‚Vox in Excelso‘ puts the spotlight on the academy’s Klingon cadet for a check-in on what’s changed—and what hasn’t—with one of the most enduring ‚Star Trek‘ species.
So far, largely in a playfully rebellious manner, Starfleet Academy has been focused on what new things it wants to bring to Star Trek—what ideas to challenge and what to push forward into new status quos to make its farthest-flung future setting feel like it’s actually evolving from what we’ve come to expect from the series. This week, in a standout spotlight for one of its most intriguing cadets, the show decided to instead embrace the fact that not everything needs to be changed.
That cadet is, of course, Jay-den Kraag, the soft-spoken Klingon who just wants to blend into the crowd and study the sciences, no matter how effervescently rambunctious his new friend circle at the academy has gotten in the past few weeks. Ever since Discovery jumped to the 32nd century, the Klingons have been one of the period’s biggest mysteries—an iconic Star Trek species that seemed to have vanished entirely, even as we got huge updates on similarly enduring species like the Vulcans and Romulans. So when Jay-den showed up as a seeming anomaly in Starfleet Academy, we could figure that we were due for a check-in on Qo’nos, and “Vox in Excelso” finally gives us that.
Except the answer is that there is no Qo’nos to check in on. The Klingon Empire is no more, replaced by a diaspora that has spent the past century-plus splintering ever further and on the verge of extinction since the events of the Burn—and Jay-den finds out pretty early on in the episode that that extinction might have gotten a bit more personal when he’s informed by Chancellor Ake that a Klingon ship believed to be carrying his fathers and mother (and seemingly much of what is left of just eight great houses of Klingon society) has been in an accident.
While this is absolutely a Jay-den power hour—with Karim Diané proving himself a standout among the show’s strong roster of young stars over and over—this, of course, wouldn’t be an episode of Starfleet Academy if it didn’t frame an exploration of a huge Star Trek concept through a decidedly more offbeat framing. So of course, the question of what the Federation can do about the Klingons is not a crisis solely addressed by senior staff in bouts of diplomacy, but through… the doctor starting the Academy’s debate club.
It feels a little wild at first that an extracurricular school activity is largely launched by the looming shadow of the dying breaths of a major galactic power, but it’s Jay-den who makes the case for the Klingon diaspora’s future to be the hot topic for the cadets’ debates, giving himself a chance to both tackle his own anxieties about public speaking and also to reckon with his own complicated relationship with Klingon culture, while Chancellor Ake beseeches one of the Klingons’ remaining leaders—and an apparent old flame—Obel Wolcek (guest star David Keeley), with an offer of Federation aid in the form of a potential new homeworld for the Klingons to begin rebuilding on, Faan Alpha.
“The future of the Klingons is decided by high school debate club” may seem on paper like an episode premise that is not going to convince Trekkies skeptical of Starfleet Academy‘s vibe so far, but “Vox in Excelso” is arguably the best Klingon episode of Star Trek in the 21st century. It certainly stands up to explorations of their post-TOS revamp in TNG, DS9, and Voyager as perhaps one of the best Klingon episodes Star Trek has ever done—offering fresh perspectives and a genuine conversation with what has come before with the species in the franchise, and embracing that the traditions established by those prior interrogations can co-exist alongside something new.
