Star Trek: 10 Controversies Behind Discovery’s Troubled Early Seasons

Yet another of Bryan Fuller's lasting aesthetic directives was the radical redesign of the Klingons for the Klingon-centric first season of Star Trek: Discovery. That redesign, executed by Glenn Hetrick, Neville Page, and James MacKinnon, included the elimination of the species' previously flowing manes, a new array of skin tones which now incorporated shades of purple, and the dramatic expansion of the Klingons' head size.

The decision to make such drastic alterations to the species was intended to make the Klingons believable to a more modern and discerning audience and to emphasize their alienness. However, makeup designer Glenn Hetrick was concerned about the response to those changes:

When we started, I was kind of obsessive about the fact that some fans were going to complain about the new look, the same way they did when The Next Generation came out. I get that.... And I really pushed for adding hair... The conversations went round and round.

Ultimately Hetrick lost his fight for the Klingons' lustrous locks in season one and an addition the aliens' new look, devised by Fuller, fell by the wayside with his departure. According to The Art of Star Trek: Discovery, Fuller feared the larger Klingon heads made the actors' eyes "beady and close together." To solve this issue, Fuller proposed that CGI be used to augment the Klingon prosthetics, though this was ultimately abandoned when Fuller was dismissed.