Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Community Question

Why do you think that the Star Trek handlers decided to niggify the Kilingons (starting in Next Generation and all subsequent series)? Was it to make them more menacing and less sympathetic? Was it to make them look less the inscrutable Asian? Or was it the simple fact that the old school Klingons sucked and needed a remix?

Your thoughts?

4 Comments:

Blogger AJ Harper said...

Thats like asking why were all the
Bajorans, of jewish descent? They could have hired some big Russians to play Klingons after all that's who the Klingon empire was based on. But you got to admit the brothas brought power to the Klingons

9:41 PM  
Blogger afrogeek said...

The brothers did add power, but the shift from a Russo-Mandarin culture to some wild ass brothers was kind of an abrupt change.

9:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

From the old to the new star trek the change in the Klingons is about the end of the Cold War and the end of The Civil Rights movement in the 1990.

In the old star trek the klingons were the enemy, modeled after the cold war adversary the soviet union - an inscrutable militarized empire.

But with TNG the Klingon empire had fallen (I dont recall exhactly how and why) and been integrated into the Federation. Thus they became black: less of a foreign adversary as an internal colony, the only partially assimilated, still slightly seething and certainly a not fully understood darker cousin to the Federation. Of course, the black klingons had their own culture, slang, and the occasional internal conflict requiring outside intervention from the white knights of the Federation (with Picard doing his best Bubba Clinton), but they are honorable, brave, make cute mixed race kids.

11:01 AM  
Blogger afrogeek said...

Michael,

That makes a whole bunch of sense. I would love to see/read a Trek where the negative side of their interactions with their allies comes to light.

9:50 AM  

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