A fun detail on all the characters on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”: they are all Nerds. Of course, they are intelligent and cultivated, and many of them are socially graceful – even humorous and charming – but they all have intellectual and cultural obsessions which combine strongly in a cheesy territory. Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart), for example, is a nerd of literature and an archeology nerd. Geordi (Levar Burton) is clearly an engineering nerd. And, yes, the taciturn, without humor worf (Michael Dorn) is a Nerd.
Worf lost his biological parents when he was a child, and he was raised on earth by human parents. Perhaps aspiring to cultural meaning, Worf began to study the customs and attitudes of the Klingons, and he was careful to follow them to the letter. He has become a Nerd for his own culture. Indeed, he became so obsessed with honor, it made him clumsy in social situations. Worf shouted on people he didn’t like to laugh and rarely joked with his friends and colleagues. He didn’t smile often.
It turns out that Michael Dorn brought all this to the table.
Back on the original casting notices of 1986 “Next Generation”, Worf was not even a character yet. The creator of the show Gene Roddenberry wanted his new series to present new extraterrestrials, and he did not want familiar species of the original “Star Trek”, and he has been in Ourlé and Hawé about the inclusion of World. Roddenberry finally included Worf after being convinced that his presence would be a sign that Klingons and the Federation were now at peace.
But it was only when Worf was launched, and Dorn started playing the role seriously, that his real personality traits began to emerge. Dorn remembers that Roddenberry gave him a lot of current latitude with the role, which he attributes to the incredible growth of Worf. He talked about the room in A recent interview with Trekmovieexpressing his love for having given such freedom.
Michael Dorn was able to invent worf
Dorn remembers that Roddenberry was not a tartar or a dictator on the characters of the “next generation”. At least not with him. Roddenberry seems to love actors with freedom. Dorn created characteristics of characters, then he was delighted that Gene and the writers of the show resumed what he was doing, finally withdrawing his acting choices in future scripts, developing even more worf. As Dorn said:
“”[…] Gene hired us. He was “the guy” during the first two years of the show, and was very clear that he wanted me to make the character mine. And the great thing about writers (and good writers and good directors) is that once you gave them something – as I gave them the stoicism of Worf and its anger and its selfish nationalism – they ran with it. And the writers are those who really created him and made him who he was. “”
Worf became an invaluable member of the crew, and he served both as an essential guyr (he would fight the most extraterrestrial) and a comic rescue character (he does not understand jokes). Roddenberry died in 1991, but Dorn continued to play in Worf until the end of “Next Generation” in 1994, then he resumed the role for four additional seasons of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” from 1996 to 2000. He recently appeared during the third season of “Star Trek: Picard” in 2023.
What would Roddenberry have thought of the development of Worf? Dorn believes it would be happy:
“I think he would be happy, because he is definitely his creation, and he was an incredibly intelligent guy. He was incredibly intelligent about television. And he was intelligent enough to give me the freedom to say:” Do it yourself. “Because he knew that if an actor created something, it’s more personal for the actor, and he is more invested.”
Dorn, not by the way, holds the record to appear on the camera in the greatest number of “Star Trek” episodes.
