Star Trek and History (45 page)

Is it possible, given the long arc and varied manifestations of the franchise, to talk about anything resembling a consistent pattern of gender relations and gender identity within the
Star Trek
universe? Perhaps a clearer picture emerges if one looks not at Starfleet but at the alien cultures, the eternal Other that surrounds them. In much of Western imagining, that alien Other is itself an image of the female, defeated or tamed by the intrepid male explorer, just as Kirk and McCoy team up to destroy the salt-sucking (and seductively shape-changing) female alien in the first episode ever broadcast, “The Man Trap.” At its best,
Star Trek
tries to move beyond such simple equations, but often alien culture is a good place to look for attitudes to Otherness (including femaleness), beginning with the most archetypical
Star Trek
alien from outside the Federation, the Klingons.
7

In the original series, the Klingons were the Federation's chief enemy. They could not have been more “other” in their creation—everything that American society in the late 1960s and early 1970s felt it was distancing itself from—with their mindless aggression and slavish adherence to warrior codes. There was a growing feeling among American elites that responding to aggression with more aggression was always a bad thing; this was the era of the Cold War, the arms race, the missile crisis, and escalating aggression in Southeast Asia. It was natural that TV culture reflected our own anxieties about that world.

But by the late 1980s and early 1990s, that hypermasculinized Other was no longer something to push away but something with which to achieve an uneasy rapprochement.
The Next Generation
saw a Klingon on the bridge, and the
Enterprise
's captain immersed himself in the ways of this culture—we as the viewers were making our peace with the hypermasculine aggressor, recognizing him as part of ourselves. If the patriarchal society of the Klingons (and the secondary role of women within it) were just another cultural expression of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, then they must be respected as such. The dictum of respect for other cultures was seen as a more enlightened way of looking at the universe than the older
Star Trek
notion of the Federation as the lone outpost of civilization and social mores.

By the late 1990s, that respect had become something more: it had become a kind of longing. As Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) joined
Deep Space Nine
and began a relationship with the (now firmly heterosexual) Jadzia Dax, viewers saw the world of Federation values—a world, not incidentally, in which women had theoretically equal rights—take a backseat to the world of patriarchal aggression, particularly as expressed in the marriage between Worf and Dax. In one of the franchise's few direct allusions to sexual activity, Worf and Dax even show up in the infirmary to get their various cuts and bruises patched up, presumably after a bout of rough Klingon sex.

In season 6's “You Are Cordially Invited,” Dax and Worf finally marry, and the franchise's relationship with Klingons appears to have come full circle. As in any patriarchal society, the young female (in this case the centuries-old Dax) must gain the approval of an older, established female in order to gain entry into the family. Thus Dax must pay court to Sirella, lady of the House of Martok. By episode's end, she has been prodded, goaded, and humiliated more than she can stand, but the response her complaint gets from her usually sympathetic confidant Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) is significant. In answer to her insulting treatment, he reminds her that in marrying Worf, she is marrying his culture, and it is her responsibility to honor those traditions. In a wedding that can only seem symbolic of the franchise's struggle with the conflicting ideas of masculine authority and female subjugation, Dax does exactly that: she marries Worf in true Klingon fashion, Trill customs set aside, as she is assimilated into her new life as a Klingon bride.

The last
Star Trek
series episode aired on May 13, 2005. It was the final installment of
Enterprise
, within which its main character, Captain Archer (Scott Bakula), went backward in time—covering the time period before Kirk and his
Enterprise
. The future, and its endless possibilities, had begun to seem less alluring to network executives and viewers than the unknown vistas of the past. This final episode was warmly received by neither critics nor fans, but there was one interesting choice in it: the opening title sequence. In it, the famous opening words were intoned by not one person, but several people.

Picard:
Space . . . the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship
Enterprise
. Its continuing mission . . .

Kirk:
To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations.

Archer:
To boldly go where no man has gone before.

The starship captain missing from this roster, of course, is Captain Janeway. One could argue that since she was never captain of the
Enterprise
itself (but rather of the
Voyager
), her voice would have been out of place here, and yet the absence of a female voice of authority does not seem accidental. The careful genderlessness of “where no one has gone before” is absent here as well.

As the franchise moved into the future, it became more at home with the past—the literal past of its own timeline and the figurative past of male dominance and unquestioned patriarchal authority. For an idea that promised so much to women, remarkably little was ever delivered, and that love affair with the past reached its culmination in J.J. Abrams's hugely successful
Star Trek
film of 2009. The past, and thus the significance of women in the present, could now be rewritten entirely.

Notes

1.
Daniel Bernardi, Star Trek
and History: Raceing toward a White Future
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 36–45. See also Jennifer Kesler, “A Look Back at the Original
Star Trek
Series,” August 3, 2010,
HathorLegacy.com
,
http://thehathorlegacy.com/a-look-back-at-the-original-star-trek-series/
.

2.
Ibid. For an account of the pilot's creation, see also Herbert Solow and Robert Justman,
Inside
Star Trek:
The Real Story
(Darby, PA: DIANE Publishing, 1990).

3.
Janeway was the first female captain to appear in a
Star Trek
series. The first female captain ever shown in the
Star Trek
canon appeared in
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
, in which an unnamed female officer is shown as the captain of the USS
Saratoga
. In
Enterprise
(which premiered in 2001), audiences were shown that female commanders had apparently served in Starfleet long before Janeway, since Erika Hernandez was the captain of the
Columbia
NX-02.

4.
Private communication from David R. Walker to the author, July 1991.

5.
Quoted in Memory Alpha: The Star Trek Wiki,
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Resolutions_%28episode%29
.

6.
David Alexander, “Interview of Gene Roddenberry: Writer, Producer, Philosopher, Humanist,”
Humanist
, March/April 1991,
http://web.archive.org/web/20070621142925/
http://www.philosophysphere.com/humanist.html
.

7.
Robin Roberts,
Sexual Generations: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gender
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 18–20.

Christian Domenig

As products of contemporary media, Klingons evoke associations with many cultures. The writers, actors, directors, and fans of
Star Trek
created in the Klingons a backward-looking culture based on honor and warfare. Whether presented as berserker barbarians, feudal lords, or samurai warriors, Klingons seem like throwbacks to an earlier age—something medieval.

In the original series,
Star Trek
writers made Klingons a stand-in for the Soviet Union, as the United States was embroiled in the Cold War, but with features that made them look like Central Asians.
1
As Klingons evolved through new versions of
Star Trek
, they developed new physical features, a more complex culture, and infamously, a working language with a fully functioning grammar and a growing vocabulary.
2

Our picture of Klingons has become more nuanced, but at the same time, so has our picture of medieval history. We can still look back at what historians once called Europe's Dark Ages and see it as a stagnant period in Western civilization, a time when classical learning, mathematics, and sciences were flourishing elsewhere. Still, historians have found interesting and beautiful cultural features in feudal societies. Comparing Klingon culture to Europe in the early medieval period can illuminate the brutality and the complexity of both.

Star Trek
's fans as much as
Star Trek
writers made the Klingons into the remarkable characters they were in all the
Star Trek
series. When the Klingons developed a new, distinctive physical appearance, it was the fans who demanded a backstory about why the Klingons Captain Kirk met lacked the crest on their foreheads that other Klingons in the series have. Due to the augment virus a lot of Klingons lost this distinguishing mark in the mid-twentieth century and for generations afterward (
ENT
, “Divergence”). That's why in the original series Klingons look like humans, with no bony ridge on their foreheads. In most ways, Klingons are like larger, tougher humans—they have the same internal organs, but they possess backup organs—a second heart, a third lung, and so on (
TNG
, “Ethics”).

The mentality of Klingons is very complex. They have a strong urge to fight, and they feel like hunters constantly looking for prey. Klingons are always ready to go into battle; in one episode, a fellow Klingon tells Worf, a Klingon Federation officer, that “peace is like a living death” (
TNG
, “Heart of Glory”). Klingons respect people who can bear pain; they have a rite of passage, the final Rite of Ascension, that involves being tortured with weapons called painsticks (
TNG
, “The Icarus Factor”).

Klingons often have to suffer, because their medicine is very primitive. There is a cultural expectation that patients with severe injuries will choose death and a ceremony of Hegh'bat, or ritual suicide (
TNG
, “Ethics”). The study of medicine is not prestigious, although Klingons are interested in genetic engineering because it can be used for war (
ENT
, “Divergence”). Klingons are always ready to die. In one episode, Jadzia Dax tells a Klingon comrade, “You Klingons embrace death too easily. You treat death like a lover” (
DS9
, “Blood Oath”). To a real Klingon, the most honorable death is to go down fighting. Klingons don't mourn for the personality leaving the body in death (
TNG
, “The Bonding”). After death honorable warriors can ascend to Sto'Vo'Kor where Kahless waits, or descend to Gre'thor, the Klingon hell (
VOY
, “Barge of the Dead”).

Klingons value warfare above all else. They have not developed a strong tradition of science or art for their own sakes, although they have produced a body of Klingon operas and literature. Klingons are minimalists; they even talk very little (
TNG
, “The Emissary”). The Klingon language is simple and oriented toward making war. It is not easy to dissemble, and it is impossible to be polite. The word for
peacemaker
is a neologism (
TNG
, “Loud as a Whisper”).

The social life of Klingons is ruled by tradition and a strict code of honor. People belong to Houses. The Great Houses have a seat in the Klingon High Council. Because the clan is important there also exists a kin liability. The oldest male is chief of a House. He makes decisions for the others and represents the family, facing all consequences for them (
TNG
, “Sins of the Father”). Family plays an important role in the life of a Klingon. All members are responsible to uphold the honor of a House (
VOY
, “Barge of the Dead”).

Klingons see women as important and powerful, if not equal. Worf explains, “We consider Klingon women our partners in battle. They're the mothers of our children” (
DS9
, “To the Death”). Marriage is a private contract, and an official celebration is not common. Klingon divorce is easy: either partner may initiate it by slapping the soon-to-be ex-spouse in the face and spitting on them (
DS9
, “The House of Quark”).

Klingon politics are tricky. It is difficult to achieve cooperation because of the various political interests. Intrigues, murder, and opportunism are regular occurrences. Internal wars are not unusual. Klingons never mention a constitution, but they seem to run their government based on traditions, like a common law. The head of the High Council is the chancellor. He can always be challenged, killed in a fight, and replaced. There is a special Rite of Succession, overseen by an Arbiter of Succession (
TNG
, “Reunion”). Once there also was a Klingon emperor, but this institution was abolished in the twenty-first century. The clone of Kahless became emperor, but he was without power. He is only a moral leader, a figurehead representing the state (
TNG
, “Rightful Heir”).