airyairyquitecontrary
aka Alex Kurtzman talks a pile of absolute rubbish
here’s what got up my nose the most:
“There have been lots of questions about that, there have been lots of questions about the look of the Klingons and the truth is that we wanted to shift everyone’s perspective about what the Klingons are because they’re so traditionally relegated to just being the bad guys,” Kurtzman said. “And that meant making visual changes, too, while hopefully maintaining and retaining the spirit of the original Klingons.”
Speaking to the idea of the “other” in our own culture, Kurtzman said that these “others” are typically just “a mirror to ourselves,” reflecting the worst things about us and our prejudices. “And when we conceived of the idea of the first season being about the war with the Klingons it was terribly important for all of us to make sure that we represented both sides of the war in a way that was understandable and relatable,” Kurtzman said. “And while the Klingons have been given specific treatment and various iterations in the past, we needed to know what it was like for them to go through this, too, and to humanize, for lack of a better word.”
Kurtzman addressed any specific similarity the Klingons might have to a human race by adding: “So, you’ll see lots of different Klingons, is the answer. And they were all built around the central premise of what the Klingons are but it is terribly important to us along with everything else to humanize them, to give a story to their experience, to give understanding to their culture, to give understanding to why they want what they want. If we didn’t do that and we made them a one-dimensional bad guy then we wouldn’t be Star Trek.”
a) The Discovery Klingons have been presented relentlessly as savage, orc-like monsters, betrayers, cannibals and torturers, plus an implication of sexual coercion and perhaps rape in the latest episode. They have been dehumanised.
b) “they’re so traditionally relegated to just being the bad guys”
This…
