Star Trek and History

by Reagin, Nancy

  In addition to military aid, we can send you special technicians. We can show you how to feed a thousand people where one was fed before. We can help you build schools, educate the young in the latest technological and scientific skills. Your public facilities are almost nonexistent. We can help you remake your world. End disease, hunger, hardship. All we ask in return is that you let us help you. (TOS, “Errand of Mercy”)5

  The resemblance to some of the rhetoric of the time is striking. Demonization of communism was common in American culture, as was the idealistic presentation of America’s aims. The height of this idealism was probably the creation of the Peace Corps, and President John F. Kennedy’s description of the new organization could have inspired Kirk: “For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps—who works in a foreign land—will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace.”6 But Kennedy’s vision was also close, in many ways, to “the white man’s burden”: the paternalistic vision of nineteenth-century imperialism. Rudyard Kipling, in the poem from which the phrase comes, describes the mission of colonizers as to “Fill full the mouth of Famine, / And bid the sickness cease.”7

  But what appears at first as simple propaganda for the Federation—which could have come directly from a Peace Corps brochure—rapidly develops into a criticism of both sides, although the Federation is still presented in more positive terms. However noble the rhetoric, the reality is that the Federation wants to occupy and fortify the planet before the Klingons do—making the two groups fundamentally similar. Although there have been clues that the Organians are more than they appear, both Kirk and the Klingon leader, Kor, come to despise the Organians as hopelessly simple and, indeed, repulsive in their refusal of violence. The only Organian Kor can relate to is Baroner, who is Kirk in disguise. Later Kor insists on the similarities between the two superpowers. When Kirk protests that unlike the Klingon Empire, the Federation is “a democratic body,” Kor sweeps this objection aside: “I’m not referring to minor ideological differences. I mean that we are similar as a species. Here we are on a planet of sheep. Two tigers. Predators. Hunters. Killers. And it is precisely that which makes us great” (TOS, “Errand of Mercy”).

  At the end, when the Organians are revealed to be extraordinarily powerful noncorporeal entities, both Kirk and Kor are angry because they are prevented from fighting each other—and here Kirk is every bit as upset as Kor (although he does have the decency to feel guilty about it later). Imperialism and expansionism, whatever the rhetoric they are cloaked in, remain fundamentally aggressive. Ayelborne, the leader of the Organians, dismisses both sides, saying, “The mere presence of beings like yourselves is intensely painful to us.”

  Other episodes are not as subtle in their analysis and show the Klingons as blindly evil. In the original series episode “Friday’s Child,” the Klingon character is totally deceitful and dishonorable. A later episode from the original series, “A Private Little War,” presents a highly ambivalent allegory of the arms race and, in particular, of the Vietnam War.8 Once again, the Klingons are clearly the aggressors—they are the ones who begin arming one group of primitive inhabitants on the planet Neural—but, while Kirk realizes these weapons are “serpents in the Garden of Eden,” he still agrees to furnish them to the opposing group.

  Criticism of both sides is more obvious in “Day of the Dove,” which calls for a rejection of hostile actions. An alien being that thrives on violence puts a group of Klingons, led by Kang and his wife, Mara, and part of the Enterprise crew together. It tricks each side into believing that the other is guilty of horrible atrocities, and then it imprisons them on the Enterprise, hoping to watch them fight through all eternity. Both sides voice blind, racist hostility toward the other and show what misconceptions they hold. Mara has heard of prison camps and torture by the Federation and is surprised to discover a different reality. It is certainly possible to infer that if the Klingons have been misinformed, then perhaps the Federation has been, too. In the end, both sides must learn to work together to drive out the entity, but this is clearly a temporary truce, as shown by Kang’s comment, “We need no urging to hate humans” (TOS, “Day of the Dove”).

  Too Klingon to Be Human

  Although Klingons appeared in only a small number of episodes in the original series, their role grew later on and throughout the movies and later series of the 1980s and 1990s. On the one hand, the old Cold War symbolism continued. Perhaps reflecting the impact of détente, they played only a small role in the first two movies, but they returned in full aggressor mode in the third movie, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.9 Premiering in 1984 during the Reagan presidency and at a time of heightened Cold War tensions, the Klingons are shown as highly violent and preoccupied with acquiring destructive weapons. But, as in the real world, by the end of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), détente had been declared with the Klingons. In the final adventure of the original crew, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), an alliance is formed. The film ends with the signature of the Khitomer Accords, ending decades of tension.

  Even before Star Trek V: The Final Frontier premiered, however, The Next Generation had already announced the Klingon-Federation alliance by including the Klingon Worf on the bridge in the first episode aired in 1987—making the statement that enemies can become friends. However, some episodes of Next Generation continue to echo the Cold War. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” reflects on what might have happened if the Cold War had become hot, showing the Federation engaged in a long, probably losing, war with the Klingons. Fortunately, the Enterprise crew manage to restore the original timeline. “The Mind’s Eye” aired the following year, and it replays the Manchurian Candidate theme, with Geordi La Forge brainwashed by the Romulans to assassinate a Klingon official in the hope of breaking the alliance.

  Klingons are “revised” in more ways than one, as the villains from the original series become heroes in later Star Trek series. The most striking is the case of Kahless, who first appears in the original series’ “The Savage Curtain” as a symbol of pure evil but later becomes a holy (but still warlike) messianic figure. In The Next Generation episode “Rightful Heir,” priests create Kahless’s clone to try to end the fighting between the factions that are destroying the empire. The Deep Space Nine episode “Blood Oath” has as heroes three Klingons who had appeared in the original series as villains. In this purest example of Klingon revisionism, Kor, from “Errand of Mercy”; Koloth, the Klingon leader in “The Trouble with Tribbles”; and Kang, from “Day of the Dove,” become honorable and noble war leaders seeking justice against a child killer.

  With the character of Worf, Klingons came to symbolize the new preoccupations of American society in the final decades of the twentieth century. America has historically been a land of immigrants, but the Immigration Act of 1924 established quotas that drove immigration rates down to exceptionally low levels in the following decades. Immigration figures then rose again with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, and they stayed at a fairly high level thereafter.10 Furthermore, much of this immigration did not come from the traditional European countries, and America found itself becoming an even more racially diverse nation. Immigrants from India, for example, had numbered only a few thousand in earlier censuses but reached over two hundred thousand by 1980, and the numbers more than doubled by 1990. A similar phenomenon could be found with all immigrants from Asia, including those from Muslim nations.11

  Added to that, as the threat of communism declined in the 1980s, the threat of terrorism, and particularly Islamic terrorism, grew. From the Iran hostage crisis to repeated suicide bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon to plane bombings and hijackings, the United States found that decades of interventionism in the world made it a target. Furthermore, the oil crises of 1973 to 1974 and 1979 showed how dependent the nation had become on foreign energy, in pa
rticular from the Middle East. The 1980s, then, saw a major change in the dominant anxieties of the American public.

  Although originally meant to be only a minor character, Worf grew in popularity and ultimately became the most visible Star Trek character: a regular in all seven seasons of The Next Generation and included from season four onward in Deep Space Nine, as well as appearing in four movies. In these later series, Klingon culture is outlined in some detail. It is a violent, warrior society that did not even have a word for peacemaker until a Federation ambassador taught it to them.12 It is also a society in decline: a preoccupation with winning honor in battle has degenerated into feuds and fighting among factions.

  Most of the episodes that feature Worf focus on his identity problems. Worf is a Klingon raised by humans, and he finds himself caught between two cultures: he is emotionally attached to his ancestral heritage, but he has been exposed to very different values that he has come to respect and admire. His story reflects the Western preoccupations about the integration of a growing immigrant population from other cultures.13 “Heart of Glory” was the first Next Generation episode to center on the Klingons. Not only do we see Worf’s attraction to Klingon traditions but also the difficulties other Klingons have in adjusting to their alliance with the Federation. Three renegade Klingons wish to return to the traditional, violent ways, and they try to convince Worf to join them. He is tempted, but in the end he rejects this and stays with Starfleet—deciding for himself on the superiority of human values.

  In Deep Space Nine, “The Sword of Kahless,” Worf talks about his inability to feel at home in either culture:

  For as long as I can remember I have always been an outsider. I was raised by humans, but I was too Klingon to be one of them. I did not belong. I begged my foster parents to allow me to visit the Klingon homeworld. They arranged for me to stay with my cousin’s family. When I first set eyes on the great domes of Kronos I felt that I had finally come home. But my own cousins wanted nothing to do with me.

  In the Deep Space Nine episode “Birthright,” Worf discovers survivors of the Khitomer massacre who—once prisoners on an isolated planet—are living in peace with their Romulan guards. They have abandoned the Klingon way of life and refuse to teach their children about it. They represent an older, immigrant generation that desires nothing more than to fully integrate into their new culture. Worf’s anti-Romulan prejudice had already been made clear in the Next Generation episode “The Enemy,” when he allows a Romulan to die rather than give him a blood transfusion. Here he must face his own racism when he discovers that Klingons and Romulans have intermarried. He, the product of two cultures, is initially outraged when he meets a girl of mixed race. He makes it his mission to teach the younger Klingon generation about their heritage, most of whom decide to follow him—but not the girl of mixed race, who feels she will never be accepted.

  Worf has much less success inspiring his own son, Alexander, to follow Klingon ways. In the Next Generation episode “Firstborn,” Alexander rejects the idea of becoming a warrior. His adult self then arrives from the future to change his mind. Alexander, he tells Worf, will become a diplomat and try to end the fighting between the Klingon houses by not seeking revenge. Because Alexander is too idealistic, his enemies consider him weak, and they murder Worf.14 This episode seems to argue that Western values such as peace and mercy cannot work in non-Western countries and should not be championed there. Paradoxically, Worf is somewhat reconciled to Alexander at the end of the episode, and he accepts that their destinies and values differ. However, their relationship continues to be troubled in Deep Space Nine, even though Alexander joins the Klingon defense forces and becomes a very clumsy warrior.

  However, whenever Klingon and Earth values conflict, Worf always chooses Earth.15 During the Klingon civil war he takes a leave of absence to fight with Gowron, but he returns to Earth at the end of the war. At first, he leaves the Empire in disgust, refusing to kill Duras’s teenage son, Toral, saying that, while this is the Klingon way, it is not his way. Later, during the war with the Dominion, he serves again on a Klingon ship, but he always returns to Deep Space 9 and a more humble role within the Federation. At the end of that series, he has the opportunity to become chancellor of the Klingon Empire, but he turns it down. He does manage to partially reconcile his heritage by becoming the Federation ambassador to Kronos, but his primary loyalty remains to Earth.

  Hell Hath No Fury . . .

  Worf has mixed feelings about his Klingon heritage, but women of Klingon origin within the Federation are generally fiercely hostile to it. Consider the Next Generation episode “The Emissary.” This episode concerns the arrival of Worf’s lost love, K’Ehleyr, who is half Klingon and half human. Like Worf she was raised between two cultures and has chosen the human one, joining the Federation diplomatic service. Unlike Worf, though, she has no sentimental attachment to Klingon ways, which she describes as “nonsense.” K’Ehleyr is a modern woman—one who puts her career first and will not give it up to follow Klingon traditions—much to Worf’s chagrin.16

  B’Elanna Torres in Voyager, also half human and half Klingon, blames her Klingon origins for most of the failures in her life. As she explains in the episode “Faces”:

  I grew up in a colony on Kessik 4. My mother and I were the only Klingons there. And that was a time when relations between the homeworld and the Federation weren’t too cordial. Nobody ever said anything but . . . we were different. And I didn’t like that feeling. Then, my father left when I was five years old. . . . And then I finally decided that he left because I looked like a Klingon. And so I tried to look human.

  She blames her troubles at Starfleet Academy and her personality defects, especially her difficulties in controlling her temper, on her Klingon blood. In “Faces” she is split into two individuals: one fully human and one fully Klingon. In the end, the Klingon one dies to save her human self. However, B’Elanna needs her Klingon DNA to survive, and the Doctor reintroduces it. Even before this, though, the human B’Elanna has come to realize that she needs her other half: “I’m incomplete. It doesn’t feel like me. I guess I’ve had someone else living inside of me for too long to feel right without her . . . I came to admire a lot of things about her: her strength, her bravery. I guess I just have to accept the fact that I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting her.”

  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

  Foreign Engagements

  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.