But this episode still strikes me as one of the ultimate Trek episodes, all the above aside. You may not like the portrait of the Klingons at all, but ultimately this is all about Worf and him choosing his friends - and what he has chosen to stand for - above his blood relatives and his personal advantage.

His choice may come back later to bit him in the behind, but what Worf does is make a choice to preserve the peace, instead of starting a Klingon civil war with a single word - and that strikes me as something very “Trek” - a single person placing peace above his personal values.
In the end it didn’t work, but I have to give Worf credit for trying to do the right thing for the majority of his people.

What I disagree with is the Starfleet noblesse - as you call it. This is precisely the point! LOL! My own interpretation of Star Trek says that all the other races are out there only to picture our human fallacies while we are already far beyond that. I just love it. Probably the main reason why I’ve never liked TOS all that much. We were sooo immature back then!

But you do have a point about the Klingons. Some times they are a bit hard to swallow.

But personaly I have nothing against the “Klingon honor” angle. What I dislike about them from TNG onward, is how unimportant that honor sometimes becomes. The high-ups are too often just scheming politicians who are willing to do what serves them, instead of upholding their honor. Sins of the Father strikes me as a perfect example of that.
In a way the Klingons have become too much of a real world analog. If they had all just stayed true to their honor, encountering them could have been somewhat more exotic and interesting. Think of the first western explorers encountering the Samurai of Japan, or perhaps more how our cliched western minds might imagine such a meeting.

But with all the political bickering among the Klingons they have turned more into “20th century people” than exotic aliens, having to stand in for several things that are wrong with today’s society.
Perhaps that is why you dislike them so much - they are perhaps too much people of the 20th century to fit into your vision of Star Trek.

I think it just proves my point here. The humanity has grown beyond petty faults and all the other races serve to present the real world human vices. Hence, your last comment is wrong. The more 20th century psychology - the better for me. On the other side of the universe, that is.

And I do not hate Klingons. Let me state that once and for all. I’m just a little fed up with them. Maybe there just was too much of Worf throughout all of TNG and DS9. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s really amusing how he is continuously struggling to fit in in both worlds…

On the one hand I like the optimism inherent to that concept, but on the other hand I think it’s a bit unrealistic. If you want to call me a pessimist for the latter, fine by me.

So a somewhat balanced view is exactly what I would have preferred in some TNG episodes - Starfleet a little less perfect, and the aliens a bit more exotic and a bit less analogs for todays humanity.

And I can’t wait to read your reviews of the late DS9 seasons when Worf joined the cast, and the Klingons joined the war. That should be interesting.