T'Kuvma

T'Kuvma (Klingonese spelling: tIquvma) was a 23rd century Klingon warrior, leader of his house and a follower of the ancient teachings of Kahless. A staunch traditionalist and Klingon nationalist, he was deeply suspicious of the expanding United Federation of Planets, which he regarded as a threat to Klingon culture and identity. He believed in unifying the feuding Klingon Great Houses against the Federation. ()
By 2256, T'Kuvma had assembled a like-minded group of Klingons and provoked a confrontation in a binary star system between several of the Great Houses and a fleet of Starfleet vessels. In the ensuing Battle of the Binary Stars, T'Kuvma was killed by Commander Michael Burnham, but he had succeeded in provoking the and unifying the Great Houses against the Federation. ()
== Early life ==
When he was young, T'Kuvma rediscovered the Sarcophagus, an old ship that had belonged to his father and been abandoned after his death. The derelict was used as a playground for other Klingon children, who attacked T'Kuvma when he tried to chase them away. ()
== Career ==
=== Uniting the Klingon Empire ===
T'Kuvma repaired the Sarcophagus and used it as his base of operations. He also developed cloaking devices which he installed on his fleet. ()
T'Kuvma believed the Federation's claim that "we come in peace" to be a lie and saw it as a threat to Klingon identity and culture. He sought to use the threat of the Federation as a means to unify the twenty-four Great Houses of the Klingon Empire by focusing their attention on a common enemy. T'Kuvma cast his movement as messianic and millenarist: he acquired the Beacon of Kahless, an ancient artifact that, according to prophecy, would unite the Great Houses when lit. He assembled a number of Klingons under his leadership. Unlike other Klingon Houses, T'Kuvma accepted outcasts such as the albino Voq. ()
Seeking to provoke a general confrontation with the Federation, in 2256 he placed the Beacon of Kahless in a binary star system near the edge of Federation space, and disabled the interstellar relay there to attract the attention of Starfleet. The was dispatched to investigate, and the first officer, Commander Michael Burnham, made a space walk to investigate the Beacon. While there she was attacked by T'Kuvma's Torchbearer, Rejac, whom she killed in self-defense. T'Kuvma proclaimed Rejac a martyr and named Voq the new Torchbearer. ()
=== Battle of the Binary Stars ===
Giving Voq the honor of activating the Beacon, T'Kuvma ignored an offer of negotiations from Captain Philippa Georgiou and declared it an example of Federation duplicity. Several members of the Klingon High Council arrived in the system with their ships in response to the signal from the Beacon, and T'Kuvma collectively addressed them as Starfleet reinforcements arrived to support the Shenzhou. Rallying a number of the Great Houses to his cause, T'Kuvma launched an attack on the gathered Federation vessels, beginning the Battle of the Binary Stars. ()
After a significant number of casualties on both sides, the senior Starfleet commander, Admiral Brett Anderson, called for a ceasefire, T'Kuvma accepted, and asked the Human to prepare for the arrival of his envoy. However, T'Kuvma instead used the truce to ordered one of his cloaked vessels to ram the admiral's ship, the , leading to its destruction. ()
After declaring victory over the Starfleet vessels, T'Kuvma instructed the High Council members to return to Qo'noS to spread news of the united Empire, and was proclaimed to be "T'Kuvma the Unforgettable" by his supporters L'Rell and Voq. () "The Unforgettable" was the most common epithet used in reference to Kahless. ()
=== Death ===
Remaining behind to collect and sanctify the Klingon dead, the Sarcophagus was suddenly disabled by the apparently-crippled . Captain Georgiou and Commander Burnham beamed aboard, seeking to capture T'Kuvma and demoralize the Klingon war effort. Engaging Georgiou in hand-to-hand combat, T'Kuvma slew the Starfleet captain, before being shot in the back by a phaser blast from Burnham, set to kill. ()
Burnham escaped the Sarcophagus and was subsequently court martialled for the events at the Binary Stars. The dying T'Kuvma was told by Voq that he would be remembered forever by all Klingons, and that his death would be the cause to unite the Empire. ()
== Legacy ==
T'Kuvma had indeed unified the Klingon Empire against the Federation, however his followers were largely abandoned by the rest of the empire. The crippled Sarcophagus was left adrift in the binary star system for several months after his death, with only Voq, L'Rell and a handful of other Klingons still aboard. Voq was subsequently overthrown by of the House of Kor, who repaired the vessel and took it for his own to lead the war against the Federation. ()
Voq and L'Rell remained loyal to T'Kuvma's memory: Voq underwent extreme surgery to pass as the Starfleet Lieutenant Ash Tyler while L'Rell, despite her disillusionment with what the Klingon Empire had become under Kol, allowed herself to be captured, in order to infiltrate the and find T'Kuvma's killer, Michael Burnham. However, after the emergence of Voq's personality went awry, L'Rell was forced to euthanize Voq by merging his and Tyler's personalities. ()
After the Battle at Pahvo, in which the Sarcophagus had been destroyed, the Empire became fractured once again and the Great Houses began competing for and indiscriminately destroying Federation assets – precisely the opposite of what T'Kuvma had hoped to achieve, which Admiral Katrina Cornwell noted while speaking with the imprisoned L'Rell. For L'Rell's part, she remained steadfast to her beliefs about the validity of her late messiah's view for the Federation, but acknowledged that the courage she had seen from Humans proved that T'Kuvma had been wrong in his claims about their race, which he had taught was without courage. The infighting between the Klingon houses resulted in such devastating Federation losses that Starfleet resorted to accepting a proposal by the mirror universe's to devastate Qo'noS using a hydro bomb. In order to end the war and prevent this act of genocide, Burnham prevented Georgiou from detonating the bomb and handed the detonator to L'Rell, who proceeded to assume leadership of the Klingon High Council, enact a cease fire, and then continue T'Kuvma's work to unite the Empire. ()
== Appendices ==
=== Appearances ===
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=== Background information ===
T'Kuvma was portrayed by Chris Obi. The young T'Kuvma in "Battle of the Binary Stars" was portrayed by Thamela Mpumlwana.
Obi compared his character to Moses, noting, "He's an outsider and he has a spiritual moment where he encounters Kahless […] and he is given a message […] He's like the runt of the litter, and he transforms into this leader, with a purpose." ()
At first, Chris Obi was very worried about how he would manage to learn all of T'Kuvma's Klingon dialogue. However, he managed to overcome that fear with the help of Burnham actress Sonequa Martin-Green, as well as a speaker of Klingonese who prepared a tape recording for the project, and two voice coaches who Obi described as "amazing." He recalled, "I would go away and listen to the sounds and come back with my version of it." ()
Chris Obi was highly pleased to be able to portray T'Kuvma, as he found the character to be very consistent. "I'm beyond blessed to be given a character that you don't go, 'Ooh, God. He's going to say that, even in Klingon.' Know what I mean?" he remarked. "That's where the connection comes. Every time I speak a line, I believe the character is truly saying these lines, and it fits. You know?" ()
T'Kuvma was featured in a deleted scene extension from , in which, after lighting his bat'leth on fire in an alcove on the bridge of his ship, he turned around, said something to L'Rell, then walked past her. ()
The prayer that T'Kuvma and Voq recite shortly before T'Kuvma's death () is later used by L'Rell to attempt to reawaken Voq's memories ().
=== Apocrypha ===
T'Kuvma's backstory is explored in the IDW comics series Star Trek: Discovery - The Light of Kahless. T'Kuvma's sister, J'Ula, is the main antagonist of the "Age of Discovery" expansion to Star Trek Online.
=== External links ===
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