When Star Trek: Discovery first aired in late 2017, fans of The Next Generation were all probably stoked to hear the name “Kahless,” the Klingon Jesus, who showed up as a clone of himself in the episode “Rightful Heir.” And now, in “Point of Light,” the third episode of Discovery’s second season, one small detail connects Lt. Tyler to Worf and those clone-happy monks in a very specific way. And it’s all about the name of that planet at the end of the episode.
Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episode 3, “Point of Light.”
By now, any hardcore Trek fan who also loves the Klingons has noticed all the ways in which the second season of Discovery seems to be bending-over-backward to reconcile apparent discrepancies in Klingon lore from the first season. The Klingons are growing their hair back! Ash Tyler shows everybody a spiffy hologram of the classic D-7 battlecruiser from the original series! And briefly, it looks like the Klingons regained that purple blood from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But the deepest cut of the bat’leth was when Georgiou and Tyler talk about dropping off the secret Klingon baby on the planet of Boreth, with Georgiou sneering, “Do you really want your son to be raised by monks?”
Boreth is a Klingon planet populated by Klingon monks who are known as “the Followers of Kahless.” In The Next Generation episode “Rightful Heir,” Worf visits Boreth in an attempt to infuse his life with some spiritualism and it is established that the monks live on Boreth to await Kahless’s return from the dead. And the reason why they choose to wait on that specific planet is that when OG Jesus Kahless was around in ancient times, he told the Klingons he would return on “that point of light,” which referenced the star in the Boreth system. This Discovery episode being called “Point of Light” is obviously not a coincidence, but the reference is more than just a nifty Easter egg. Tyler and L’Rell’s baby, left on Boreth, would be an adult in the time of The Next Generation, and very, very likely is one of the monks who decides to just clone Kahless in “Rightful Heir.” Let’s do the Star Trek math.
If we assume the Secret Voq/L’Rell baby was born sometime in 2256 (during the first season of the show), he would be about 113-years-old the events of the TNG episode “Rightful Heir.” If he stayed on Boreth, this would mean he is a very old monk—but he wouldn’t necessarily look all that old because the Klingons clearly age differently than humans. Case in point: in Deep Space Nine, Kor, Kang, and Koloth are all alive and running around fighting with bat’leths as very old men. How old? Well, these guys were all adults in the original Star Trek, which happens in the 2260s, meaning they are definitely out there somewhere in Discovery, too. In fact, Discovery has established that Kol (Kenneth Mitchell from season 1) and Kol-sah, Kol’s dad in “Point of Light,” (also played by Kenneth Mitchell) are part of “House Kor,” Meaning, those two Klingons are related to Kor in some way, shape or form. (Side note: it seems really likely we’ll see House Duras or House Mogh in this season of Discovery, but I digress.)
The point is Kor, a-grown ass Klingon is running around in 2257, has a showdown with Kirk in 2267, and lives long enough to get drunk and bother Worf and Dax in 2372. Note also that Kor does not die of old age, but rather dies in battle in 2375. We don’t know how old Kor was in the original series when he met Kirk, so let’s just assume that he was a young adult, about age 35 (the actor who played the character, John Colicos, was 38 in 1966). If Kor 35 in 2267, that means he’s 153-years-old when he dies in a space battle in Deep Space Nine, in the episode “Once More Unto the Breach.”
So, if Kor can be 153 and still participating in space battles in Deep Space Nine, then Tyler and L’Rell’s kid can easily be a 113-year-old monk on Boreth in TNG.
In “Rightful Heir,” the high priest on Boreth is named Koroth and is the religious leader who is behind the idea of cloning Kahless in order to “fulfill” the prophecy of their messiah’s return. Could Koroth be the son of L’Rell and Tyler? Why not? He’s an old Klingon who was raised on (and potentially still lives on) Boreth by monks devoted to Kahless, so it seems pretty plausible. And the math checks out.
Plus, if the child of L’Rell and Voq is the guy who pulled the trigger on the whole let’s-clone-Kahless thing, it retroactively means T’Kuvma and Voq were perversely correct in their faith about worshiping Kahless in the first episode of Discovery. Kahless did return to the Klingon people, on that “point of light.” And the son of one of the most devoted Kahless guys ever—the son of Voq—might have been responsible for bringing Kahless back. But by the time of The Next Generation, Klingons don’t bring back their messiah with faith. They do it with science.
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read, an editor at Fatherly and a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
But none of the monks were albino, were they? Doesn’t Tyler point out his child will face hardships like he did as Voq because of his being albino? Or did I misunderstand?
Speaking of #TOS Klingons showing up in #DS9, let’s not forget that the character from the Tribbles episode(s), Arne Darvin, lived in both eras.
He was even played by the same actor, making this just another way that #DS9 was really cool and #STD is not.
I’ve noticed a lot of these pieces being hammered out recently, in an effort to make it seem that this show is honoring, fulfilling, or explaining rather than retconning while hamfistedly trying to throw a bone to old school fans every now and then. And they are clumsy at it. I caught the reference, sure, but this is more of a reach than another article I read just today which theorized that Ash Tyler may have been responsible for the destruction of Praxis and thus more diplomatic exchanges between the UFP and Klingon Empire. What’s next? Are we going to see a Discovery character come up with some obscure tactical or policy doctrine that one of these articles will claim “allowed” for the Enterprise-C to try and rescue the Klingon outpost on Narendra III and thus secure peace between the two powers? These are very transparent attempts at piquing the interest of longtime fans with name drops and the like, and they come off as being included by people who saw a handful of TNG episodes while eating ramen and studying for finals back in the 90s.
Ugh. I’ve given up commenting on these things, but I have to say something here and that thing is “For god’s sake, if you must make this show then at least keep it in its own lane and quite wrecking better series in the franchise with forced connections”.
The Boreth connection was a bit on the nose. The bigger question for me is when does our Kor take up leadership of House Kor (and why was it not house Kol)?
What I wonder is if this child grows up to be THE Albino who Kor, Koloth, Kang, and Curzon swore a blood oath against. On one hand, we know that albinos are looked down upon in Klingon culture, which could very well lead this child to not identify with Klingon society at large. Plus, if he learned that House Kor was responsible for some of his (family’s) problems in life, he may have targetted Kor and his allies as enemies. Not to mention the age fits, as The Albino appeared somewhat younger than Kor, Koloth, and Kang on DS9, but still aged.
After all, they never said The Albino wasn’t Klingon.
@5 Now that you mention it, The Albino does look like he could be a Klingon with a rare mutation.
BTW, one of the #ST novels said he was a Klingon:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Albino
That’s not canon, however.
Yeah the Albino from Blood Oath is something that seems like a pretty obvious connection. I’m kind of shocked the author of this article didn’t talk about that, since everything else in it is very spot on.
You have left out one very important detail: Their son is albino. Although he was left on that okanet and raised by monks it is far more likely that he’s either the actual Albino they fight in DS9 or has ties to him because it’s very clear that Albinism amongst Klingons is rare so the chances of them being related or the same person is very likely. Kor, one of the leading members to that raiding party, has the same name as the uncle that attacked L’Rell, right? So if the Albino from DS9 traced his lineage and made that discovery there is a very good chance he started conflict for revenge. I forget who started the fight but either way, even if Kor started it, it could easily have been because of the knowledge that the Albino as an infant is the reason his father or brother was killed.
Tl;Dr itsi more likely that they are connected in DS9 because of the Albino Klingon storyline.
To give them some credit, this is a no-win scenario.
Towards the end of season 1, DIS’s ratings were somewhat correlated with their focus on existing lore — the more they played around with old ideas, the better their ratings tended to be. So *not* referencing existing lore would probably only hurt them, and give more credence to the “not Star Trek” argument.
At the same time, most television shows can only go so far with references to old canon (kind of why TNG stopped really referencing TOS after season 2).
I do feel like a lot of DIS’s references have been hamfisted (even a bit beyond the Borg showing up in ENT), but in comparison to other shows, spending the first two seasons on heavy references isn’t really off track. They just need to be able to do something afterwards, because you can’t keep a show on that alone.
Personally I hated it when the twenty-fourth century got mixed up in earlier periods. You should have seen my hissy fit when the Ferengi showed up on ‘Enterprise’. Happily I stopped watching before the Borg appeared.
I’m fine with the occasional reference, but there is a point when it becomes distracting, like watching a Memory Alpha article brought to life. Give me stories, not hyperlinks.
This show could take a lesson from “Gotham” in that the show isn’t really a prequel to any previous BatLore (Batman’66, Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, Christopher Nolan)… it’s a prequel to its own Batman. DISC keeps wanting to prove it’s the “real” deal with its connect the dots approach to Canon and Continuity, but this just keeps screaming, “Not My Star Trek”
Kurtzman just doesn’t have the chops as a producer/showrunner to actually juggle Trek lore in a meaningful fashion. His ham-fisted efforts to reconcile his Space Orcs as ‘Klingons’ in the new season is laughable last-minute scrambling. Of all things the show dropped the ball on, it’s the Klingons that Kurtzman screwed up the worst.
STD’s biggest problem is that it just doesn’t have anyone on the cast with enough charisma and likeability to hang the stories on. Even in S1 and 2 TNG Patrick Stewart was instantly watchable (as was Brent Spiner), DS9 had Avery Brooks and the Quark-Odo double act to fascinate and engage viewers, and even poor Voyager had Picardo and McNeil. ENT and STD both suffer from the lack of that charisma and warmth. STD had a shot with Lorca, but utterly wasted him in a dumb mirror universe plot and pointless grimdark, but that is it. None of the rest of the crew have that level of engagement, they are all plucked from the bucket of either bland or irritating.
@14: Yeah, that’s been an issue. And that’s a hard thing for a character drive show to handle — especially since Discovery is supposed to be *the* character-drive Star Trek show (or at least that’s what it was sold as).
Tilly, Staments, and Saru aren’t really dynamic enough on their own to provide that. They’re popular characters, and have potential, but they aren’t really set up to drive the show forward. They’re side characters; they contribute to the plot, but they don’t really solve it or cause it on their own, or at least not on a regular basis. They need more of a central focus in order to really get that energy going. That’s not supposed to be their role (Burnham is the MC after all), but I don’t think keeping them as side characters and Burnham as the main is really working. Especially if the writers keep solving the plot for her.
That’s a good point about charisma and likability in Discovery. Perhaps, in retrospect, it wasn’t the best decision to place the show’s central familial drama within a clan of Vulcans, who aren’t the most charismatic or likable people in the galaxy and have been difficult for actors to nail down. I’m convinced now more than ever the main reason fans ever liked this species was down to the unique talents of Leonard Nimoy. It’s the rare actor who can play stoic and condescending and be charismatic and likable at the same time.
Agreed, Nimoy was one of those one in a lifetime talents. I don’t think any other actor, except Mark Lenard maybe, quite managed to get that balance as a Vulcan. I do think that even Nimoy would have struggled if he’d been the main viewpoint character though, the original show really need him and Shatner (and Deforest Kelly) playing off each other. Maybe that is the real strength of TOS, which even TNG didn’t quite get, that natural chemistry and relationship of the central cast.
Oh definitely, the casting in TOS was lightning in a bottle.
Let me add, I don’t blame Discovery for wanting to explore Vulcan culture more — they can be occasionally fascinating — but maybe it would’ve been better had Burnham been raised human and we get to see her enter this world as an adult. It’s hard for me to relate to a character who was raised in an alien culture. Whereas, Worf was relatable to me because he was both an outsider and had a very human family. I know what those things are like.
Nice theory, Ryan. Thanks for sharing it.