Across the country this week, productions of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” are warming hearts. In this city, one version poses this question: What if Charles Dickens were a Trekkie?

The answer runs an hour and 20 minutes and includes three fight scenes, 17 actors with latex ridges glued to their foreheads and a performance delivered entirely in Klingon—a language made up for a Star Trek movie.

A Klingon

“It’s like an opera,” says Christopher O. Kidder, the director and co-writer. “You know what’s happening because you already know the story.”

For those not fluent in Klingon, English translations are projected above the stage.

The arc of “A Klingon Christmas Carol” follows the familiar Dickens script: An old miser is visited on a hallowed night by three ghosts who shepherd him through a voyage of self-discovery. The narrative has been rejiggered to match the Klingon world view.

For starters, since there is neither a messiah nor a celebration of his birth on the Klingon planet of Kronos, the action is pegged to the Klingon Feast of the Long Night. Carols and trees are replaced with drinking, fighting and mating rituals. And because Klingons are more concerned with bravery than kindness, the main character’s quest is for courage.

A Klingon Christmas Carol

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Clayton Hauck for The Wall Street Journal

Actors perform in “A Klingon Christmas Carol” at the Greenhouse Theater on Chicago’s Lincoln Park.

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Klingons first appeared on the Star Trek television series in the 1960s. They were a brutish, warlike species who dramatized hostilities between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Mr. Kidder says. As political tensions eased, the characters morphed into noble warriors, who live according to a strict code.

In 1984, producers of “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,” incorporated Klingons into the screenplay and asked Marc Okrand, a linguist with an expertise in Native American languages, to create dialogue for the movie. Mr. Okrand created a 2000-word language that could be expanded by compounding words.

A theater troupe has mounted a production of the Dickens classic ‘A Christmas Carol’ in Chicago, but this version is in Klingon, the language of the characters in Star Trek.

Mr. Okrand thought the Klingon dictionary, published as part of the marketing campaign, was little more than an oddity that might find its way to the attics of a few Star Trek fans. Wrong: It has been through more than 20 reprints and sold over 300,000 copies.

After its founding in 1992, the Klingon Language Institute, based in Blue Bell, Pa., began publishing quarterly newsletters and hosting an annual conference. Attendees wear ridges fixed to their foreheads, sashes and knee-high boots, and compete in game shows in Klingon.

I would love to see this!