Having already restored the original Starship Enterprise and put it back on display, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum needed to find another way to celebrate Star Trek’s birthday today. So it commissioned extraterrestrial linguist Mark Okrand to record special audio tours of the museum in Klingon, to accommodate visitors from Qo’noS.
Mark Okrand, language consultant for Star Trek
Okrand, a former Smithsonian post-doctoral fellow, is better known among Trekkies as the linguist who developed the Vulcan and Klingon languages for the Star Trek films and TV series. So who better to record an hour-long highlight tour of the Air and Space Museum’s most popular exhibits in Klingon than him? Maybe Worf, but his Starfleet contract is sealed tighter than an airlock.
You can listen to Okrand’s Klingon museum highlight tours on the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum website, through its new GO FLIGHT app which is available for mobile devices through both the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store, or by watching this fun outtakes video featuring the man himself, the least intimidating Klingon in the galaxy.