How Michael Dorn made Worf stand out in Star Trek: The Next Generation

When “Star Trek: The Next Generation” debuted in 1987, it presented Trekkies with a new character who would challenge everything they knew. In the original “Star Trek” film, the treacherous Klingons were often presented as aggressive enemies, usually standing out as the Federation’s arch enemy. In “The Next Generation”, one of the Klingons – Worf, played by Michael Dorn – was part of the senior staff of the USS Enterprise-D. In the second season of the show, Worf became the ship’s head of security. Trekkies had to learn that all the hostility toward the Klingons was old-fashioned and even unwise. Peace was declared, and the Klingons were now allies.

Of course, Worf wasn’t the brightest, most peaceful character. He was often quick to suggest violent courses of action to his captain and often viewed all alien visitors with suspicion. Of course, as head of security, that was his job. Sometimes, he got angry. Worf was also, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He was raised on Earth, specifically in Russia, by human parents, and had to learn about his Klingon heritage from books and study. As such, he becomes obsessed with humorless honor, and is determined to have as little fun as possible. Even compared to other Klingons, Worf was taciturn and inflexible.

The character was so popular that he was eventually moved to “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” giving Worf an additional four seasons to the seven he already experienced in “Next Generation.” Michael Dorn has appeared in more episodes of “Star Trek” than any other actor.

Dorn, of course, was happy with the work and pursued the role wherever it took him. Even in the early days of The Next Generation, he knew he was just there to play Worf to the best of his abilities. He wasn’t interested in acceptance or his character’s backstory in the least. in 2012 interview with StarTrek.comDorn admitted that he was just there to do a job and do it well. That was it.

Dorn was hands-on when it came to his job playing Worf. When asked if he was concerned that acting in a large group might diminish his character, Dorn said he was not concerned. After all, Dorn admitted that he was not a writer on the show, and that all of Worf’s life choices would be beyond his control. He didn’t even do stunts. “I just took it day by day,” he said. “The main thing for me was to do the role right and be as good as possible. I didn’t think about the future that way.”

Two things: doing the right part, and doing a good job. A healthy outlook for any job, really.

Dorn recalls that some of his co-stars did not share his expectations. He said some of them wanted to play characters that the audience considered friendly. The idea was that if the actor played a friendly character, the writer would want to write more scenes for him. This was especially true in the show’s early years, when everyone, Dorn recalls, was still finding their feet. But Dorne had no such concerns about Worf’s future. He said:

“Everyone was running. They were doing their job, but you could tell they were trying to preserve their future, basically. You want to be friends with Data. You want to be friends with Geordi. You want to be friends with Picard. You want to side with all of these People because their feeling is: writers write relationships, and if you have a relationship, they’ll write you more of a relationship. Personally, I said, ‘Who cares? That’s going to be a weird, angry man.’”

Dorn’s dedication to being mean and angry seems to have paid off in the end.

Dorn, just reading his lines and doing a good job, allowed Worf to shape as a character. Dorn showed Worf his violent temper, as well as his obsessive devotion to honor, and the writers of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” stuck to what he was laying out. Dorn was happy to accept the Worf stories handed to him, knowing that the writers would probably know what to do with Worf in the long run. Dorn said:

“Fortunately, the writers took off with that. All that stuff they wrote about Worf being an orphan and being raised by Russian parents, that’s all writers’ stuff. I didn’t do anything about it. I just gave them what the character was, and that was that.”

Of course, that didn’t stop Dorne from running with Worf for a bit. After “Deep Space Nine” ended in 1999, Dorn felt that Worf could easily continue in his own series. By the end of his tenure at DS9, Worf had become the Federation’s ambassador to the Klingon homeworld, Qo’noS. Dorn wrote an entire pilot for a television series focusing on Worf About how Qo’noS needed to rebuild after the war, and how the Klingons had to reluctantly accept the Federation as a formidable galactic power.

This series never came to fruition, but Worf eventually returned. In the third season of Star Trek: Picard in 2023, Dorn played the grey-haired Worf, now working as a secret agent for Starfleet, rooting out criminals from outside the Federation. It looks like “Star Trek” can’t do without Worf for long.