When Star Trek fans think of the most famous characters in the franchise, names like Spock, Kirk, Picard, Riker, Sisko, and Uhura tend to be mentioned first. Scotty is, of course, famous even to normies for the whole “Beam me up” thing, and in more recent years, Seven of Nine and Captain Janeway have also gotten even more popular. But what if the most famous and most important character in Star Trek is actually Worf?
In terms of the number of episodes and movies, Worf, as played by Michael Dorn, is the one character who exists in the most installments of Star Trek. This includes all seven seasons of The Next Generation, all four Next Generation feature films, nine out of the ten episodes of Picard Season 3, and, starting on October 2, 1995, Seasons 4-7 of Deep Space Nine. In short, Worf appears in 12 separate seasons of Star Trek, across three different TV series. (Oh, and Dorn also played his own ancestor, also named Worf, in the 1991 film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.) So, if there is one character who is holding the Final Frontier together, it’s almost certainly Worf. And, arguably, Worf’s role as Trek’s MVP all started 30 years ago, with DS9’s “The Way of the Warrior.”
Deep Space Nine’s status as a sequel series to The Next Generation was always clear. But in 1995, it was the first calendar year in which DS9 existed without a season of TNG lurking around somewhere. 1993 saw the debut of DS9, and its second and third seasons both aired throughout 1994, the final year that The Next Generation was on the air. So, for at least two seasons, TNG and DS9 were side-by-side. Then, in 1995, Voyager launched, but its crew departed the Alpha Quadrant and the familiar galactic neighborhood of TNG, leaving just DS9 to continue the canon laid out by TNG. In “Way of the Warrior,” the Season 4 premiere of Deep Space Nine, the Klingons are up to some kind of secret invasion, and Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) decides to enlist Worf to figure out what they’re up to. Why? Well, as Sisko says, “The only people who can really handle the Klingons are Klingons.”
Basically, Worf’s mission is a short-lived one. Because he’s a Klingon and knows how to drink with Klingons, he can get the information about somebody pretty fast, as to what the aramada orbiting DS9 is really up to. A lot of this requires a bit of suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer: Did Sisko really draft Worf just so he could go get some old Klingon intoxicated and spill the beans? Why would the Klingons conspicuously show up with a massive fleet before going to invade Cardassia? Why not just go straight there?
But these are the kinds of hair-splitting plot points that viewers only notice on repeated viewings. And that’s because the thing Trekkies are most aware of, both now and 30 years ago, is that this is Worf’s crossover moment. The Enterprise-D was destroyed in Star Trek Generations, and this is the first time we’re seeing one of the members of that crew after the movie. Starfleet hasn’t built a new Enterprise yet, Worf isn’t sure what he wants to do with his life, and so, transferring to the space station Deep Space 9 became a moment where both the character and the franchise grew up a little.
DS9 was always positioning itself as the anti-TNG, insofar as characters constantly fought with each other, the political situations weren’t quickly resolved, and the larger stories unfolded over entire seasons. And yet, even though Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney) cheerfully moved from being a part-time guest character on TNG to a regular on DS9, bringing Worf on was different. With this crossover, DS9 was making a very clear statement that just because you have two TNG characters on the show now, the vibe and format of that old show wasn’t suddenly coming back.
In one crucial scene, Worf and O’Brien get a drink together in Quark’s Bar, and they reminisce about saving Picard from the Borg in “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II.” In terms of onscreen time, this was only five years prior, but relative to what had happened in the Trek franchise since, it felt like ancient history. Worf tells O’Brien that he was never worried about whether or not the Enterprise crew would win at the time, saying: “We were like warriors from the ancient sagas, there was nothing we could not do.”
This statement is clearly a meta-commentary on the nature of the post-TNG era of Trek. The Enterprise had been destroyed, and at the time, we didn’t know if there was going to be a replacement. Worf is adrift, thinking about resigning from Starfleet, and to top it all off, one of the defining pillars of the TNG era — the notion that the Klingons and the Federation are at peace — is ripped away in this episode.
And so, if you were a TNG fan who was just coming around to DS9, Worf represents the soul of a more hopeful era of Trek, trying to find his way in a slighter grittier, more unforgiving present. Sure, bringing Worf onto DS9 was certainly a stunt, designed to boost viewership. But, by making his presence an actual statement about the realism of DS9 versus the relatively safe nature of TNG, the Trek franchise wasn’t just having a conversation about itself, but about the difference between optimism and reality. Worf was right. In TNG, it felt like there was nothing the crew couldn’t do. But in DS9, the Trek franchise teaches Worf a different lesson: Why losing the battle can be better for you in the long run.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2, “The Way of the Warrior” stream on Paramount+.
