LOL, sorry, the exact same problems. It's not that they are wearing different clothes. It's they have a different number of nostrils, internal vs external ears, the shape of their skull is profoundly different. It's not a 'fad' it's the very biological makeup of the species, let alone profound differences in culture. Once again I'd be fine with these as a new breed of Klingon, that would have been exciting. They didn't do that. One interview with a producer said that was the intention but by the beginning of season 2 that was in the trash when they showed all 24 Klingon Houses and they were all variants of the new Klingon design. No TMP or TOS, even though continuity would have most of them be TOS at that time. As to the tech problems, sure, it's pretty clear that the defining characteristic of Star Trek is 'people aren't comfortable with technology.' I mean,the entire thing is about neo-ludditism, right? LOL. I mean, they do have some problem with the transporter at times, the transporter occasionally errors out, but we still see it in use by not only all Federation starships but also all their primary rivals. Tech adoption is widespread. Warp drive, shields, phasers, energy torpedoes, transporters, all the basic technologies are ubiquitous. Again, if every ship has the technology Disco says they do, then why don't we ever see them use it when another ship hails them? We see the central viewscreens of ships from other factions many, many times. When they don't have them that's when it's a topic of discussion, such as the Dominion and their Jem Hadar attack fighters. You are allowed to like what you like, but there are massive continuity errors in Disco. So unless major physical surgury is all the rage, no, this is not the same thing as wearing a wig vs a three piece suit. And if it is all the rage, maybe it should be mentioned. Here's a fan site that goes into the differences and why they are virtually impossible to reconcile while also stating that there is the same continuity as previous Trek. https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/dis-klingons.htm
Huh, I never noticed that. I don't know if it falls under better technology or not. 24th century Klingons seem to have their ears magically covered by their hair at all times, like how mermaid hair always falls over exposed nipples. Meanwhile in the 23rd century: Arguably that's what their skulls always looked like without hair. General Chang was the only bald Klingon I recall seeing before DSC, but he also had only the mildest of forehead ridges as well, so maybe he was partially Augment? He looks like he's right in the middle of the TOS/TNG change. I dunno, maybe aliens would say the same thing if the only time they saw humans while watching Black Panther, then later they saw Shang Chi. Or if they went from watching Friends to The Sopranos. That does feel like a missed opportunity, but I can live with it. Houses rise and fall, and fashions change. Maybe the leaders of the various houses had cosmetic surgery to emulate K'Kuvma and his followers. With the TOS Klingons my headcanon was that they were discriminated against and forced behind the scenes by their own houses, which is why so many of them ended up on the KDF ships that Kirk encountered during TOS. I mean... kind of? TOS was very much anti-AI. How many evil computers did Kirk alone deal with? How many times did genetic engineering end up eliminating diseases and creating cool, friendly people that never caused problems? Nintendo sold a virtual reality gaming system in 1995. VR was supposed to be the next big thing. Today you can get virtual reality playstation games, but they're far from the norm. Decades later, people still prefer gaming on screens. I don't think it's outlandish for VR to keep improving and getting rolled out over and over, but not really catching on until it reaches Holodeck level quality in TNG. A company that made retinal implants stopped making them in 2019. Now the people that got them have obsolete technology in their heads. People didn't even go for Google Glass. Even though so many people are basically glued to their phones, having them right in their faces was too much. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60416058 I would personally think the biggest risk with holo-communicators onboard military ships is the possibility of revealing too much information to the other party. That, or someone hacking your systems and sending over a hologram capable of physically interacting with the ship. Imagine speaking to an enemy captain holding a sword and suddenly he stabs you with it, or walks over to your life support controls and turns them off. Communicating via viewscreen with the camera focused tightly on the speaker and the background blurred has to be safer. Kang, Kor, and Koloth all went from looking like TOS Klingons on TOS to looking like TNG Klingons by the time DS9. Kang had changed his appearance by TUC, if Tuvoks memories are to be trusted. So... Klingons definitely have no problem with major surgery, the vain bastards. :klingon:
So, on the episode where Sulu's team is in danger of freezing to death because there's a problem with the transporters, are you screaming, "WTF don't you just send a shuttlecraft down to pick them up?" Or do you let that one slide?
I do! One of Shatner's Kirk novels even went out of the way to mention that they specifically couldn't use shuttles on that planet because reasons.
Sure, they wore their hair long. As opposed to Disco, who were all bald in season 1. They changed that in later seasons of Disco, evidently at least in part by popular dislike of the new look, and gave them their hair back. They even introduced it in canon as to why - the Klingons shaved their hair when they are at war. Problem was, their heads were shaved before the war was declared, when the topic among the major houses meeting was whether to go to war or not. And of course in later seasons of Trek Klingons are at war with their hair just fine. This is what I mean by bad writing. They created a look people didn't like because of the way they introduced them (a self-inflicted wound), and then when they changed it back gave us nonsense as to why they didn't have hair when what was on screen clearly contradicted this, even what they themselves did in the previous season. And you can hand wave this away, sure. The question is how many times do you have to do this, how much headcanon do you have to make to address these faults? This topic came up because it was said the writers of Disco respected Trek as it had came before. Clearly that isn't true. Hell, in Birthright the shape of Klingon ears in the TNG era is actually a plot point. Worf is having a romance with Ba'el, believes her to be fully Klingon, but when he brushes her hair back sees her pointed ears. He rejects her as part Romulan. He also sees her external ears for a moment before noticing the point, so it's safe to assume Klingons have otherwise normal humanoid ears in TNG. And yes, that's nitpicky, and by itself wouldn't mean much. But it's just another example, and in this case it's a plot point in the one full blooded Klingon character in Trek (who was on for more seasons of Trek than any other character!). And it's a specific backstory episode about Worf. So I'd say that means that story is more important to Klingons than a random plot point in a random episode. That's reasonable head canon, though of course at the time the Augment issue didn't exist so it's a retcon. I'm sure the real answer is Christopher Plummer could tell them to go fuck themselves instead of spending 3 hours in the makeup chair every morning. But no, the elongation of the skull is quite profound. Even with Worf's flowing locks it wouldn't be a match. They literally changed their heads from season 1 to season 2 with no commentary. This is the same character: Again, the rollout of Klingons in Disco was problematic and they got a lot of flack. They tried to change course over time. And again, if they had simply said 'these are a different subgroup' I'd have really dug it. Romulans and Remans, for example. Hell, that's my headcanon. It just isn't canon because they had the opportunity to introduce it that way even while their design team stated what they intended, but then screwed it up by showing us all the Houses were present and looked like this. They could retcon it later, I'd be happy with that. But that doesn't change the error at the time. We already know there are different skin tones among Klingons just like Humans and Vulcans. This goes far beyond that. There is absolutely no indication that Klingons in TOS were somehow in a lesser branch of service or were not well considered, if that's what you are implying. Koloth, Kang and Kor were all Dahar Masters, revered in the 24th century. Dax speaks of them as legends. And the D7 was the frontline ship, Disco at least got that right. AI, yes. Computer, no. Remember TOS was decades before personal computers. The ship's computer was day to day life. Certainly they are anti-genetic engineering, but that's defined within the show. WWIII took place in the 1990s caused by genetic supermen. You keep applying the concepts of civilian tech to Starfleet. If an admiral gives an order it's an order, just like they show the advent of the Transporter, by far a more potentially problematic device, from Ent where it was looked at with suspicion, to TOS, where it was rare for anyone to complain about, to TNG, where not wanting to get into a transporter was seen as a sign of personality disorder. This isn't whether or not people want to wear Nike or Adidas. Starfleet clearly follows a hierarchy, and personal preference doesn't mean much in that. And once again, that doesn't mean every other space faring race would take on Starfleet's biases, and they clearly do. It just didn't exist, and it's a massive retcon to say otherwise. Retcons are fine, if they are done intelligently. This one just said fuck it, lets ignore the previous 50 years of shows, because it's pretty and we like it. Once again, how horribly do you have to distort things to make this fit? It's impossible. It's especially stupid considering they were going to jump to the future in 2 seasons, where it would have been a perfect upgrade. You could even introduce it in Disco S1 but make it that the Discovery, not the Enterprise, has a significant flame out because they can't get the new tech to work. That is why it's not adopted. Easy peasy. Instead all the ships had it except Enterprise at the time, going directly against the concept in TOS that it's the finest ship in the fleet. And we ignore none of the aliens and none of the ships in the future have it. Is there any indication that the holograms are 24th century tactile holograms, with force fields? Certainly they don't appear to be able to move from the area generating them. I'd say this doesn't match what's on screen at all. And even if that was the case, that would be a good reason not to have them, as opposed to Disco who says all the ships do - until they vanish entirely in the future. Holographs of that level of sophistication don't come into play until Voyager, and again, this is an example of how Voyager is the most advanced ship with it's fancy holographic doctor and it's neural gel pack circuitry. Again, that's not necessary even if it's your personal headcannon. We see the viral mutation change the Klingons in Affliction in ENT with no surgery necessary. There's no reason to believe surgery was necessary if they found a cure for that mutation back to their original appearance. Which almost certainly has to be the case, because from TNG on we never see another Augment Klingon.
I let a lot slide on TOS. It was inventing it all from scratch, it had to produce 2-3 times the number of episodes per year, production budgets were a fraction of what they are now, and a lot of shit hadn't even been created yet. Hell, the Shuttle hadn't been shown to that point on the series, had it? If you watched it from the beginning back in the day there was no idea a shuttle even existed in any of the scripts at that point. For that matter, at that point they didn't think they were going to have a shuttle. The ship design included a shuttle bay, but they didn't have the budget to create the shuttle or film those shots. They actually got the familar box shape of the Shuttle because they cut a deal with model maker AMT to make the shuttle for them for nominal cost for a deal where AMT could produce consumer models of the Enterprise. Hell, that budget problem is why the transporter was introduced into the story at all. They then spun out that idea for several plots in TOS, including this one, Enemy Within, the one where Kirk is split into good and evil versions. Again, 4th episode, 1966. Is no shuttle then a retroactive continuity error? Sure. Is it more forgivable considering it was the 4th episode of the series and we wouldn't even know there were shuttles as viewers until 12 episodes later? IMO of course. Is it ridiculous to try to equate that with egregious errors on a show released 51 years later? Who has a budget 8 times as high, even adjusted for inflation? After 703 episodes and 13 movies had set the stage for them? Yes, I hold modern productions to a higher standard than the 4th episode of a show in 1966. Call me funny that way.
I wouldn't imagine Kor was discriminated against as DS9 specifically had him having looked down on Martok (refusing to give him a position in the military) in the past for not being from the right background.
He'd hardly be the first person to overcome discrimination only to turn around and discriminate against others. I've known plenty of first generation immigrants that have no problem complaining about other immigrants and refugees entering the country.
I have a coworker from Bangladesh. A few years ago he took a morning off to attend his Canadian citizenship ceremony, then later that day complained about Canada letting in too many refugees. "We've got to take care of our own people first!"
Sir, may I speak? We're all with you, sir, but consider this: Until TWoK, the time period in which Trek takes place was never canonically established on screen. By placing it in the 23rd Century as it does, this requires for human civilization to have not only obtained warp drive, but to have also traveled some 25K+ lightyears to the edge of the galaxy in less than a century from now. Indeed, if you watch "Where No Man Has Gone Before," you will find that the log buoy they pick up was launched by a Federation ship some 200 years before. This would mean that it'd have to be launched in the 2060s. When did Zefram Cochrane make his first warp flight? 2063. So, that means between 2063 and 2069, Earth not only had to create the UFP, but also build at least one ship capable of traveling to the edge of the galaxy. Now, I suppose we can handwave away the mistakes made by a '60s TV show, and possibly forgive the errors in judgment made by those doing TWoK, since they were under a lot of pressure to come up with something that did impressive box office numbers, but FC was made by a studio that had lots of experience, not only with things like continuity but also with nitpicking fans. Yet, they didn't do anything that would fix the fact that TWoK kinda fucked up the timeline. Now, don't ask me what Enterprise did to the whole thing, because I never watched it, but ISTR a lot of discussion about how the series took place between FC and the actual establishment of the UFP. And also that Archer was pissed that the Vulcans were keeping the humans from really playing with their "toys." Nor, AFAIK, have any of the other series done anything to correct this issue. Maybe I'm wrong, but if you're going to say that a 2020 TV series should do better at handling things like continuity than a 1960s TV series, but never mention that a 1980s movie (generally considered one of the best movies, if not program in the history of the franchise) fucked up the timeline and nobody's bothered to address that in subsequent episodes/movies, uh, there's a problem.
Ah, so going back to the 4th episode of season 1 isn't enough, now we are at the pilot for that season. LOL. So literally the first episode with Kirk - McCoy isn't on board yet, they don't even have the TOS costumes finished. Yes, there were massive continuity errors back then, as there was no continuity established yet, and they certainly had no inkling people would be picking it apart nearly 6 decades later. You might also notice that Kirk says that the SS Valiant was out there using impulse drive when they were swept away by a magnetic storm. This after saying that 'the impossible has happened', as they didn't expect to find the ship out there. Kind of hard to travel 25000 light years at sublight. Clearly they were trying to parallel the concept of ships being swept out to sea, and to them the 'magnetic storm' was as event that could drag ships far, far off course. And of course that they state it's a fact that humans have ESP and some can see the future. I think they decided to drop some of that by the time TNG came around. What's more, it's never stated it was a Federation starship, the SS Valiant. It's stated it's an Earth ship. Hence, the SS Valiant as opposed to the later USS Valiant in DS9. So no, there's no indication that particular continuity was a problem. What error in judgment is that? That the Romulan ale comment? Hardly a major issue - 'it takes this stuff a while to ferment' was delivered very dryly, it could have been tongue in cheek. And how long do you normally age ale? LOL. Not sure where I see TWoK fucking up the timeline, or FC either for that matter. There's half a dozen statements of the time frame of TOS and yes, they were all over the place. The writers generally would refer to an event and then say it was 200 or 300 years ago, but that was always just to give the audience some idea of scope. Savage Curtain put Lincoln's life at 3 centuries before, so this would be around 2165, 100 years before the current consensus. Kirk tells Khan he had been sleeping for 2 centuries, so that would be around 2190. When Kirk is back in the 1960s and the US Air Force officer tells him that he'll get locked up for 2 centuries, Kirk says 'that would be around right.' So 22nd century again, 2160. But Okuda came along and wrote up a timeline and placed it at 2266-2269 to fit descriptions in other books that it was the 23rd century. And while that was not considered canon, it later became canon as show writers referenced it for future episodes. Yeah, and that works just fine with Okuda's timeline. TOS didn't care about that type of continuity so they imposed some later. Once they started caring about continuity in terms of the dates of things they stuck with it. Prior to that they contradicted themselves within a few episodes of each other. But then, that's the difference between standards in 1966 and one in 2020. And you might have noticed no one mentioned specific dates, you are the one bringing that up. As you said, no specific date was ever given in TOS, just a wide range of approximations. To the rest, you don't have to care about these things, it's perfectly fine if you don't care about continuity at all. But clearly the writers chose to ignore lots of what had come before, not just random dates but things that had been established for 600+ shows. And it is not surprising in the least that people who had been watching Trek for many decades weren't big fans of that.
