Canon

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    The Klingons: A Code, or a Costume? (Race Spotlight)

    ByAlex

    A man stands in the Great Hall on Qo’noS, accused of a treason his father never committed, and the most powerful Klingon in the room knows he is innocent.

    Chancellor K’mpec has the truth in front of him. The defence codes that allowed the Romulans to destroy Khitomer, four thousand dead in a single night, were not transmitted by Worf’s father Mogh. They were sent by Ja’rod, father of Duras, whose house carries too much weight on the Council to be touched without splitting the Empire. So the Council does the arithmetic and lets an innocent name carry the guilt. K’mpec asks Worf to swallow it, to accept discommendation and a lifetime of public shame, so that the Empire does not crack along the fault line the truth would open. And Worf does. He turns, and a hall full of warriors crosses their wrists and turns their backs on him, one by one, for a crime that did not happen.

    That is the most honour-obsessed culture in Star Trek, transacting in a lie, in the one building where honour is supposed to mean something. Remember that image. Everything else here pulls against it.

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    The Gorn: People or Monster’s? (Race Spotlight)

    ByAlex

    Kirk has the thing beaten. He has spent the back half of “Arena” turning a barren rock and a handful of raw minerals into a working cannon, sulphur and charcoal and a few rough diamonds packed into a length of bamboo, and now the Gorn captain is down in front of him, wounded and waiting for the killing blow. The Metrons have all but invited it. And Kirk lowers the weapon.

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    Why I Can’t Make Myself Care About Star Trek Novels

    ByAlex

    There is a Wikipedia page that attempts to define Star Trek canon. It is, in the way of most Wikipedia pages on contested topics, thorough, carefully footnoted, and ultimately incapable of settling the argument it was written to resolve. The page lists what counts, what doesn’t count, what Gene Roddenberry said, what he later contradicted, and the various positions Paramount has taken over the decades. It will not tell you whether the DS9 relaunch novels matter. It will not tell you whether Destiny counts. These are questions canon cannot answer, because they are not really canon questions.