Star Trek: 10 Characters That Faked Their Way Into Starfleet

For all the mind-boggling, quintessentially Klingon violence of it, you've got to give Voq (and L'Rell) credit for the monumental, and monumentally painful, effort he went to in order to get inside Starfleet. There's no Klingon word for anaesthesia, it seems, but there is one for what Voq put himself through — choH'a', translation, 'great change'. That, dear reader, is a euphemism! Voq was flayed and splayed, sawn up, re-sequenced, and re-programmed until even he himself believed he was human. For the most part, he was.

There was a real Ash Tyler, a lieutenant, captured aboard the USS Yeager (not the kitbash one, of course!) by the Klingons at the Battle of the Binary Stars. It was he the unfortunate selectee for the harvest of everything Voq needed to become him — memories, DNA, and consciousness. Doubt the Klingons have kitchen sinks, but you get the point! Once Voq was Tyler, and the real Tyler was no doubt dead, he was planted in prison alongside another faker on this list (and another who's not, for different reasons — Harry Mudd). Now there's an irony only a rewatch can provide!

Prison break achieved, without the tattoos, Lorca and Voq/Tyler made it back to the Discovery. We'll spare you a description of the horribleness that ensued, but the 'Starfleet sleeper agent' plan never really did work. Voq had become Ash Tyler all too well, and the Klingon was eventually purged from him in all but memories. By the time the Discovery had left for the 32nd century, there was only faking it of another kind for Tyler (Voq no longer) as the new head of Section 31.