As bad as the Burn hit the Federation, the Klingons had it worse. Now just a diaspora scattered across the Alpha Quadrant without a homeworld, their fate lies in the hands of Cadet Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diane).
“Vox in Excelso” shares some clear DNA with this series’ second episode, “Beta Test” with its focus on the Federation’s efforts to begin mending its relationship with one of its former allies and having one of its cadets play a pivotal role in these efforts. Where this week’s writers Gaia Violo and Eric Anthony Glover improve on that formula is how they neatly fold the A-story into Jay-Den’s backstory and personal journey.
Before Star Trek: Starfleet Academy even aired, online haters were already mocking Jay-Den for what they assumed would be a less “manly” take on their skewed interpretation of Klingons. This perception of the Klingons as an aspiration form of masculinity has always been as misguided as the viewpoint that Vulcans represent some ideal form of rationality.
Like with Spock’s mixed heritage, both Worf and B’Elanna Torres were Klingon protagonists designed with more complicated identities. Torres was half human while Worf was raised by human foster parents on Earth. This outsider component helped better critique the Klingon culture, exposing the hypocrisies underneath its veneer of noble warriors.
Jay-Den differs from Worf and B’Elanna Torres in that he actually is a full Klingon who grew up among fellow Klingons. But he too is an outsider nonetheless because he yearns for a different kind of life. So upon encountering an advertisement for the new Starfleet Academy, his brother recognized it as a perfect opportunity for Jay-Den. We already obviously knew Jay-Den did enroll, but we learn here that decision came with the shame of feeling like he disappointed his father. So he too feels like a marginalized voice: “But I do not know what Klingon I am or what Starfleet Officer; I dishonor both worlds.“
But after the fall of the Klingon Empire, his people are also now marginalized, and it take’s Jay-Den’s unique perspective to recognize Starfleet’s paternalism, however well-intentioned, as an insult striping Klingon’s of their right to define themselves. He even chastises the Federation as a colonial power, daring to ask if the Federation requires swallowing up the cultures of “other great peoples” in an act of assimilation “in order to redefine itself after The Burn.”
And while my preference is for less references to past Trek, I do almost wish the writers here had Jay-Den actually use the word “assimilation” because of the specific dark connotations that word holds in this franchise. The conflict of cultural assimilation versus celebrating our differences is a thematic thread tracing back to The Original Series when they introduced IDIC, the acronym representing the Vulcan maxim of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
Jay-Den isn’t our only Klingon on this series though. Lura Thok had a Jem’Hadar father and Klingon mother. Embodying more of that expected Klingon warrior identity, Thok provides a great counterpoint and mentor figure to Jay-Den. It’s she who helps him realize his father wasn’t ashamed of him but rather chose to miss his target in the hunt deliberately to honor Jay-Den by setting the bird free and, in doing so, symbolically freeing his son to chart his own path.
Thok interprets the gesture as his father seeing Jay-Den as “a Klingon warrior whose passion for death is surpassed only by his passion for life.” It’s this newfound understanding of his father’s act of tough love that gives Jay-Den the insight needed to convince the Klingon diaspora to settle on their new homeworld. The Klingon sense of honor precludes them from accepting a handout, but when framed as the glorious spoils of conquest — even albeit through an almost ceremonial, bloodless battle — a gift given out of pity becomes conquered territory, preserving Klingon pride.
Photo: Brooke Palmer/Paramount+.
I’ve always gravitated towards Trek episodes that were courtroom dramas like “A Measure of a Man,” “The Drumhead,” or the more recent “Ad Astra per Aspera” because the genre lends itself to the characters having to win a moral argument. Speaking of “The Drumhead,” my favorite bit of fan service this week that managed to not be overly distracting goes to when the Doctor quotes the fictional Judge Aaron Satie:
With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured…the first thought forbidden…the first freedom denied – chains us all, irrevocably.
In “The Drumhead,” Captain Jean Luc Picard invoked this very quote warning about curtailing civil rights in the name of security as a stern rebuke of Satie’s daughter, who’d stirred up a McCarthyist witch hunt. This evergreen quote feels particulary timely in 2026 America.
The debate competition conceit in “Vox in Excelso” functions similarly to a courtroom drama. But Violo and Glover deftly tie the Klingon refugee crisis to Jay-Den’s immediate family as well as his personal struggles of identity and fear of public speaking. It’s a great character piece that defines Jay-Den as “a warrior not with weapons but with words.”
Further, “Vox in Excelso” demonstrates how this generation, with their own unique perspectives, are capable of improving on the Federation of the past. There is a truth in Jay-Den’s critique of this rebooted Federation, one that could also be read as meta-commentary to the franchise’s writers themselves as they endeavor to restore Star Trek. Perhaps the adults are clinging so hard to some past ideal of the Federation that they’re failing to grasp why it began falling apart even before The Burn.
The final line of the episode continues this thought, suggesting some marriage between the Federation of old and the new possibilities presented by the next generation. It brilliantly demonstrates how to effectively use this academy setting and this distinct, post-Burn moment to tell a true Star Trek story that boldly challenges the audience to reimagine a future that surpasses the limited imaginations of 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2010s writers.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy release Thursdays on Paramount+.
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