Review by Ian Keogh
Are you a Star Trek fan, yet find it difficult to suppress a groan of disappointment every time there’s another episode focussing on the Klingons and their relentlessly masculine culture? Well you probably won’t get on with The Light of Kahless, although the bonus of a graphic novel format is not having to listen the daft makey-up gutteral growl of the Klingon language.
During the early episodes of Discovery a major menace was warlord T’Kuvma uniting the warring Klingon houses, thus making them a viable threat for the first time in centuries. Co-writers Kirsteen Beyer and Mike Johnson acknowledge he wasn’t around for long by having most of this story being a flashback, showing the obstacles T’Kuvma overcame to reach the position of enabling the unthinkable. As a youth he buys into his sister’s devotion to the teachings of Kahless, considered the first true Klingon, and is eventually sent to Borek to further his studies.
The writers provide a once great family in decline, showing the rot ingrained and no great desire to look above the comforts that remain. It provides T’Kuvma a convincing position to rebel against. If his training is the usual Klingon rot of enduring the unendurable to prove oneself worthy, it gives him a solidified view, and that in one sense is what artist Tony Shasteen provides.
His panels have richly textured backgrounds, with exotic designs a speciality. They’re a strangely decorative view of such an ascetic people, yet all the effort put into the designs also shows in occasionally weak and and sometimes posed figures, which don’t seem to interest Shasteen as much. They’re noticeable, but not to the point of greatly impacting what’s in places a clever story enlightening about the cast.
T’Kuvma is shown as an ideologue, but one who despises frippery and exploitation, at least in Klingon terms, and as such becomes more rounded than he was in the TV show, where he was just a means to an end. There’s also a neat revelation about how he could be manipulative if need be, also providing a little more background to his TV presence.
Love the Klingons? You’ll find The Light of Kahless good value, but it’s not going to change anyone else’s opinion.
Rather than having an ongoing series to accompany the Discovery TV show, IDW are issuing one complete new story per season, accompanied by the occasional special, so Succession is next on the agenda.
