I disagree, season one showed us that every Klingon everywhere was bald. In war, before war, in childhood, even in alternate realities. I'm not a fan of how season two chose to bring hair back, but they were definitely altering a season one decision.
True, but I think the idea is that it'd be better to leave the specifics to the audience, rather than drawing attention to it and establishing some Real Official Fanwank. If we just started seeing haired Klingons in season two, or they started using the holograms less and less, without drawing attention to it, it'd leave it to the audience to believe whatever made us all happiest. Doing it the way they have gives season two the air of a
fix fic, calling out all the stuff that someone didn't like about season one and tidying it up, but without actually retconning it into the cornfield entirely. Granted, I don't usually mind that sort of thing when it happens in the novels, but one important difference between novels and TV shows is that novels have narration. There could be a page or two just about Klingon fashions vis-a-vis times of war and Great House disunity that's thought out, sensible, and gives a deeper reason that affects characterization or subtext or something, but you can't have Burnham do much more on screen than "I heard the Klingons are growing their hair again," which, no shit, we've got eyes, Michael.
She can't go on about how Klingons started shaving their heads when the Houses fell into civil war thirty years earlier, that the practice was started in the early days of the religion of Kahless, as a reference to him making his sword by dipping his hair in lava, that it was supposed to reflect that the Klingon people had no time for pursuits other than war if they wished to survive to hunt and drink and sing opera another day, that every fiber of their being (and every strand of their hair) had to go into the fight, but doing it for so long made it cease to be extraordinary, and many Klingons were beginning to feel the tradition had outlived its usefulness in an era of endless war, both hot and cold, both internal and external, rather than brief, defined conflicts with clear winners and losers with existential stakes. There, that ties into the deeper lore, smooths the path between where we've been and where we're going to end up where Klingons never shave their heads, and even has some social commentary about the changing face of war in the post World War II era. Easy. Pocket Books, DM me.
It's something I've been saying about Discovery in season two. It is, in the parlance of the times, extra. It always goes further than it needs to, but not far enough to justify making a big deal of things. In lieu of starting to explore some really novel, trippy concepts and drama that would justify keeping to their super-liminal style, the show needs some subtlety. Maybe I should ask
Hoity Toity to break into the production offices and graffiti "LESS IS MORE" on the writers' room door.
