As the title informs you I will only be speaking about the Klingons as they appeared in the original Star Trek series, not he later retconed aliens that were introduced in the Motion Picture and later elements of the franchise.

Star Trek arrived during an interesting period in entertainment history, by being produced in the later 60’s the series was influenced by and could be seen as a metaphor for both World War II and The Cold War. The writers, directors and producers of the series counted among their number several World War II veterans while the Cold War, now well under way, underpinned everyday life and provided an atmosphere of dread under the treat of global nuclear war. It is natural for people to look on the Klingons of the original series as a metaphor for either the NAZIs or the Communists, but which is a better fit?

Now first I am not putting forth a proposition as to what was in the creators heads when they crafted Star Trek’s original bad guys, but rather just an exercise about which brutal ideology best matches what we know of the Klingons.

There are of course a number of areas of overlap between the deadly forces of Communism and National Socialism. Both were brutal dictatorships, both murdered on a vast scale, both were ruthlessly expansionistic, both were extremely militaristic, both engaged in suppression of dissidents, both crushed the individual under the power of the state.

All of these elements would seem to apply to the Klingon Empire, both this complicates the issues. However it is important to recognize that National Socialism and Communism however similar in many area are not the same thing, so perhaps by finding key differences between the two and apply them to what we know or can extrapolate from the Klingons we can determine the best match.

Communism did not recognize the right to own property. All property belonged to the state, while Nazism recognized private property in a fairly recognizable state, corporations, and the like. From the original series we have no data about the Klingon economic models and systems, so we can’t use this as a point of differentiation.

Communism believed in an inevitable march of history; that peoples and cultures inexorably moved through certain developmental stages, in the same sequence, and that the end results would be the stateless commune.  Nazism believed in the survival of the fittest on both a racial and a cultural, which were really one and the same for them, stage. They thought that it was the natural order for the strongest culture to dominate and subjugate the ‘weaker.’

Ah here we have a bit of a match with the original series Klingons. They clearly believed that if they were stronger is was natural and right for they to rule. They did not argue their dominance from destiny, but from ability.

Communism was a very delusion and distorted view of mass teamwork. That everyone person, if given an equal share would pull equally hard for the greater good and that want and greed would die away. It was group oriented, but in a fanciful belief that people would become happy and prosperous in a share and share-alike fantasy. Nazism saw the individual as only a cog in a machine to support the state, and the race which defined the state.  Every man and woman had a duty to the state and that duty overrode all individual consideration. There was no utopian fantasy of universal brotherhood, only the importance of the state over the individual. This matches up quite nicely with Commander Kor’s speech to Kirk in ‘Mission of Mercy’ just before his men burst in to, once again, arrest the Captain.

The final point of divergence is the spread of ideology.

The communists could be though of a evangelicals. It was not enough to conquer territory, to claim resources, to amass power, they also had a burning need to convert. They desires that not only did subjugate peoples bend knees to their power, but adopted their view and vision of the future. Like the Inquisition before them the Communists could brook no heretics. The Nazis weren’t interested in that at all. Because of the racial components of their belief system,  they saw the world as a conflict between themselves and everyone else. They never expressed an argument that their system was better for everyone, they never tried to convince Kirk or the Organians that they should convert, but rather brute force to take was enough and all they required was subservience.

To me this makes it clear, for the Original Series Star Trek, the Klingons were much more like Nazis than communists.

I must publicly confess my sin and make proper atonement.

For the past two days I have sought out and deliberately watched two episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. I do not have the excuse that these episodes, a two parter, were written by a friends as I did when I watch episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, and as such this is a sin against taste.

I watched the Season 3 episodes, Through A Mirror, Darkly parts 1 & 2 via the Netflix instant view.  This story arc takes place entirely in the producers views of the Mirror Mirror universe first seen in the original series episode of the same name. ( a truly great Episode.) Howevere the producers did not pay attention to that episode and were wildly off the mark on how that universe worked. In Mirror Mirror counter-Spock warns Counter-Sulu that should he, Spock, go missing, his asscoicates would come looking for revenge. Counter-Sulu blanches when counter-Spock that some of his associates are Vulcans. In that one moment we get so much about what has changed. The Vulcan are bad asses, more like Romulans than the pacifists we know. In this Enterprise story the Vulcan are enslaved to the humans, but basicly the same. In fact they are leading a revolt against the empire instead of being a terror within it.

There are numerous other faults in these two episodes. Production design managed to copy known sets from the original series, (The Starship Defiant, lost in the episode The Tholian Web, has appeared in the Mirror Mirror universe, bring the empire tech from about a hundred years down the road.) However they try to create sets that are meant to be aboard Defiant but are not copies of original sets, and the design fails. These new sets do not look like the belong on the same ship. There is also a CGI Gorn in the second part. they smartly kept the effect mainly to the shadows, but it did not look like a Gorn. The body looked pretty good, but the head was entirely different. Also they portrayed the Gorn as quick and nimble, guess the original wasn’t good enough for them.

During the second episode counter-Archer (the lead and Captain in the series) is repeatedly advised and taunted my visions of regular Archer. I kept waiting for the explanation for what this was. It never came. None at all. Nothing that happened in the story impacted on the regular universe and the whole story arc was pointless.

A waste of time. How shall I atone?