Klingonese
Ah… the Klingons. I won’t get into a discussion of these beloved Star Trek villains just yet. There will be a more appropriate time soon enough. As for speaking Klingon, if you go back to the Search For Spock, you’ll see there were no subtitles. I like to think they were actually arguing about what color socks go best with their uniforms and getting really angry about it.
If you’re feeling really nerdy, you can translate the Klingon dialogue using Bing translator, Klingon to English. https://www.bing.com/translator/.
I preferred the Romulans… well from The Original Series of Trek, anyway. In TNG they were given the funny forehead disease that afflicts all Trek aliens and, in my opinion, became very one-dimensional as evil villains. If anything, the honorable Romulan we saw in “Balance of Terror” (one of my favorite episodes of TOS) was used as the template for the Klingons. The Romulans quickly fell into disuse, and by the time of TNG, misuse. The Klingons were even given the later Romulan ship design. Still, Worf made Klingons likeable, and for the first 5 seasons of TNG was one of the best things about the series.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a great weekend! May the Forciness be with you!
The Romulans were given the old Klingon ship design, not the other way around. The original Romulan Bird of Prey model was either damaged or lost, and when they reappeared, the effects people had to use another design. Spock even comments on it in the episode, with a line to the effect of “intelligence reports Romulans are now using Klingon design.”
The later appearance of a Klingon Bird of Prey ship to match the Romulan one isn’t the Romulan design being used for the Klingons, but rather the Klingons using the same name for a ship type, but a completely different design.
TL:DR, Romulans got the Klingon ship design, Klingons got cloaking devices, everyone got horrible cranial growths and baffling species-wide mutations.
The Romulan bird of prey in Balance of Terror preceded the introduction of the Klingons and all they did was stick a neck and head on the bird of prey design. I actually like the Balance of Terror version best.
Nope. Looked it up. The Bird of Prey model went missing before third season, and the D7 was an original model built to satisfy a deal with a toy company.
http://www.startrek.com/article/forgotten-trek-creating-the-romulan-bird-of-prey
http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/D7_class_model
Really, they look very different. I’m not sure where you got that “stuck a neck on it” bit.
It does look different, you’re right. Although the basic shape of the body being a disc with the angled wing nacelles is similar and probably inspired the Klingon version.
Love the original Bird of Prey from Balance of Terror, though. Beautiful design.
Not to spoil the Klingon translation but to make it a little easier; here’s the Klingon in text form (i.e. copy-paste-able), since it’s easy to misspell it trying to go between two different windows (especially if you’re not used to seeing Klingon spelling):
Vader: qaparHa’qu’
Klingon: naDevvo’ yIghoS
…
Vader: mumuSHa”a’
Also, in regards to the Romulan from TOS “Balance of Terror,” I kind of have the opposite view: the only ‘honorable’ thing he did was to self-destruct his ship to prevent the technology from reaching the Federation. Every other action was rather dishonorable – he led an invisible ship to conduct sneak attacks on outposts, wiping them out almost before they realized he was there (killing without his opponents having a chance to surrender themselves – even though it’s not the Romulan way, honor would allow other races to surrender to you). The Romulans were thus ‘one-dimensional’ in a ‘win at all costs’ sense in TOS. By TNG they had become multi-dimensional, with Spock leading the faction of Romulans who searched for a union of logic and emotion, and wanted a reunification with Vulcan.
Just my two cents.
(and the Klingon dialog is great – I think I know what you were inspired by for it, but I don’t want to spoil it for everyone else by asking 🙂 )
I understand where you’re coming from questioning the honor of the Romulan commander, but I think you’re overlooking the way the character spoke, and the way Mark Lenard played him. I’ve always seen him as a loyal soldier obeying orders to the best of his ability even when he found them distasteful. His quiet conversations with his friend and his final words with Kirk showed me a man with a heart and soul of friendship and courage, trying to make the best of an impossible situation.
The Klingon’s line isn’t translating fully for me for some reason. It comes out “ylgos from here!” I’m guessing it’s supposed to say “get away from me!” or something like that?
Make sure you use the capitalization in the words, both lower and uppercase.
The Klingon’s got the lion share of the development in TNG thanks to Worf and Ronald Moore. The Romulans never really had an anchor to keep showing up other than that plot twist of Sela. Who was a guest star, and never showed up after her initial appearance. And they didn’t have one actor being the ambassador on DS9, so no one cared about what the Romulans were doing really. Now if they go back to the OG timeline for a new show and place it after Romulus blowing up, that might be interesting to see the surviving Romulans dealing with no home planet.
I’d never really given it much consideration, but thinking about it, I completely agree that the Klingons basically usurped everything that made the Romulans unique in TOS. Which makes me wonder about the writers’ thought process that got them there: Was it a conscious decision? Someone (Gene? I don’t remember.) had a brilliant idea to put a Klingon in the main cast, mirroring the burgeoning friendly relationship between the US and Soviets at the time – the Klingons were always a Russian pastiche on some level, though they restrained from on-the-nose metaphors for quite a long time before the obvious Chernobyl/Perestroika metaphors of Star Trek VI – but the writers must have quickly realized that the Klingon culture had nothing to work with beneath the bellicose surface. So they borrowed some cultural traits from the underused Romulans and the crude barbarian Klingons suddenly became a warrior race steeped in honor and tradition. Good for the show, good for the overall characterization of the Klingons, maybe even good for East-West relations in some small way.
Too bad the Romulans had to suffer for it. All that left them with was looking virtually identical to the Vulcans* and some half-baked Roman Empire trappings that ended up being stolen (and being put to better use) by the Cardassians. Poor Romulans; red-headed step-children of the Trek universe. Can they keep nothing for themselves? But then again, later the Klingon Empire gets exposed as a corrupt miasma of back-stabbing blowhards who only pay lip-service to honor and glory, so maybe the Romulans got the better part of the deal. (If you ignore everything that happened in Nemesis. Which I do. The Romulans enslaved a darkness-dwelling indigenous race that look like Nosferatu on steroids and nobody ever mentioned it before? These are the kind of people Spock wanted to re-unify?)
* I’ll admit that it’s a pretty nifty sci-fi concept exploring divergent evolution that the Romulans are Vulcans who left their homeworld and embraced their emotions rather than suppressing them, but that can not possibly have been the intention when we first meet them in Balance Of Terror. More like, “We have no time or budget for makeup but there’s a few extra pairs of Spock ears lying around.” There are quite a few plot holes in the long history of Star Trek that can only adequately explained with “We don’t talk like to talk about it.”
Wow, that was a pretty long diatribe. With a footnote even! This is what I love about Star Wars: no sociopolitical allegories, just old-fashioned, classic archetypal mythmaking. With spacewizards and laser swords. I hope the new movies keep it that way. Let Trek have the heavy-handed real-world metaphors. Maybe just, y’know, handle it a little more deftly than Into Darkness? Don’t let me down, Simon.
Actually, Star Trek III DID have subtitles for the Klingonese segments.
I guess my illegal copy didn’t include the subs?
I remember seeing a version on TV without the subtitles. I don’t know which was first.
I wonder if the subtitles were added later in the 90s after Klingon was formalized by nerd fandom.
Marc Okrand (born 1948) is the inventor of the Klingon language. He was hired by Paramount Pictures to invent the language and coach the actors on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Okrand’s basis for the Klingon language came from the few samples spoken in Star Trek: The Motion Picture which were made up by James Doohan. He is also famous as the author of The Klingon Dictionary and all its addenda.
The copy of Star Trek III I have offers two settings for subtitles: 1) titles of everything said 2) titles for just the Klingon words. Perhaps whomever made your bootleg didn’t know that. You have to turn them on, the Klingon subtitles are not automatic.
If they weren’t hard coded into the film reel then they might not have been in the original theatrical release.
Vader must be besides himself to be near a true Trek Icon! 🙂
Oh and, in my opinion TOS did just about everything better, especially Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand. <3