Is Lt. Ash Tyler really the Klingon Voq disguised to look like a human? A new parody account on Twitter called “Real Javid Iqbal” strongly suggests this theory is 100 percent true. Plus, a few Trek insiders are retweeting the “actor.” Are they in on the joke? Or has this theory basically been confirmed?
Possible Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery ahead.
On October 25, the Twitter account for Stella Star Trek Dog, tweeted triumphantly” “Lovely to see @RealJavidIqbal join Twitter. He’s a quiet man in real life, but on set, he has a magnetism that one khan’t stop watching.” Stella Star Trek Dog is thought to be an account operated by Discovery consulting producer Nicholas Meyer, who tweets out jokes and thoughts on behalf of his dog, Stella. And the tweet references the name of the actor who plays Voq — “Javid Iqbal” — who may nor many actually exist.
For those just getting caught up on this particular fan theory, it goes like this: the albino Klingon Voq, who took over as the new messiah after Burnham killed T’Kuvma in “The Battle of Binary Stars,” is supposedly played by an actor named Javid Iqbal. The trouble is, there’s very little information about “Javid Iqbal” out there and the actor hasn’t been photographed outside of his Klingon makeup, seemingly, ever. The plot thickens when you recall that actor Shazid Latiff (who plays Lt. Tyler) was originally cast as the Klingon Kol back in December 2016. Then in April 2017, CBS was announced Latiff was playing Tyler and Kenneth Mitchell was playing Kol. Still, Latiff was slated to play a Klingon, and now people think he still is. Just one who is in disguise.
Did everybody get that? Good. Warp-speed to the present. The character of Voq appeared in the first two episodes of Discovery, and then again in the fourth episode in which it was revealed he was going to go live with secret Klingon matriarchs to do something mysterious in which he would have to “give up everything.” Since then, we haven’t’ seen Voq, but Lt. Tyler showed up in the very next episode, conveniently, in a Klingon prison. Supposedly, certain fans think all of this adds up to Voq and Tyler being the same person. And now, the parody Twitter account for “Javid Iqbal” is doubling down on the joke. Every single tweet shows Iqbal in full Klingon makeup, acting like a “normal person.”
On Monday, “Javid Iqbal,” tweeted about being a guest on the show After Trek (he wasn’t) which was retweeted by the show’s host, Matt Mira. So, if Matt Mira and Nicholas Meyer are both seemingly in on the joke, does this just mean this twist is real? Or is there a longer con — or khan — at work here?
The twist of Tyler being a Klingon in disguise isn’t that crazy, even without all this “Javid Iqbal” stuff. It has a precedent in the original series: in “The Trouble With Tribbles,” a Klingon agent did, in fact, pose as a human on space station K-7, which lead to a memorably melodramatic scene in which Bones scanned the guy’s vitals and said “Jim, this man’s a Klingon!” Now we just have to wait and see if something similar happens on Discovery, or…in real life.
At 8:30 p.m. Eastern on the next two Sundays — November 5 and November 12 — CBS All Access will air the last two new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery before it goes on a mid-season hiatus. The second-half of Season 1 is expected to air sometime in January 2018.
If you liked this article, check out this video on why the Klingons look so different on Star Trek: Discovery.
