About two years or so ago, I was introduced to a Star Trek fan film project called Axanar. This production, crowd-funded but with the input of several Hollywood folk and famous genre actors, was to tell the story of the first war between the Klingons and the Federation. A war that concluded with the famous Battle of Axanar, where Garth of Izar (who appeared in TOS) defeated the Klingons and won the war for the UFP.
The released a 30-min short to whet the appetite of their supporters and fans. "Prelude to Axanar" is done up like a History channel documentary, with interviews and "stock footage" and the like to tell the story of what led up to the famous battle. If you have not seen it, click on the video below and DO SO. It's worth your time.
Now, up until this Axanar, CBS had turned a mostly blind eye to fan productions of Star Trek in general. Several have been boasting production design comparable in quality to Axanar (Star Trek: Renegades and Star Trek Continues are both highly recommended by yours truly.) But something about Axanar stuck in their craw and they sued the pants off the Axanar production team.
What stuck in their craw was, as we now know, Star Trek Discovery. A new official canon series that would tell the story of the first war between the Klingons and the Federation.
Eventually, the suit was settled out of court and the end result is that whatever original Axanar film was planned will now never see the light of day. We may get something, but not the original vision.
I really wanted to hate Discovery because of this lawsuit and how it screwed over so many wonderful creative people. People who clearly love Star Trek and want to tell stories in that universe. People who are not interested in hurting CBS's bottom line but are really trying to encourage people to check out this 50 year old story in all its iterations. Star Trek's biggest and most enthusiastic fans, now screwed over by the Star Trek franchise's owners. Grrr!!!!
Then Discovery came out back in October and it was unbelievably jaw-dropping good. Every episode (with one minor exception) just knocked it out of the park: Amazing story, great characters, beautiful ships (the Fed ones anyway.) I fell in love with Discovery, to the point where it may be my favorite Star Trek series yet and I've seen them all.
As the first season of Discovery progressed, I started to wonder "Is there a way that this and Axanar can co-exist in the same 'universe?'" I became increasingly convinced that yes, they could. They could be parallel stories being told about the same war. There would, of course, require some tweaks, but it could be done.
Canon has not firmly set the date of the Battle of Axanar. We only really know that studying Garth of Izar's tactics at that battle was required reading for up and coming Star Fleet officers at the Academy. (This is established in the TOS episode "Whom Gods Destroy" where we meet a now-insane Garth). It could be set during Discovery's time period (2256 or so), despite the Axanar fan crew setting the date of the battle much earlier (2241).
Of course, the sticky wicket there is how would Kirk have studied the battle at the academy when he was already serving in Star Fleet in 2256 (That was during his time aboard the U.S.S. Farragut as a junior officer). Perhaps he had to return to the Academy for further study after his first starship assignment.
Well, best made plans and all that, as Discovery progressed further yet, this sort of reconciliation became harder and harder. With the first season of Discovery now over and the Klingon War now concluded, ending with a whimper instead of a bang, it's pretty well impossible to place Axanar into Discovery as a parallel story.
So, back to the drawing board...
So, let's put Axanar and the battle thereat back when the people who made it set it: 2241. That's 15 years before Discovery and 25 before TOS. This removes the sticky wicket about Kirk having studied the battle during his Academy days. It again predates his entry into the Academy.
But the new sticky wicket is the Klingons, who have, according to Discovery, been in isolation from the Federation since ENT. Their emergence at the Battle of the Binary Stars comes as a shock to the Federation, who've heard very little from the Klingons for the past century.
The key word there is "very little." Very little is not "nothing" and Discovery itself tells us that Klingon-Federation contact has occurred at other times within the last 100 years, always violently. Not the least of which is the raid where Michael Burnam's biological parents are killed.
Given Michael's presumed age (Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays her, is 32), that raid very well could have taken place within the Axanar storyline's Four Years War.
Prelude to Axanar also establishes a few things that could help us here. It makes the point to show the Klingon battle strategies are really one of massacre and genocide (which also fits with their war strategy in Discovery), less one of occupation. It establishes Kharn, the battle commander of the Klingon offense, as being at odds to some degree with Klingon leadership. This too fits in with Discovery's reveal that the Klingon people are divided and the Great Houses do not get along.
So here's my proposal to reconcile these two amazing high quality Star Trek stories.
In 2241, one of the Klingon Houses, let by Kharn the Undying, launches an attack against the Federation, hoping to convince the other Great Houses that the Federation is weak. This attack goes immensely well, destroying colony after colony and starship after starship. (Among these colonies is the one where a young Michael Burnam lives and she is orphaned in the attack.) Kharn is right, the Federation is weak and vulnerable, but the Great Houses are too busy bickering among themselves to fully commit to Kharn's war effort.
As a result, the Federation gets a brief respite, which they take to appoint new leadership (Adm. Rameriez) and develop a new starship (The Ares class, or perhaps the Walker class, given how similar in appearance they are to one another.) These new ships are able to repel Kharn's raiders, but Kharn learns (by deliberate leak) that the new Constitution class starship is being constructed at Axanar and is vulnerable to attack. He takes the bait and launches an attack, an attack which Garth of Izar repels. Disgraced, Kharn retreats and the war ends.
But the Klingons have learned a few things about the Federation. It is vulnerable and a full scale attack by the entire armed forces of the Empire would be devastating. Enter T'Kuvma, a Klingon visionary who fears the Federation and what it intends to do to the Empire. He calls for the Klingons to unite against this threat. Much like Kharn before him, he is unsuccessful. At least, until he finds the lost legendary Ship of the Dead. He uses this discovery to claim Kahless's mantle and the great houses begin to listen to him. As they gather, Michael Burnam and the crew of the Federation starship Shenzhou discover them at a binary star system. Hostilities ensue and the Discovery story begins.
A couple additional points about this reconciliation. One of the critiques of Discovery (a valid one, I feel) is how bizarre and different looking the Klingon ships are. The show runners imply this is because each House has their own production facilities and builds their own starship designs. That fits with the above. Perhaps the traditional Klingon D-5, D-6. and D-7 ships are those of the House of Kharn and only become more universal after L'Rell unites the Houses (again) at the end of Discovery season one.
Of course, that doesn't explain the bizarro D-7 we see in Discovery episode 5 "Choose Your Pain." The only thing I can say is that perhaps this is a modified D-7 in use by the House of Kharn and now under L'Rell's command. (T'Kuvma and L'Rell's house is not named in Discovery, a curious and convenient omission.)
The second point is how can Discovery be the great first war between the Klingons and the Federation when 15 years earlier there was another equally devastating conflict between those two powers? Here, you'll have retcon a bit of Axanar (since it's not official canon, it's the easier target for this sort of tweaking.) The Axanar "Four Years War" simply cannot be as grand a scale of conflict as is presented. Instead, it's a series of raids and deep strikes into Federation territory, devastating perhaps to individual colonies such as Arcanis IV, but overall not so great a threat to the Federation as a whole. It threatens to ignite into such a conflict, which is why Rameriez and company take it so seriously, but until the other houses and the Great Council align behind Kharn, it remains a lesser conflict.
So, what do you think? Comments and serious critiques are welcome.
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