“You do not kill an animal unless you intend to eat it.”
The problem with Klingons is laid bare in this shame-faced episode, which is so morally and conceptually muddled that it ends up arguing for race-hatred, religious zealotry, and even fascism. “Birthright, Part II” finds Worf garrisoned at a penal colony inhabited by Klingons and Romulans who escaped the war and made peace with one another twenty years ago – and Worf proceeds to resort to everything up to and including bombing the place to set them back on what he considers to be the right track: xenophobia, mutual distrust, and war.
Oh, I don’t think the episode means any of this intentionally. It’s just too stupid to figure it out. The pressure that Star Trek: The Next Generation has put on the core concept of the Klingon personality pushes that concept to the breaking point here.
Worf has, at his best, always been the Enterprise’s stay-at-home racist and fascist (at least when it comes to the Romulans), but the problem with making him the hero of this story (and, by extension, the problem with making the Klingons allies of the Federation) is that there is now dissonant tension between Worf’s race as conceived, and the basic morality that Star Trek preaches. “Birthright II” argues that the Klingon children of the Klingon/Romulan prison camp deserve to have some awareness of their cultural heritage, and then demonstrates that their cultural heritage in this context means rejecting pacifism, engaging in sport hunting, and embracing violence as a way of life.
The result is an episode that uncomfortably suggests that staying true to one’s racial heritage will inherently lead to race-hatred; and at the same time, that rejecting that heritage is a soft option, ignoble and cowardly. (The title, “Birthright,” becomes quadruply creepy in this context.) The result is like parachuting Worf into the one corner of Gaza where Israelis and Palestinians are getting along, and having him teach everyone how to make bombs. It’s morally repugnant.
But like I said, probably wholly unintentional. This is wildly lazy writing. The proceedings are actually quite humdrum, beige storytelling of the worst kind, with no dramatic movement or sway to any of the story’s turns. And there’s also Worf’s creepy half-romance with a teenaged girl, whom he spies naked in the jungle one day and who later turns out to be a Romulan/Klingon hybrid (and to whom Worf, of course, teaches a bit of self-dislike). I don’t know how old Worf is meant to be at this point in the narrative, but Ba’el can’t be more than 21, given the timeframe… and she looks younger. It’s gross. What a colossal mess this is.
One Enterprise out of five.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Six is in stores. Season Seven will conclude the blog in early 2015 – you can pre-order the final season now.