ok apologies in advance for the long post but for the benefit of any non-Trekkies or Trekkies who haven't watched multiple Star Treks, please allow me to elucidate the hilarious tale of The Klingons and Their Foreheads.
It's 1966. Star Trek is just a newbie sci-fi show and not a multimedia juggernaut cultural icon yet. Captain Kirk and Mister Spock need some bad guys to fight, but it's the 60s and they have a makeup budget of $3 which they already spent on Spock's ears. So here come the Klingons! but like most of the “aliens” on the show they look basically human — just a buncha grouchy dudes with fu manchus and scary eyebrows.
fast-forward to the late Seventies. Star Trek is now a bona fide phenomenon. they're making it into a movie. and the Klingons are very popular — even today they're the most memeable, recognizable part of the franchise. So of course they're gonna be in the first-ever Star Trek movie. And hey, it's a big studio film, we got some cash to throw around, so we'll give the Klingons a makeover. Turn em into big burly fellas with sharp teeth, shaggy hair and huge boney foreheads.
imagine being a fan and going from the left pic to the right, with no warning or explanation. fans were actually pretty chill about it (possibly because they didn't have the internet yet) and kinda shrugged and said “Star Trek has more money now, so it's great that they can make the Klingons look more alien.” Someone asked Gene Roddenberry (the guy who invented Star Trek) about it and he said fans could pretend the Klingons had always had ridges on the show, if they wanted, or not. And Klingons would look pretty much the same for the next 20 years:
so everything's cool. one of the shows (Deep Space Nine) even brings back a couple of the same Klingon characters from the classic 1960s Star Trek, and they have ridges and no one comments on it. But then they do a time travel episode where they go back into an episode of the 60s show, using actual footage from the episode (it's the tribble one btw) and this one has a lot of Klingons in it. But the DS9 crew have their Klingon buddy Worf with them (he's the guy on the left in that last pic). And this is the late 90s so they can't just CGI new foreheads on all the old-school Klingons. The difference is glaringly obvious and someone asks Worf about it, and he Fight Clubs them all and says “We do not discuss it with outsiders.” LOL.
So that's that, right? Nothing further needs to be said.
It's the early 2000s and Star Trek is GOING WHERE MY HEART WILL TAKE ME doing a prequel now, all taking place ~100 years before the original 60s show. Klingons are in the very first episode, and they look pretty much the same as they have since the 80s. All is well. then in the 4th (and last) season, along comes a multi-episode story arc about *deep breath* the Klingons stealing corpses of dead human supersoldiers to make super-Klingons but then they accidentally create a new COVID variant that somehow gives them all human DNA and melts away their forehead ridges for the next hundred years.
The next time the Klingons showed up was a deleted scene in the 2009 Star Trek movie which dodged the question by putting all the Klingons in face-concealing helmets. In the 2013 sequel a Klingon takes his helmet off and yup, he has ridges. (Though these movies do take place in an alternate universe…)
It's 2017. The new show Star Trek: Discovery has just debuted. The Klingons are the main antagonists of the first season. Hooray! You turn it on and you see this:
ok. this look is a bit busy, but you could probably get away with it if this is the far future or these are some kind of offshoot Klingons who— What's that? This is set only ten years before the original show you say? well I'm sure the fans will react normally.
Arrested Development narrator: they did not react normally.
You had fans flipping their shit because the Klingons didn't have human heads like in the 60s, and other fans flipping their shit because they didn't look like the ones from the past 30 years. and weirdly the thing they were most pissed about was the Klingons being BALD. so in season 2 the showrunners said “ohh, actually the Klingons were all shaving their heads this whole time” and slapped wigs on top of the huge makeup headpieces they'd built,
(unrelated but they also made the actors deliver all their lines in the Klingon language, with big fake monster teeth and no ADR so every conversation sounded like this: “Axxgh mrfgh shkkfch krrrf btchgfhfgl. Scrrx? Bachggggch mffrfrflgh!” they were aiming for Game of Thrones and got Swedish Chef)
they also tried to say this was a group of Klingons we'd never seen before, but that kinda went out the window when they showed the Klingon government and they all looked like this. and none of the shows have dared to have a live action Klingon since!
so next time you think your fandom is the silliest, remind yourself that the simple question “what does a Klingon look like?” requires like 2 paragraphs of explanation and will probably make a neckbeard mad.
There was more too, about the Klingons, in both canon and comic books/novels. There was a recurring semi-joke thrown around that the ones from TOS were the Northern Klingons and the ones from TNG onwards were the Southern Klingons. (I wanna say this was the writers but I’m going from memory here).
There was Debt of Honor, the graphic novel written before Kor, Kang and Koloth showed up on DS9 with their ridges, that this new race of Klingons had forced them out and they were on the outs. Kang, still looking like his TOS self, is there in the TFF era.
Not to mention there debate about the name of the Klingon homeworld (Kling? Klinzhai?) which TNG sidestepped by Picard asking to set a course to the First Imperial City of the Klingon Imperial Empire). Star Trek VI sure chose Qo'noS (pronounced Kronos) as the name of their world (which, is cool, but raised some eyebrows).
Finally, I gotta recommend Excelsior: Forged in Fire, written by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels,a novel which relates the story of how Sulu became captain while also dealing with Kor, Kang and Koloth and a very young Curzon Dax, and their vendetta against the Albino, and, incidentally, how he figures into them getting their ridges back.
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