2x19 Judgment

[9.4/10] I tend to like naturalism in most things, even in stories in outer space. It’s why I found found the original Star Trek difficult to warm to at times, with all of Kirk’s grand pronouncements about this and that, and a certain pulpiness that was always the intent of the show. All else equal, I want the conflict, the characters, and their reactions to feel real, even if the setting or scenario are outlandish.

But by god, somehow the Klingons just bring out my inner cheese. (Surgeon General’s Warning: If you or a loved one start autogenerating dairy products internally, please consult a physician.) There is just something about those growling, shouting, gesticulating aliens that works for me, and turns a tone that might seem over the top elsewhere into something I can absolutely vibe with.

The same goes for courtroom drama episodes for that matter. There’s an artificiality to the setting, one where people are called upon to make big speeches in a structured setting, that lends itself to a certain amount of grandiosity and presentation. Lawyers “act” when making presentations to juries or arguing in front of judges, so it makes sense that actors playing lawyers would, well, act as well.

So when “Judgment” presents a Klingon legal drama, it can be loud and boisterous and grandiose in what it offers the audience, and it goes down as smoothly as a nice slug of bloodwine, even for sticks in the mud like me.

The episode sees Archer brought before a Klingon tribunal and charged with fomenting rebellion. Using a Rashomon type presentation, the courtroom scenes are, in part, a frame story to depict a skirmish between Archer and Klingon named Captain Duras (a name that raises instant suspicion among Next Generation fans). Captain Duras tells his side of the story, a tale of a duplicitous, Klingon-hating, terrorist-helping human who defied the Empire and dishonored a proud warrior. And then Archer tells his side, of his crew rendering aid to a group of beleaguered refugees harassed by the Klingons like the ones we met in “Marauders”, of defending his ship from a Klingon-instigated attack, and of the mercy she showed his enemy despite the opportunity to slay his opponent.

It’s all done well enough, with some cool firefights and explosions. The true set of events are predictable enough, but it’s fun to see the Enterprise through a lying Klingon’s eyes, and the episode adds enough wrinkles and new details to what really happened to make the retelling of the story compelling. It all sets up Archer as someone resourceful, proud, and noble, who not only outflanked a Klingon battle cruiser, but who is willing to sacrifice his own life in order to save a group of people he’s barely met, because it’s the right thing to do.

That’s not the most interesting part of the episode though. It’s fine to see Archer presented as the good captain yet again, but it’s far more fascinating to see another glimpse of the Klingon legal system, to hear about the degradation and change of the Klingon society, and to see the story of one man (er, Klingon man) seeing Archer’s stand as an object lesson for standing up for his principles.

The Courtroom drama part of it is just downright fun. Sure, theoretically Archer could be sentenced to death, but c’mon. The spark of the judge’s weird ball glove gavel, the rabble of the chanting crowd, the tet-a-tet between the defense advocate and the prosecutor are all great texture and great television. There is a certain amount of enjoyable scenery-chewing that goes on when Orak, the mercenary, decorated prosecutor, goes full “j’accuse!” with Archer, and it’s just as fun when Advocate Kolos is roused from his complacency by Archer, and starts using his craftiness to meet Orak head-on.

But what’s even more engrossing is Kolos’s recollection of a more enlightened Klingon society, and his lamenting how much his people have devolved into rank warriorism. I’ve watched literally every other Star Trek series, and outside of a few notable exceptions, I only know Klingons as the proud, revelrous warriors that they’re typically presented as. The idea that there’s other classes of Klingons than the ones the likes of Kirk would likely meet on the interstellar frontier is neat in and of itself.

Even more compelling, though, is the notion that the Klingons were once a diverse set of people who had scientists and teacher and real lawyers, who devolved into an “honor and war above all” corruption that would overtake the culture as a whole. There’s an antiquated sort of species essentialism to Star Trek: all Vulcans are logical, all Klingons are war-like, all Ferengi are greedy. Different stories have subverted these ideas on the margins, but “Judgment” is the first Trek story I can remember to suggest that it didn’t have to be this way, that for Klingons at least, this was a regrettable cultural homogenization, rather than a speciesist inevitability.

Kolos aims to fight against that tide. He tries his hardest for the first time in years, and earns Archer a commuting of his death sentence to life in prison. Inspired by Archer’s example, he publicly questions how far these Klingon courts have fallen in his time, regretting his complacency, challenging the hypocritical sense of honor, and speaking truth to power. It earns him the same trip to the penal colony of Rura Penthe that Archer gets, cementing the ways in which “Judgment” is a spiritual successor to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which dealt similarly with kangaroo courts and hard-won shifts in Klingon society.

In truth, the episode runs out of gas a bit once the setting changes to the frozen prison. The enjoyable Klingon bravado, the heightened reality of the tribunal setting, fade a little into standard Trekian folderol. Still, the convenient rescue is an enjoyable post script to these proceedings, and even better is Kolos resolve to stay and improve his people’s lot.

The show isn’t subtle about it, with Kolos outright stating why he’s had a change of heart, what he means to atone for, and how he’ll have the will to go on. But maybe with these operating Klingon stories, subtlety is overrated. There is something heartening, maybe even stirring, about this cynical man finding reason to believe in something again. Even I would be hard-pressed to ask Enterprise to turn the volume down.