IDW’s line of Star Trek comics continue to provide an inventive, engaging take on the franchise, with series like the flagship Star Trek title and Star Trek: Defiant bringing new ideas and fresh perspectives to the Trek galaxy. As the major crossover event “Day of Blood” reaches its stunning conclusion, readers have been given a unique insight into Klingon biology, radically altering the familiar conception of their culture.
Star Trek: Defiant #5 – written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Angel Unzueta – includes a text page, which contains startling new ideas about Klingon physiology.
As the text page explains, “Klingons can produce a powerful volume and quality of adrenaline,” which she suggests means they are not “necessarily inordinately angry, but tremendously afraid.”
Klingon Bravery Is A Coded Response To Deep-Seated Fear
As most fans of Star Trek to name the bravest species in the galaxy, and most would reasonably answer, “Klingons.” Which is why Star Trek: Defiant’s recent revelation about Klingon biology is one of the most fascinating concepts, and biggest swings, that IDW’s Trek has taken yet. Great emphasis is often placed on the values of violence and aggression traditional in Klingon culture – but Christopher Cantwell’s Defiant text page argues that the answer to “nature vs. nurture” is not an either/or, but rather a complex interplay. A biological predisposition to feel intense fear may in fact lie at the root of Klingon society’s emphasis on strength, power, and conflict.
Nature And Nuture Conspire To Make Klingons Violent
The text page in Defiant #5 is presented as a voice log recorded by the unnamed Orion pirate who has found herself caught in the middle of Star Trek’s God-War in the course of the Defiant’s early issues. The log follows her analysis of “ketracel-red,” a modified version of “ketracel-white,” the drug used to keep the genetically-engineered Jem’Hadar super-soldiers loyal to their Dominion masters. The renegade Klingon Kahless is using a version of the substance, modified with Klingon adrenaline, to keep his Red Path cult followers in a state of increased fear and agitation, in order to keep them on their crusade against the galaxy’s godlike beings.
Christopher Cantwell presents a fascinating concept with the text page from Defiant #5. Klingon behavior has a deeply engrained cultural basis – but the genesis of their cultural norms itself can be found in their biology. Science fiction often gives general character attributes to its non-human races, something everything from Star Trek to Star Wars has done in abundance. Cantwell introduces a scientifically-based explanation for this, in the case of the Klingons, doing so in a way that – rather than being further reductive – makes Klingons more complex, more dynamic characters, heralding a new way of writing them in future Star Trek stories.
