Posted on 12/20/2010 10:42:06 AM PST by Fractal Trader
Across the country this week, productions of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" are warming hearts. In this city, one version poses this question: What if Charles Dickens were a Trekkie?
The answer runs an hour and 20 minutes and includes three fight scenes, 17 actors with latex ridges glued to their foreheads and a performance delivered entirely in Klingon—a language made up for a Star Trek movie.
"It's like an opera," says Christopher O. Kidder, the director and co-writer. "You know what's happening because you already know the story."
For those not fluent in Klingon, English translations are projected above the stage.
The arc of "A Klingon Christmas Carol" follows the familiar Dickens script: An old miser is visited on a hallowed night by three ghosts who shepherd him through a voyage of self-discovery. The narrative has been rejiggered to match the Klingon world view.
For starters, since there is neither a messiah nor a celebration of his birth on the Klingon planet of Kronos, the action is pegged to the Klingon Feast of the Long Night. Carols and trees are replaced with drinking, fighting and mating rituals. And because Klingons are more concerned with bravery than kindness, the main character's quest is for courage.
Klingons first appeared on the Star Trek television series in the 1960s. They were a brutish, warlike species who dramatized hostilities between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Mr. Kidder says.
In 1984, producers of "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock," incorporated Klingons into the screenplay and asked Marc Okrand, a linguist with an expertise in Native American languages, to create dialogue for the movie. Mr. Okrand created a 2000-word language that could be expanded by compounding words.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“Carols and trees are replaced with drinking, fighting and mating rituals.”
Sounds like my kinda holiday! ;)
syfy ping
Hmmm. I always envisioned a Ferengi Christmas Carol...
See! See how well it works!
That’s very wrong, which is probably why I’m laughing my butt off.
A Christmas Carol? In Klingon????
jIH ta’ ghobe (I do not care.)
i heard rhat james dohan invented klingnon.
Nope...it was a man named Marc Okrand. He invented it for “Star Trek III” and designed it so that new words could be made by combining others.
Mr. Okrand actually consulted for this “Christmas Carol” travesty.
GOES TO URANUS AND WIPES OUT KLINGONS....
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