#i'm seeing a lot of ds9

[ferryfoam]

He has no idea he's like a daughter to me. My middle aged male daughter

ASIT is making me real sad and lately I have been spending every waking hour thinking about nothing but Elim Garak

I have also been reading this wonderful fic by Cucumbermoon and it is making me sadder but it's beautifully written and very good https://archiveofourown.org/works/30310065 I am very enthusiastic to read the sequel once I am finished (it is possibly correlated to the fact I am menstruating as of current but I cried multiple times while reading so. Really good!!!)

[deltamachine2013]

mid-1990s comic book artists 🤝 horny julian bashir fan artists

let's make the twink buff for fanservice

[theskoomacat]

jean-luc picard, the tackling alzheimer's patient

[specialagentartemis]

Genuinely: For people who are angry and frustrated at the limited number of movies and shows available for streaming, at the way streaming services pull or cancel movies and shows at will, at the way every media corporation under the sun is pulling their stuff onto their own streaming service and balkanizing access to things behind a dozen different monthly subscriptions? For people who miss Blockbuster and want to be able to just rent a DVD again?

See if your local library has a DVD collection.

If I want to watch The Mummy (1999) with Brendan Fraser? I can't stream it on Netflix, but I can borrow it from my local library.

If I want to watch The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff? I can't stream that pretty much anywhere, but I can borrow it from my local library.

I want to watch Star Wars or Iron Man or my favorite Disney movie but I refuse to sell my soul to pay for Disney+? I can borrow these from my local library.

Do I want to finish watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 or check out Star Trek: Picard but resent that it's all on yet another streaming service I don't want? I can borrow season box sets of DVDs from my local library!

Obviously, available circulating collections vary a lot between library systems. (My hometown's library has all of Star Trek DS9 on DVD, for example, but my college town's library only has TOS, Picard, and Discovery.) And of course it depends on whether things are released in physical media form at all, and you won't be able to keep up with new episodes of new series - it takes a while for many things to come out on DVD.

But there can be a lot of good stuff there too. For example, I missed Nope in theaters, but I still really want to see it. So I have it on hold from my local library. I'm 73rd in line on 50 copies, so it'll be a while.

So check to see what DVD collections your library does have - it might surprise you what you can get access to, for free, in a manner that no greedy corporation can yank away.

And by checking out DVDs, you are telling the library that you use and want them to maintain and grow their AV media collection. Which is an encouragement we could really use these days.

[mariusslonelysoul]

Finally started ds9 so here are some thoughts~ (i'm almost done with s1)

They are NOT pulling punches good god

Even the intro is already much darker

Also trek has always been horny but i was not expecting to hear "sexual holosuite programs". I guessed that's what the holosuites were used for but i didn't think they'd confirm it

I like the uniforms better than tng's. quark's outfit is certainly a statement too

Odo is first and foremost a hater and i respect that

Pls let jake be happier than wes. I'm hoping than with nog there too they support each other

Kira is a fascinating character, the scene with the spiritual leader telling her to accept her violence so she can move on was great

Dax is also so interesting, i hope they explore some more of how she copes with her previous identities

On that note, it's not trek without a character being put on trial

Julian is such a loser i love him

Honestly all the characters are great and i cannot wait to see more of them

I also hope keiko appears a lot, i need the o'brien family to be happy and thriving

Odo and quark are such worsties, they are like spones but without the yearning and tension

Ngl i do miss the captain's chair

[writergeekrhw]

There's been a lot of talk over the years about whether Ferengi are a antisemitic stereotyoe. Given that DS9 had more Jewish actors and creative staff, what do you think of that discourse?

Was this something that was kept in mind when reinventing the Ferengi from how they were in TNG?

I can tell you the INTENTION of the Ferengi was to satirize capitalism and the West. Ferengi derives from the Persian "Farangi," i.e. Franks, people from France. More broadly, it came to mean "Western European." Hence "Farangistan" = Europe. Farang/i spread to other languages, notably Thai where it now means "foreigner."

Farang - Wikipedia

So, the Ferengi are intended to be us. Westerners, even more specifically Americans. The original TNG bible compares them to 18th and 19th century Yankee traders. Sexist and greedy, patriarchal and dishonest.

I'm pretty sure this was the intention of their look too, especially the noses. Big noses are common in Asian caricatures of Westerners. Check out the Thai sculpture in the link above. According to my father, for example, the Rhade tribe from the Vietnamese Highlands called Americans "big noses" and when he was their military advisor, he was Captain Big Nose.

And then TNG cast a ton of Jewish actors as early Ferengi, and a lot of people saw them completely differently. (Aside, I've heard from some Asian fans that they perceive Ferengi as caricatures of the Cantonese, which speaks to how different cultures see them.)

We were definitely aware of this issue when DS9 came along, and I largely followed the lead of our Jewish-American showrunners on how to handle it. Generally, by digging deep into three different main Ferengi characters and several recurring, I hope we transcended the stereotypes.

We showed Ferengi not as whip-wielding pirate/raiders (not a Jewish trope btw, see Yankee traders), but as a small business owner, a handyman/engineer, and an aspiring Starfleet officer, all struggling with issues of cultural assimilation and grappling with their own culture's shortcomings when it comes to women and greed.

When writing the Ferengi, I drew from my own (white bread, Catholic, Army brat) background, so for example, I saw the Rules of Acquisition not as some kind of take on the Talmud, but as a satire of Western self-help business books, a kind of "How to Win Friends and Influence People," meets "The Devil's Dictionary." The Ferengi afterlife is based on my vague understanding of Chinese traditions I grew up around in San Francisco, etc.

I'm not sure we fully separated the Ferengi from the baggage they came to us with, but we definitely tried.

[dothetoothsteethhaveteethtoo]

ok I know nobody needs to know this but I gotta tell a lil story, so this time last year I hadn't seen a single episode of Voyager so imagine my confusion when my dash was suddenly filled with lizards

It was a pleasant confusion, of course, I was delighted by the incredible influx of lil guys and I managed to surmise some vague idea of the context from all the memes...

Cut to a sunny June afternoon when I was just minding my own business for the FIRST 45 MINUTES of the episode, it caught me so much by surprise I kid you not this was my exact reaction

I had NOT figured out from the assortment of tumblr posts that the rest of the episode is totally normal, I was in NO way prepared for the lizard jumpscare, honestly it was an incredible moment

Anyway this is a long and convoluted way of me saying thank you to all the creators who made posts for Threshold Day last year, you inspired me to watch Voyager next (I'm slowly making my way through the treks and I chose voy after ds9) because I was desperate to fully understand and appreciate this wonderous holiday in the trek calendar, and now that I do, I couldn't be happier! Can't wait to see what you talented lot bring to the party this year

🦎 MERRY THRESHOLD DAY EVERYONE 🦎

[vintagetvstars]

René Auberjonois Vs. Rik Mayall

Propaganda

René Auberjonois - (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - just a delightful man! best known to most for his performance as odo on deep space nine but has had a long and storied acting career and appeared in many shows (fyi the images of him out of odo makeup i've submitted are from stargate sg-1, the rockford files, charlie's amgels, the jeffersons, night gallery, wonder woman, murder she wrote, and enterprise :3 as you can see, much like his shapeshifting fictional counterpart he's quite the chameleon!)

Rik Mayall - (The Young Ones, Bottom, The Comic Strip Presents...) - Rik played a lot of characters that were horrible people, but he was so charismatic that you couldn't help falling in love with him. I did when I saw The Young Ones when I was 15.

Master Poll List | How to submit propaganda | What is vintage? (FAQ)

Additional propaganda below the cut

René Auberjonois:

check out his ds9 tie / he looks so cute with his wife here!

Rik Mayall:

His comedy partner Adrian Edmondson wrote this in his autobiography: "... when we're doing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival I watch a girl fall in love with him, right in front of me... a girl walks by close to the front of the stage. When she sees Rik she just stops in her tracks right in front of the stage, and stares at him. She never looks at me, only at him, but I'm there and I've got a ringside seat... I watch her fall for him, from very close quarters. Watch her gape in wonder. I see her smile grow into a beam. I see her eyes transfixed. It's like she's been injected with a wonder drug that makes her glow from within. This is his power."

[quasi-normalcy]

Actually, you know what? Ever since I learned that Ira Steven Behr signed that grossly unfair letter against Jonathan Glazer, I've been forced to kind of reevaluate some of my interpretations of things in Deep Space Nine.

Like Section 31. I was willing to suppose that it was always and only intended to be villainous. But knowing as I do now that the showrunner who included it is perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to genocide, I'm forced to wonder...was it critical? Was it?

Like, let's consider canon here. In "Statistical Probabilities", Bashir and the other augments calculate, in no uncertain terms, that the Federation can't win its war with the Dominion. Their model even accurately forecasts things that happen later in the series: the Romulans declaring war on the Dominion; a full-scale revolt on Cardassia Prime. The end of the episode kind of pooh-poohs their model, like, "Well you couldn't even forecast what Serena would do in this room" but like...(1) the premise is basically lifted from Asimov's psychohistory concept, which works on populations rather than individuals, and (2) there's even a line of dialogue in the episode saying that the models become *less* uncertain the further you go in time. And indeed, the Federation ultimately wins the war not because any of their assumptions were wrong, but because there was another factor that they weren't aware of: the Changeling plague. The plague that had, of course, been engineered by Section 31 to exterminate the Changelings.

So again you have to ask: *was* this critical? Or was the real message that a black ops division willing to commit genocide is necessary to preserve a "utopian" society, no matter how squeamish it makes a naïve idealist like Bashir? And yeah, the war is ultimately won by an act of compassion, but only *after* Bashir sinks to S31's level by kidnapping Sloane and invading his mind with illicit technology. So...is this really a win for idealism?

And then we have the Jem'Hadar. They're a race of slave soldiers, genetically engineered to require a compound that only the Changelings can give them. By any reasonable standard, they're victims. And yet, the series goes out of its way, especially in "The Abandoned", to establish that they're irredeemable. You can't save them. Victims of colonialism they may be, but your only choice is to kill them, or else they--preternaturally violent almost from the moment that they're born--*will* kill you. And of course, I've long assumed that this was just a really unfortunate attempt to subvert what had become the standard "I, Borg" style Star Trek trope where your enemies become less scary once you get to know them, but like. I would say that there's pretty close to a one-to-one correspondence between this premise and the ideology excusing the mass murder of children in Gaza.

Or the Maquis. There's this line at the start of "For the Uniform" where Sisko tells Eddington that he regards the refugees in the Demilitarized Zone as being "Victims of the Maquis", because they've kept alive the forlorn hope that they would ever be allowed to return to their homes and...Jesus, when I write it out like that, Hello, Palestinian Right of Return. [The episode of course ends with Sisko bombing a Maquis colony with chemical weapons, though it is somewhat less objectionable in practice than I'm making it sound here].

And you know what...I get that DS9 is a show that's intended to have moral complexity, and to be kind of ambiguous in a lot places, and not to give you simple answers and so on. And I'm *not* trying to do the standard JK Rowling/ Joss Whedon/ Justin Roiland thing where a creator falls from grace for whatever reason and people comb through their oeuvre to show that they were always wicked and fans were stupid for not seeing it earlier or whatever. But I will say that these things hit different when you know that the series was show-run for five seasons, comprising every episode that I've just named, by a man who would go on to sign his name to a letter maliciously quoting Jonathan Glazer out of context to drag him for condemning an active genocide. And given that I've been a fan of DS9 for basically my entire life, this is deeply unsettling to me.

[jadenvargen]

thanks so much everyone who was interested in a painting! most of them have been sold off and i'm in the process of making shipping labels rn. some are still left if interested. i'm rly happy everyone has been so supportive q.q most everything's been sold out, and i'm really happy to see it go to a better home.

the pieces that are left if anyone is still interested are as follows:

also, i thought to add some extra pieces that i initially didn't want to sell because i wasn't personally as pleased with them, but if anyone's interested:

G: 150 $ L: 30$ H: 80$ O: 100$

X: 30$ Y: 40$ Z: 20$ W: 30$

Plus this piece that I wanted to post but didn't end up happening. maybe someday. it's A-3 sized ds9 episode painting:

300$ because it's twice as large as most of the others.

as always, jaden.kristoffersson@gmail.com for all inquiries !

bonus. if anybody's interested, i'm considering putting my 2021 sketchbook (full of saw art mostly lol) on ebay for auction, but idk if it's a good idea. LMK what u guys think! (here's a quick flip-through video of it. CW for blood and some nudity)

Thank you everyone for the support so far. Absolutely no pressure in buying, just if you want, it's here. lots of love.

[foone]

One thing I think about a lot is that how omegaverse is a sort of meta-setting that can and has been applied to many different fandoms, right?

So there's "omegaverse supernatural" (because that's where it started) and "omegaverse star trek" and "omegaverse Frasier" and "omegaverse Batman" and "omegaverse US presidents".

You can basically easily apply it to any fandom with lots of men in it, which turns out to be most of them. (and you can apply it to the rare female-majority fandoms with a bit of extra work).

But the interesting thing to me is that omegaverse depends on characters having subgenders: alpha/beta/omega are effectively gender roles on top of the regular male/female ones, but they're ones not specified in the original fiction, right? (I mean, not usually).

So like, you can watch NewsRadio and it makes it pretty clear Dave is a man, but it never specifies if he's an alpha or omega, because why would it? Also, why is my go-to example of a random sitcom one from 1995?

Anyway. So you've got a bunch of characters with canonical genders (not that that has ever stopped fans from headcanoning them as different! Dave is a trans man, Lisa is a trans woman, and Bill? All Phil Hartman characters are closeted trans women, so jot that down), but you don't have canonical subgenders.

So fans have to decide which characters in a fiction are alphas and omegas and so on. They tend to be pretty consistent for most characters, actually.

But the part that interests me despite not really reading omegaverse stuff is just those headcanons.

Like, I can take a show I know well, like say Star Trek: The Next Generation, and find out what the fans think their subgenders are.

Like, I'm gonna guess that Riker and Worf are alphas. Picard could go either way. LaForge is an omega, Data is... An android, but he's had sex, so... I'm gonna guess alpha? O'Brien is an omega, but that's mostly going off DS9. Maybe he wasn't in TNG yet? Wesley I'm guessing gets headcanoned as omega.

And see, now I can go look at ao3 and see what other people think for these! And for some reason that's way more interesting to me than just reading any omegaverse fic.

I think we should do more of this sort of shit. I mean, I guess we kinda do for things like top/bottom, dom/sub, trans/cis, but I demand more subgenders! Subgenders that aren't depicted in the fiction but fans have to headcanon.

I kinda want to make a sort of wiki website which works by scraping ao3 tags and assigning alpha/beta/omega to characters from shows, basically a fan vote on how people headcanon the subgenders of these characters.

Anyway I checked and oh boy yeah everyone says Wesley is an omega. Apparently Zefram Cochrane is an omega too.

And the one fic I saw with Data in it made him an omega. Huh. Interesting.

I dunno. It's weird: I've got no interest in reading a fic where these characters fuck in their weird omegaverse ways, but I can't not be interested in knowing how fans headcanon them.

[andy-888]

You know, seeing the Marvel situation in which they cut a quote where they confirmed Carol and Valkyrie used to date, made me think that the day where studios and big franchises realize, just for their own greedy interests, that the ppl that create most engagement are queer folk, they'll have to put more care in canonically queer characters and in queer stories.

Queer folks are the ones who: make fanart, make edits, write fanfiction, make blogs about it, make fandoms out of it, or just simply tweet or engage with official accounts. They are the ones who give you free publicity and you mistreat that public so much. You know how many shows/movies I decided to watch, how many videogames I decided to play, just bc I saw 1 cute gay fanart? Edit? And then I loved the product as a whole? A LOT.

Why do they think good omens s2 had such a good engagement? And it was so fun for the public? I need these franchises to wake tf up. This also comes bc these days I see a lot of transphobia in the Star Trek fandom bc of a trans trill. A TRILL. I'm not trans, but that scene in DS9 where Jadzia meets a long last klingon friend who knew her as Curzon and then called her Jadzia with the same love made me so happy, bc I have trans friends and i saw how hard it is. Star Trek has ALWAYS been woke and having to see those comments made my blood boil.

Stop making content for cis straight men, make content for the girls and queer ppl bc they are the ones who carry the weight of lifting your bland ass product.

Edit: I want to also add neurodivergent ppl to the sack. God if hyperfixations don't move mountains. I hope you don't get more autism powers doctors as representation

[sirellas]

post canon ds9 fic i won't write for real, in bullet points:

story starts with jake sisko, pondering and writing. he got a commission from some federation news service to do a fluff piece on "the soul of the klingon people" now that the war is over and they have a new chancellor, essentially a "look federation people, klingons are still chill. maybe chiller, even. so everybody be cool" deal (i'm imagining they have to do an article like this for every group of aliens that were a major combatant in the war) but jake takes it seriously and refuses to phone it in.

first he goes to alexander, who's visiting the station while between KDF assignments or something idk. but he says look buddy i wanna know what's up with klingons, you get me? alexander does not get him and also would like to know what's up with klingons, so he says hell yeah human friend let's figure this out.

then it becomes a series of vignettes of these two kind of out of touch young people learning about the klingon spirit and also themselves as they seek out someone who can tell them the secrets of life and honor etc etc. jake has a warped sense of normal from growing up on ds9 and alexander has never felt right in solely klingon or human spaces, so they have some gaps in their knowledge to fill.

i'm thinking they start with worf and martok, who are busy on qo'nos building their credibility and new government. worf isn't great at talking about feelings and martok's being pulled in a lot of different directions, so they're not much help. hanging around on qo'nos is interesting, but ultimately not what jake and alexander are looking for either.

then they start thinking outside the box. order isn't important but they start hitting up all relevant klingons and klingon adjacent folk: darok, sirella, ezri, nikolai, kurn, maybe a duras sisters cameo for equal representation of shitty klingons.

last we saw of kurn of course he had lost his memory but since this is my fic i'm not writing i'm gonna say bashir's not as great at brain reconfiguration as he thinks he is and it didn't take fully. so he's a little confused but getting the hang of it. a lot of "which one of you is my nephew again? i can't tell humans apart" kind of deal even though alexander is 3/4 klingon. he tells them what he's re-learned about klingons since he's been rebuilding his own identity.

nikolai also was essentially exiled but it's fine. he's got a gaggle of kids now and alexander and jake have to do the fake forehead thing to blend in while they talk to him. nikolai's got a lot of insight into worf as a brother but not much on klingons as a whole. alexander brings him some pierogi helena made.

alexander: "wow my foster uncle's wife looks a lot like your stepmom, isn't that funny?" jake: "nah i don't see the resemblance"

maybe at this point nog joins them because he's having his own identity crisis as the only ferengi in starfleet so he decides to just hop on board for jake and alexander's identity crisis.

they go see jeremy aster too, the kid from tng who became worf's brother through a whole thing, and he's got a pretty interesting view of klingons and the klingon spirit from an outsider/insider perspective.

sirella and darok are probably the least helpful but i think sirella baby-ing alexander would be fun. they're both trying to deny it and deny how much they like the attention (sirella at having a new-ish nephew-ish and one who wasn't raised klingon so she can do all the classic klingon things with him fresh, and alexander at having a(nother) mother figure to love him). jake is studiously taking notes in the corner while sirella tries to teach him how to skin a fresh kill or something like that.

anyway this whole journey ends with them finding kahless 2 (the clone of kahless) whose only occupation is thinking about the klingon spirit. but his wisdom boils down to "everyone's different and everyone has to figure shit out on their own, but together we can strive to be greater than yesterday" etc etc and jake gets his article. alexander reaffirms his grasp on his cultural identity and also gets to see a lot of his family so he's reminded that he's loved, even if everyone is doing their own thing. and nog develops a huge crush on sirella. everybody's happy.

[bijoumikhawal]

DS9 characters as Lingerie

(because I'm on vacation in NC and can)

Sisko- I like this set, though I could do without the writing. It's comfortable, but still... alluring. (Also I have pictured him in leather bottoms that lace up a few times but I don't consider that lingerie)

O'Brien - I do not think he wears lingerie of his own volition, but I do think Keiko has talked him into interestingly designed undies once or twice

Julian - something something that time he unzipped his uniform and had no undershirt on. Technically this is dance wear, but it's also literally a body suit. I definitely think simple, classy black is more his style- a contrast to his off duty tendency of dressing like a parrot externally

Garak - (honestly you can probably say a lot of Aint Born Typical's designs suit him. Also I really like them because all their designs are made to fit a range of bodies, not just skinny women) I really like the red suit he wears, and I think the slightly elevated but still subtle design this one has from the beaded drops would suit him.

Kira - (cut rant about how most lingerie is unimaginative and scared of androgyny) I chose this set because I don't think Kira would wear anything too fussy, and the herringbone detail reminds me of her uniform's undershirt and of Bajor's passion for crochet. I don't think she'd necessarily go for this color though- maybe more of a sage green. I could also see her wearing what Sisko does

Jadzia - the impression I get from her civvies is she likes things purple and drapey

Odo - the cheat answer is that Odo canonically doesn't even wear normal underwear and is going commando to an extreme we can only dream of. I feel like he would copy a dabo girl and end up with something like this if he had too though

Quark - bee2a (affectionate)

[worflesbian]

Klingons & Racialisation - the Long Post

This post is an overview of the racial coding of the Klingons from their first appearance to the present day, illustrated by quotes from Trek writers, actors and crew members taken from the Memory Alpha article Depicting Klingons, with my own interjected summaries and explanations. It is by no means comprehensive (I likely missed some stuff), and does not offer critical analysis of the quotes provided, but nonetheless is intended to demonstrate irreproachably the open fact that Klingons have always been intentionally written and designed as non-white -- something that fandom consistently fails to take into account when perpetuating racist stereotypes and reiterating racist canon content. I recommend reading the whole article for a more in-depth understanding of the subject, as well as seeking out the existing writing of fans of colour. This post is primarily for reference purposes so I've tried to limit my own analysis and opinions, but I do post those in my Klingon tag as well as more general headcanons and worldbuilding and I'm happy to answer any (good faith) questions this post may raise.

As always, if I have overstepped in any way as a white fan in making this post, I am grateful to be informed and will make any required changes.

Content warning for outdated and offensive language under the cut.

The Original Series

"There is some suggestion that the Klingons represent a Cold Warrior's view of China in the 1960s – swarthy, brutally repressive." (Star Trek Magazine issue 153, p. 66) "And I think he was basing a lot of it on the kind of attitude of the Japanese in World War II...." ("Errand of Mercy" Starfleet Access, TOS Season 1 Blu-ray) The script of "Errand of Mercy" introduces the Klingon look by saying, "We see the Klingons are Orientals," "Spray my hair black, give me a kind of swamp creature green olivey mud reptilian make-up, and we'll borrow some stuff from Fu Manchu, and put a long moustache and eyebrows on me." ("The Sword of Colicos", Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Official Poster Magazine, No. 8) "I think the makeup was called 'Mexican #1 or #2.' That was the name of the original makeup foundation – they actually had kind of racist names at the time, like 'Negro #1' and 'Mexican #2' – which was the basis for the original Star Trek makeups." (Star Trek Magazine issue 172, p. 59) "In the original series, all they wore was a dark face and their black hair," Michael Westmore observed. ("Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Two", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) The Klingons' appearance changed within the original Star Trek series; although dark makeup and heavy eyebrows were the norm, the Klingons of "The Trouble with Tribbles" were much lighter-skinned and more Human-like in appearance.... He noticed that they are not only less like Mongol warriors by having less of a swarthy appearance but also by being slightly not as fierce... ("The Trouble with Tribbles" Starfleet Access, TOS Season 2 Blu-ray) "...they were meant to represent the Communist foes of the United States specifically during the Vietnam War, which was being controversially fought at that time. (Star Trek: The Original Series 365, p. 222) "...let us never set up a situation whereby those adversaries of ours [Klingons] give any indication of ever being anything but highly aggressive and self-seeking opponents." (These Are the Voyages: TOS Season Three)

Here it is explicitly stated that the Klingons were based on various Asian cultures, with the USSR also being mentioned heavily in the article. This influence and the use of "yellowface" is covered more comprehensively in this youtube video Klingons & The History Of Racial Coding. However, the video has some notable gaps which I hope to cover in this post.

Post-TOS (movies)

The Star Trek III portrayal of Klingons took inspiration from Japanese history. "Harve [Bennett] had the notion that the Klingons were like Samurai warriors," explained linguist Marc Okrand. (Star Trek: Communicator issue 114, p. 27) Robert Fletcher agreed with Bennett, later saying of the Klingons, "I always liked to think of them as authoritarian, almost feudal, like Japan had been." (The Making of the Trek Films, UK 3rd ed., p. 52) Regarding the make-up, Michael Westmore observed, "Until now, Klingons were brown. Some had a bony ridge running down the middle of their foreheads, long black wigs and facial hair." (Star Trek: The Next Generation Makeup FX Journal, p. 28) "I thought it was an ideal way for us to have our closure too, because the Klingons for us have always been the Communist Block, the Evil Empire. It just made sense to do that story." (The Making of the Trek Films, UK 3rd ed., p. 100) "Gene was really bothered by the Klingons in VI [....] [They] were, in his words, 'too civilized, too decent, too much of the good guys in the story.' [....] [The Klingon detente] was not the way Gene would have handled it. He would have reversed it, he would have had the Klingons being the ones who couldn't handle the peace, with the Federation saying, 'Come on, let's try and work this out.'" (Star Trek Movie Memories, hardback ed., p. 289) "The story never explored the Klingon culture the way I'd hoped it would [....] I was hoping for greater insight into the Klingons." (I Am Spock) Nimoy hoped, in specific, that the movie would provide some important insight into why the Klingons had "always been so angry, such nasty, vicious murderers." Nimoy wanted the insightful knowledge to be an intellectually transformational force, changing the thinking of Kirk and the audience. (Star Trek Movie Memories, hardback ed., pp. 287-288) In an interview in the DS9 Season 7 DVD, Robert O'Reilly observed that a long-running joke among actors who have played Klingons is that they do not want to appear in the Star Trek films as, he believes, the only purpose of a Klingon in one of the films was to be killed off.

Although these last three quotes may not seem relevant, I believe they highlight an important facet of the racialisation of the Klingons. It reads as though Gene Roddenberry was against depicting the Klingons in a more sympathetic light than the Federation, and considering that the Klingons are intended to be non-white, refusing to give depth or motive to their anger in favour of keeping them "nasty, vicious murderers" comes across as fairly racist, especially when these kind of reductive and harmful stereotypes could've been challenged as Nimoy suggests. The treatment of Klingons as disposable villains is also concerning in this context.

The Next Generation

African-American actors were often cast as Klingons in TNG and subsequent Star Trek productions. This practice wasn't racially motivated but was instead carried out because it lessened makeup time, as the performers already had a brown complexion without having to have their skin painted that color. (Stardate Revisited: The Origin of Star Trek: TNG, Part 2: Launch, TNG Season 1 Blu-ray) Tony Todd, who portrayed the recurring Klingon character Kurn, stated, "I don't look at the Klingons necessarily as African-Americans, but it's about tapping into something–they're certainly an alienated people, so maybe that's why African-American actors can identify with those characters. But that doesn't mean it's exclusive to them." (Star Trek: Communicator issue 116, p. 54) Michael Westmore actually changed the Klingon facial design in numerous ways, though. He stated, "I added a Shakespearean style of facial hair and a forehead bone structure based on dinosaur vertebrae and I was able to modify motion picture Klingons for television." (Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts, p. 59) In "A Matter Of Honor", the Klingons were intended to be used to shed some light on a common social problem prevalent at the time of the episode's making. This was, namely, what it was like to be the only person of either white or black skin coloration while surrounded by people of the other color. The Klingons were selected to illustrate this theme as a spin on the usual arrangement of a predominantly Human crew serving aboard the Enterprise-D alongside Worf. (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 176) Two historical societies, the Samurai and Vikings, served as other inspirations, Moore perceiving about Klingon culture, "There was the calm, elegant reserve associated with the Samurai but there was the 'party-down' like the Vikings." (Star Trek: Communicator issue 114, p. 58) "I stopped thinking of the Klingons as the Cold War adversary," he explained. "I didn't think it fit [....] The place where the Russians were when I was doing the Klingon shows just wasn't as relevant any more." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 19, pp. 64-65) "The Klingons are not evil, tyrannical pirates bent only on pillage and plunder. They have a strict, almost unyielding code of ethics and honor and take their responsibilities as rulers seriously." Following a description of the Klingon homeworld, the memo continued by saying, "Klingon society could most closely be compared to that of Sparta or feudal Japan." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) Having recently seen the film Malcolm X, he imagined the Klingons in the "Birthright" duology as metaphors for black people. (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 274; Star Trek: Communicator issue 105, p. 16) "There's a certain way you have to carry yourself. You have to really be able to project the violence and the anger [....] All you have to do is think of the Spartans. They say, 'They'd rather have you come home dead on your shield than come home a coward.' [18]

This is where I feel the video essay previously mentioned falls short -- in the next gen era, Klingons are now explicitly black-coded. While some Asian cultural influences are still cited, they learn more towards the historical and are intermixed with other historical European influences (Spartans, Vikings, Shakespeare) rather than being fueled by contemporary prejudices towards the political enemies of the US as they were in the TOS era.

Deep Space Nine

Fields also generally based the Klingon group on American Western prototypes from the film The Magnificent Seven or, to a lesser extent, Japanese prototypes from The Magnificent Seven's movie source material, Seven Samurai. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (pp. 131-132)) "So, the hair [...] was permed. So, it had more of a curl instead of the straight type look, and by perming it, they were able to kind of give them larger, bigger hair, so it was more like a mane." ("Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Two", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) "I don't know how you could equate Klingons with what's going on in the world today," he admitted. "I think the intention was to make them like samurai. That hairdo they gave them is very much a samurai hairdo. A lot of the fight sequences, the moves with the bat'telh, are very much taken out of the Asian martial arts [....] It's very romantic you know, these three old guys, the Klingon over-the-hill gang." (The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine issue 15, pp. 17-18) "It was different for them to get into this makeup, because [...] [the makeup was more elaborate and] the beards were bigger, and they were greyer, and they had curls to them, and the moustaches, they had the Fu Manchu look to them. So, they weren't used to sitting that long to be a Klingon." ("Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Two", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) For recreating some old-style Klingons in "Trials and Tribble-ations", the Klingon-playing actors had to be made up with the same swarthy, shiny brown makeup as used in the original series. (The Magic of Tribbles: The Making of Trials and Tribble-ations) ...he had them unite in song, thinking this was "just the kind of thing that Klingons do" because they are, in his opinion, similar to Vikings. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 449)) "I always saw the Klingons as a combination of Japanese Samurai who haven't had their morning coffee (or tea!) and African Zulu warriors." [25]

In DS9 the only inspirations cited seem to be historical, once again leaning towards feudal Japan and the Vikings. Interestingly although the Klingons here are predominantly dark-skinned, I don't think that J.G. Hertzler, who is white, had his skin significantly darkened to play Martok (at least, not compared to the obvious brown makeup worn by other white actors playing Klingons). Having a white actor play a Klingon without dark makeup could've set a precedent decreasing the use of such practices later on, but no one seems to have picked up on it.

Enterprise

The Klingons of ENT: "Sleeping Dogs" were based on the crew of the Russian submarine Kursk. "For me," said Dekker, "the point was to acknowledge the Klingons as 'people' – to find them in a clear position of distress [....] The idea to 'humanize' their plight was mine, and it wasn't anything I thought about as far as canon. It just seemed right." (Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, issue 41, pp. 10-12) In the final draft script of "Affliction", the altered Klingons were initially referred to as "fierce-looking aliens" and were further described thus; "The aliens have a swarthy complexion, and dark facial hair... they could easily be mistaken for Humans. We'll eventually learn these are Klinqons... but their cranial ridges have disappeared."

At this point in time it seems the Klingons had essentially done a 180 from one-dimensional villains to sympathetic fan favourites, while still retaining the skin-darkening aspect of their makeup and "barbaric" characterisation. Although this is not mentioned in the article's section on the Abrams films, the images provided do demonstrate a level of skin darkening for the Klingons' brief appearance in Into Darkness.

The final section of the article is incomplete, meaning I don't have a lot of information for Discovery's redesign of the Klingons. The sources I can find cite ancient civilisations such as the Byzantines as well as Islamic architecture as inspiration for the set design, with a baroque influence on the costumes. I have heard rumours that the crew of Discovery have cited North African cultures as their inspiration for the Klingons but I can't currently find a source for this. Despite the lack of direct quotes, it's visibly clear that the Klingon makeup is still darkening the skin of white actors, although this time also to non-human blue and purple colours, as well as altering certain features in a racialised way. To elaborate: Mary Chieffo, who plays L'Rell on Discovery, is white and has a very thin nose and small lips, but in costume these are broadened in a way that seems imitative of African ethnic features.

As of the making of this post (early August 2023) I haven't seen any of Strange New Worlds, but from some cursory research its latest episode (Subspace Rhapsody) seems to have put a white actor (Bruce Horak) in brown makeup to play a Klingon. I am deeply disappointed that on a television set in 2023 people can still be darkening an actors skin like this without questioning the racial implications of what they're doing.

Thank you for reading to the end of this post. Please feel free to link to it if you found it useful enough to cite in another context. I would like to reiterate that I am white and while this is an issue I care deeply about it is not one I have an emic understanding of, and if anything I've said here is inappropriate I would be very grateful to be made aware.

[leohttbriar]

Someone brought an overhated character poll to my dash about Kai Winn and im literally so sad about the responses. I knew there were people who hated her but it's really baffling to me how maybe 10 people tops acknowledge her past and the reasonings behind her choices, they just see a space Karen.

oh dude, i'm sorry that sucks. and "sad" really is a simple but fairly complete word when it comes to the character of winn adami, huh.

like. i think a lot about how she's the most normal-looking woman on the show. she is also, simply, normal. she is faithful and political and appears and acts in ways far more familiar to us than most characters. even the fact of her alien-faith hardly serves to alienate, given that she is faithful in the way we might be--without true expectation of ever meeting the divine in this life. while kira can seem more like a fictional character when she speaks of the prophets, due to her proximity to them, winn sounds like the person accosting you on a street corner to talk about the rapture.

that's the thing, though, isn't it. about the "karen" phenomenon in general. there is nothing uniquely bad about middle-aged white women--nothing that makes them uniquely ungovernable in social spheres in ways men aren't. in ways everyone isn't, in some way. (merely anecdotal evidence, but my own experience in the service industry made me far more wary of men in their 30s wearing patagonia vests over dress-shirts). winn adami is a normal sort of frustration to people. one they encounter in the day-to-day. the political conservative who stands outside of planned parenthood and tells girls not to throw away their everlasting souls. the pentecostal women speaking gibberish in church, gesturing to the heavens with their out-of-fashion french manicures, who brought a tater-tot hot dish with extra kraft cheese to the pot luck. the women with cross-walls. with like. so many crosses. the women with leathery tans on the aging skin of their arms and neck. the women who quietly walk into voting booths around the world and choose "safety" over anything else, whether or not that "safety" is real.

at least. that's who people think winn is. setting aside the fact that most people don't truly know the kinds of women listed above, that it's unlikely they've spared a single ounce of pity for women like that ever in their entire lives, winn is not exactly pitiable in this way. she is awash in power. she is intelligent. she thinks. she would stand in a voting booth and choose "safety" (whether or not it's real) but she's not the lady wearing a t-shirt that says trump could grab her pussy if he wanted. she's not one of the many blonde women on fox news. she's not even sandra day o'connor or any other female conservative intellectual. because she's a metaphor.

we don't know her real-world politics because she's a fictional character in a fictional universe leading a fictional world. we know she's a conservative because fights very very hard to maintain the status quo regarding her bajoran religion and its teachings. but we don't know how any of that can be truly allegorized to conservative policies in the real-world. the main tension being: conservatives in the real-world base a lot of truly evil policy on a made-up divine figure interpreted through thousands of made-up hermeneutics and it is materially all Not Real. in ds9, the prophets are actual beings who affect reality. winn's said and done things on the show that sound like something an annoying woman with a turquoise-cross around her neck would say at a utah city council meeting about creationism and "inappropriate books." she also says things that a woman would say at a protest against the racist and paternalistic policies of the british museum. all we know of her as a political figure is that she is conservative. and like, power-hungry and desperate, but those aren't essentially related. she wants to conserve. and that encompasses more than one thing.

which means that people, when they see her, simply aren't thinking. they react to a woman who looks as she does. who speaks like a politician. who makes decisions that are unfair. but, exactly as you said, the show grounds her. they give her a past. they richly flesh out so much about her. they have her acting too rationally sometimes for someone of her professed faith. they have her acting completely irrational as her gods reject her again and again. all while she clings to them with a faith that endured actual torture at the hands of violent imperialists who yet attack her planet and yet attack her and yet she has to speak with as the leader of bajor.

and it's hard to see (beyond the obvious) why this character receives so much vitriol when you have characters like garak and dukat and kira who all are considered charming and beloved in some way or another, while still being as complex as they are. (and i don't even think dukat is all that complex.) even sisko has some moments that, if i lived in his world, i would be somewhat repulsed by--like when jake begs him to let the prophets go and sisko embraces the cosmic over the request of his son. (again: the prophets are real though, so my "repulsion" is more a reaction against people i see as priests, who i find in the real world, as a rule, awful.)

so. it's definitely sad. because the level and kind of hate bestowed upon this character really does seem to be a symptom of a much larger issue: of course, misogyny.

also that people don't tend to think.