Star Trek and History (14 page)

B'Elanna still refers to her Klingon half as a separate person, however. In “Day of Honor” she even attempts to go through with a Klingon ritual, saying, “I've been thinking about the rituals that my mother taught me, and they don't seem quite so hateful as they did when I was a child.” Still, she leaves the ceremony after it begins, telling Tom Paris that it was “ridiculous, meaningless posturing.” He insists she should complete it, saying, “It matters because it's part of who you are. You've been running away from that your whole life.”

This theme continues in the
Voyager
episode “Barge of the Dead.” B'Elanna decides her mother is in Gre'thor, Klingon hell, and she must rescue her. She goes through the ritual and saves her mother (although we don't know whether any of this is actually real). In the end B'Elanna discovers that she has been dishonorable and that she merits Gre'thor because of her uncontrolled anger. Paradoxically, what she had always considered the result of her Klingon blood she now realizes is her own dishonor.
17
Later, in “Lineage,” when she becomes pregnant, she reacts hostilely when she learns that the baby will have some Klingon characteristics, and she wants genetic therapy to remove them. We discover that she fears being abandoned by Tom Paris just as her father left her mother. When Paris reassures her, she is finally reconciled to her Klingon heritage. She realizes that throughout her life, she has blamed being Klingon for the loss of her father.

The difficulties experienced by bicultural and biracial characters like Worf and B'Elanna reflect American concerns about immigrants from cultures that are not traditional sources of immigration. For example, the problems Klingon women have integrating into human society mirror the reality of many girls from immigrant backgrounds. Much attention has been focused on this question, particularly with regard to women in the Islamic world.
18
Most dramatically, the “honor” killing of Palestina Isa in 1989 in Missouri brought the subject to national attention. The paradox is that Klingon women are both more aggressive than their human counterparts and more oppressed than their Federation counterparts (in the series, no woman can sit on the High Council, and we never see a Klingon woman commanding a ship). Although Klingon men living among humans experience the same prejudice, they have fewer problems adjusting after their boyhood.
19

Beyond tensions about multiculturalism and gender, one can also see a fear of being dragged into foreign conflicts emerging in later
Star Trek
movies and series, which reflect parallel concerns in American political debates. In 1982, a multinational peacekeeping force, which included American troops, arrived in Lebanon, but it quickly became a target itself of suicide bombings. Over the next few years, terrorist attacks against the United States continued, including a long list of bombings, suicide attacks, and hijackings. These worries found their reflection in
Star Trek
as well. In the two parts of
Next Generation
's “Redemption,” the Federation becomes involved in a Klingon civil war that includes suicide bombers, large-scale battles, and secret interference by the Romulans. Picard had nearly been assassinated in an earlier episode (“Sins of the Father”) because of his involvement in Klingon politics, and now the Federation faces a difficult situation: refuse to enter the conflict and face the near certainty of Romulan allies being victorious (and upsetting the delicate balance of power in the galaxy) or enter the conflict and face a massive war over something that does not directly concern it. Of course, Picard manages to find a solution, but throughout
The Next Generation
and
Deep Space Nine
, the Federation continually faces internal turmoil within the Klingon Empire that has important repercussions for it, as well.

We have already noticed that the Klingon Empire is frequently shown as corrupt and in decline.
20
In
Deep Space Nine
, “Blood Oath,” Kang laments, “There was a time, when I was a young man, the mere mention of a Klingon Empire made worlds tremble. Now our warriors are opening restaurants and serving racht to the grandchildren of men I slaughtered in battle.”

Problems of corruption and faction fighting became endemic in the highest levels of Klingon society and government. For example, the Klingon High Council declares Worf's dead father, Mogh, a traitor at the instigation of Duras, the head of a powerful house. In reality, Mogh was innocent and Duras's father was guilty, a fact that the chancellor, K'mpec, freely recognizes, in the episode “Sins of the Father.” He justifies accusing Mogh of being a traitor by his wish to preserve peace in the Empire, and he convinces Worf to accept discommendation, an official form of ostracism. In “Reunion,” Duras continues to prove himself dishonorable, murdering K'Ehleyr and later poisoning K'mpec. K'mpec's attempts to preserve peace fail, and after his death civil war breaks out. In the
Deep Space Nine
episode “Tacking into the Wind,” Ezri Dax later points out to Worf how much the Empire has declined:

Who was the last leader of the High Council that you respected? Has there even been one? And how many times have you had to cover up the crimes of Klingon leaders because you were told that it was for the good of the Empire? I know this sounds harsh but the truth is, you have been willing to accept a government that you know is corrupt. . . . Worf, you are the most honorable and decent man that I've ever met and if you're willing to tolerate men like Gowron then what hope is there for the Empire?

In the end, Worf takes matters into his own hands and challenges Gowron to combat. He wins but refuses to lead the Empire—choosing instead Martok, a man of humble origins who has suffered prejudice within the Empire for being a man of great integrity and honor—perhaps because he is from outside the ruling class. His appointment signals real hope for the future, especially since Worf becomes the Federation ambassador to Kronos. Under Martok's leadership and with Worf's support, the Klingons will almost certainly become more like their Federation allies.

Although
Enterprise
concerns the early history of Starfleet before the Federation, it is the most recently produced series. It explores in some detail the initial contact between humans and Klingons in order to explain the origins of the hostile relations between the two in
Star Trek
. Much of this is linked to corruption within the Empire. Jonathan Archer, commander of the
Enterprise
, is put on trial by the Klingons for aiding and abetting “rebels.” We first see the official Klingon version of events and then Archer's—and we are left in no doubt that Archer's is the correct one. The “rebels” are only refugees who have been stripped of all resources after their annexation by the Klingons: “[They] left us with nothing. . . . They said they'd bring food, fuel. They never came back” (
ENT
, “Judgment”).

We see that, from the start, the Klingon Empire is a corrupt, aggressive, and expansionist power. Archer's trial is a farce, and Kolos, his advocate, talks about how justice has become a parody. Kolos explains that in his career he has won over two hundred cases, but all of them were much earlier, “when the tribunal was a forum for the truth and not a tool for the warrior class.” He laments:

Now all young people want to do is take up weapons as soon as they can hold them. They're told there's honor in victory. Any victory. But what honor is there in a victory over a weaker opponent? Had Duras destroyed that ship he would have been lauded as a hero of the Empire for murdering helpless refugees. We were a great society not so long ago. When honor was earned through integrity and acts of true courage, not senseless bloodshed. (
ENT
, “Judgment”)

This episode aired in April 2003; one could see it as a commentary on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began in March of that year. Archer makes the point that “for thousands of years my people had similar problems.”
21

Over five series, eleven films, and numerous books, Klingons have changed and developed in parallel with evolutions in American society and foreign policy. Originally representing an extremely negative view of the Soviet Union, reflecting Cold War tensions, the Klingons became over time a mirror of the worries of a multicultural America. In the process, they went from tyrannical dictators to honor-bound warriors who fail to live up to their cultural ideals. In all cases the Federation, that representative of Western democracy and liberalism, is held up as the better civilization and the one toward which the Klingons should evolve. However, it is also made clear in the later series that Klingon civilization had been different and nobler in the past—more like that of the Federation—and that departing from this has led to tyranny, dishonor, and endless fighting between factions. An entire history has been created for a fictional people, but this history reflects the reality of American experiences over the last fifty years.

Notes

1.
The language, invented by Marc Okrand, has devotees at the Klingon Language Institute, which publishes
HolQeD
, a scholarly journal;
jatmey
, a journal of poetry and fiction; and
Qo
'
noS QonoS
, which is entirely in Klingon. The Klingon Language Institute also offers a course to learn the language. See
http://www.kli.org/
.

With regard to Klingon role-playing groups, see Jennifer Porter, “All I Ever Want to Be, I Learned from Playing Klingon,” in
Alien Worlds: Social and Religious Dimensions of Extraterrestrial Contact
, ed. Diana Tumminia (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007). Also Peter Chvany, “‘Do We Look Like Ferengi Capitalists to You?'
Star Trek
's Klingons as Emergent Virtual American Ethnics,” in
Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture
, eds. Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).

2.
Gene Coon to Don Ingalls, August 21, 1967, quoted in Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, “Cold War Pop Culture and the Image of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Perspective of the Original
Star Trek
Series,”
Journal of Cold War Studies
7, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 78. Leonard Nimoy also admitted as much: “I was mulling all this over and thinking about the similarities between Federation/Klingon Empire relations and U.S./Soviet Union relations—the ‘Cold War'”; Leonard Nimoy,
I Am Spock
(New York: Hyperion, 1995), 313–315.

3.
Rick Worland, “From the New Frontier to the Final Frontier:
Star Trek
from Kennedy to Gorbachev,”
Film and History
24, nos. 1–2 (1994): 19. Mark Lagon made similar comments in “‘We Owe It to Them to Interfere':
Star Trek
and U.S. Statecraft in the 1960s and the 1990s,”
Extrapolation
34, no. 3 (1993): 251–263.

4.
For other commentaries, see: Daniel Bernardi, Star Trek
and History: Raceing toward a White Future
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 51–52; Rick Worland, “Captain Kirk: Cold Warrior,”
Journal of Popular Film and Television
16, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 113; Lincoln Geraghty, “Creating and Comparing Myth in Twentieth-Century Science Fiction:
Star Trek
and
Star Wars
,”
Literature Film Quarterly
33 (2005): 195; and Sarantakes, “Cold War Pop Culture and the Image of U.S. Foreign Policy,” 80–81.

5.
Lagon talks about “the zealous desire of James T. Kirk . . . to spread the Federation's way of life.” “‘We Owe It to Them to Interfere,'” 252.

6.
John F. Kennedy, Announcement of the formation of the Peace Corps, March 1, 1961,
http://www.peacecorps.gov/about/history/speech/
. Worland also comments on the Kennedy influence in “From the New Frontier.” See also Denise Bostdorff and Steven Goldzwig, “Idealism and Pragmatism in American Foreign Policy Rhetoric: The Case of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
24, no. 3 (1994): 515–528.

7.
Rudyard Kipling (1899) in
Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1940), 323–324. There is a large amount of literature on the imperialist elements in
Star Trek
, most of which does not directly concern Klingons. Katja Kanzler, for example, in
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations: The Multicultural Evolution of
Star Trek, American Studies Monograph Series no. 115 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, Winter 2004), 103, sees Jean-Luc Picard as representing European imperialism.

8.
This has been frequently analyzed, so it will not be discussed at any length here. For more, see H. Bruce Franklin's chapter in this volume, and also his “
Star Trek
in the Vietnam Era,”
Science Fiction Studies
21, no. 1 (March 1994): 28–31; and Worland, “From the New Frontier” and “Captain Kirk”; Sarantakes explains in detail the rather muddled development of the episode in “Cold War Pop Culture and the Image of U.S. Foreign Policy,” 90–96. See also Jon Wagner and Jan Lunden,
Deep Space and Sacred Time:
Star Trek
in the American Mythos
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 154; and Paul Christopher Manuel, “‘But What of Lazarus?' Taking Individuals Seriously in the
Star Trek
Saga,” in
New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction
, eds. Donald Hassler and Clyde Wilcox (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 169.