Dunno why they need a Starfleet at this point. Someone’s attacking you? Transwarp-beam a nuke into their capital city. Want to explore some region of space? Transwarp-beam a probe into it. If anything, the Federation is now as powerful as that race from the TNG episode “Contagion”, who could teleport anywhere, even Toronto.
And JJ Abrams is making this and Star Wars!
Ok this is a small complaint at best but I couldn’t help thinking it when I saw the movies. The Klingons. Wtf was going on with their appearance? I thought they didn’t get the ridges till well after TOS happened. I mean, in TOS they clearly looked more or less human but now, during the same time period they have the ridges? Were they made that way because that’s how most people envision them? Even if that is the case, they looked AWFUL.
TOS-era canon for the Fu Man Chu-looking Klingons was that those were a client race chosen to interact with the non-Klingon outlanders because they were less prone to rampagey violence.
DS-9 era explanation: Worf: “We do not talk of that time.”
Enterprise-era canon is that Klingons always had forehead ridges. Somebody came up with a genetic plague that morphed them into quasi-humans (see above, TOS-era), and they used those as their diplomats because, again, not so much with the berserk rages.
It’s also interesting to note that three of the TOS-era Klingons showed up in an episode of DS9, and they all had bumpy foreheads. Apparently they grow back.
Or they were vain and had cosmetic surgery. The Klingon geriatric equivalent of botox.
So do you think the plastic surgeon kept various different popular forhead molds on display for a customer to choose from? Can you pick from a selection of celebrity forheads?
“I was originally going to go with Young Kahless number three, but everyone is getting that one these days. I hear the triple ridge is coming back into style…”
Actually, the TOS explananation was “These are Klingons”. Then TMP came along and gave Klingons head ridges. “Why do Klingons have head ridges?” “We have a better makeup budget. Just go with it. These are Klingons. They’ve always looked like this. Shut up.”
Next Gen kept the forehead ridges. It wasn’t until later people were trying to reconcile forehead-ridged Klingons of TMP and Next Gen with foreheadridgeless Klingons of TOS.
In DS9, named Klingons from TOS showed up with forehead ridges. No explanation, suggested interpretation: “Klingons have always looked this way. Any apparent difference in TOS is a TV resolution issue. Or your imagination. Or - look, a squirrel!” It became an issue in DS9 when Sisko lead a team through to the past to the events of the episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”, and especially because Worf is sitting around in the cantina with his forehead ridges while there is a roomful of ridgless Klingons. Answer: [del]“Shut up”[/del] “We do not talk about these things.”
I wonder how it would have played for no one to notice, pretend the old Klingons were fine and there was no difference. “Just go with it.”
Then “Undiscovered Country” gave us somewhat ridged Klingons with Kirk and Co, supporting the notion that Klingons always had ridges.
Finally Enterprise came along and gave us that stupid genetic weapon explanation.
And the “client race” explanation was from some novel, so calling it canon is weak.
Apparently Abrams decided that “Forehead ridges are cool; therefore, more ridges = more cool!”
I have no canon cite for this (haven’t bothered to research it), but my personal interpretation of the different ridges/bumps is that it’s the Klingon version of different ethnicities. They all have basically the same skin color, but Klingons from different parts of Kronos have different ridges. We’re shown a lot of different Klingons during TNG, and I noticed that Klingons who were blood relatives had the same kind of ridges. Worf, Kurn, and Alexander had one style, while the members of the House of Duras had a completely different style. Meanwhile, Alexander’s mother (whose name I can’t recall ATM), while not being a blood relative of Worf, had the same type of ridges, which suggests that she was of the same ethnicity as Worf.
Anyway, I just saw Into Darkness yesterday afternoon, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve seen a few things mentioned in this thread and have some ideas about them that I haven’t seen mentioned.
Khan’s race: If Khan was supposed to have been born c. 1959, is it unreasonable to suggest that he was possibly a 4th- or 5th-generation descendant of an Indian man and a white, English woman? I’ll admit that, being American, I don’t know how tolerant the British of the 19th Century would have been of such a union, but given Britain’s heavy presence in India, it had to have happened from time to time. And genetics being what they are, especially if there were more white ancestors between the original pair and Khan’s birth, some of the offspring could indeed be very “white”. There is a married couple at my church - a very white man and a dark-skinned Mexican woman. They have three kids. Their son is obviously part Mexican - he’s lighter-skinned than his mom, but has clear Mexican features. Their daughters, OTOH, are very light-skinned and display more of the father’s European features. That’s just in a single generation. I’ve also read an article (with photos) about a mixed-race couple, where both parents were half-black/half-white. They had twin daughters, and one looked pure African while the other was lily-white and blond-haired.
The other thing I haven’s seen anybody mention was the family whose daughter Khan/Harrison saved early in the movie. They looked Indian to me, and I wondered if that was a subtle nod to Khan being Indian.
Kirk telling Chekov to put on a red shirt has already been mentioned, but I haven’t seen anybody mention Kirk’s telling the two actual redshirts to change their shirts just before he hauled them down to Kronos to capture Khan. And now that I think about it, I can’t remember if those two actually survived the encounter.
The man is Black (That was Noel Clarke - Mickey from Doctor Who - incidentally), the woman is Indian, so the kid would be multiracial.
Given that Khan was the subject of genetic tinkering, he might have just ended up relatively pale-skinned as a side effect. Or maybe he was tinkered to be white on purpose because whoever made him thought it was superior. Nobody said the folks behind Khan and the Augments had to be a nice person.
Wow, really? I just started watching Doctor Who, and I’m about 4-5 episodes in. I didn’t even recognize him.
There are plenty of Indians with white skin, blue or green eyes, and brown hair, particularly in Kashmir. If Khan is a Panjabi Sikh, then It is not unknown for Panjabis to be tall and fair.
In the Star Trek future, all black men are a little on the chubby side.
And Mexican.
And with a thing for rich Corinthian leather.
To be absolutely fair, Montalban was ethnically Spanish, which is closer than Mexico is to India. And there are plenty of Indians with Portuguese ancestry, so that gets us a step closer.
My two colleagues were discussing the movie and A, who has seen it, was explaining to B (a man in his 50s with degrees from Harvard and M.I.T.) the Khan backstory as presented by J.J. Abrams and B blurted with outrage: “That’s not how it happened in real life!”
Mr. “B” is a time traveling secret agent, obviously.
Hmm … We’re going to have to have a talk tomorrow.
Or possibly yesterday.