What Klingons should look like

[Zor]

Frankly I find this better than any interpretation of Klingons: TOS, TNG, 2009 movie or Disco. Would you agree?

Zor

[Master Six]

That really doesn't seem any different from the TOS Klingons. It is good that they note an omnivorous diet -- it was stupid making them pure carnivores.

Personally I had no problem with the visual appearance of the TNG Klingons, except that the females' ridges should have had a more gracile appearance (more like the way Human-Klingon hybrids like Keyhler looked). Culture-wise, I like some aspects of how the Klingons were fleshed out in TNG and DS9, but they went way overboard with their focus on a supposed system of "honor", and in making the Klingons into dull savages instead of sophisticated characters like in TOS.

[Crazedwraith]

You make a klingon look like that you are never going to be able to feature them in any real capacity on a tv show.

[Imperial Overlord]

I don't see any tool manipulator body parts. Fail.

The Final Reflection Klingons are the best Klingons.

[Master Six]

Oh wait...the beast is the Klingon?

Cool idea, but never happening on TV. I'd keep the design for a critter from Qo'nos or somewhere.

[Ultonius]

I don't see any tool manipulator body parts. Fail.

The Final Reflection Klingons are the best Klingons.

According to the artist's note here the 'raptorial forelimbs' have 'dexterous retractable grooming organs' allowing tool use. Personally, I think it's an interesting design, though I would have given the Klingon at least an equipment harness and a disruptor, since the Starfleet officer gets her uniform and phaser rifle. I find it quite amusing to imagine a version of TNG where Worf has exactly the same personality, but looks like that. More broadly, it's quite interesting to imagine Star Trek with completely non-humanoid versions of the species we're familiar with. Obviously, half-human hybrids would be utterly impossible, and interspecies romantic relationships would be ... complicated, if they existed at all. I suppose Spock would either have to be a pure Vulcan, with Amanda Grayson as his 'stepmother' influencing his outlook, or a pure human raised in Vulcan culture.

[Iroscato]

Have you been at the Toilet Duck Zor? That thing is a fucking shitshow.

[Tribble]

I don't see any tool manipulator body parts. Fail.

The Final Reflection Klingons are the best Klingons.

Well, at least you can use the spikes to hang your clothes. I'm always short on closet space

[Formless]

Hell no. Its one thing to propose an alien species that looks distinctly non-human, but its another thing entirely to disregard the importance of opposable thumbs. Or at least give them some sort of prehensile limb, like a tail that is clearly useful for something other than retaining their balance. Frankly, the only way a quadruped (or in this case a hexaped) is going to become an advanced spacefaring civilization is if they have a highly dexterous trunk like an elephant, or some other limb like, as I said, a prehensile tail. Which will make them look distinctly un-dinosaur like.

And yeah, I get that those attachments to their foremost limbs are supposed to be their tool using limbs. However, they don't look like tool using limbs. This creature does not have even one bit of technology on them, further giving the impression of a beast of burden an actual Klingon might ride into battle. I've heard it proposed that as preposterous as it might sound, a humanoid, bipedal form is actually not that unrealistic for sentient aliens to have, although proportions might very well be different from humans. At minimum, I expect most aliens will have an upright form suitable for seeing the wide world around them (so a hexapedal Klingon is more likely to look like a centaur or perhaps be a biped with four upper limbs useful for manipulating technology). This goes double for a highly aggressive warrior race like the Klingons: this animal is actually just as easy to kill as an elephant. They might have an innate toughness to them based on their sheer mass, but with eyes aimed directly in front of themselves like a human it cannot see behind itself, which makes it very vulnerable to hunters trying to outflank it. Moreover, quadrupeds have difficulty turning around to face a flanking predator or hunter. This means quadrupeds tend to run away from predators, rather than turning to fight them. A human warrior on the other hand can quickly turn on the balls of their feet and bring their weapon to bear on their attacker; we only fear flanking attacks when we are surrounded by multiple opponents. Remember, even humans were prey once upon a time, and our upright gait is not unlikely to be an adaptation for seeing those predators off in the distance before they can even get near to us.

And another thing: a warrior race like the Klingons will likely have needed to invent primitive projectile weapons at some point in their history. I see no way that this animal could throw a javelin or a dart, much less use a bow. Its "arms" are simply in the wrong place to get any mechanical advantage needed to do that. Again, because they can stand on two legs and use their upper limbs to manipulate their environment, even a chimpanzee can throw things. Their bodies have the mechanical advantages needed for that task. This animal simply does not. This is the shape of an animal that moves in herds and most likely relies on herd behaviors to defend the herd from attacks. It is not built like a predator, much less like something that can build rockets.

If you want to know what a good non-human sentient looks like, Lovecraft's Elder Things are a good example of what to look for. Lovecraft made them supremely alien simply by giving them a radially symmetric design (broken up by having two wings). BUT he also understood that in order for an alien to do human things it must meet certain criteria, which is why tentacles are so common in the Cthulu mythos (they provide an alien with a way of manipulating tools that still looks very strange to humans). The same goes for the designs of his other aliens like the Great Race of Yith. This thing is ironic, in that all the effort to make it look alien actually makes it look more terrestrial, not less. It looks like a beast of burden from an alternate history where Earth life has six limbs. But it doesn't look like it should be a sentient tool user, much less an omnivore that can hunt. It appeals to human misperceptions that dangerous wildlife is big and scary, when in reality many big quadrupedal animals were exterminated by early man using javelins. We are the top predators of Earth for a reason.

[Zixinus]

It depends on what you base this on. If you want alien aliens, then this is sort-of a step in the right directions but still has problems. The spikes sticking out of the side is just stupid. The manipulatory fore-arms look tacked-on, they should be more integral to their anatomy. The "beachmaster" thing is just ridiculous.

For a TV show, no. You have actors and you need them to be humanoid for the actors to act and even to have faces with human eyes for actors to act. Having them as CGI or other would necessarily limit their screentime due to costs (unless you can drive those costs down somehow). This is a compromise that a TV show has to make.

As for description, the problem is attributing a species-wide cultural aggression and favoring of militarism to biological causes rather than cultural, societal and soforth. Just as human society are more than their genetic heritage, alien societies should be more than their biological nature. Klingons shouldn't be militaristic simply by biology, but because that is how they choose to define themselves.

[Zor]

From the artist about the matter of manipulators

Zor

[bilateralrope]

Is it just me, or does the artist saying "retractable" feel like saying "I know manipulators are required, but I'm too lazy to draw them" ?

[Zor]

Is it just me, or does the artist saying "retractable" feel like saying "I know manipulators are required, but I'm too lazy to draw them" ?

Abiogenisis is hardly a lazy artist who does not think things through.

Zor

[Formless]

You realize that it doesn't matter, right? Saying that the arms are retractable is A) a co-out and B) nonsensical. Where is there room for them to retract? Where do they retract from? Are they those things that appear to be attached to the front of their foremost legs? Because I already explained why those don't work. And it doesn't even matter, because as soon as you say they are retractable, you make the design even worse. Limbs need proper anatomical structure to function. This is the reason artists drawing angels rarely show them from behind, because the bone structure cannot support both bird wings and human arms-- the shoulder blades are in the way of the bird wings, so one or the other set of limbs is screwed. This animal cannot raise any of its visible limbs above its head, so it cannot do many of the things a human can do, like throw objects or lift them in order to build structures. Any other limb that might be hiding in there cannot be very strong because of a lack of supporting structures, which makes it dubious that this thing would have ever developed tool use in the course of its evolution. You need strength to swing an ax or dig out the foundations of a building. To say nothing of swinging a Bat'leth.

I saw his other creature designs and they are much better about these things (I particularly like the hexaped which has manipulators on its mandibles) but this is just lazy and disregards fundamental concepts of affordance theory. Human hands afford us to use a wide variety of useful tools, and any creature designer who wants to depict a sentient alien would do good to remember how their own alien's manipulators grant them the same ability.

[bilateralrope]

Is it just me, or does the artist saying "retractable" feel like saying "I know manipulators are required, but I'm too lazy to draw them" ?

Abiogenisis is hardly a lazy artist who does not think things through.

Zor

I never said that the artist didn't think things through. Only that coming up with a cop out to avoid figuring out how to draw a necessary detail is lazy.

Though I suppose I could accuse the artist of not thinking things through: Take the middle set of legs. Wouldn't they get in the way of the other legs, limiting the length of the creatures strides ?

By legs, I'm referring to the 6 feet with claws. The frontmost limbs I'll refer to as arms because they are clearly something different to the legs.

[NeoGoomba]

I mean, the only thing we know for sure is that the "ancient" klingons were fucking badass monsters. TNG did us a favor in that evolution episode by making primeval Worf some hulking, unseen horror movie monster.

[bilateralrope]

More thoughts:
- The middle legs limit the stride of all legs, limiting the creatures speed.
- The claws on the feet aren't positioned to let them grab prey.
- Bring retractable, the manipulators won't have much strength.
- The bits around the mouth don't give much opportunity to grab prey.
- The spikes are useless for attack. Maybe useful to discourage things that try to eat it.
Conclusion: This creature doesn't hunt mobile prey. It lacks the speed to chase and the ability to quickly kill anything it sneaks up on. It's either a herbivore, scavenger or filter feeder. It's also a prey animal.

How does any of that fit with Klingons ?

[Elheru Aran]

There's a reason even Farscape kept its big creatures fairly stationary. A beast-Klingon could have worked if it was set up like Pilot, plonked down in front of a big-ass station. Even resembles Pilot a little bit... just a bit less anthromorphic.

And yeah, six legs plus forelimb manips is too much. I could -maybe- accept four legs plus forelimbs, but more limbs than that and you're looking at a bit of a mess unless you're going insectile or invertebrate.

[bilateralrope]

There's a reason even Farscape kept its big creatures fairly stationary.

I'm guessing the cost of special effects.

A beast-Klingon could have worked if it was set up like Pilot, plonked down in front of a big-ass station. Even resembles Pilot a little bit... just a bit less anthromorphic.

Sure, it would work as an alien. But its behaviour would be nothing like a Klingon because it can't move.

[FaxModem1]

It looks like a triceratops had a transporter accident with a parrot. Hard pass

[Elheru Aran]

There's a reason even Farscape kept its big creatures fairly stationary.

I'm guessing the cost of special effects.

A beast-Klingon could have worked if it was set up like Pilot, plonked down in front of a big-ass station. Even resembles Pilot a little bit... just a bit less anthromorphic.

Sure, it would work as an alien. But its behaviour would be nothing like a Klingon because it can't move.

That's kind of the point I'm trying to make, yeah. That such a setup probably wouldn't work with practical effects, not without something hinky like a panto-horse setup. It's possible now that digital effects have both improved and become cheaper, but still a lot more work than a rubber forehead.

Although I could sorta see bipedal or quadrapedal Klingons being a larval form of the big critter, used as mindless foot-soldiers a la Starship Troopers bugs, and the big critters directing action from ship bridges or ground bases... something like that.

[Solauren]

No visible methods for using tools.

Therefore, not viable as a space-faring species.

Would make an excellent 'companion species' for Klingons, however.

[tezunegari]

Would make an excellent 'companion species' for Klingons, however.

It could be the klingon version of a cat...

Or if the spikes on the back are movable and can be flattened to the skin (like a form of lamellar armor) it could be their form of a horse. or draft animal.