Kruge the archetype for the Klingon Warrior/Space Viking?

[TheHammer]

Trying to figure out where the idea for the Klingons as being all warrior space vikings came from. After all, we really didn't see it in TOS. In TMP they were naught but bit players. Christopher Lloyd's Kruge seems to be the first example fitting the "Klingon as warrior" stereotype. It also so happens that The Search for Spock gave us the first close up look of life aboard a Klingon ship, and occured just prior to TNG. I don't believe that Kruge was meant to portray your "typical Klingon", rather an extremist who was willing to go to any lengths to preserve his way of life.

So was this the birth of the brain bug that lead to the TNG and Beyond Klingons?

[El Moose Monstero]

Klaa, more than Krugge, surely? It's been a while, but Krugge seemed like a fairly level headed cold bad guy who was chasing a legitimate goal, whilst Klaa was the one randomly shooting space junk, fussing over testing his 'mettle', and rushing off to Nimbus 3 solely on the principle that Kirk might be there?

[Stofsk]

I'm sorry but what exactly is the brain bug and how is Kruge or even Klaa a demonstrable example of it? You mean to tell me a klingon captain is aggressive? Holy shit, my mind is blown.

The hilarious thing is the TOS klingons weren't so wildly different when you have Kor butcher organians to quell a perceived uprising, or the character of Kang who looks and acts like that 'space warrior' archetype. People tend to take the style of TNG klingons and completely miss the substance.

EDIT: Also we saw klingons onboard their ships in TMP. So TSFS wasn't the first to do that either.

[Patrick Degan]

Kruge hardly fits the "Space Viking" archetype. His objective wasn't honour or glory just for the sake of honour and glory but to secure the data of a new Federation "ultimate weapon" which he perceived as a potential genocidal threat to his nation. He didn't bother with challenges or codes of martial conduct in pursuing his mission but acted from expediency. One might argue that beaming down to Genesis to personally duel with Kirk qualifies, but I think that by that point Kruge was partially unhinged after losing his crew. Klaa might be closer to the archetype, but when TFF was made, TNG was in its third season, by which time the Space Viking nonsense had been well established from "A Matter Of Honour" onward. If anything, the influence of TNG bled over into TFF's depiction of the Klingons, not the other way around.

The Space Viking Klingons seem purely an invention of TNG, first appearing definitively in the first season episode "Heart Of Glory". The irony is, though, that they were so depicted to show them as obsolete freaks compared to Worf and then the later writers turned it around and based the entire template for the Klingons on the freaks. The movie producers, I think, might have conceived the Klingons more along the lines of feudal Japan's samurai class rather than European Dark Age Vikings —the design for the uniform armour and the hairstyles (at least for the Klingons seen in the opening sequences of TMP) suggest that influence. But past TSFS, that seemed to have been forgotten.

[Patrick Degan]

The TOS Klingons, of course, were merely the Soviets in very thin disguise, in keeping with the Cold War themes of that series. Kor's action on Organia is standard for any military dictatorship taking harsh measures to quell partisan resistance to an occupation army and deter future disaffection against the New Order. With Kang and his survivors, that was merely a case of their seizing weapons and an opportunity when it presented itself. But if Kang had been a Space Viking, he'd have sought to personally defeat Kirk's crew in combat rather than seizing engineering to shut off the life support to those sections of the Enterprise still under Kirk's control and suffocate them.

[Baffalo]

This all falls back on how each Klingon is portrayed. Kang certainly looked older than the younger men under his command, and so I reason that he wasn't as phased by his blood yearning to go out and act honorable and kill everything. No, he was like that grizzled old sergeant who's seen too many young men under his command get chewed up out of 'honorable' combat. You don't get to be an Old Klingon and not learn a few tricks. So by seizing engineering, Kang knew he could reduce the risk to his men while still satisfying their need for honor and glory. Bringing home the Enterprise would certainly do a lot for all of their honor. Klaa on the other hand was comparatively young, perhaps having killed his way to the top. He appeared eager to run out and engage the Enterprise even if he knew deep down inside that Kirk had probably squashed over a hundred BoPs in his time.

I think that what happens is, young Klingons are taught that honor is everything, that they should build their honor for their house and they should act honorable. This is taught by elder Klingons who don't want a bunch of young Klingons running around butchering half the galaxy. They have to maintain positions of strength, after all, and they can't fight a half dozen wars. So instead, they're taught to be 'honorable' and eventually, should they survive, learn there's more to life than running around looking for a fight. That's why older Klingons are shown to be more calculating and much different than their younger compatriots. They still yearn for combat, but they've learned when and where to fight much better.

[TheHammer]

I'm sorry but what exactly is the brain bug and how is Kruge or even Klaa a demonstrable example of it? You mean to tell me a klingon captain is aggressive? Holy shit, my mind is blown.

The hilarious thing is the TOS klingons weren't so wildly different when you have Kor butcher organians to quell a perceived uprising, or the character of Kang who looks and acts like that 'space warrior' archetype. People tend to take the style of TNG klingons and completely miss the substance.

EDIT: Also we saw klingons onboard their ships in TMP. So TSFS wasn't the first to do that either.

TSFS was the first to show us Klingons in great detail. Among the space vikingy things Kruge did was beam down to the planets surface and kill the evolved space worms with his bare hands, and the hand to hand fight with kirk.

As noted, Klaa was post TNG and thus doesn't count.

[Eframepilot]

It was the new makeup and outfits in TMP. Just the way they dress screamed "we are warriors rrraaaaarrgh". Kruge and the "Heart of Glory" Klingons followed from that.