thlIngan Hol featured on NBC's "Chuck"

[Kesvirit]

Film.com

Music on Chuck: Klingon and Kevlar
Nov 27, 2007 | Drake Lelane


First off, let's congratulate Chuck (and Life) on getting picked up for the full season. Along with the fanciful Pushing Daisies, these are the cream of this season's crop of new series, and it's nice to see great television get rewarded even without stellar ratings. Knowing that Chuck has a life beyond the next few episodes felt important for this episode, so I'm sure NBC chief Ben Silverman had that in mind in making the announcement prior to airing.

Bringing back Bryce so soon was a dangerous proposition, but it was handled pretty well, especially having his first conversation with Chuck be coded in Klingon. Remember that his last, via email, was coded in the language of the game Zork. My Star Trek geek is fairly limited, and I can't recognize Klingon, but a quick search shows that they at least tossed a few correct words and phrases in there to appear accurate. It was just a nice touch to have Chuck be saved by geek code instead of the cryptology of the spy world. First was Buy Mart's code word "Pineapple" to use in a "Black Swan" event, which not only referenced Nassim Nicholas Taleb's rare event theory, but also an infamous Tonight Show sketch featuring Ross the intern and Steve Irwin (see video). It's hard to imagine this was the Buy Mart employees' first Black Friday, but funny nonetheless to see Jeff and Lester cowering in fear of the shopping throngs.

Getting back to geek code, specifically Klingon, Bryce again invokes the Star Trek language to query whether Chuck is wearing a vest (Bryce: "HIja'? ghobe'?" Chuck: "HIja'"). The fact that there's not a word for vest (let alone "Kevlar") in the current Klingon canon of words is something that's easy to overlook. Who knows, perhaps someone on the Chuck staff is a Friend of Maltz, and legitimately created a word for it?

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The article continues here.

(Be on the lookout for Tony Todd as semi-regular CIA Director Graham.)

[Qunchuy]

...they at least tossed a few correct words and phrases in there to appear accurate.

Bryce: tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'? Do you speak Klingon?
Chuck: HIja'. bIpIvHa'law'. Yes. You look terrible (you seem unwell).

These are phrases from the Useful Klingon Expressions appendix of The Klingon Dictionary. The closed captioning is exactly what is given in TKD as the "rough pronunciation".

The fact that there's not a word for vest (let alone "Kevlar") in the current Klingon canon of words is something that's easy to overlook.

The actor's tongue apparently stumbled on the pronunciation, but it sounds like the word was supposed to be wep jacket. The word yoD shield would have been perfect at the start of the line, and maybe he just forgot it. The closed captioning omits the sentence entirely, so we don't have any more clues to go on.

Bryce: (yoD) ghaj'a' wep? HIja'? ghobe'? Does the jacket have (a shield)? Yes? No?
Chuck: HIja'. Yes.

Hmm, now that I think about it, the writers might have been going for this:

ghaj yoD wep? shield jacket has (lit.)

Accounting for the unfamiliar vowel pronunciation, that's pretty much what I heard.

[jorDe]

Too bad all of the shows listed here were canceled. I liked Chuck.