TL;DR – Starfleet Academy finally fixes the issue of Klingons on multiple fronts and earns the classic Jerry Goldsmith theme.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that airs this series.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Vox in Excelso Review –

Okay, today, before we dive into the review, I need to warn you that we are going to get deep into the lore and into some of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the series. I would not usually get as inside-baseball as this in the reviews; however, it is clear that this episode is very much based in that space.

So, to set the scene, the USS Athena has taken the Starfleet Academy out on their first away mission to chart a nebula. While it is meant to be a learning opportunity, it is to some extent. The trip is marked in tragedy when it is discovered that a refugee ship carrying remnants of the last 8 Klingon houses has crashed, and some of those onboard were Jay-Den’s (Karim Diané) family. Now he is thrust into a spotlight he does not want nor is appropriate, but he still has to navigate it anyway. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

So Let’s Talk About Klingons

Okay, so we need to talk about how the Klingons have been depicted in Star Trek. All the way back in the original series, they were mostly normal human-looking people with some tan makeup and a poor disposition. It was a budget thing, but when we got to the Star Trek movies, they had more money, so the Klingon makeup was reformed and reworked until it got to the style that ran from The Next Generation all the way through to Enterprise, where DS9 had to explain why they looked different in the past with their time and played a game of hot potato that Enterprise would finally settle, in its much-improved fourth season.

I give you all this backstory because you need to know that Klingon makeup has changed quite dramatically, but then it has been very stable for decades, which is when we reach the reboot period after Enterprise went off air. The Kelvin movies gave us a glimpse of their version of Klingons when Zoe Saldana showed off her impressive Klingonese, who had taken on a goblin-like visage, but that was barely a cameo. But when we got to the start of New-Trek, things changed dramatically.

The first season of Discovery made some dramatic changes to the Klingons; some were quite interesting, others were very polarising, one being the new design of the Klingons. Now, to put my cards on the table, while I am someone who generally likes Star Trek Discovery, even if it was flawed, I am also clearly on the record stating that I don’t like the decision they made with reinterpreting a lot of the classic alien designs. Look, I honestly get why they changed it up because when you go and watch some of the older shows, you can start to feel an uncomfortable brown-face aspect to a number of the characters. While Discovery ended up having quite a dialogue with fans over its runtime, it is clear that they understood that they didn’t nail the design of the Klingons. In Season Two, they softened the design; in Season Three to Five, there were no Klingons present at all, and shows such as Lower Decks and Picard reverted to the old design.       

I give you all of this prelude because when Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was announced, it caused a bit of buzz that they had a Klingon character using the style of makeup shown in Strange New Worlds, which is still a tweak on what has come before due to modern prosthetics techniques. Still, it is much more in line with the Klingons we have known in the past. More than that, this week feels almost like a conversation with the fans because we get some real insight into the Klingons that adds to their story, without feeling like a plasticine insert.

It’s All About Family

At its core, this is an episode all about family, the family that gets you, the family that doesn’t, and the families that you create that might not be related by blood. Jay-Den might be a Klingon, but he is more interested in healing than slaughter, which does not sit well with most of his family, especially Drekol (Martin Roach), one of his fathers. However, while his brother Thar (Tremaine Nelson) might have been the most stereotypically Klingon that ever Klingoned, he also understood that Jay-Den had a different path than him and cherished him for who he was.   

However, we know that Jay-Den has had a hard break from his family, and this week, we find out why. I want to give full respect here to Karim Diané because it is hard to bring a lot of emotion underneath so much prosthetics, but he makes it work. He carries the episode with his grief, his determination, and his strength. Jay-Den’s conversations with Lura Thok (Gina Yashere) were the highlight of the episode and might be the most impactful thing Star Trek has done in an age. Part of what makes it work as well as it does is that this episode gives more depth to the Klingon concept of Honour, giving it more of a rounded view rather than the surface-level concept bandied around a barrel of blood wine.

Klingons have been notably missing in the future series, and this week, we get a very plausible reason why that is. The Burn not only affected ships, but any ground-based dilithium reactor, and we know from The Undiscovered Country that Klingons have a habit of using unsafe power generation. Thus, Qo’noS was destroyed entirely, its colony worlds heavily damaged, the alliance with the Federation was revoked, and then what was left was attacked by former client species. Now, what Klingons that are left are nomadic, and there is a very real chance that they are running headfirst into extinction.

Klingons responding to abject tragedy and an existential threat to their species by doubling down on their traditions, even though holding firm to those traditions is what is likely going to cause their extinction, felt like a very plausible scenario. I liked the conversations between Obel Wochak (David Keeley) and Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) trying to find a way forward, but knowing that it won’t work because the pill was too large to swallow. In the end, it took Jay-Den reminding them that the Federation needs to stand for its ideals, even when it is hard, and sometimes the creative answer is the best one. It was a Star Trek answer to a Star Trek question, and it earned the classic Jerry Goldsmith theme.   

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Vox in Excelso? Yes, we do. I think this is one of the strongest episodes of the new period of Trek, and it gives me active hope that Starfleet Academy has a real future going forward. Have you watched Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Vox in Excelso? Let us know what you thought of the new series in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Directed by – Doug Aarniokoski
Written by – Gaia Violo & Eric Anthony Glover
Created by – Gaia Violo
Based On – Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry
Production/Distribution Companies – Secret Hideout, Warm Blood Sunday, Roddenberry Entertainment, CBS Studios & Paramount+
Starring – Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Bella Shepard, Oded Fehr, Gina Yashere, Brit Marling, Stephen Colbert, & Robert Picardo
With – Rebecca Quin, Ken Barnett, Tremane Nelson, David Keeley, & Martin Roach
And –  Dorothy Atabong, Sean Jones, Nicole Dickinson, Michael Brown, Avaah Blackwell, Joseph Chiu, Joseph Messina, Layina Chano, & Rekha Shankar