Currently, most of a playfully rebellious way, Starfleet Academy focused on what new things it wants to bring to Star Trek—what ideas will be challenged and what will be pushed into new status quos in order to do so farthest future setting feels like it’s actually changing from what we’ve come to expect from the series. This week, in a standout spotlight for one of the most interesting cadets, the show decided to accept the fact that not everything needs to change.

That cadet is, of course, Jay-den Kraag, the soft-spoken Klingon who just wants to hang out with people and study the sciences, no matter how loud his new friend at the academy has been for the past few weeks. Ever since Finding jumped on 32nd centurythe Klingons are one of the greatest mysteries of the time—an iconic Star Trek species that seem to have disappeared completely, although we do get a lot of updates on equally enduring species like the Vulcans and Romulans. That’s why when Jay-den appeared as an anomaly in the Starfleet Academywe can think that we should check-in with Qo’nos, and “Vox in Excelso” finally gives us that.

Except the answer is that there is no Qo’nos to check. The Klingon Empire is gone, replaced by a diaspora that has spent the last century—more fractured and nearly extinct since the events of the Burn—and Jay-den learns early in the episode that that extinction may be more personal when Chancellor Ake informs him that a Klingon ship is believed to have been carried by his fathers (and what his fathers and many mothers left behind). EIGHT great houses of Klingon society) had an accident.

While this was absolutely a Jay-den power hour — with Karim Diané proving himself a standout among a strong list of young stars again and again — it was, of course, not an episode of Starfleet Academy if it does not frame an exploration of a large Star Trek concept through a more offbeat framing. Of course, the question of what the Federation can do about the Klingons is not a crisis that can only be addressed by senior staff in diplomatic battles, but by… the Academy’s debate club.

It may seem a little off-putting at first that an extracurricular school activity is largely launched in the looming shadow of the dying breaths of a major galactic power, but it’s Jay-den who makes the case for the future of the Klingon diaspora to be a hot topic for the cadets’ debates, giving himself a chance to face his own anxieties about speaking out public, and his own Klingon culture. pleaded with one of the remaining leaders of the Klingons—and an apparent old flame—Obel Wolcek (guest star David Keeley), with an offer of Federation help in the form of a potential new homeworld for the Klingons to begin rebuilding, Faan Alpha.

“The future of the Klingons is decided by the high school debate club” seems on paper like an episode premise that won’t convince Trekkies who doubt the Starfleet AcademyThe vibe so far, but “Vox in Excelso” is the best Klingon episode yet Star Trek in the 21st century. It certainly stands out in the explorations of their post-TOS transformation TNG, DS9and Voyager as probably one of the best Klingon episodes Star Trek has been done since—offering new perspectives and authentic conversations with those who have come before the species of the franchise, and accepting that the traditions established in those earlier interrogations can coexist with something new.

However The Next Generation transformed the Klingons as a wary ally of the Federation rather than the differently-charged villains they were originally Star Trekfor the past 40 years the status quo has existed for the Klingons; we have never seen them in a way that exists outside of conflict. Of course, they weren’t always at war—yet usually they are—but even as Klingon culture and their warrior honor codes flourish, Klingon society as we know it has always been shaped by external threats and, more importantly different here for “Vox in Excelso,” interiors.

Backstabbing games in the court of the Klingon Chancellery and among the Great Houses defined most of the new Klingon society from TNG keep going, and lots of Star Trek because those years are about trying to retroactively interpret the state in their long timeline, from Enterprise famously provided an origin story for the species’ redesigned appearance FindingThe species’ own radical aesthetic overhaul led to an almost immediate retreat of a more traditional Klingon design.

“Vox in Excelso,” meanwhile, jukes and, through the disintegration of the Klingon Empire as a structure, offers us the opportunity to see this way for Klingon culture without the broad framework that has defined it ever since. TNG. This was done through three distinct forms, anchored in a broader preparation for the debate club’s seminar on the Klingon Question. The first is Ake and Wolcek’s back-and-forth, which perhaps leans heavily on the older vision of the Klingon leadership—a political fight over image and reputation that is as much about two former lovers reuniting after years apart as part of Wolcek’s belief that the Federation’s offer of Faan Alpha is the opposite of the Klingons’ steadfast desire to save their freedom, even if it saves them from freedom. But the episode’s main focus is rooted in Jay-den’s own connections to his two communities: his family history and his new support group of peers and staff at Starfleet Academy.

In flashbacks to the 16 months before he joined Starfleet, we see Jay-den’s difficult relationship with his three parents, while the Kraags (mother LíVanna, played by Dorothy Atabong; fathers Drekol and Enok, played by Martin Roach and Sean Jones; and brother Thar, played by Tremaine Nelson) live an isolated life on a world called the Klingon Prime. Although they were, through the disaster of the Burning, freed from the political dramas of the Great Houses that we have known for decades. Star Trekthe conflict discussed between them is still rooted in that interpretation of the tried and tested idea of ​​honor.

The division here is between Jay-den and one of his fathers in particular, Drekol, while the latter is concerned with Jay-den’s growing curiosity about the world beyond his family: his interest in other technological cultures of Krios Prime and the Federation, his desire to study science rather than hunting, and a general reservation that prevents the idea that we expect from the generally naive Klingons. When a stubborn refusal to accept outside help leads to the death of Thar, who supports his brother’s different path, Jay-den’s relationship with his family seems completely broken, with Drekol destroying the Starfleet Academy recruitment orb. Krios.

Or at least, that’s how Jay-den sees it. He has spent the last 16 months internalizing his “failure” to be what is expected of a Klingon, although he maintains his curiosities and his desire to join Starfleet, which creates a division within him that shows time and time in this episode, both in his panic attacks as he tries to adapt to join the arguments of the academy, his arguments and his debates with Caleb. at Jay-den for seemingly hypocritically advocating for an independent, isolationist future for the Klingons while seemingly abandoning his people for Starfleet.

An explosive crashout later, Jay-den turns to the only other person in the academy who might actually understand him in Cadet Master Thok, given his own Klingon upbringing. And it is she, and her own character as a woman in two worlds, that actually allows her to synthesize a new point of view: Drekol does not use the Klingon tradition to reject his remaining son when he interrupts the hunting ritual but uses the Klingon tradition to signal to Jay-den that he accepts the future that the young man wants for himself. Acquiring that perspective instills in Jay-den the confidence to succeed in the debate club, emphasizing that the reason the Federation’s offer of Faan Alpha has been rejected up to this point is because Starfleet (and that is Ake, who is watching from the audience) has failed to meet the Klingons on their own terms—that the Federation will cease to be the Federation at best, a community apart. Klingons own independence in the process.

Overcoming his own doubts—on the debate podium and as he reckons with his relationship with his family—Jay-den gives Starfleet the answer it needs. Instead of handing Faan Alpha to Wolcek and the Klingons on a platter, they made a big show of a mock battle between Athena and a fleet of Starfleet ships and what was left of the Klingons before retreating and allowing the Klingons to claim the world as spoils of their warrior traditions. Everyone gets what they want: Starfleet helps, the Klingons save face, and Jay-den in particular learns not only to find comfort in the bonds he began to make at the academy, but also how to stand up for himself and exist as a Klingon and a member of Starfleet.

Maybe it is Starfleet AcademyThe strongest hour so far, one that focuses on the comfortable scenario the series has found for itself by framing the larger explorations of Star TrekThe world and 60 years of ideas through his academic status. Fully believing that children are the future, seeing one of them shapes the new status quo in one of the walkingThe most important species in such a deftly managed way is a testament to what Starfleet Academy can make the best of it.

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