SabreAce
SOH-CM-2023
*Trekkie hat on*
In the DS9 episode "Trials & Tribble-ations" (where the Defiant and crew go back to the TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles"), O'Brien, Odo, and Bashir, on seeing the TOS Klingons, turn to Worf for an explanation, which gets a typical Worf-style answer: "We do not discuss it with outsiders.
The reasoning would later be covered in Star Trek: Enterprise (I hope I've got the right story arc here - I missed a lot of Enterprise when it first ran and keep only catching bits and pieces. Seem to recall reading a lof this stuff in episode summaries, though). The basics were that a disease/genetic condition of some sort was taking down Klingon after Klingon, but they found that by incorporating human DNA into the Klingon DNA, it would prevent the spread of the disease.
So, essentially, the TOS Klingons were Klingon/Human hybrids, and by the 24th century, everything had worked itself out back to normal (which explains why the three original Klingons - Kor, Kang, and Koloth - were smooth-headed in TOS but ridged in DS9).
The other explanations that have come up over the years besides the Enterprise version were that the Klingons always had ridges (in other words, Starfleet was censoring the ridges on all TOS starship logss that we happened to see
- or just makeup was expensive at the time), or that Klingons have different regional appearances...ie, the TOS Klingons were all "South" Klingons, and the Movie/TNG/DS9 versions were "North" Klingons. Granted, that last one ignores why Kang and his lot were smooth in TOS and ridged in DS9, but...what can ya gonna do?
In the DS9 episode "Trials & Tribble-ations" (where the Defiant and crew go back to the TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles"), O'Brien, Odo, and Bashir, on seeing the TOS Klingons, turn to Worf for an explanation, which gets a typical Worf-style answer: "We do not discuss it with outsiders.
The reasoning would later be covered in Star Trek: Enterprise (I hope I've got the right story arc here - I missed a lot of Enterprise when it first ran and keep only catching bits and pieces. Seem to recall reading a lof this stuff in episode summaries, though). The basics were that a disease/genetic condition of some sort was taking down Klingon after Klingon, but they found that by incorporating human DNA into the Klingon DNA, it would prevent the spread of the disease.
So, essentially, the TOS Klingons were Klingon/Human hybrids, and by the 24th century, everything had worked itself out back to normal (which explains why the three original Klingons - Kor, Kang, and Koloth - were smooth-headed in TOS but ridged in DS9).
The other explanations that have come up over the years besides the Enterprise version were that the Klingons always had ridges (in other words, Starfleet was censoring the ridges on all TOS starship logss that we happened to see
- or just makeup was expensive at the time), or that Klingons have different regional appearances...ie, the TOS Klingons were all "South" Klingons, and the Movie/TNG/DS9 versions were "North" Klingons. Granted, that last one ignores why Kang and his lot were smooth in TOS and ridged in DS9, but...what can ya gonna do?
