Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Pays Off 35-Year-Old Klingon Shakespeare Joke

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Published Mar 2, 2026, 9:12 PM EST

John Orquiola is a New & Classic TV Editor, Senior Writer, and Interviewer with a special focus on Star Trek. John has over 5,000 published articles at SR, and he has interviewed the biggest names in Star Trek on the red carpet and VIP events, among other beloved shows, movies, and franchises.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 8 - "The Life of the Stars"

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy paid off a 35-year-old Klingon joke from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Directed by Nicholas Meyer, 1991's Star Trek VI was the final film starring the cast of Star Trek: The Original Series, and featured Christopher Plummer as General Chang, the evil Klingon prone to incessantly quoting William Shakespeare's plays.

Written by Gaia Violo & Jane Maggs, and directed by Andi Armaganian, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 8, "The Life of the Stars" brought theater to Starfleet Academy. Lieutenant Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) teaches a theater class, using Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," to help the suffering cadets cope with their collective trauma.

Jörg Hillebrand, who was a renowned researcher for Star Trek: Picard season 3, captured three pages from the Klingon translation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet seen briefly in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 8. This pays off Chancellor Gorkon's (David Warner) line in Star Trek VI that "You have never experienced Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon." See it below:

Thanks to three pages from the Klingon translation of Hamlet, seen ever so briefly in #StarfleetAcademy's "The Life of the Stars"➡️↙️↘️, we can now finally experience Shakespeare in the original Klingon ("Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"⬆️⬅️). Or we can just buy the book. 😜 — Jörg Hillebrand (@gaghyogi49.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T20:02:02.419Z

William Shakespeare's King Lear was also referenced in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 6's title, "Come, Let's Away." This is a quote from King Lear Act 5, Scene 3: "Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage."

However, Jörg Hillebrand shared the front and back cover of the Tales from the Frontier comic book that plays a pivotal role in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 6. "Come, let's away" turns out to be the catchphrase of the USS Miyazaki's Captain Chi. See it below:

I'm happy I finally have time time to feature the "Tales from the Frontier" comic, seen in #StarfleetAcademy's "Come, Let's Away".😊 I have assembled all the pages seen in the episode but as a special gift, here's the cover and back page of the comic, provided to me by its designer: Stu Pearce! 🧵 1/4 — Jörg Hillebrand (@gaghyogi49.bsky.social) 2026-02-19T21:00:15.034Z

The works of William Shakespeare have long been an inspiration and played roles in multiple Star Trek series and films, starting with MacBeth and Hamlet performed by the Karidian Company in Star Trek: The Original Series season 1, episode 13, "The Conscience of the King."

Chancellor Gorkon's quip about Shakespeare "in the original Klingon" inspired the Klingon Language Institute to publish The Klingon Hamlet in 1996. Shakespeare "in the original Klingon" has been an amusing meta joke for over three decades, and Star Trek VI might be the most well-known fusion of Star Trek and Shakespeare.

It's not too surprising that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's Klingon cadet, Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané), opted for a Klingon opera as his choice for a play to be studied in Lt. Tilly's theater class, but it's good to see Klingon Shakespeare was considered as an option and appeared on-screen as a long-awaited payoff to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.