March 21 2026, 08:15 
Depending on where you get your information, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the latest installment of the Star Trek franchise, is either “an angsty teen drama wearing the skin suit of what can be arguably called the corpse of Star Trek,” or an updated enterprise “right in step with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s original vision of the show.”
Rotten Tomatoes gives the series an “88% fresh” rating; IMDB users rank it a bomb, with a 1.8 out of 10 rating.
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One source of the reviewers’ divide: same-sex couples, polycules, and queer characters introduced matter-of-factly, which have some unenlightened Star Trek fans (an oxymoron in Rodenberry’s diverse universe) declaring the show “woke.”
“I believe in a future where none of this matters as much,” says Karim Diané, the first gay Klingon in the franchise’s 60-year history, and a target of criticism from the manosphere bemoaning Star Trek’s latest iteration.
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“Society expects men and masculinity to look one way, and it’s so rigid that almost nobody fits that standard,” Diané tells Xtra* magazine. “Men are expected not to be emotional, not to need friendship, or not to like other men. They’re expected to do it on their own, pull up their pants, and dive into battle.
“We’re turning all of that on its head with this show. Some men are gay, some are straight, and some are not necessarily the best captains, but they’re great co-captains or team members. Not every man has to be the head of the ship. Some women are better at that,” says the 23-year-old Washington, D.C. native.
Not long after Diané got the role, he met George Takei, Sulu on the original Star Trek series, who later came out as gay. That series premiered in 1966, another time of social upheaval in the U.S. — an interracial kiss in one episode had heads exploding on the right.
“One of the Starfleet Academy producers had called me, prepping me for what was to come, playing this queer Klingon on the show. They knew that I would be met with a lot of heat. I decided to send George an email and just tell him about the character. The show wasn’t out yet, but I told him, ‘By the way, my Klingon Jay-Den is gay,'” Diané said.
“Ten minutes later, he and Brad wrote back this lovely, lovely email, expressing that they had tried in the ’60s to get a queer character on the show. But Roddenberry had feared that, because they had already featured that interracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk, a gay character back then would have risked the series’ total cancellation,” Diané continued.
“To go from George’s experience to Jay-Den existing feels like the manifestation of all the work that he had put in,” he added.
That manifestation includes a relationship that was probably inconceivable to most NBC viewers and network censors in 1966: the gay polycule Diané’s Klingon occupies in Starfleet Academy.
As for the haters, Diané says when they attack his character online, “It has nothing to do with me.”
The queer Klingon says Starfleet Academy creator Alex Kurtzman helped him put all the “racism, homophobia and sexism” online into context.
“He brought up a great point,” Diané says. “On YouTube, there is an overabundance of negativity when it comes to not just me but the show in general. Creators make money off it because negative taglines on YouTube get more clicks than positive ones. A lot of times it is just a way to make money, which is so evil.”
“Now, I understand that people have different opinions creatively about the show, and that is fine. I welcome, read, and respond to some of the critiques. But the majority of it really is hate for the sake of hate,” he adds.
“What I am truly focused on is the positivity. There is so much love,” he says.
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