When Star Trek: Discovery first aired in late 2017, fans of The Next Generation were all probably stoked to hear the name “Kahless,” the Klingon Jesus, who showed up as a clone of himself in the episode “Rightful Heir.” And now, in “Point of Light,” the third episode of Discovery’s second season, one small detail connects Lt. Tyler to Worf and those clone-happy monks in a very specific way. And it’s all about the name of that planet at the end of the episode.
Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episode 3, “Point of Light.”
By now, any hardcore Trek fan who also loves the Klingons has noticed all the ways in which the second season of Discovery seems to be bending-over-backward to reconcile apparent discrepancies in Klingon lore from the first season. The Klingons are growing their hair back! Ash Tyler shows everybody a spiffy hologram of the classic D-7 battlecruiser from the original series! And briefly, it looks like the Klingons regained that purple blood from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But the deepest cut of the bat’leth was when Georgiou and Tyler talk about dropping off the secret Klingon baby on the planet of Boreth, with Georgiou sneering, “Do you really want your son to be raised by monks?”
Boreth is a Klingon planet populated by Klingon monks who are known as “the Followers of Kahless.” In The Next Generation episode “Rightful Heir,” Worf visits Boreth in an attempt to infuse his life with some spiritualism and it is established that the monks live on Boreth to await Kahless’s return from the dead. And the reason why they choose to wait on that specific planet is that when OG Jesus Kahless was around in ancient times, he told the Klingons he would return on “that point of light,” which referenced the star in the Boreth system. This Discovery episode being called “Point of Light” is obviously not a coincidence, but the reference is more than just a nifty Easter egg. Tyler and L’Rell’s baby, left on Boreth, would be an adult in the time of The Next Generation, and very, very likely is one of the monks who decides to just clone Kahless in “Rightful Heir.” Let’s do the Star Trek math.
If we assume the Secret Voq/L’Rell baby was born sometime in 2256 (during the first season of the show), he would be about 113-years-old the events of the TNG episode “Rightful Heir.” If he stayed on Boreth, this would mean he is a very old monk—but he wouldn’t necessarily look all that old because the Klingons clearly age differently than humans. Case in point: in Deep Space Nine, Kor, Kang, and Koloth are all alive and running around fighting with bat’leths as very old men. How old? Well, these guys were all adults in the original Star Trek, which happens in the 2260s, meaning they are definitely out there somewhere in Discovery, too. In fact, Discovery has established that Kol (Kenneth Mitchell from season 1) and Kol-sah, Kol’s dad in “Point of Light,” (also played by Kenneth Mitchell) are part of “House Kor,” Meaning, those two Klingons are related to Kor in some way, shape or form. (Side note: it seems really likely we’ll see House Duras or House Mogh in this season of Discovery, but I digress.)
The point is Kor, a-grown ass Klingon is running around in 2257, has a showdown with Kirk in 2267, and lives long enough to get drunk and bother Worf and Dax in 2372. Note also that Kor does not die of old age, but rather dies in battle in 2375. We don’t know how old Kor was in the original series when he met Kirk, so let’s just assume that he was a young adult, about age 35 (the actor who played the character, John Colicos, was 38 in 1966). If Kor 35 in 2267, that means he’s 153-years-old when he dies in a space battle in Deep Space Nine, in the episode “Once More Unto the Breach.”
So, if Kor can be 153 and still participating in space battles in Deep Space Nine, then Tyler and L’Rell’s kid can easily be a 113-year-old monk on Boreth in TNG.
In “Rightful Heir,” the high priest on Boreth is named Koroth and is the religious leader who is behind the idea of cloning Kahless in order to “fulfill” the prophecy of their messiah’s return. Could Koroth be the son of L’Rell and Tyler? Why not? He’s an old Klingon who was raised on (and potentially still lives on) Boreth by monks devoted to Kahless, so it seems pretty plausible. And the math checks out.
Plus, if the child of L’Rell and Voq is the guy who pulled the trigger on the whole let’s-clone-Kahless thing, it retroactively means T’Kuvma and Voq were perversely correct in their faith about worshiping Kahless in the first episode of Discovery. Kahless did return to the Klingon people, on that “point of light.” And the son of one of the most devoted Kahless guys ever—the son of Voq—might have been responsible for bringing Kahless back. But by the time of The Next Generation, Klingons don’t bring back their messiah with faith. They do it with science.
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read, an editor at Fatherly and a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
