Klingons (
Klingon:
tlhIngan, ) are a fictional warrior race in the
Star Trek universe. They are
recurring villains in the 1960s television show
Star Trek: The Original
Series, and have appeared in all five spin-off series and
seven feature films. Initially intended to be swarthy antagonists
for the crew of the USS
Enterprise, the Klingons ended up
a close ally of humanity and the
United Federation of Planets in
later television series.
As originally developed by screenwriter
Gene L. Coon, Klingons
were darkly colored humanoids with little honor, intended as an
allegory to the then-current Cold War
tensions between the United States
and the Soviet Union
. With a greatly expanded budget for makeup
and effects, the Klingons were completely redesigned in
Star Trek: The Motion
Picture (1979), gaining ridged foreheads that created a
continuity error not explained by
canon until 2005. In later films and the
spin-off series
Star
Trek: The Next Generation, the militaristic traits of the
Klingons were bolstered by an increased sense of honor and strict
warrior code.
Among the elements created for the revised Klingons was a
complete language, developed by
Marc Okrand off gibberish suggested by actor
James Doohan. Since its appearance,
Klingon became the first fictional language to break into popular
culture; the works of
William
Shakespeare and even the Bible have been translated into the
guttural language. Several tutorials and dictionaries have been
published and according to
Guinness World Records, Klingon is
the most popular fictional language by number of speakers.
Design
Conception
The Klingons were created by screenwriter
Gene L. Coon, and
first appeared in the 1967 episode "
Errand of Mercy". They were named for
Lieutenant Wilbur Clingan, who served with Star Trek creator
Gene Roddenberry in the
Los Angeles Police Department.
In the original television series (
TOS), Klingons were
typically portrayed with bronze skin and facial hair suggestive of
Asian peoples, and possessed physical abilities similar to humans
(in fact, Coon's only physical description of them in his "Errand
of Mercy" script is "oriental" and "hard-faced".) The swarthy look
of Klingon males was created with the application of shoe polish
and long, thin moustaches; budget constraints would not allow any
further creativity. The overall look of the aliens, played by white
actors, suggested
orientalism, at a time
when memories of Japanese actions during
World War II were still fresh. The production
crew never came to an agreement on the name "Klingon"; Coon was
adamant about keeping the name, and it persisted because no one
else offered up a better name.
The Klingons took on the role of the Soviet Union in opposition to
the United States' future counterpart, the
United Federation of Planets.
As such, they were generally portrayed as inferior to the crew of
the
Enterprise. While occasionally capable of honor, this
depiction treated the Klingons as close to wild animals. Overall,
they were shown without redeeming qualities—brutish, scheming, and
murderous. Klingons became the primary antagonists of the
Enterprise crew, in part because the makeup necessary to
make
Romulans was too time-consuming and
costly.
For the first two seasons, no Klingon ships were seen despite being
frequently mentioned. This was because of budget constraints—
designer
Matt Jefferies did not have
the money to create a Klingon ship until the third season. When the
episodes were
remastered
beginning in 2006, Klingon ships were digitally inserted into
shots earlier than their original appearances.
Redesign
For
Star Trek: The
Motion Picture, the Klingons were
retconned and their appearance and
behavior radically changed. To give the aliens a more sophisticated
and threatening demeanor, the Klingons were depicted with ridged
foreheads, snaggled, prominent teeth, and a defined language and
alphabet. Lee Cole, a production designer, used red gels and
primitive shapes in the design of Klingon consoles and ship
interiors, which took on a dark and moody atmosphere. The alphabet
was designed as angular, with sharp edges harkening to the
Klingon's militaristic focus. Costume designer Robert Fletcher
created new uniforms for the Klingons, reminiscent of
feudal Japanese armor.
While no Klingon characters were seen in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan, their appearance as the central enemy in
Star Trek III:
The Search for Spock (1984) led to minor alterations. For
the third generation of Klingons, the heavy, cragged head ridges of
The Motion Picture were redesigned and made less
pronounced. While Fletcher was happy with the original film
uniforms, more had to be created as the old costumes had been lost,
destroyed, or loaned out and altered irreparably. New costumes were
fabricated, retaining the air of feudal Japanese design; Fletcher
thought it was an important part of the Klingon authoritarian
attitude. New Klingon weaponry, including an energy weapon and a
special knife known as a
d k tahg, were designed.
The release of a new television series,
Star Trek: The Next
Generation, prompted a further revision in the depiction
of Klingon culture, though Gene Roddenberry had wanted to avoid
re-appearances of races from the old series. Set a century later
than the original series, the
USS Enterprise-D
featured a Klingon crewmember,
Worf. Makeup
artist
Michael Westmore needed a
consistent reference to base the Klingon look on, as each
individual Klingon had distinct head ridges. He found what he was
looking for in a book of dinosaurs; observing dinosaur vertebrae
laid out flat, Westmore cut the designs in half and modified them
to suit each Klingon. Westmore designed his Klingon's beards to be
Elizabethan, combining prehistoric
and aristocratic elements to give audiences a feeling of depth from
the appearance. Over time, Westmore and the other makeup artists
designed different sizes of prosthetic headpieces which could be
quickly applied and modified to save time; the amount of
preparation to turn an actor into a Klingon decreased from around
three hours to one. While important characters had custom
headpieces, background actors used pre-made masks with minor
touchup around the eyes and mouth.
The Next Generation
effects artist
Dan Curry used his martial
arts experience to create a flowing fighting style for the race.
When the episode "
Reunion" called for
a special Klingon blade, Curry drew on Far East influences to
develop a weapon known as the
bat leth. Curry, a
collector of weapons, was annoyed by fictional weaponry that were
designed to "look cool" but could not be handled practically. Curry
combined elements of the Himalayan
kukri, Chinese axes and fighting crescents to
create a two-handed, curved weapon that has since been widely used
in the franchise.
The culture of the Klingons began to resemble revised western
conceptions of "savages" such as the Zulu, Vikings and Native
Americans— a proud, warlike and principled race. Whereas the
TOS Klingons served as an allegory to contemporary
totalitarian regimes,
The Next Generation Klingons held
principles more in line with
Bushidō;
actor
Michael Dorn stated that without
the revision in Klingon culture, his character, Worf, would not
have been a Starfleet officer. With the first Klingon-centric story
in
The Next Generation, the first season episode "
Heart of Glory", the Klingons once again
became an important part of the Star Trek universe, and by the
advent of the series
Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine, Klingons had fully become heroes
rather than villains.
The final Star Trek film to feature the entire cast from the
original television series,
Star Trek VI: The
Undiscovered Country (1991) served to bridge the original
series Klingons at war with the Federation to the time of
The
Next Generation, and presents a subtly different treatment of
the race. At the time of the film's development, the Soviet Union
was collapsing, and with the advent of
glasnost the old allegory of Klingons as Russians
was becoming obsolete. The Klingons were redesigned to evoke the
Nazis, with the red, white and black Klingon flag deliberately
similar to that of the
National Socialist
German Workers Party. The Klingons in the film liberally quote
Shakespeare, a trait stemming from director
Nicholas Meyer's comparison of the Empire's
appropriation of Shakespeare to the Nazis' similar attempt in the
1930s. Meyer also felt it was apropos for Shakespearean actors such
as
Christopher Plummer and
David Warner to speak the
lines.
The
breakdown of the Klingon's empire because of a Chernobyl
-like incident results in a new age for the
Federation and Klingons, leading to the time of The Next
Generation and later series where the two governments are
trade partners and occasional allies. Starfleet members are
shown to be highly bigoted against Klingons, who in turn feel that
their way of life will be obliterated by peace. The Klingons were
given new uniforms designed by Dodie Shepard, in part because there
were not enough of Fletcher's
The Motion Picture costumes
to meet the demands of the film.
Dorn described playing a Klingon as simple, joking that after hours
sitting in a makeup chair, actors were highly motivated to get the
dialogue right the first time. Repeat Klingon
Robert O'Reilly told all neophyte Klingons
that the most important part of speaking was to say the lines with
belief and "go all the way". When O'Reilly and Dorn's character had
a confrontation, makeup artists wiped spittle off each between
takes, a consequence of the harsh-sounding language. When filming
The Undiscovered Country,
Christopher Plummer asked director
Nicholas Meyer to adapt his
character's look, feeling the heavy forehead appliances looked
rather fake. Instead, Plummer's character, General Chang, was made
bald with very subdued ridges and an eyepatch nailed to his skull.
Plummer felt that the unique appearance helped "humanize" the
character. In contrast to white actors portraying the warriors,
more recent Klingon roles have been predominantly played by black
actors.
Explanation and theories
According to the official
Star Trek web site, the
Klingons' varying appearance is "probably the single most popular
topic of conversation among
Star Trek fans".While the real
reason for the discrepancy between
The Original Series
Klingons and their feature film and later television series
counterparts was a lack of budget, fans took it upon themselves to
contrive an acceptable canon reason for the sudden change. These
theories postulated that
TOS Klingons were in fact humans
raised as Klingons, similar to
Janissaries; that for cosmetic or diplomatic
reasons, Klingons removed the ridges via surgery; or that
TOS Klingons were in fact hybrids with a more human
species. Simple theories that the different Klingons were different
racial breeds were complicated by the fact that the characters of
Kang,
Koloth, and
Kor appeared with smooth features in the
original series, yet reverted to a ridged appearance in
Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine, and that
Worf acknowledged the
difference in appearances when the crew of Deep Space 9 returned to
the 23rd century in the episode "
Trials and Tribble-ations," but
offered no explanation, saying merely, "We do not discuss it with
outsiders."
A
canonical explanation for the
change was given in a two-part storyline on
Star Trek: Enterprise. The two
episodes, "
Affliction" and "
Divergence", aired in
February 2005. An earlier story arc featured the Augments,
genetically-engineered humans left over from the
Eugenics
Wars of the late 20th century, and who were defeated by Captain
Jonathan Archer and the
Enterprise in Klingon space. The
Klingon High Council fears that
Starfleet
was developing armies of Augments; after gaining access to genetic
material from the Augments, the Klingons perform experiments to
increase their own intellect and strength. The experiments turn
disastrous when a flu strain mutates and becomes a deadly plague
that spreads across the Empire, causing physical changes resulting
in the afflicted bearing a
TOS-era appearance. Dr.
Phlox of the
Enterprise
formulates a cure for the virus, but the physical alterations
remain in the populace and are inherited by offspring. Phlox
indicated that "someday" the physical alterations could be
reversed.
Attributes
Culture
In comparison to
The Original Series, Klingon culture is
thoroughly examined in later series episodes, part of a larger
movement by Star Trek writers to deepen viewer understanding of the
alien races of the franchise. The Klingons adhere to a strict code
of honor, similar to feudal Japanese customs. Their society is
based on war and combat; ritual suicide is often preferred over
living life as a crippled warrior, and may allow a warrior to die
with honor. To be captured rather than killed in battle brings
dishonor to not only the captive but his descendants. Death is
depicted as a time for celebration, not grief.
Klingons are depicted as a spiritual people. The equivalents to
heaven and hell are called Sto-Vo-Kor and Gre'Thor, respectively;
in Sto-Vo-Kor, battle and feasting can be eternally won and shared,
while those sent to Gre'Thor are condemned to eternal torture
unless their honor is restored by living relatives. Those who do
not die in battle may not enter Sto-Vo-Kor; relatives undertake
quests to guarantee their deceased comrades entry into paradise.
Despite believing in an afterlife, the Klingons perform no burial
rites, and dispose of corpses by the most efficient means.
The Klingon's spiritual leader is
Kahless, a
messianic figure who established early codes of honor and was the
first Klingon emperor. His fabled weapon, the Sword of Kahless, is
depicted as a unique
bat leth that serves as the Klingon
equivalent of the
Holy Grail. In the
TNG episode "
Rightful Heir",
Kahless appears in the flesh to Worf, who had doubted his Klingon
faith. This Kahless is revealed to be a clone, created in an
attempt to bring Klingons together, and who is chosen to lead the
Klingon people as a figurehead.
Language
Marc Okrand is the author of several
books about the Klingon language, which he developed.
The Klingon have their own guttural language that was developed for
the feature films. For
The Motion Picture,
James Doohan, the actor who portrayed
Montgomery Scott, devised the initial
language heard in the film. For
The Search for Spock,
Marc Okrand, who created the Vulcan
language used in the previous film, developed an expanded Klingon
vocabulary based on Doohan's original made-up words.
Okrand was presented with a difficult task; he had to contrive a
language that sounded alien, while still simple enough for the
actors to pronounce. While most
constructed languages or conlangs
follow basic tenets of natural languages—for example, all languages
have an "ah" sound—Okrand deliberately broke them. He chose the
rarest form of sentence construction, the object-verb-subject form:
instead of saying "I boarded the
Enterprise", the Klingon
construction is translated as "The
Enterprise boarded I."
Okrand reasoned the language would be indicative of the culture,
the Klingon's language focuses on actions and verbs. Adjectives do
not strictly exist; there is no word for "greedy", but there is a
verb,
qur, which means "to be greedy". The language does
not contain the verb "to be", which meant Okrand had to create a
workaround when director
Nicholas
Meyer wanted his Klingons to quote Shakespeare and the famous
line "
to be, or not to be" in
The Undiscovered Country. Initially, Okrand came up with
"to live or not live", but Plummer did not like the sound of the
line. Okrand went back and revised the phrase to "
taH pagh,
taHbe", roughly meaning "whether to continue, or not to
continue [existence]". The Klingon language is small compared to
natural languages, containing only 2,000 words; the colors green,
blue, and yellow are all represented by one word.
Okrand convinced
Pocket Books to
publish the
The Klingon
Dictionary in 1985; in it, Okrand elaborated on the
Klingon language's grammar, syntax and vocabulary. While Okrand
expected the book to only sell as a novelty item, eleven years
after publication the book had sold 250,000 copies. Dedicated
Klingon enthusiasts, some but not all Star Trek fans, created the
Klingon Language
Institute, which publishes multiple magazines in the language.
While Paramount initially tried to stop the Institute from using
their copyrighted language, the company eventually relented. The
Institute has since published Klingon translations of
Hamlet and the Bible. The Bible proved to be
difficult to translate, as Christian concepts like atonement—and
words like God—are not found in the Klingon vernacular. From time
to time, Okrand has amended the "official" list of Klingon
vocabulary due in part to requests from the Institute and other
groups. Other Klingon groups include blood drives, bowling teams,
and a Klingon golf championship.
The Klingon language's prevalence is not limited to books; a
three-disc video game,
Star Trek:
Klingon, requires players to learn the language in order
to advance. In May 2009, a joint collaboration between the KLI,
Simon & Schuster, and
Ultralingua
launched the
Klingon Language
Suite for the
iPhone concurrent with
the release of the new movie. The popularity of the language meant
that in 1996 it was considered the fastest-growing constructed
language, ahead of other languages such as Tolkien's
Elvish or
Esperanto. While the language is widespread,
mastery of the language is extremely uncommon; there are only
around a dozen fluent speakers of the language. Okrand himself is
not fluent, and the actors who speak the language in the Star Trek
series are more concerned with its expression than the actual
grammar. According to the 2006 edition of
Guinness World Records, Klingon is
the most spoken fictional language by number of speakers, Klingon
is one of many language interfaces in the
Google search engine, and a Klingon character is
included in the .
Starships
As the Klingons are portrayed as a warrior culture, Klingon
starships are usually depicted as
warships,
heavily armed with a variety of
particle beam weaponry and
antimatter warheads. Many Klingon ships
also make use of
cloaking technology
to hide the vessel from view. The first Klingon ship design used in
The Original Series, the D7-class battlecruiser, was
designed by
Matt Jefferies to evoke a
predator's shape akin to that of a
manta
ray, providing a threatening and instantly recognisable form
for viewers. The configuration of Jefferies' design featured a
bulbous forward hull connected by a long boom to a wing-like main
hull with the
engine nacelles mounted on
each wingtip. Later Klingon starships by other designers kept to
this same overall configuration, although updated to reflect their
respective time periods:
Rick
Sternbach's designs for
The Next Generation and
Deep Space Nine drew on elements of Starfleet ships
features to reflect the alliance between the Federation and the
Klingons, while
John Eaves' designs for
Enterprise incorporated more rugged and primitive
construction to make the vessels appear consistent with the earlier
time period.
Homeworld
Qo'noS is the Klingon homeworld, also known as Kronos. Early Star
Trek literature referred to Qo'noS as "Klinzhai", but the
TNG episode "Heart of Glory" called the planet "Kling". It
was the film
Star Trek VI: The
Undiscovered Country which officially established the name
as Qo'noS. Qo'noS is depicted as green in color when viewed from
orbital space. It includes a lone huge land mass with a vast ocean,
a severely tilted axis that causes wild seasonal changes, a
turbulent atmosphere and extremes of both warm and frigid weather.
The destruction of the planet's moon, Praxis, was a plot point in
the film
The Undiscovered Country, the after effects
driving the plot of the film and later events in the television
series
Star Trek: The
Next Generation.
See also
Notes
- Special Features, "Klingons: Conjuring the Legend."
- Reeves-Stevens, 35.
- Reeves-Stevens, 226-228.
- Kraemer, et al., 51.
- Reeves-Stevens, 262–265.
- Kraemer, et al., 60.
- Edwards, 4.
- Edwards, 5.
References
- Star Trek cast and crew (2004). "Klingons: Conjuring
the Legend." Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Special
Collectors Edition Special Features. [Disc 2/2; DVD].
External links
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