The makeup for Original Series Klingons

[tim0122]

I want to preface this post by saying I know why the Klingon makeup was changed starting with the movies.

What I'm curious about is solely TOS makeup. The Klingons in TOS season one are all shown (as far as I can recall) to have dark skin. In season two, I don't think any of them have dark makeup on. Now the dark makeup in Errand of Mercy can be pretty spotty, but they at least made the attempt. In season two, there is nothing except facial hair.

Was there a reason for this? Was it purely a cost saving measure (though, I do wonder how much dark face makeup could possibly cost in the mid-to-late-60s)? Or was it because they were worried about being compared to a minstrel show or something similar (I.e. white guys are given dark makeup and are shown to a ruthless, barbaric warrior species with no redeeming qualities)?

Just curious, as I found it annoying that one of the few species the makeup people bothered to make look different than humans in the first season are made more normal looking the second season.

P.S. I haven't seen season three yet. So I don't know if they rectify this there.

 

[tim0122]

I meant to post this in TOS section. Admin, please feel free to move it. Sorry about that.

 

[Christopher]

From what I've read (though I can't remember where), makeup artist Fred Phillips just forgot how he'd done the Klingon makeup the first time. It had been kind of improvised by Phillips and John Colicos in "Errand of Mercy" anyway. Although they restored the original look by the time "A Private Little War" came along. It was only "Friday's Child" and "The Trouble With Tribbles" that used the more "human" look.

 

[Maurice]

Basically, Fred Philiips had forgotten what the makeup looked like in "Errand of Mercy", so in the second season you got the Kaukasian Klingons. In the third season he went back to the original swarthy look.

 

[tim0122]

A Private Little War and Friday's Child often meld together for me. Must have forgot that the former corrected the makeup.

Thank you both for the information!

 

[RAMA]

Ive actually seen people on social media recently who said the Klingon grease paint and Fu Manchu mustaches were the ultimate expression of Kilngondom. This is when you know TOS purites have lost all touch with reality. Granted, I can overlook it's crudeness because the Klingons are so memorable but let's not go overboard shall we?

RAMA

 

[Kor]

The TOS Klingon makeup was just fine. It wasn't any more or less "crude" than anything else on 1960s TV. But Roddenberry later went overboard with revisionism in trying to make everything look completely different for the cinema.

Let's not forget that the swarthy Klingon makeup included some green tint, thereby contributing to a not-quite-human look, along with the unusually-shaped eyebrows, mustaches and beards.

Considering Philips didn't receive any directives whatsoever on what the Klingons should look like and had to come up with the look at the last minute, his solution was quite clever.

Kor

 

[Warped9]

"The Trouble With Tribbles" and "Friday's Child" featuring your bargain basement Klingons.

Yes, Fred Philips and John Colicos created the original look togather.

 

[Christopher]

The TOS Klingon makeup was just fine. It wasn't any more or less "crude" than anything else on 1960s TV. But Roddenberry later went overboard with revisionism in trying to make everything look completely different for the cinema.

That's not "going overboard with revisionism," it's having the basic good sense to recognize that the movie screen has much greater size and resolution than the TV screens available in the '60s and '70s and thus demanded a more detailed and better-looking makeup design. Creativity is about trial and error and refinement. The insistence of purist fans that creators should always slavishly adhere to the earliest version of their ideas is naive and backward. The first version of an idea is rarely the best. That's why we aren't discussing a show about Captain Robert April of the starship Yorktown and his half-Martian first officer Spock who absorbs energy through a metal plate in his chest.

 

[Warped9]

That's why we aren't discussing a show about Captain Robert April of the starship Yorktown and his half-Martian first officer Spock who absorbs energy through a metal plate in his chest.

C'mon, you'd have loved to see that.

I've long looked at TMP as GR's Trek ideas writ large. TMP allowed for things Roddenberry could only dream of on a television budget.

 

[Kor]

In TMP, Spock and Sonak were still recognizable as the same species as the Vulcans of TOS. The makeup was undoubtedly done with more care and detail for the feature film than for the TV show, but the design was not radically changed for the big screen.

I think something similar could have been done with the Klingons; make them look good and more detailed for the big screen, without arbitrarily making them look like a completely different species.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

I think something similar could have been done with the Klingons; make them look good and more detailed for the big screen, without arbitrarily making them look like a completely different species.

On the other hand, I think an opportunity was missed to portray the Klingons as more than just a "species." Trek has always tended to fall into the lazy trap of racial essentialism, treating species identity and political/cultural/religious/etc. identity as exactly congruent. Imagine if "Klingon" had been redefined as a cultural designator encompassing any people who ascribed to the code of Kahless, regardless of their species. Or even just as the name of an empire that encompassed subjects of multiple species, like how the Roman Empire included everyone from Britons to North Africans. That would've been a handy way to deal with the different Klingon appearances and make their civilization richer, less monolithic, and more interesting. We could've had Klingons belonging to many species and identified visually by, say, their clothing and the symbols they wore.

 

[Kor]

^ That is a very good point. With a background like that, it would have really meant something when Krell told Apella, "I'll make a Klingon of you yet."

Kor

 

[Christopher]

Then again, if they'd gone that route, we never would've gotten "Affliction" and "Divergence," which means we would've missed out on the high-warp rescue sequence at the start of "Divergence," which is probably my favorite action sequence in the entire Trek franchise.

 

[Warped9]

Anything to spare us from the ENT "solution."

 

[Marsden]

I'm just going to mention that in the StarFleet Battles version based on TOS, TAS, Franz Josef TM, and some other stuff pre 1979 exclusively, the Klingon race were the ones that controlled the Klingon Empire, but about 60% of the starship crews were not Klingons but subject races conquered by them, which is why the Klingons stayed in the front of the ship with the long skinny neck in case there was a mutiny by said subject races.


I also wonder if they didn't do anything with Tige Andrews because of his slightly darker complexion, but then really dropped the ball with William Campbell.

I also thought Tige Andrews was excellent as a Klingon. I'd rank him only behind John Calicos and Michael Ansara for Klingons.

 

[Kor]

Andrews' hairline foreshadowed the future appearance of Klingons from the movies onward.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Kras

Kor

 

[BillJ]

Ive actually seen people on social media recently who said the Klingon grease paint and Fu Manchu mustaches were the ultimate expression of Kilngondom. This is when you know TOS purites have lost all touch with reality. Granted, I can overlook it's crudeness because the Klingons are so memorable but let's not go overboard shall we?

RAMA

The Klingons looked their best in The Motion Picture and The Search for Spock. I'll take the "grease paint" and "Fu Manchu" mustaches over the "Bad Hair Band" Klingons of TNG and its spinoffs every day of the week. I also think that the Abrams films did a great job of making the Klingons feel alien for the first time since TMP.

 

[Maurice]

In reality, they basically had to redesign the Klingons for TMP because otherwise non-Trekkies would have just assumed they were human. Not saying the solution they landed on was optimal., but I get why they did it.

 

[Christopher]

In reality, they basically had to redesign the Klingons for TMP because otherwise non-Trekkies would have just assumed they were human. Not saying the solution they landed on was optimal., but I get why they did it.

Anyway, it's worth keeping in mind that continuity wasn't as big a deal with TV and movie producers back then as it's become in the modern age. Lots of productions tweaked their continuity and contradicted themselves all the time. Look at The Six Million Dollar Man. At first, in the pilot, Steve Austin was a civilian astronaut who was given bionics by Oliver Spencer (Darren McGavin), a ruthless intelligence chief who basically forced him to work as an indentured spy. But in the series, he was an Air Force colonel who was given bionics by Oscar Goldman, his best pal whom he worked for voluntarily. And when the series did an episode that revisited his recovery and early adjustment to his bionics, they replaced the nurse character who'd helped him through it with an entirely different character and actress. That same episode introduced another bionic man named Barney Miller, but then the sitcom Barney Miller premiered not long thereafter, so when they brought Barney back again, he was suddenly named Barney Hiller.

Continuity was a flexible thing then, so nobody who was making a movie version of a decade-old TV series would've felt there was anything wrong with changing things about it to fit the movie. If anything, it's impressive that TMP was as consistent with TOS as it was.