Klingoning on to Hope

SPOILERS BELOW for "Vox In Excelso," Episode Four of Star Trek: Stafleet Academy

Cadet Jay-Den Kraag hears a voice from on high in the fourth episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, a solid hour of television that delivers a welcome update on the Klingon civilization in the post-Burn era. 

Through a series of very effective flashbacks, we learn more about Jay-Den's family, including a very supportive brother who understands that Jay-Den's wish to become a healer instead of a warrior is an honourable choice--a choice that bitterly disappoints their father. 

Turns out the Klingon Empire has been reduced to the Klingon Diaspora, with just a few Great Houses left of the multitude of Klingon families. Qo'nos, the Klingon homeword, was rendered uninhabitable by the Burn, and the Klingons now roam the stars in search of new homes. To make matters worse, there's been an accident involving a Klingon colony ship, one carrying, among many others, Jay-Den's parents. Their fate, and the fate of the other passengers, is initially unknown. 

It hasn't been an easy task, but it turns out there's an uninhabited world in Federation space that closely replicates conditions on Qo'nos before disaster.

The Federation is happy to grant the Klingons the right to settle on this new world, but there's just one problem: Naturally, the Klingons don't take charity. As a Klingon, Jay-Den understands his culture better than anyone at the Academy, so he's in a unique position to articulate his people's positions, which dovetails nicely with this episode's main classroom activity: debate club. At first the Klingon issue is off-limits, deemed too sensitive given the events occurring in real time. But Jay-Den, who has a bad case of stage fright and hates debate club, forces the issue--and forces himself to face some of his fears. 

Jay-Den's reflections on his past and some help from his fellow cadets give Jay-Den the ammunition he needs to win the Academy debates--while providing a solution to the Klingon refugee problem. In essence, Jay-Den argues that the Federation's stated claims of valuing diversity are hollow without active listening and engaging with other cultures on their own terms. 

So, naturally, the only honourable choice is for the Federation to challenge the Klingon refugees into fighting over the potential New Qo'nos--a solution that came to me about five minutes into the episode, but still, kudos to the writers for setting things up this way. A brief space battle breaks out, a polite fiction that results in zero casualties but allows Klingon honour to remain intact. 

I really enjoyed this episode. It gives Jay-Den some great moments, gives the Klingon species as a whole more depth, and shows quite effectively that the status quo viewers are used to from other Star Trek shows is very different in important ways. It's a breath of fresh air. 

 

Normie Kwong Gets a Heritage Minute

 

I was fortunate enough to meet Norman Kwong when he took over from Lois Hole as Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, and I wrote speeches for him for a couple of years. He was a very congenial fellow, and he certainly deserves this accolade! 

X-Men Black

In the last few days, an interesting rumor has started to circulate: that Marvel Studios, in an effort to differentiate their forthcoming X-Men films from the recently ended Fox X-Men films, might recast key roles with an eye on diversity: for example, Professor X, portrayed in the comics and so far on film as a white man, might be black, or Asian, or, presumably, a woman.

This is an interesting idea on its own, but imagine if Marvel Studios went one subversive step further: imagine if there were no white mutants at all in the Marvel cinematic universe. What if, in this new iteration, the X-gene was only expressed in peoples of colour?

I think this could be a potentially fascinating exercise in subversive filmmaking if handled correctly - handled correctly both in the world of the film and in the real world of marketing and publicity.

Imagine if Marvel Studios announced the cast with their usual fanfare, but without remarking on the skin colour of any of the actors. Just a normal studio blitz where they roll out, say, Idris Elba as Professor X, Mike Colter as Colossus, Celina Jade as Storm, John Cho as Wolverine, Adam Beach as Cyclops, Aishwarya Rai as Jean Grey, Aisha Tyler as Psylocke, etc. No white actors at all, just solid men and women who happen not to be white.

Much as I hate to admit it, the first question at the press conference would probably be "Hey...I couldn't help but notice there are no white actors. What's up with that?"

If I were Marvel, I'd probably say "I knew we'd get that question, but you know what? We just picked the best fit for each role, and these are the people we came up with."

If pressed, they could explain that once upon a time in Hollywood, it was not only common, but standard practice to have films and television shows with all-white casts. We still have the occasional film that features strictly men, or maybe one or two women of significance. Statistically speaking, a major film with a cast of no white people was inevitable...right?

As for the world of the film, imagine if the first two or three or four Marvel movies with these new X-Men contained no references at all to the colour of the characters. In universe, no one would notice that there were no white mutants.

Until, let's say, the fifth or sixth Marvel X-Men film, in which it is revealed that the X-gene only ever expresses itself in people of colour. In the comics, X-Men are already vilified for being strange and different; across comics history, in fact, the X-Men have been metaphors for the black experience, the gay experience, the trans experience. What if the films made that metaphor explicit? Imagine if the white characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe hated mutants even more, out of a combination of fear and envy? What if white politicians put pressure on white superheroes like (most of) the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, etc., to enforce anti-mutant laws? How would non-mutant peoples of colour be impacted by a world where whites feared and hated non-whites even more?

On the one hand, I'm kind of horrified by my own idea, because the Marvel films are very powerful cultural touchstones, and such a storyline could deepen rifts that already exist. And the films themselves would be pretty darn serious fare, and probably quite disturbing and unpleasant. Not exactly the generally lighthearted Marvel fare audiences have become used to.

On the other hand, in the hands of a sensitive, intelligent team of writers and other creators, such a storyline could be used to show the horrible error of our ridiculous prejudices.

It's completely possible that this is the worst idea in the world. I'm a white guy, with all the blinders of privilege that entails. But the notion of seeing such a strategy play out is pretty interesting, no? "Interesting," perhaps, in the Chinese curse sense of the word...