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Do you feel sorry for Alexander?

Alexander going from a pacifist to signing up with the Klingons to fight in the dominion war never really bothered me.

For a start he's a teenager now. He has all the confusion that comes with changing hormones and if worfs situation in insurrection is anything to go by klingon puberty involves violent urges to fight and kill things. Also his ageing faster way than the human children around him back on earth probably makes it difficult for him to maintain any friendships and the recent conflict between federation and Klingons resulting in the withdrawal from the khitomer accords all adds up Alexander feeling isolated and alone on earth.

That's probably more than enough to make Alexander start questioning the pacifistic beliefs of his childhood and reconsider his cultural identity.

Add to that the war with the dominion. During tng era and early ds9 there was the occasional squabble between factions but things were mostly peaceful and easy to be a pacifist. Now suddenly the whole alpha quadrant is on alert and geared up for war. There's probably been a surge of applicants to the military bodies of most worlds in the form of young people wanting to help protect their world/loved ones from the dominion threat.

Alexander could join up with star fleet and have to go through the strict regime of academy training or he can just sign up with the Klingons and five straight in. With all the aggressive instincts of the klingon teenage it's not surprising he decided to skip the first option and went with the latter. But when alls said and done he's still got a quiet shy personality not the usual loud boisterous klingon persona and he's a stranger to klingon ways thanks to his upbringing on earth so he has a difficult time fitting in.
 
Starfleet does have an "enlisted" category, though. They presumably get much less training than years at the Academy.
 
The ramifications of this are quite interesting....how old is B'ellana? Based on Alexander she could be 15. There's something to think about.

Edit: so I checked. She's 24 at the start of Voyager. Following the same thinking, (it's a good thing people nail down dates in trek) what about Worf? He gets regressed to Klingon puberty in Insurrection.. What if he was only 10 in farpoint? Without nailed down dates, going on appearances, the Alexander recast brings up questions about child soldiers etc...which frankly, it should do anyway. But it isn't touched upon at all (at least Kes wasn't a soldier) nor is why such a long lived species (the three Klingon Ks) actually presses it's young into service so young. An 8 year old can serve shoulder to shoulder with a man of 100 or more?
Some of this, and the Tom Cruise as Comic Relief casting never worked for me. I mean, he literally went to school with Molly, (and technically Keiko) wouldn't that make for awkward conversations with the O'Briens? Miles and Keiko both should have at least considered tearing Worf a new one. (Alexander is a quarter human and a federation citizen...are there not child labour or child soldier laws in the future?)
 
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