Today in bald-faced retcons:

It's ok, everybody, you can relax: Klingons have hair again. Now I know this is probably low on your list of things to worry about given looming ecological disasters and our country's rapid decline into a petty dictatorship, but holy shit some people have very strong feelings about Klingons. I should probably explain and you should probably buckle the ol' nerd belt.

Above: future people taking my sound advice.

I'm not saying the producers weren't on
 cocaine. Just that they probably did less
 cocaine than they would do in the 70's.

The newest Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, made some design changes to certain elements to established Trek canon including, most notably and most controversially, the Klingons. If you're just a casual nerd, you probably know Klingons as the lumpy-headed alien, ultra-violent Viking/Samurai people from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But Discovery, being a prequel, is set just before the original series. And on that show Klingons were just white dudes in problematic brown make-up and fu manchu mustaches. And this was the 60's, so you can't even blame cocaine.

Enter: the space orc.

Later, the Trek movies and TNG introduced the more familiar look with the forehead ridges, making them more alien and less racist. Well, slightly. At the insistence of then show runner Bryan Fuller, Disco (it's the abbreviation) took this redesign even further adding more detail and more varied, less human skin tones. It also took away the 80's metal band hair and made all the Klingons bald. What wasn't super-clear is whether or not the audience was supposed to interpret this as Klingons were always hairless or that these Klingons just shaved their heads.

Ok, mostly matured. I still think
Into Darkness was a shitty
Wrath of Khan knockoff.

Now, you're probably wondering who the shit would devote more than a half second of their life to pondering this mystery and the answer is fans. Reactions ranged from, 'hey cool new Klingons' to 'Bryan Fuller is basically Hitler.' Canon-violation is, as you know, a grave sin among trekkies. And I get this. I've certainly been guilty of this kind of obsessive fandom, but I think I've mellowed in my old age. I like the newer, balder look and don't really care if it's a visual reboot for the age of HD, or just all the rage on planet Qu'noS. I've matured.

But an olive branch, of sorts, has been offered in the trailer for Discovery season 2 in which the Klingons have hair again.

And there was a great rejoicing throughout the land
followed immediately by pedantic, knit-picky complaints
about all the other things that are wrong with the trailer.

You know what this scene needed?
More lore about Worf's haircut.

Glenn Hetrick, the show's make-up designer, even offered an in-universe rationale for why the Klingons look like KISS again explaining that they, as a species, all shaved their heads because Kahless or something, and that's cool. I mean, if there's one thing we Star Trek fans love it's needlessly complex lore to explain on-screen inconsistencies. I would have been satisfied with the idea that bald just went out of style, but I can also see why major, unexplained visual changes can annoy some fans and drive others to have irrational freak outs on the internet.

CBS All Access: the bitter, police-procedural
flavored pill Trek fans have had to swallow.

On the other hand, loosing one's mind over Bryan Fuller's decision to not trot out the Ming the Merciless mustaches and gold lamé uniforms of the original series is maybe not the healthiest thing to do. Anyway, the trailer looks fun and contains 100% less Lenny Kravitz music, so I can't wait to re-sign up for that CBS streaming service so I can watch this one thing and then cancel. Oh, and did I mention Spock?

Because Spock. Speaking of characters who are suddenly hairier than we remember, Spock, now played by Ethan Peck-remember? We talked about this. Anyway, Spock shows up in the trailer, shaggy and bearded although hopefully without a lot of screen time devoted to developing a backstory about his facial hair.

"A beard? But facial hair is a blatant violation of canon as established in
TOS episode 1: The Cage in which Spock of 2254 is shown clean shaven.
We're going to need at least a two-parter to explain this one."

-At least 15% of Star Trek fans