Fan reactions to Starfleet Academy's female Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid character

[Enterprise1701]

I would have appreciated the 32nd century be made more distinct from the 23rd century without DIS medical white as a fourth uniform division color, lol. That is an unfortunate change from the pre-streaming status quo IMO.

 

[fireproof78]

I would have appreciated the 32nd century be made more distinct from the 23rd century without DIS medical white as a fourth uniform division color, lol. That is an unfortunate change from the pre-streaming status quo IMO.

I mean, we saw medical white in the TOS films, and on the Kelvin and alternate Enterprise so it's not a streaming thing.

 

[The Wormhole]

I mean, we saw medical white in the TOS films, and on the Kelvin and alternate Enterprise so it's not a streaming thing.

I think the point is supposed to be that it didn't happen in the Holy Berman era, which is now considered the text book definition of what Star Trek is despite being considered filth twenty years ago.

 

[fireproof78]

I think the point is supposed to be that it didn't happen in the Holy Berman era, which is now considered the text book definition of what Star Trek is despite being considered filth twenty years ago.

True.

All power to the Berman. Skydance should hire him again.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

True.

All power to the Berman. Skydance should hire him again.

As we've learnt from Doctor Who bringing back venerated showrunners after 20 years can be disastrous.

 

[Nerys Myk]

True.

All power to the Berman. Skydance should hire him again.

The Bermite Heresy is a stain on all of Trekendom ! Strike it from the Holy Word!!

 

[Firebird]

The Bermite Heresy is a stain on all of Trekendom ! Strike it from the Holy Word!!

The Cult of Terry does not believe you are of the Body!

 

[Quantum21]

I don't understand all this hate/vitriol online suddenly about the female Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid character from Starfleet Academy. People saying: "oh there can't be a female Jem'Hadar because the Jem'Hadar were all males". In the 24th century. There were no female Jem'Hadar in the 24th century because they were all genetically engineered (essentially clones "bred" not born) to be male. The Dominion genetically engineered the Jem'Hadar to be super soldiers and engineered/cloned them all to be male (being clones there was no need for women, also the Dominion mindset at the time being that having women would have made them weak). Things change over 800+ years. After returning to the Great Link Odo could have changed the Dominion and ultimately caused them to decide to clone female Jem'Hadar. For all we know the Dominion as it was in the 24th century may not even exist in the 32nd century. A female Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid character is an interesting idea for a character actually, seeing that both species are warrior, just warriors with slightly different ethos. Saying that because the Jem'Hadar were the way they were in DS9 means they can't be any different in Starfleet Academy makes absolutely no sense. By that logic a group of people who were a certain way in the 1200's at the time of the high middle ages and the crusades HAVE to be exactly that same way today in the 2000's.

Some pedants also point out that the actress has a "large body size" and say "Klingons and Jem'Hadar are warriors! They're all fit and have great physiques!" There have been plenty of heavy-set Klingons in Star Trek (General Koord in ST: V, Chancellor K'mpek from TNG, the chef at the Klingon restaurant in DS9 season 2 to name but a few). The character being heavyset is such a non-issue, and if she is the product of a union between an Jem'Hadar and a Klingon, there is no reason she couldn't have inherited the genes for larger body size.

People complain because of something that is new and different being done in a new Star trek series that is set in a timeframe beyond anything that's been seen so far. And they complain because this character is part Jem'Hadar and yet not like the Jem'Hadar in DS9 800 years past. A LOT can change in 800 years. I think Star Trek would be a lot less believable if nothing had changed after 800 years. These same people say this is an example of Star Trek's creative powers ignoring canon. It's not. It's building canon. Nothing about this character contradicts, retcons, or otherwise disrespects canon.

And then there's all the people saying that it's part of "the woke agenda". No it's not. It's just a character. Yet it's obviously played by a black woman and a person with some body size. So what? Why does/should that matter? Honestly all the hate/outrage over the character BEFORE the show has even premiered: much ado about nothing. I have a better idea: how about let's not go Green Eggs and Ham and actually wait until the series premieres and we actually see the character before passing judgement.

It's called racism. "Woke, blah, blah, blah."

It requires the intelligence level of a ferret to bring up such things, and I'm being unkind to the ferret in the comparison.

 

[Honshu]

I don't understand all this hate/vitriol online suddenly about the female Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid character from Starfleet Academy. People saying: "oh there can't be a female Jem'Hadar because the Jem'Hadar were all males". In the 24th century. There were no female Jem'Hadar in the 24th century because they were all genetically engineered (essentially clones "bred" not born) to be male. The Dominion genetically engineered the Jem'Hadar to be super soldiers and engineered/cloned them all to be male (being clones there was no need for women, also the Dominion mindset at the time being that having women would have made them weak). Things change over 800+ years. After returning to the Great Link Odo could have changed the Dominion and ultimately caused them to decide to clone female Jem'Hadar. For all we know the Dominion as it was in the 24th century may not even exist in the 32nd century. A female Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid character is an interesting idea for a character actually, seeing that both species are warrior, just warriors with slightly different ethos. Saying that because the Jem'Hadar were the way they were in DS9 means they can't be any different in Starfleet Academy makes absolutely no sense. By that logic a group of people who were a certain way in the 1200's at the time of the high middle ages and the crusades HAVE to be exactly that same way today in the 2000's.

Some pedants also point out that the actress has a "large body size" and say "Klingons and Jem'Hadar are warriors! They're all fit and have great physiques!" There have been plenty of heavy-set Klingons in Star Trek (General Koord in ST: V, Chancellor K'mpek from TNG, the chef at the Klingon restaurant in DS9 season 2 to name but a few). The character being heavyset is such a non-issue, and if she is the product of a union between an Jem'Hadar and a Klingon, there is no reason she couldn't have inherited the genes for larger body size.

People complain because of something that is new and different being done in a new Star trek series that is set in a timeframe beyond anything that's been seen so far. And they complain because this character is part Jem'Hadar and yet not like the Jem'Hadar in DS9 800 years past. A LOT can change in 800 years. I think Star Trek would be a lot less believable if nothing had changed after 800 years. These same people say this is an example of Star Trek's creative powers ignoring canon. It's not. It's building canon. Nothing about this character contradicts, retcons, or otherwise disrespects canon.

And then there's all the people saying that it's part of "the woke agenda". No it's not. It's just a character. Yet it's obviously played by a black woman and a person with some body size. So what? Why does/should that matter? Honestly all the hate/outrage over the character BEFORE the show has even premiered: much ado about nothing. I have a better idea: how about let's not go Green Eggs and Ham and actually wait until the series premieres and we actually see the character before passing judgement.

The Jem'Hadar represent another very interesting variation on the theme of sentience. In the Star Trek universe we see many kinds of sentience, the unified sentience with discrete units being but instances of the hive (the Borg), the non-solid sentience, capable of both unified and discrete agency (the Changelings), the non-corporeal sentience (the Prophets, the Q, etc), bound to linear time or not, and at the other end of possibilities, the androids and the clones where sentience may be limited (for the Jem'Hadar), undefined (like for the Vorta) or enhanced (like for Data).

If anyone here has read The Left Hand of Darkness, it should also be clear that permanent "dual-genderedness" is a minor property when compared to the potential for a species to develop, progress and explore. In particular, within species that are dual-gendered, the characteristics that we assign to human genders may or may not hold for other naturally occurring or created species.

With all this said, I cannot see why the Founders would have bothered with giving a gender to creatures that they absolutely never meant to be able to proliferate on their own, outside of Founder control. To the contrary, they were given a short life, as well as a dependency on a substance that seems to be both their endocrine and catabolic fuel (ketracel-white). Giving them any kind of reproductive drive and capability would have been very dumb and self-defeating. Giving them "shadow" DNA or any possibility to mutate viably is probably also completely off the table and the Jem'Hadar probably have disease-resistant, but otherwise very simple genomes. A genome that is very stable and robust to attack probably make them very hard to modify, by the same token. (Hard but no impossible, as that demonstrated by one stranded Jem'Hadar who discovered that it was not dependent on ketracel after all...)

A gendered Jem'Hadar would have to be a different species from the ground up, to each and every one of its cells, which is not too hard for the Founders to create when you think about it. Maybe Odo had something to do with it. Giving each created species a chance to develop on its own in its own niche, and making the creation of a species a sizeable responsibility instead of a convenience.
This also would suggest that Jem'Hadar may simply mean "creature" or "child-being", without referring to its exact makeup or appearance? Likewise Vorta could have just meant "drug dealer" or "intermediary"?

Assuming that the Jem'Hadar of the 24th century must be male because of their agressivity and their insistence on hierarchy is just an artefact, IMO, due to their being creations of human fantasy. A Klingon or a Vulcan would not come to the same assumption.

Opinion disclaimer as always, cheers for now

 

[Michael]

Excuse me, but where exactly does the notion that the Jem’Hadar of the 24th century were “non-gendered” come from? Sure, we never saw Jem'Hadar females, but the ones we did see were usually very clearly identified as male, were they not? I can’t remember them making it a point that the Jem'Hadar had no gender, just that the Dominion wasn’t breeding female ones.

Also, considering the story of how the Founders found the Vorta and genetically engineered them into their loyal servants (with both male and female Vorta being cloned) I don’t think it’s too far fetched to assume there being a similar backstory for how the Jem'Hadar soldiers came to be. I don't think it was ever mentioned (nor intended by the writers) that they were created by the Founders from scratch, so I assume just like the Vorta they were an existing Gamma Quadrant species that had developed naturally (probably with both male and female specimens) and the Founders merely changed their genetic makeup to make them the drug-controlled soldiers they became.

I think it’s fascinating that some fans seem to find a female Jem’Hadar such an outlandish concept, 800 years after the Dominion has been defeated.