Klingons on TV – Why I think a Klignon series will never work

For man years, fans have bemoaned the lack of a true Klingon themed TV series. The was especially evident when TNG premiered with a Klingon bridge officer. This came up periodically during DS0, as they had some great Klingon episodes and characters. But given what we know about Star Trek, and the standard episodic television format, I think a Klingon show would very quickly become boring and repetitive, if an episode could even be made long enough to watch.

Fist the format. Many shows we know and love, including all of Trek except for DS9, followed one pattern. A ship and its crew flies around space. Meets folks with a problem, and solves the problem, usually after some gut wrenching moral dilemma. This works well with a federation crew for several reasons. First they have the prime directive, which usually needs to be broken in order to solve the problem. Second they are multi-species, so they have a greater chance of internal conflict and debate. Third they are peaceful, and as such must find a peaceful way to solve the problem. Fourth, they feel that they are the enlightened ones and all people on all planets desperately want to become equal members of their government.

Now the Klingons have no prime directive, unless you consider outward expansion at all costs to be that directive. Either way, Klingons generally do not break rules they enforce them, with little or no dilemma. Fusions/augments not withstanding, the Klingons do not have multi-species crews that we have seen. While there are bound to be differences of opinion, they are generally not based around several generations of cultural differences among the crew. Klingons are not peaceful, time and time again; we have seen that when in doubt conquering the planet will work much better than negotiating, this of course would make for very short episodes. While Klingons are arrogant, and do think they have it all figured out, they realizes that most races probably do not want to be their subjects and will resist occupation, although this is usually not a problem. That does mean, however that Klingons are not likely to come in and try to help solve someone else’s internal problem that has no benefit to the Empire.

Just in these two paragraphs we have probably eliminated about half (or more) trek episodes if they had Klingon crews. I think one of the best examples to see this would be the TOS A Private Little War. There are two groups of natives. The Organian treaty requires that an occupying force be invited. Klingons provide weapons to encourage one group to take control and invite them in. From the Klingon perspective this episode takes 5 minutes. Then comes Kirk on his white horse, and spends the rest of the time agonizing over the prime directive, before breaking it in an effort to balance the power on the planet. Has the roles been reversed, and say Kirk had brought better farming equipment to the peaceful tribe first, the Klingon response would not have changed. No hard choices here. Give the other guys guns, and then they have guns, no opposition and farming equipment. Oh yes, and the Klingons get the planet.

Looking now at a TNG episode, Heat of Glory, one of the first ones where we really got to see Klingons being Klingons. Yet the imperial response was to simply destroy the ship with the escaped criminals onboard. It did not matter that they were Klingons, it did not matter that they saw the federation for the enemy that they were. After their escape to the Enterprise, the Klingon response was the same, transport them for execution. The federation as usual waffled and almost got their ship taken over, but the Klingons at least got to die in somewhat of a battle. Next in line would be The Emissary (TNG) with the Klingon sleeper ship. Much is made about Klingons not bluffing at poker, a theme that will be repeated in future episodes, when Alexander is told that Klingons do not lie. The Imperial response is simply to destroy the ship, as it is of no benefit to the empire. The T’Ong fires on the Enterprise, as they immediately see it as an enemy ship. The federation immediately takes this as incentive to find a peaceful resolution. Then Worf come up with a plan that basically amounts to “If I lie to them, they will not shoot us anymore”. Once again a premise not found with a Klingon crew.

There are two DS9 episodes to look at, “Once More into the Breach” and “Sons and Daughters”. In the first the action is all about an anomaly of a character, an elderly Klingon who has failed to die in battle. The main plot devises are that somehow a Kor has managed to do this, and also that his abilities are failing. If he does not fail at his first battle, then we are once again faced with a shortened episode. However we rarely get to see Klingons fail, and we know that when it happens they do not like it. The only way to make this story dramatic is to have a revered character get feeble. There is also the internal conflict between high and low born Klingons, which we have never seen before but is needed to replace the different aliens normally in conflict in a federation crew.

Sons and Daughters we see a suddenly much older Alexander son of Worf. And the conflict arises because he is basically inept at being a warrior. Conflict is of course needed, but we have to accept the idea that not only would an inept student make it out of basic training, that a federation citizen like Alexander would even have been allowed to enroll in the Klingon academy. Then we have to accept that the Empire, in the middle of a war, would send one of their worst, to not only a front line position but on Martok’s flagship. Then we have to let him fail once, but somehow not get killed, so he can save the day at the next battle. So in both episodes we see that the only way to make Klingons dramatic is to make them fail. This would be a very boring series, and would make the viewer wonder how these repeat failures ever managed to conquer enough worlds to be called an empire in the first place.

As much as Klingons are sometimes called two dimensional villains, this may very well be their biggest asset. By not being the main characters, they can be whoever they want or need to be. By being seen only in their interaction with the federation, they can be fully Klingon. Every time Star Trek has tried to have them interact with each other, they have had to make one flawed. Either they are old and feeble, unskilled and dangerous, stupid or unenlightened or at the very least dishonorable and treacherous. None of those conditions are all that likely to exist in a culture that prizes honor, ability, tradition and death in battle the way that we have been lead to believe that Klingons do.

So in closing the only way to have a Klingon based Trek series, is to have it not feature Klingons. I for one do not want to see what Paramount would try to do with such a guideline.