Star Trek TNG Forgets Its Most Important Hero
Star Trek is a show with many great heroes like Captain Picard and Commander Riker, but the most important hero is one that fans tend to overlook: Riva, the deaf ambassador from “Loud As a Whisper.” That episode described how Riva negotiated multiple peace treaties between the Federation and the Klingons, implying that he was the main architect of peace between these two empires.
However, the episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country both provide different explanations for how that peace came about, effectively erasing the importance of Riva.
Loud As A Whisper
To contextualize how Star Trek forgot Riva, we need to review the one and only episode that he appeared in. In “Loud As a Whisper,” he is brought in to help negotiate peace between two warring alien tribes, but he quickly runs into problems when one tribe vaporizes his assistants (or, as the show names them, his “chorus”). In a rare example of the show giving her character something meaningful to do, Deanna Troi helps Riva find the courage to go back and make peace with the same aliens that brutally murdered his helpers.
Introduced The Klingons To A New Word
While that’s the main plot of this Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, the most fascinating part of the story is Riva’s background. We find out Worf has mixed feelings about the guy because the man was responsible for negotiating multiple major peace treaties between the Klingons and the Federation. As the security chief ruefully notes, the Klingons didn’t even have a word for “peacemaker” until Riva came along.
The episode throwing in that particular bit of Star Trek trivia may seem weird, but this was likely the show’s attempt at using Riva to establish a timeline for the peace between the Klingons and the Federation.
United The Klingons With The Federation
Things were a bit confusing early on in the later Season 2 episode “The Samaritan Snare,” Picard mentions the Klingons being members of the Federation, which lines up with the weird appearance of a Federation flag on a Klingon ship in the Season 1 episode “Heart of Glory.” Eventually, The Next Generation established the Klingons simply had a peace treaty with the Federation, and for a time, Riva seemed to be its chief architect.
Yesterdays Enterprise Undoes All His Hard Work
However, Star Trek never referenced Riva again, and his contributions towards peace with the Klingons were erased the next season in the episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” That episode revealed that the destruction of the Enterprise-C while defending a Klingon outpost from the Romulans helped lead to peace between the Klingons and the Federation.
Going off that episode, the person most responsible for that peace might arguably be Tasha Yar, who goes back in time to save the future, effectively erasing the alternate timeline that brought her back to life.
Riva’s Accomplishment Meant Nothing
If that’s not bad enough, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country completed the erasure of Riva and his accomplishments. That film is set in the year 2293 and is all about the Federation making peace with the Klingons after their moon, Praxis, explodes. The movie is set 71 years before the beginning of The Next Generation and approximately 41 years before the birth of Riva, effectively retconning that his biggest accomplishment happened decades before he was even born.
A Casualty Of Star Trek’s Wonky Timeline
We can’t exactly blame Star Trek for having messy canon regarding the Klingons…heck, Discovery was still dealing with timeline confusion decades later regarding this warrior race. However, we can’t help but be sad for Riva, an interesting character who went from brokering an impossible peace to being swept aside by a future episode and film.
We’re currently trying to learn sign language so we can ask Riva the most important question about his episode: why the heck did the show give his rando chorus the most grisly deaths in the entire franchise?
