My theory is that the Star Trek movie versions of the Klingons were influenced by the Borellian Noman from the original version of Battlestar Galactica.
Much about Nomen is not known, other than the fact that they follow a doctrine referred to as "The Code" and use laser bola as a form of weapon, which they draw with purpose (The Man with Nine Lives). Nomen are also capable of stopping, or at the very least lowering, their life-function for a temporary period of time and have extremely well-tuned reflexes and seemingly super-human strength (Baltar's Escape). They pursue a form of vendetta against enemies, called the blood hunt.
"Blood Hunt", eh? Super human strength? Weird forheads? I think the makers of Star Trek were influenced by all of this stuff.
Apparently, 28 January 1979 was the original airdate of the BSG episode in which they first appeared (The Man With Nine Lives), and the release date of Star Trek The Motion Picture was December 7, 1979.
Now, the revamped funky forehead sporting Klingons only appear in one brief scene (with their new, revamped language - or the first version of it, anyway). It's possible that the Borellian BSG guys had an influence.
This influence became more pronounced in later versions of Star Trek - especially TNG, where there were a fair number of episodes dealing with Worf's Klingon heritage.
The TOS Klingons were essentially interplanetary arms dealers who disliked the Federation. There was a bit of an 'oriental' influence in terms of their overall look, but they weren't especially honourable, or even all that severe. They were just "the bad guys".
I think the "Klingon Makeover" was heavily influenced by BSG's Borellian Noman.
I choose to believe that this is the case, anyway. What do you think?
Star Trek Introduces Alien Character With Totally Different Forehead Wrinkles
June 4, 1997 | ISSUE 31•20
HOLLYWOOD, CA—In a move expected to spark debate and excitement among fans, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine producers announced Monday that next week a new alien character will appear on the show possessing "completely different" forehead wrinkles from those of any previous alien. According to make-up artist Rick Baker, "We're very excited to feature a character whose forehead wrinkles look nothing like those of either a Klingon or Romulan or Bajoran or Ferengi or Cardassian. They're like no other forehead wrinkles we've ever created."
Star Trek Introduces Alien Character With Totally Different Forehead Wrinkles
June 4, 1997 | ISSUE 31•20
HOLLYWOOD, CA—In a move expected to spark debate and excitement among fans, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine producers announced Monday that next week a new alien character will appear on the show possessing "completely different" forehead wrinkles from those of any previous alien. According to make-up artist Rick Baker, "We're very excited to feature a character whose forehead wrinkles look nothing like those of either a Klingon or Romulan or Bajoran or Ferengi or Cardassian. They're like no other forehead wrinkles we've ever created."
The thing is, my theory contends that the forehead wrinkle phenomenon begins with the original BSG series, and that this torch was then taken up by Star Trek.
Although TOS was known for pointed ears and antennae, only the Tellerites had weird forehead wrinkles - but they also had weird heads in general. I'm referring specifically to foreheads, here.
To my way of thinking, the Borellian Noman were the original TV spacemen who had weird forheads. True, the wrinkled forehead technology of the time wasn't as advanced as it later became - but they were blazing the trail. Or blazing the wrinkled forehead.
But perhaps the most rabidly insular and conservative people among the Colonials were the Borellian Nomen, who were feared by the other Colonial peoples and who held themselves as special, elitist, and as sort of a Promised People. The Borellian Nomen were clearly based loosely on desert Arabs or Berbers, with a mix of Jewish mysticism thrown in. Unlike other ethnic groups, the Borellian Nomen held themselves as superior to all other humans. They may have had a breeding program, selecting for specific physical traits and personality types.
Obviously, if they were into selective breeding, they liked large foreheads.
They were obviously based on Neanderthals - they were outer space cavemen as far as looks went - but there was a whole culture hinted at; one that seemed brutal and quite different from the other human cultures featured in BSG.
The fact that they weren't just culturally removed from the rest of humanity - different ethics, different clothing, etc - but physically different in terms of their appearance and their abilities, is what fascinated me about them as a kid. I was a kid who loved outer space stuff, and cavemen. These guys were both in one, and I loved it.
I saw this episode (The Man With Nine Lives) about five years ago - it didn't really hold up well, I have to say.
But the fact that the Borellians had this whole super-serious code of honour thing going on struck me as interesting. They seemed to be just like the TNG era Klingons, yet pre-dated them.
It's just a weird little cul-de-sac of fandom that I wanted to mention. It intrigues me.
I used to wonder if the Borellians were the ancestors of the Neanderthals.
The Patrick Macnee intro used to reference a whole Chariots Of The Gods scenario, and I thought that it was also a kind of riff on Star Wars (in that BSG was set "a long time ago"). I assumed that when they found Earth, it would be primitive or whatever, and a whole Von Daniken thing would develop with the galactica and its "rag-tag, fugitive fleet".
Patrick Macnee's voice over wrote:
There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens.
Once I looked at the original air date of the show, and then compared it to the original release date of the first Trek movie, the similarity seemed like something other than a coincidence.
I mean, why redesign the Klingons to begin with? I've never heard of a believable explanation for why they decided to do that. Roddenberry made some comment about how "they (Klingons) were always like that, you just have to use your imagination", but it never worked for me.
Wikipedia wrote:
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 and 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.
Wikipedia also wrote:
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 Klingons' 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.
Why redesign the Klingons? Why not cook up a new bunch of futuristic savages? Why radically alter a bunch of bad guys that were beloved by fandom and risk a backlash?
Wikipedia (once again) wrote:
The culture of the Klingons began to resemble revised western stereotypes of civilizations such as the Zulu, the Vikings, and various Native American nations — as 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.
Did this "Klingon Makeover" occur so they could deny any anticipated comparison to BSG's Borellians? So Trek's creators/producers could say "We had the Klingons over a decade ago - we didn't copy anyone", etc?
This was a comparison that nobody ever made.....until now.
When you look at it, it seems obvious. To me, anyway.
According to the official Star Trek web site, the Klingons' varying appearance was "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."
Borellian Noman, I tells ya.
It was all a cover up for the plagiarising of the Borellian Noman.
"Lack of budget" is just codswallop. The Klingons behaved differntly in TOS, they didn't just look different.
The advent of Star Wars made it necessary to intoduce some heightened "alienness" to the Klingons. BSG was a bit of a Star Wars rip off. And STTMP carried on the rip-off traditoin.
By the way, Twikki looks like a cross between Darth Vader and a penis.
There are a lot of things to consider regarding the Klingon redesign and a lot of reasons that it may have happened, but the BSG similarities are too big to ignore.
The advent of Star Wars made it necessary to intoduce some heightened "alienness" to the Klingons. BSG was a bit of a Star Wars rip off. And STTMP carried on the rip-off traditoin.
By the way, Twikki looks like a cross between Darth Vader and a penis.
True enough - and Vader's helmet makes him look a bit like General Urkko (?) from POTA.
The rip-offery was rife in those days, and Star Wars was the original game changer in the late 1970's.
I still think it's interesting that there was this whole "code of honour" thing introduced as a Klingon trait after the advent of the Borellians, though. Not to mention the foreheads.
There are a lot of things to consider regarding the Klingon redesign and a lot of reasons that it may have happened, but the BSG similarities are too big to ignore.
It's the way the Klingons are portrayed, not just the foreheads, that led me to this theory.
Why redesign the Klingons? Why not cook up a new bunch of futuristic savages? Why radically alter a bunch of bad guys that were beloved by fandom and risk a backlash?
Because that kind of fandom was a completely new thing and no one knew exactly how such a beast operated. As it turned out, the new Klingon look is probably the only truly popular change in The Motion Picture. Just about all the other changes would be effectively nullified by the next movie.
_________________ I reserve the right to be spectacularly wrong.
They could've revamped the Romulans instead of the Klingons, or invented another bunch of alien guys - it really doesn't matter that much.
My point is that the makers of STTMP - and later on, the people making the decisions behind the scenes on the later Trek movies - were influenced by the Borellian Noman; they redesigned the Klingons in the image of the Borellians from BSG.
It need not have been the Klingons specifically who were updated/retconned, but the fact that there's suddenly this whole 'code of honour' business being bandied about, plus the weird foreheads, leads me to think that the Borellians were a definite influence on the kinds of changes that were made.
What I'm saying, in a nutshell, is that BSG's Borellians were a direct influence on the people who were making the decisions about the Star Trek franchise.
The original BSG may not have been a long-lived show, but I think it was influential in many ways. I think the revamping of the Klingons is the most obvious example.
The Borellian Nomen remain some of the best Galactica villains, and are in a way precursors to the honor bound Klingons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, complete with bumpy makeup, but this episode was filmed over a year before the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture where the bumpy headed Klingons first appeared. A broader back story is hinted at, with the mention of the honor 'code', the hierarchy within the group and the unique laser bola weapons.
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