Starfleet Academy Review: Vox In Excelso

Arguments over morality? In Trek? In this century?

Spoilers below

There’s a way to see “Vox In Excelso” as being something of a nose-tweak to the first season of Discovery. Here too the story revolves around Federation/Klingon conflict, to the point where we get this show’s first real space battle. Except of course I mean “real” in the sense of “more than one ship per side”, and not “is actual a real battle in any way”. Even without considering how this delightfully inverts Discovery’s repeated dips into “war is hell” sludge, there’s a delightful sense of both confidence and cheekiness in deploying a Klingon fleet in your episode, and then doing this with them.

It’s a mission statement, obviously. The important conflict here isn’t Starfleet versus the tattered remnants of the Imperial Fleet (note how it looks at first like the Feds are hugely outnumbered, only for it become apparent that a sizeable proportion of the Klingon vessels are transports, presumably carrying refugees). It’s the need to secure a future for Klingons while also securing a future for being Klingon. Putting this in the context of a debating class is an extremely clever move. Sure, there’s been no shortage of ways mistaking the structure of debating societies for the way politics should be done, but in the episode’s broader context, the idea of “vox in excelso” (“voice above all”) makes thematic sense. It certainly reads as better to me than last week’s overwrought PE lessons. This might well be my own biases showing – I love constructing arguments (obviously) and despise having someone shouting at me because I’m not running away from them fast enough. There’s something deeper here as well, though. “Vitus Reflux” was about who has what it takes to command in Starfleet. “Vox In Excelso” is about why it matters if there’s still a Starfleet to command.

The central question here – what is the Federation’s moral responsibility as regards the Klingon diaspora? – is a classic Trek concern. Not just in the sense of it being an ethical dilemma, in which the Federation risks nothing but its own moral good standing, but in the sense that it revisits a recurring theme from throughout the franchise’s history: to what extent does the Federation actually believe its own line about respecting other cultures. Here too, we see the show in conversation with Discovery; in their own ways and for their own reasons, Kraag and the Klingon ambassador are both adamant that it is better the Klingon race die from failing to rally after disaster than it die by assimilating into the Federation. ”Remain Klingon!”, as the old saying goes. Importantly, this case is made compellingly, even while the episode explores the ways in which demanding strict adherence to tradition comes with its own cost.

Fun as it is to see all those spaceships zipping about, the episode’s two greatest moments are both just two people talking in a room. The first is the argument Kraag has with Mir – both of them are so terribly hurt, in totally different ways, and you can wholly understand why both of them lash out the way they do, even while them doing so just makes everything worse. This is part of the show’s already strong (if not, I think, unblemished) record of making its 32nd century teenage angst stories work – kids behaving like kids, in ways that are frustrating, but which make total emotional sense. We’re not just winding up hormone bombs and lobbing them at each other. To return to something Mir himself realises in “Beta Test”, sometimes you meet someone whose trauma mirrors your own, and rather than bond over that, seeing your own reflection just makes you think about yourself all the harder.

There are other ways in which “Beta Test” is an obvious point of comparison here – a widescreen story which considers the political and humanitarian consequences of the Burn, which is then paralleled with a much more personal tale about the emotional cost of everything that has happened. We even end with a broadly similar conclusion – a cadet helps Ake come up with a plan to get Starfleet what they want by thinking outside the box.

Like Ake having to weather Mir’s repeated acts of defiance, we might worry that this approach becomes stale. Very much unlike Mir’s attitude, though, complaining the cadets might save the day too often feels like I’m asking the show to not be what it clearly wants to be, and is doing perfectly well at being. Of course this wants to be about how the teachers learn just as much from their students as vice versa. That’s what shows focussed on school life are, unless you want to go down a much more cynical path, which just isn’t what Trek or the world in general needs right now.

I’ll admit that, at first glance, the solution here looks rather underbaked. I thought it was obvious from the very beginning that “have the Klingons claim Faal in battle” was the call, and so really the only surprise is how easily that’s accomplished without bloodshed. Thinking on it further, though, I realised I was underestimating the story’s cleverness. The revelation here is that Starfleet might be able to get through that fight unscathed. I mentioned there are two scenes I loved in the episode. The second is Kraag’s conversation with Lura Thok. In part that’s because of the explicit confirmation that at least some Jem’Hadar have freed themselves from the Dominion (what will the internet racists pretend to find confusing about Gina Yashere’s character now?). Mostly, though, I love it as a scene in which Thok faces up to the fact that her role isn’t just as badass yellmeister, and where someone with experience of life in the intersection of two cultures offers the benefits of that experience to someone in a similar position. Thok’s situation isn’t the same as Kraag’s, any more than Mir’s is, but Thok concentrates on how the similarities can be used to help, rather than letting the differences drive her into an argument.

And it’s Lura’s insight, just as much as Kraag’s, that ends up finding a solution. A Klingon warrior will not set their weapons down, but they will deliberately miss. In that way, honour is satisfied. This is what gets us to the episode’s resolution; the realisation that Klingon can compromise on whether anything or anyone dies, but they still need to open fire.

Perhaps this reads as silly. Or even hypocritical, one more way in which the Klingons, as Ezri Dax once pointed out, fail to live up to their own standards with frequently disastrous consequences. I don’t think so, though. For me, this is more reminiscent of the practice of deloping in duelling, whereby a combatant fires into the air to satisfy honour without shedding blood. Whether this seems ridiculous to us in the 21st century isn’t the point. The point is that cultural practices don’t have to make sense to be important to those involved. This is Kraag’s point throughout, and which he ultimately delivers via the debating podium, itself a highly stylised and regulated form of duel. Give the Klingons the opportunity to seize their new home, and trust that, with honour satisfied, they will fire into the air.

(Or you hope they do, anyway. Kraag’s plan isn’t without risk; just ask Alexander Hamilton. Or Squire Trelane.)

It all comes together very nicely, then. I’ll admit to a little disappointment that the show’s decision about what to do with the Klingons is just to re-run Picard’s handling of the Romulans. That said, given I’ve been so critical of how that worked out in practice, I can get on board with Starfleet Academy committing to getting it right this time. The offhand line about the entire Empire becoming uninhabitable feels like a fudge, but hey, at least the show recognises interstellar societies have land and resources outside of their home system, something Picard never really even thought about.

What I’m left with is, once again, is a sense of hope. The show is succeeding admirably on its own terms (it’s close, but I think this is the best episode yet), but it’s also thinking hard about what Trek has been, and what it needs to become. More importantly, it’s doing that without forgetting that first and foremost, we need to care about the characters at the centre of it all.

Ordering

1. Vox In Excelso

2. Kids These Days

3. Beta Test

4. Vitus Reflux