Why does the klingons look different

Kor, the Klingon Commander, even told Kirk "our races aren't so different". He meant that both humans and Klingons are war-like species, but his words could also now have a deeper context: the Klingons have 24 Great Houses and it's possible this group of Klingons underwent the same perfected procedure that turned Voq into Ash Tyler.

Kor later appeared in DS9 with ridged brow and wild Klingon hair - could he have had surgical alteration during the TOS era and later regained his Klingon form?

Despite their savage demeanor, the Klingons obviously possess sophisticated technology and some of TOS ' Klingons were known to turn themselves human to become spies. Arne Darvin in "The Trouble With Tribbles" was revealed to be a Klingon spy working to sabotage the Federation and when he reappeared over a century later in DS9 , Darvin remained trapped in his human form.

And then, within a decade, the Klingons perfected and continued surgical alteration into human form as part of their methodology for galactic conquest, which helps explain why the Klingons Kirk met during his five-year mission looked unlike any other Klingons before or since. John Orquiola is a Features staff writer who has been with Screen Rant for four years.

He envisioned Kor as a vicious, brilliant military leader, so the parallels to Khan were strong. Phillips and Colicos decided to give the Klingons black hair, dark skin, and a Fu Manchu mustache. Colicos also suggested a slightly green tinge to the skin color to imply that his character was, in fact, an alien, not just a Soviet villain. Fletcher and Phillips came up with the distinctive forehead ridges which have come to define the Klingons.

In an interview on The Captain Logan Show in , Fletcher said that he was also inspired by the exoskeletons on lobsters. He imagined the Klingons as having a rigid exoskeleton. He also noted that their long hair should cover parts of the extended spinal column.

These factors made the forehead ridges envisioned by Fletcher and Phillips possible. When the movie came out, fans were stunned by the drastically different look of the Klingons. Instead of being inspired by lobster exoskeletons as Phillips had been, Westmore drew his inspiration from dinosaur vertebrae. He stated that each of the forehead ridge prosthetics he designed was based on a specific dinosaur spinal column. To this end, he added distinct ridges to the bridge of the Klingon nose and created sharp, craggy dentures for each Klingon actor.

Westmore arguably achieved his goal, creating Klingons that looked more alien than ever before. As more Klingons were introduced in TNG, Westmore came up with the idea that each Klingon family should have distinctly different forehead ridges, implying the shape of the ridges was genetic. Westmore designed markedly different prosthetics for each of the recurring Klingons. Again, Westmore and his team created specific forehead ridges for each recurring character.

They also changed up the hairstyles and facial hair for each recurring Klingon. When the Motion Picture came out, Klingons had spikes down the middle of their foreheads, as well as more prominent teeth. They still had short hair but were beginning to look like the Klingons that first appeared on Star Trek: Enterprise.

In later Star Trek movies, the Klingons had more cranial spikes and ridges, and their hair was longer than before.

As the makeup artists decided on what they wanted the Klingons to look like, the storyline was that they were finally starting to gain their characteristics back after several generations.

Since Voyager took place at roughly the same time as The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, the Klingons looked the same throughout the three series. The Voyager crew only had one Klingon, and she was a Klingon-Human hybrid, which suggested that after the Khitomer Accords, humans and Klingons began mating and having relationships. Once she left the Academy, she joined the Maquis because they offered her a place to fight and a cause to fight for.

However, Starfleet decided that the Maquis were wrong about their methods and that they were criminals, so they tried stopping the rebellious faction. Voyager was sent to capture a certain Maquis ship that was lost in the Badlands, a particularly dangerous part of space. Both ships were caught in some sort of energy beam that transported them to the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant.

She had a smaller stature than other Klingons, and she appeared mostly human. While she was disciplined for her actions, Captain Janeway realized that she was very skilled and passionate about Engineering and chose her for that position. However, the Doctor ran a family simulation, complete with a holo-wife and two holo-children. His son had Klingon friends, which looked like the Klingons of the Next Generation era. Star Trek: Discovery showed their fans a new Klingon that defied any logic in their appearance.

Discovery Klingons were bald, had different cranial ridges, and had spikes on the sides of their skulls. Remember that Discovery was set ten years before James Kirk took command of the Enterprise when Klingons appeared human-like. It seems that when Klingons were at war with another race, or when they had a civil war amongst the houses, they shaved their heads to be more war-like.

When the hostilities ceased, they let their hair grow back. One explanation that will be fully explained later in this article is that some Klingons were not affected by the new virus that swept through the Klingon Empire and killed millions of Klingons. Why did the Klingons all of a sudden look almost human in only years? Sometime in the 22nd century, the Klingons heard about humans creating genetically superior humans in the late s. It was the same genetic engineering that created Khan and his people.

They learned about a ship carrying Augmented humans that had crashed near the Klingon homeworld. Because they thought that humans were working on the way to overpower the Klingons and conquer them, they raced to the crash site and took the Augmented embryos to glean the DNA from them.

Once their top scientists created a drug from the DNA samples, they tested it on a few willing subjects. The few volunteers that took this died agonizing deaths, even after they began showing enhanced characteristics. Almost immediately, the cranial ridges disappeared, they became weak, and they contracted a flu-like illness that killed many Klingons. And because this drug affected the DNA sequences, it became a virus that continued for many generations of those who took the drug.

The virus, known as the Levodian Flu, would have wiped out the entire race had it not been for the Klingons requesting help from Dr. Phlox on the Enterprise.