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The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 4.
Klingons are one of the most iconic species in Star Trek. Over the course of the franchise’s 60-year run, they’ve evolved from deadly enemies to fierce allies and everything in between. ButJay-Den Kragg is not your typical Klingon. This has been obvious since his first appearance on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, but the series’ fourth episode is where the character really begins to come into his own. (And, if we’re honest, so does the show he stars in.)
The only Klingon student in the Academy’s first class in over a century, Jay-Den is essentially everything a traditional Klingon is not. He’s a pacifist studying medicine who longs to become a healer and help those in need. He won’t eat meat that hasn’t been killed in a fair fight (which includes replicated food!). He’s even nervous about participating in a debate class, because he views it as a form of conflict, something he has sworn to avoid.
But “Vox in Excelso” is not just an hour that offers a compelling backstory for one of the series’ most appealing young characters. It also redefines what it means to be a Klingon warrior for a new era. Because it is Jay-Den who ultimately finds the strength to speak out on behalf of his culture, who guides the Federation toward a compromise that allows the Klingons to accept the help they need without sacrificing their honor to do so. And it is his outsider status — a life lived with a foot in both the worlds of the Klingons and Starfleet — that helps him see a way forward.
“I’m definitely not a traditional man,” Karim Diané, who plays Jay-Den, told Den of Geek, when asked about crafting such an unconventional take on a familiar kind of character. “I’m not this macho guy who goes to sports games or plays football on the weekend. I am the opposite of that. I like to think that I’m…soft. Gentle in my tone and in the way I carry myself. I think maybe that’s what I just naturally exude. And I’d like to imagine that that’s what brought me to this role. But full credit to Noga and Alex [Kurtzman], who wrote this character this way and left it up to me to find it. To find him. The challenge for me was finding his voice and getting comfortable in the way he looks. But the softness kind of comes naturally to me.”
For Diané, playing Jay-Den has also been about finding a balance between embodying the kind of Klingon Trek fans were familiar with while finding a way to create something new.
“I’m new to all of this, right?” Diané said. “So I really had to look to the people [who were] leading me. I looked to Doug [Aarniokoski], my director, who really, really helped bring out this character. I looked to Michael Dorn [who played Worf on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine], to really know what the standard of a Klingon is. But then I also had to look to myself, and just really trust that my natural sensitivity and softness are okay to bring to this character.”
Jay-Den’s quieter, conflict-avoidant character isn’t the only way that Starfleet Academy is shaking up the story of one of the franchise’s foundational alien species. Klingons have apparently had it rougher than most since the Burn, spending the better part of the last century as a people without a homeland, living on the verge of extinction and shuffled from place to place in the wake of Qo’noS’ destruction.
“It was all very intentional,” showrunner Noga Landau said when asked about reimagining Klingon society in a post-Burn world. “We are big Klingon fans in the Starfleet Academy writers’ room. And we obsessed about every detail with the Klingons, even down to the warrior stew. We just wanted everything to be perfect. And honestly, the question we asked ourselves was, what haven’t we done with the Klingons yet in Star Trek? What is a new story? What thrusts this mighty empire of warriors into a very new situation that sheds light on who they are to their core?”
The Klingon diaspora has caused its people to double down on the sanctity of their remaining culture and traditions, the things that connect them to the home they once knew and the history they still share. These beliefs often draw them into conflict with the Federation — their resistance to admitting weakness or accepting help in any form runs the gamut from rejecting lifesaving Starfleet technology to refusing the gift of a new home planet — and illustrate why Jay-Den has such difficulty feeling as though he belongs in a society that privileges its standalone warrior ethos more than ever. (Though, if you want to get technical about it, Klingon healers aren’t particularly rare, historically speaking.)
“Honestly, our main point in making the episode was to remind the audience of the power of the Klingons,” Landau said. “And in this story, it’s also about the power of these people who are refugees. There are so many people who walk the earth right now who live as refugees, and there are so many people who walk the earth now who are descended from refugees. I would say for most people alive today, if you look back far enough, you will find an ancestor who’s a refugee. The strength it takes to survive being a stranger in a strange land is everything you need to understand who you are, and it’s a universal story that we told with the Klingons. It was important that everyone who watches this episode sees themselves in the story of the Klingons. Because it’s about strength and it’s about never letting go of who you are.”
A big part of Jay-Den’s story in “Vox in Excelso” is about allowing him to find and accept his own strength. For all that he was raised in a warrior culture, he’s learning that there are different ways to be strong than in combat, and more than one way to fight for the things you believe in than throwing a punch or wielding a blade.
“This message is so important to me because, again, I’m not a warrior,” Diané said. “I hate sports. I hate fighting. I’m not into any of those things. And for so long, people have tried to make me that. So it’s really exciting for me to be [part of this episode] because it really shows that you don’t have to be that. You don’t have to pick up a weapon. You don’t have to pick up a spear. But you can still impact and change an entire world with your voice and your energy. That message is really, really important to me.”
“Vox in Excelso” ends with the Klingons safely established on a new homeworld, Jay-Den’s parents safe, and the young cadet seemingly having settled into a much more confident identity. And, according to Diané, that new sense of self-assuredness is only going to get stronger as the season continues.
“He continues to grow in every single way. And I feel like I continue to figure this character out as Jay-Den is figuring himself out,” he said. “Even moving into season 2, I feel like every one or two episodes, you’ll see a shift in him. I’m becoming more comfortable using this deep, deep voice that he speaks in. Stylistically, you might see his hair change in different ways, or that he has new ways of expressing himself physically. His speech becomes quicker and more comfortable. Truly, where we’re at in Episode 4 is just the seed. He continues to blossom moving forward.”
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with the finale on March 12.
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