match for the transfer, and since they have Trip, of course they can squeeze out the extra 1% of speed they need then to even things out.
8 replies later and I’m totally ignored, so I’ll try again.
Does the explination of the Klingons looking different explain why the Klingons in the episode of “The Trouble With Tribbles” from the origional series look one way, then, when they come to Deep Space 9 in “Blood Oath” look different?
The Klingons who appeared in DS9’s Blood Oath were…
Kor (from the TOS episode Errand of Mercy)
Koloth (from The Trouble With Tribbles)
Kang (from Day of The Dove)
One can assume they were either cured of the smooth look, or elected to undergo polastic surgery in their old age to get their bumps.
And to the fanwankish bullshit that Gene Roddenberry always wanted the Klingons to have bumps. Fucking nonsense. This was a bit of his after death legacy by his wife and biographer. A guy who worked on “The Motion Picture” in 1978 says GR didn’t like the spine-ridged look at first.
No offense intended, it is just typical Gene Roddenberry nonsense, ranking right up there with “the execs didn’t want a female second in command.”
No Gene, they had no problem with a female second in command, what they had a problem with was the female being portrayed by your horse-faced, talentless whore of a girlfriend!
Again, no offense intended to the poster, Just tired of this Gene Roddenbery is a Star Trek Deity bullshit. Plus lots of Vodka doesn’t help my mood.
Sir Rhosis
GR did not create everydamnlittlething to do with Star Trek. Sorry.
I didn’t have a problem with that. He acted to save several million lives. Having studied the disease, he knew he wasn’t putting anybody on the Bird Of Prey in actual danger (he could cure them long before they became terminal).
Sir Rhosis
I’d heard the ‘Gene always wanted ridges’ explanation enough that I assumed it was true. I do not have some shrine to him in my living room.
I don’t have a shrine to him either, tho he has my undying gratitude for the initial creation of the entire Trek concept… As for the ridges story, I’ve heard both sides from several good sources, so I assume the real truth is somewhere in the middle. Plus, I never really cared that much.
What does bug me, tho, is this lame ass attempt to reconcile the 60s to the 00s. Unneeded and trite.
Doc Cathode, my apologies if I offended you. My annoyance is not with you, or others who hear and innocently believe the “Gene created all” theory, but rather with the perpetuators of such myths who do take away from the various writers, etc. who did add concepts to Gene’s wonderful initial creation of the Trek universe.
I wasn’t offended. I just wanted to make my position clear.
So why were the ridges added for TMP? Did any of the writers of TOS or novels want ridges? Was it a change made by a producer or studio executive? Did Foster or somebody else just say ‘It would be cool if the Klingons had ridges?’
Were any of the writers/creators of TOS happy with how the Klingons looked? I always assumed the greaspaint and metallic curtains were the result of a low budget rather than anybody saying ‘This is how they should look.’
At this stage I’m not exactly sure who was the first to say that the Klingons in TMP should resemble the mutants from Roddenberry’s failed pilot Planet Earth, but that is were the idea came from. If you will note the Klingons in TMP all have the exact same cranial ridge (supposedly at that stage it was meant to be their exoskeletal spines riding up and over their heads) just like the mutants from that 1974 pilot. In Trek III, they became distintive bumps/ridges and in later TOS films and TNG were further modified.
On the TMP Special Edition DVD one of the execs (or maybe it was a behind the scenes guy) states that Roddenberry resisted changing the Klingons but got talked into it finally.
Gene Coon created the Klingons (as a race) for the TOS episode Errand of Mercy. Gene Roddenberry did name them after an old LAPD buddy named Wilbur Clingan. These days the elderly Mr. Clingan enjoys meeting fans at conventions and billing himself as the “Original Klingon.”
I own a copy of Coon’s script. He describes the Klingons as “Orientals: hard-faced,” that’s it.
Actor John Colicos, who played the Klingon Kor in that episode, said in interviews that he and Fred B. Phillips devised the make-up on the spot in Phillips’ office. I take that somewhat wih a grain of salt. I’m sure Phillips knew the look he was going for, though Colicos may have indeed offered suggestions as they were putting it all on him.
And why did they create the Klingons to begin with? Because the pointed ears for the Romulans were too expensive and time-consuming to make and they needed a villain that was cheaper to make up.
For those who don’t know, what Aesiron is referring to: Harve Bennett’s first draft script of the film Star Trek III: The Srearch For Spock had Romulans as the villains. Director Leonard Nimoy requested that he change it to Klingons as he felt they were stronger villains. Bennett did so, but left the Bird of Prey (a Romulan ship) in the script with no explanation as to why the Klingons were naming their vessel types after those used by Romulans.
