I’d love to contribute to this thread but between ToB and now Trials of the Luremaster I can’t seem to get my brain to wax philosophical.
Oh well, perhaps in a few days... Wait a sec! Have any of you seen
Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episode "
Rightful Heir?" It tells the story of the return of Kahless, the Klingon messiah (no relation to your’s truly). Here's a bit of a retrospective by Deborah Fisher.
Issues of personal faith were not often explored on Star Trek by the more humanistic-leaning Gene Roddenberry. The legend of Kahless has been alluded to over the years and he even appeared briefly in the original
Star Trek (portrayed by Robert Herron in
"The Savage Curtain"), but to feature the deepening of Worf's spiritual journey was a particularly intrepid move.
Interviewed several years ago for a Klingon retrospective, writer Ron Moore called
"Rightful Heir" an odd script for
Star Trek. "I wanted to do a show about faith," Moore recalled. "What if Kahless came back? The Klingons must have some religion that they all follow. The story explored a lot of topics and notions that had been hovering, but had not really been touched on yet."
Executive Producer Rick Berman especially cautioned his writer and director, Winrich Kolbe, about not doing a Jesus story. "What we didn't want was a skinny, long-haired Western version of Christ," says Kolbe. "We really wanted a Napoleon—a driven, compact figure who probably got picked on at school because he was so short. Now he has a chip on his shoulder and he's playing that out in politics and religion."
Kolbe thought it was possible that instead of being large and imposing, Kahless was more like, well, Danny DeVito. With that image in mind, the director and producers gave Kevin Conway the honor of bringing Kahless the Unforgettable to life.
"Klingons are usually pretty big and I'm not," says Conway without a trace of self-consciousness, "but when they called me, I would have done it—even if they hadn't paid me." Conway was primed to do sci-fi. "I was a sci-fi nerd when I was a kid," he says. "So was my brother and we would pass books back and forth like [Theodore] Sturgeon [writer of "Shore Leave," Star Trek], [Ray] Bradbury, [Robert A.] Heinlein. I was a big fan of Star Trek when it first came on back in the 60s."
The actor was also no stranger to make-up or make-up supervisor Michael Westmore. Conway had been aged 70 years by Westmore techniques for a part in Sylvester Stallone's "Fist." "When I first got to the Star Trek set, though," recalls Conway, "Michael said 'what we did before is nothing to compared to this!'"
Even more challenging than the rigorous makeup calls were the four-inch heels Conway had to wear to boost the character. Walking might not have been too bad, but Conway had to fight Michael Dorn's Worf wearing them while wielding a bat’leth.
Of the heels and the outfit, Conway says "I kind of liked it. By the time I stood up and looked at this figure, it wasn't me anymore. Then I walked around the lot and said 'hello' to people in my new voice. It was a trip."
Conway approached the development of Kahless very seriously and he relished thinking about the Klingons. "They're very strange, but they do have a national character, a kind of fierce, warlike, atavistic personality. At the same time, there's an honor that's important that makes it understandable why they'd be aligned with the Federation.
"Kahless is a Klingon, but he's also a Klingon that's 1,500 years old. I tried to think if we were going back to our ancestors, while they might resemble us, there would be a different way they'd conduct themselves. When Kahless lived, he had absolute power and there was no shortage of confidence in him. He'd been inculcated by the High Priests to think that he was the Messiah. Worf's doubting him made him a little angry at first and only later when he couldn't remember things did he start to have doubts. He realized he was a fraud. Then at the end, Worf tells him he's still Kahless. He put aside his pride and agreed to be at least a figurehead."
The episode Moore wrote (from a story by James E. Brooks) revealed the High Priests' plot to clone Kahless and install him as the true leader of the Klingons. Of course, Gowron had something to say about that. Eventually, however, Gowron agreed to allow the installation of Kahless as the spiritual emperor on the homeworld while he remained leader of the High Council.
"Playing a Klingon was quite interesting," says Conway, "because in spite of the heavy make-up that makes you look like every other Klingon, you have all those little tiny moments in front of the camera to indicate that there's a sub-personality. Each Klingon might look the same on the surface, but each one is different underneath."
For Conway, who has also voiced an audio book about Kahless, the chance to enter the world of Star Trek was unforgettable. "I had the same feelings of fantasy being on Star Trek that I imagine fans have. Stephen Hawking visited the set while I was there. How could anyone pass up an opportunity to be there? Star Trek is more than a TV series. It's a part of our culture that people will be examining years from now. Kahless is such an important figure in Klingon history. It was an honor to play him."
You can get a synopsis and review of
"Rightful Heir" [url="http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~werdna/sttng/tlynch/rightful.rev.html"]here[/url]. The episode raises some intriguing questions about faith.
"If his words hold wisdom and his philosophy is honorable, what does it matter if he returns? What is important is that we follow his teachings. Perhaps the words are more important than the man."
[ 07-08-2001: Message edited by: Kayless ]
