Rightful Heir - 6.23

If a Klingon episode doesn’t have a boob window, is it really a Klingon episode? WE’RE ABOUT TO FIND OUT.
Ep opens with Worf LATE FOR WORK. Riker tries to get him on the comm but no dice.

Rikes is all like “Don’t make me come up there young man…”
But he does have to go up there (which, like, if you know anything about the layout of the Enterprise you know it’s down there, but maybe their Alexa is just in the ceiling) even though you never know what you’re gonna find in a petulant Klingon’s bedroom.

Does anyone else smell burnt sage?
I don’t know where exactly it happened, but somewhere between here and Season 3 the Klingon aesthetic morphed from death metal to “that guy who discovered Buddhist meditation and won’t shut up about it.”
Hmm… candles, low lighting… Worf, what are you up to? Also, I hope you’ve got a blanket over your—

Well I know what that face means.
Jk, jk, but he *is* meditating real hard. Someone’s in trooooouuuubbbleeee…

Whatever, Captain, I don’t even want to go to your stupid bridge.
Sulking Worf might be the highest form of Worf. It’s time for an intervention.

Look what this has done to your liiiiiiiife.
Can I just say this is often not the most flattering angle and both these guys look 💯..

“I can’t believe you smoked a bowl that big.” 
I’m also going to go ahead and say that candles in your quarters ≠ open fire pit. That should go in the backyard of your Palm Springs condo where it belongs.
Anyway, Cap decides that Worf should go to rehab on a spiritual retreat to figure out what’s going on.

YOU WISH.

I’m going to go ahead and guess that a dank cave is not gonna solve your problems.
So these dudebros are all meditating hoping to see Kahless (pronounced KAY-less) who is a kind of Klingon Jesus and who appears to people in visions, and once you see him in a vision you’ve “won”? Like this guy:

Again with the choice of faces.
Worf has been trying to see Kahless for DAYS and is not happy that this guy has seen him and he hasn’t.

FULL WITHER.
This coat that Worf wears at his meditation retreat is actually kinda cool, but I’ll circle back to it in a second.
So there’s Worf all mad that he can’t see Kahless (now that I keep writing it sounds like a really cheesy pickup line… “Hey babe, I can make you see Kahless”) and then this happens:

…Maris?
I mean, we know who it is.

Come here and give your Great Aunt Kahless a kiss.
Hmm… white fur coat, knee-high circulation socks, aggressively beige undergarments… yup, looks like a great aunt to me.
So, point of order real quick… in a world where people can reappear and disappear in transporters ALL THE DING DONG DAY Worf and the others seem to accept this guy popping out of thin air as a religious miracle PRETTY QUICKLY.
Okay, let’s talk about outfits. I’m gonna jump around plotwise here so… sorry.

It’s Joseph and the Amazing Techniboldbox Dreamcoat. But like, if the bold box was… too bold.
I guess Klingons are doing that thing where you only wash your hair once every ten stardates, and it somehow makes it look even more shiny? I mean, Worf and Bev could have a Tress-off here. Worf would lose, but they could still have it.
More importantly, I thought at first I was really into this coat. The fabric is very early-90s teenage boy figuring out his sexuality while not going full neon and I like any jacket where you can put your arms in the opposite sleeve to stay warm.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell if you can see it, but there’s an intense collar situation going on.

Am I wearing the jacket or is the jacket wearing me? Hard to tell.
It’s got a kind of militaristic Zorg-chic to it, I guess, though the swirly colorful fabric kind of takes away from any authority those aggressive shoulders might give, but my real complaint is this:

I killed a booth at Sizzler for this jacket.
The red pleather piping just screams buffet-style eating, I don’t know why. Like, just imagine those little plastic milk pots you get at a restaurant that can’t be bothered to have jugs. This was a real fail for me. Let’s take one last look at that sumptuous fabric pattern tho…

Mud colored fingerless leather gloves and a white fur coat are either the LEAST METAL THING or the METALLIEST THING OF ALL TIME. TBD.
Moving from Worf to Kahless, it’s like, hard, I guess, to dress like a savior? They have this mural in the Temple or whatever it is of Kahless…

Man, pre-Revolution France was way more intense than I thought…
I feel like this is one of those situations where the artist takes liberties to make the subject look better than they actually do. We get a real life comparison.

Also, we can agree that this is just a dude wearing the same coat as the mural, yes?
White fur is a bold statement, which I guess if you’re already making it why not go for big shoulders. I don’t get the sash, which appears to be a white fur strip down the center of a discount, discolored gray Old Navy fleece scarf, but it matches the painting so I guess it’s fine.
I wanted to take a more backed-out look at this but the best shot I could find comes from later in the ep, and, spoiler alert, Kahless has to go on board the Enterprise.

This color story is titled Ambivalence
Like, just pick a hue, bro. Any hue. I see now that the thing I thought was a fur-lined Old Navy Bargain bin scarf is actually the lapel (?) of the jacket. It just seems like a lot of flat color on a garment that literally required at least one (maybe several) animals to die in order for it to exist.
At some point Worf has to BATTLE Kahless and so we get to see what’s under his coat.

All hand to hand combat should be done in wine-colored pajama tops
I mean, this fabric looks very soft. I don’t quite know what to do with the pleats-for-days vest, but the leather buckle-less belt seems on point. The high collar he’s wearing seems to be a favorite of the spiritual Klingon crowd.

I wonder if the costume designer for this ep watched it later and was like “Oh my god, when I get drunk I make clothes with ribs.”
I guess I’m not mad at it—at least it has a point of view, even if that point of view is “Free Shuttle Bus from the Phoenix Airport to the Apache Gold Casino.” Plus it gives this guy an opportunity to wear his finery, though I think there’s an obvious missed opportunity here for a boob window.

This is a boob window I’m slightly less interested in.
Anyway, the main thrust of this episode is the question of whether or not this Kahless is real, because on the one hand, magic in the 24th Century? But on the other hand, his DNA is Kahless’! Somehow! When there’s Klingon Kontroversy you know who we need to call.

If that’s not a cover of a rap album I don’t know what is. Oh, wait a second.

Featuring the hit track “Couldn’t Kah-less” 
They totes make fun of Gowron for wearing all his medals. He is kind of the Paul Ryan of the Klingon Empire, right? Kind of?
There is a plot that goes to this episode that I could probably do Drunk History style but I’ll spare you and just show you this chilling prognostication:

I don’t know if something from the past can also be too soon, but too soon.

At least the Klingons have honor.
Okay I don’t want to leave on such a sour note, so here’s a pic of the Klingon Temple that Worf Got His Groove Back At:

This Spacious AirBnB in a secluded hotspot on Boreth has 52 bedrooms, 44 baths, and a pullout sofa in the common room. There is Wifi in most of the house, and a Keurig with complimentary coffee and bloodwine pods.
Strict cancellation policy.


* This article was originally published here