Michael Dorn believes "there's room for all kinds of Star Trek"

Michael Dorn got his start in the Star Trek franchise playing Worf, the Klingon security officer aboard the Enterprise, on Star Trek: The Next Generation. His character returned in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and again in Star Trek: Picard, making him the actor to have appeared in more Star Trek episodes than any other. So it's not wrong to say that Dorn knows Star Trek and what it takes to make a series that Gene Roddenberry would approve of.

The 71-year-old actor was recently interviewed by Trekmovie at the 51st Saturn Awards where Dorn and the rest of the cast of The Next Generation picked up a lifetime achievement award. And he was asked how he thought Gene Roddenberry would feel about the "darker aspects" of Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And though the actor thought The Next Generation was Roddenberry's vision, he also thinks there's room for "all kinds of Star Trek."

"Gene’s vision is The Next Generation. That’s the vision. It was always hope. It was always on a ship going out in the out into space. And so I think [what came after] probably isn’t his vision, but the thing is that we had to have somebody take over. And I think their vision fits into Star Trek. And I always believe there’s room for all kinds of Star Trek."

- Michael Dorn

Picard certainly went darker than any other series in the Trek universe, and it has its naysayers because of that, but, in the end, especially with the third season, it reverted to the original vision of hope just like all the series do. There's always that element of belief that things will turn out better than they are. And though some of the current series might not handle the trajectory toward hope the way Roddenberry would have, they all make up the great, wide world of Star Trek.