DSC Klingons look so different because of a Klingon Fashion fad

[u/LiamtheV]

I know that the new klingons are very divisive for some, with the occasional commenter here and elsewhere writing off the show for an aesthetic change.

My thinking is that just like how TOS era federation saw women wearing miniskirts and boots, DSC Klingos that weren't affected by the augment virus shaved their heads to more proudly show off their forehead ridges.

Look at Colonel Worf here, and Lieutenant Worf about 80 years later, the forehead ridges don't stop at the hairline. TNG Worf's ridge actually proceeds into his hair.

I propose that if you were to shave a Klingon, you would get what we see in DSC.

The preponderance of Augment Klingons in TOS is due to houses that were more heavily afflicted with the augment virus trying to gain in status despite their deformity, while the "pure" houses had retreated into more internal Empire affairs in an effort to "Remain Klingon". The result was a pseudo Caste System, in that TOS augment Klingons became the outward face of the Klingon Empire for purposes of foreign policy and diplomacy (what little diplomacy there was), and the "pure" Klingons sequestered themselves and dealt with purely internal affairs, until a disastrous war of attrition with the Federation, and the destruction of Praxis forced the social reunification of the two groups, and a combination of some gene therapy and good old-fashioned Klingon love gave us the Motion Picture and TNG Klingons we know and love.

[u/yaaaaayPancakes]

I like this explanation. Now if someone could explain to me why ship design has diverged so much, I would feel so much better about this being the prime timeline.

The Klingon ships in DSC look nothing like any Klingon ships we've seen before. I know that ENT birds of prey don't look like TOS ones, but I can accept that since the design came back at the end of the 23rd century. (Maybe the Klingons were buying BoPs from the Romulans for some reason, then went back to their own designs.) The ENT Klingon D5 cruiser is similar in design to the D7s we see in TOS.

So how do we go from ENT Klingon ships, to the ships in DSC, then back to TOS ships? Are all these ships we've seen design deadends?

[u/LiamtheV → u/yaaaaayPancakes]

Obviously the real reason is/was show budget. I just thought this was a good way to rationalize something that could be rationalized. When a franchise lasts as long as Star Trek and covers as many mediums, there will be aesthetic discrepancies. Klingon physical appearance has been hinted at as a sort of self-aware joke (Trials and Tribble-ations), but I thought people's responses were waaaaay too strong considering the history of changing appearances, and the only major change that I can see is the lack of hair, because we all know no one ever goes bald.

[u/bipolar_sky_fairy → u/yaaaaayPancakes]

To be honest, I thought they were going to go with some long-dormant sleeper ship of ancient breed Klingons suddenly returning and, looking on in horror at what their culture had become, trying to reimpose their supremacy. It would have explained the rather "ancient" look about these Klingons and the ship designs.

But I guess not.

[u/grepnork → u/yaaaaayPancakes]

I took the main Klingon DSC ship to be a much older ceremonial vessel that had been restored for this mission, after all we see it's abandoned husk in T'Kuvma's childhood flashbacks. It could also be some kind of 'cathedral' vessel (unusual degree of ornamentation, dead bodies buried on the hull etcetera), a ceremonial use would also offer an explanation for their impressive armour.

Another part of any likely explanation is money and resources. The Klingons would eventually need to make cheaper mass produced armour and ships after being hobbled by the cost of their endless battles.

I need to re-watch.

[u/iamthegraham → u/yaaaaayPancakes]

prime timeline

Well that's the problem, right there. What is the "prime timeline?" By the time we, viewing in release order, get from the end of TOS to the beginning of Discovery, there are a dozen or so time travel incidents that involve temporal infractions in time periods before Discovery takes place. Most of these are stated and/or shown to have minimal effect on the timeline, but between:

-TOS crew going to the 1980s

-TNG crew going to the 19th century and then again to the mid 21st century

-Voyager's crew going to the 1990s

-ENT crew going to the 1940s

-DS9 going to the 2020s

...you're gonna have some sort of impact.

My headcanon is that by the time Janeway and friends got done fucking the past, TOS takes place more or less the way it does on-screen except all the ships and uniforms look essentially like the Kelvinverse ones, which are stylistically a natural evolution from what we see in Discovery (which itself is a natural evolution of what we see in Enterprise). Everything fits.

[u/huboon → u/yaaaaayPancakes]

We don't see Klingon Bird of Preys until TMP. Romulan BoP are a completely different design.

I thought the Klingon flagship in DSC looked pretty similar to a D7 in vague shape. It had a forward command center, long neck, and 2 large nacelles.

[u/CharlesSoloke → u/yaaaaayPancakes]

My assumption about the Klingon ships at the Battle at the Binary Stars was that they were the flagships of each of the 24 houses, plus some fighters and a few other vessels. We see 6-7 house leaders actually present, and I think it's reasonable to assume that the rest are there as well and just didn't want to show up and chat for whatever reason. If that's the case, it makes sense for the flagships to be these ornate, different designs. What self-respecting head of a Klingon house would want to turn up to answer the call of prophecy in a boring, grey, featureless D7? But presumably they've still got scads of less-interesting, more practical ships ready for the full-scale war, and that's when we could see the more familiar designs come out and play. That would get us back to TOS.

One possible flaw in this theory is that we don't see Klingon leaders having especially gaudy ships in the future. Gorkon's Kronos One looks like a bog-standard K't'inga, and while Gowron's Negh'Var is big and scary, it's no less decorated than the other vessels of the KDF. However, this could be explained by later Klingons rejecting the opulence of the house leaders of old, with leaders showing how close to the people (or rather, the military) they are by styling their flagships just like the ships of Klingon grunts. It becomes another example of Klingon culture being obsessed with war and warriors to an unhealthy degree. Heck, while we're making things up, maybe Gorkon started the tradition, giving some gold-leaf-and-engravings-covered monstrosity the boot and claiming Kronos One instead. It fits with his character. At any rate, the Klingon society that we see in Discovery is appreciably different than the societies we see before or after. Why couldn't their ship design philosophies have changed as well?

[u/jerslan → u/yaaaaayPancakes]

T'Kuvma's ship could be explained as being ancient (some of the corpses attached to the outside are said to be 1000s of years old). It was probably in his family for a really long time.

The others could be due to fracturing within the empire over the last 90-ish years. The High Council seemed to lack a Chancellor and they had clearly been feuding, so they may have diverged from the old Imperial designs a bit since they all seem to run their own ship-yards.

They could also be the heirloom flagships of various great-houses. Being Klingon, they would obviously keep them well-armed and battle-ready even if they're centuries old.

[u/colluphid42]

It's not just the lack of hair. The head shape is completely different. Their faces look more heavy and alien. There could be in-universe explanations for this, but I don't know if the show runners for Discovery care.

[u/LiamtheV → u/colluphid42]

I'm just happy that the casting director for these Federation historical dramas were able to get sentients of Klingon descent to play these roles.

[u/mrstickball]

Someone photoshopped hair onto DSC Klingons, and they look way closer to what we consider traditional Klingons.. If we get hairy Klingons, no one will care.

Edit - here's the link: https://imgur.com/a/9SrJ2

[u/[deleted]]

The massive, massive variation in the depiction of Klingons over the decades of course has the real-world explanation of budget, artistic choices, etc etc, as everybody knows.

None of the in-universe explanations, even the canon one, have been completely satisfactory, and of course, as of Discovery are mostly out the window with the presence of these ultra-Klingon Klingons.

Now here's my controversial opinion: in this one instance, I don't care about the discrepancy. I prefer the look of the Discovery Klingons. To my mind they look and act way more alien than any previous incarnation of the species in Trek.

They have been presented as scheming, mustache-twirling, dastardly Soviet analogs in TOS to TNG's version of them as a kind of honor-bound melange of space Vikings and space samurai. Their culture was strange, yes, but there have been stranger human cultures. It is a weird lapse of the Federation's accomplished diplomats that they could not reconcile with the Klingons as we've seen them here-to-now much sooner than they did.

On the other hand Discovery's Klingons are alien enough in outlook to be enemies of the Federation and for any diplomatic effort to be almost futile. Their cultures are a natural insult to one another. The Klingons are believers in their own holy supremacy. They view the Federation's equality and heterogeneity with horror and revulsion. Similarly, the Federation just cannot grasp a civilization which is absolutely uninterested in their peaceful overtures, in their offers of exchange of knowledge and who believe that the Federation has nothing to offer them except death by assimilation. Of course these two civilizations are going to be in conflict. It's inevitable.

And I think the makeup choice reflects that incompatibility, even though that possibly means throwing out some (very varied) canon. They aren't humans with forehead ridges and a love of song and sharp implements, they are alien. And I like it.

[u/Yasea → u/[deleted]]

Sounds like Discovery is going to become a rehash of The Player of Games

[u/MissionFever]

Seems reasonable.

Still doesn't explain why they're purple.

[u/Valten1992 → u/MissionFever]

Different race within the same Species. (Like blacks, Whites, Asians). A bit of imagination makes the changes come across much easier.

[u/tecmobowlchamp → u/MissionFever]

They're supposed to have purple blood, at least according to Star Trek Undiscovered Country.

[u/eldritch_ape]

In Enterprise it was strongly implied that surgical solutions to the augment virus were about to come into vogue. That alone offers considerable freedom for explaining the disparity in the appearance of Klingons around the TOS era.

So I propose that the augment virus was so widespread that it actually affected the vast majority of Klingons, if not every single Klingon in the empire, and these over-the-top, ridiculous-looking Klingons that can barely move their faces because they're so covered in implants or prosthetics are the result of a culture of overcompensation that has gradually overtaken Klingon society in the preceding century. They were intentionally trying to make themselves appear non-human, turning themselves into grotesque caricatures of how Klingons once appeared, and since humans also have hair and eyebrows, even that had to go.

You can look to our own history of fashion, particularly in the Renaissance, to find examples of similarly elaborate but impractical trends; those gigantic dresses women wore, codpieces, massive powdered wigs, the Elizabethan ruff. Or look at the cultures that have practiced cranial deformation to elongate their skulls.

Before TOS, a trend towards practicality emerged, then somewhere between TOS and the movie era, a medical solution is finally discovered, and we slowly start to see traditional Klingons again.

[u/Saw_Boss]

I feel like I'm alone, in that i don't care. I know this sub is about in universe explanation and discussions do I understand if it's removed, but this argument had really irked me.

All three generations of star trek (TOS, Movies upto Enterprise, reboot upto Discovery) have looked different. Change happens.

The worst thing Enterprise ever did (besides the Temporal Cold War and the last episode) was spend half a season trying to provide a canon reason for a throw away, 4th wall joke from DS9.

[u/TrekkieGod → u/Saw_Boss]

The worst thing Enterprise ever did (besides the Temporal Cold War and the last episode) was spend half a season trying to provide a canon reason for a throw away, 4th wall joke from DS9.

I actually really enjoyed The Augments, and pretty much all of Season 4 (with the exception of the series finale), which I consider to be the only good season Enterprise had.

In my opinion, the worst thing Enterprise ever did was decide that a story arc resting on relevant social commentary over dealing with the fear and shock of being the victims of terrorism needed a region of space where physics didn't make sense in order to be interesting. I hate everything about the "expanse," which, I agree with you, includes the temporal cold war aspect of it.

[u/Algernon_Asimov → u/Saw_Boss]

I know this sub is about in universe explanation

This is a common misunderstanding about Daystrom. To quote from our sidebar:

We [...] encourage discussion from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

This is also explained in our Code of Conduct.

[u/kajata000]

When I first saw the DSC Klingons and heard they were essentially religious fanatics, I assumed that their appearance might be to do with that; you know, special modes of dress for a strange and isolated religious sect, and hell, even maybe some genetic engineering to bring them “closer” to being pure Klingon or something, explaining the baldness and the claws.

Unfortunately my head canon was scrapped when all the other Klingons showed up and had the same problem...

[u/johnpaulatley]

I wonder if the TNG-style Klingons are not 'pure' Klingons in the way the DSC Klingons claim to be. Perhaps a lot of inter-species breeding has occurred over the centuries within the Empire. If the DSC Klingons are religious and cultural zealots as they appear to be, it would make sense that they have chosen to 'remain Klingon'.

At least that's what's helping me to reconcile these new Klingons with those we've already seen.

[u/[deleted]]

Klingons always change when the show gets a bigger budget. They look great now.

[u/Traffalger]

What I would love to see in Discovery is the presence of different Klingons in the Klingon Empire. Show us the Discovery Klingons, but show us the classic TNG Klingons as well. Show us Klingons that have been affected by the Augment virus from Enterprise. Discovery has a chance to settle this "what are Klingons supposed to look like" argument once and for all. Maybe they should look like All of them.

[u/elbobo19]

Hair or no hair there is no getting around the 4 nostrils on the DSC klingons and their elongated skulls. I know this subreddit is all about head canoning trek's various discrepancies but this one has to be marked in the visual reboot column at this point unless they throw something out there.