When “Star Trek” first hit the airwaves the main bad guys, the Klingons, were surrogates for the Soviets during the Cold War, The hyper aggressive, warlike aliens were a great foil for Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise. By the time “Star Trek: The Next Generation” rolled around, coinciding with a thaw in American-Soviet relations, the Klingons had become unruly allies, with even one, Lieutenant Worf, serving on the Enterprise.
The next Trek series, “Star Trek: Discovery” is drawing nigh. The new show is set ten years before the original series and will deal with the origin of the Federation-Klingon conflict.
The question arises, will the Empire maintain its status as a surrogate for the Russians? One would think so, considering the machinations of Vladimir Putin. However, one would be mistaken for such an assessment.
The Klingons as deplorable's
It seems, according to Entertainment Weekly, that the Klingons are going to be stand ins for Donald trump supporters. Mind, showrunner Aaron Harberts hastens to say that his Klingons are “not the enemy,” which would have come as a surprise to Captain Kirk. However, “isolationism” and “racial purity” will be big themes. The Empire’s different way of looking at the universe will force the officers of the USS Discovery to take a good look at themselves. Still, the transformation of the Klingons from a fierce, warrior race into a group of silly people who cling to their quaint notions of honor and their disruptors is bound to be off putting to many people.
Can ‘Star Trek’ survive insulting 63 million Americans
Trump supporters are used to being depicted as savage animals. However, they tend to get really irate when they are condescended to by people who set themselves up as their betters. It looks like, reading between the lines, that the Trump loving space aliens are going to be an unenlightened lot who need to be set straight by the Federation about how the universe actually works.
“Star Trek” has always tried to delve into burning issues, The series was at its best doing that when those were derived from JFK new frontier ethos of the 1960s, The show devolved into politically correct silliness during the Next Gen Picard era. However, “Deep Space Nine” and, to some degree, “Voyager” tried to be a little subversive in the Federation’s image of itself as the perfect, enlightened society.
If the new show is going to be a vehicle to poke fun at roughly half of its audience, then it will likely fail. The tragedy is that the purveyors of this nonsense are not likely to get it when it happens.
