6 Years Later, Star Trek Just Answered A Big Canon Question With A Massive Twist
The folks at Starfleet Academy answer a burning question about the Klingons.
In 2020, when Star Trek: Discovery took the franchise into the 32nd century, fans had a question: What happened to the Klingons? While the Klingons of the 23rd century dealt with shifting aesthetics, the Klingons of the far future were missing in action. But now, Starfleet Academy has delivered a stand-out episode that fully unpacks the Klingon question. The fourth episode of the season, “Vox in Excelso,” starts with a quirky premise, but eventually reveals itself to be pure, old-school Trek.
Karim Diane’s resident peace-loving Klingon, Jay-Den, is in the spotlight for this one, and along with Starfleet Academy showrunner Noga Landau, the pair helped Inverse unpack what this episode was all about and how they showed a new side of the Klingons without taking away the core of what makes them special. Spoilers ahead.
Jay-Den’s family in a flashback.
“Vox in Excelso” is Latin for “a voice from on high,” and the episode begins with a literal examination of voices and talking. Turns out Starfleet Academy has a speech and debate team, and the Doctor (Robert Picardo) is their coach. We learn that Caleb (Sandro Rosta) is really good at debate, and Jay-Den is terrified of public speaking. But the episode only uses this as a jumping-off point, because we soon discover that the Klingons are no longer rulers of a vast empire, but refugees spread throughout the galaxy, and that only eight major Klingon houses even exist anymore. Essentially, this is the answer to the Discovery question. The Klingons have been absent from the Discovery era because, after the Burn, the Empire collapsed, and the Klingons refused help.
“I think it was so important for us to say: how have we never seen the Klingons before [in this era]? And what would it mean to be a Klingon in the 32nd century?” Landau tells Inverse. “And that led us to this really important conversation around how many people nowadays on Earth are refugees, and what would it mean if the Klingon Empire became a diaspora, who had no home, who had nowhere to go, who lost their empire. But, who never lost their identity as Klingons.”
Nahla does her best to understand Klingons, but even her centuries of wisdom are no match for Jay-Den’s hot take.
When tragedy strikes, and several of the few remaining Klingon refugee ships are destroyed, the need to find a new homeworld becomes urgent, and Starfleet wants to help. It’s at this point that the central debate of the episode gets interesting: Jay-Den knows the only way to get the Klingons to accept help is to do so without destroying their culture.
It’s an argument that’s been at the core of many of Star Trek’s better conversations about multiculturalism; or as the Klingon Chancellor Azetbur (Rosanna DeSoto) said in The Undiscovered Country (1991), “The Federation is no more than a homo sapiens only club.” In essence, “Vox in Excelso” is picking that conversation up several centuries later. The Federation obviously values pluralism, but even an atypical, peace-loving Klingon like Jay-Den knows you can’t take someone’s culture away in the name of saving them. The Klingon problem needs a Klingon solution.
“The journey that Jay-Den goes on in this episode is all about finding his voice,” Karim Diane says. “And it was the journey I was going on, too, literally finding his voice. How much emotion can I give that voice? And I think you’ll continue to see him and I develop our voice, both sonically and also, emotionally.”
Like the shy Jay-Den, Alexander, Worf’s son, did not want to be a warrior.
When Diane talks about his Klingon alter-ego, he toggles between his softer, natural speaking voice and the deep baritone of Jay-Den. There’s pluralism there, too. Diane contains Jay-Den, but he’s imbued his shy Klingon with some unexpected points of reference. Diane did his homework when he got the part, and that meant figuring out all sides of the Klingons, not just the tropes everybody knows.
“I would say maybe the episodes where I was watching and observing Alexander were influential for me,” Diane reveals, referencing Worf’s son from The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. “With those episodes, I realized, the Klingons aren’t all just one way. There are multiple ways for them to exist.”
This isn’t to say Jay-Den is exactly like Alexander, but as Diane carries on the tradition of this proud and complex alien race, he’s proving, once again, that the Klingons contain multitudes.
