The story of Star Trek has always been one of outsiders turned heroes. From Spock to Data to Odo to Seven of Nine and onward, Star Trek almost always has a humorless observer looking in, at once the resident straight man and the butt of the joke. Take Commander Data. Wafting above his peers with the kind of unflappable self-confidence that only a machine can muster, incapable of the kind of social vulnerability that comes with shame or fear.
Even if Data wanted to be more like a human, he could not be wounded by embarrassment. But at the end of the day, unfailingly, he could still function as well as any officer in the fleet. Watching Data gave me strength to let me conquer my own fear and to trust that the average person would rather be my friend than my enemy.
Now, I realize that my problems are not like Data’s. His home planet was destroyed, and beyond a brother with a malfunctioning brain, he was the first and last of his kind. He never had to worry about the consequences of his past catching up with him, because for all he knew, there were none. Data was a character with the luxury of blissful aloofness, which, in many ways, makes Worf his exact opposite.
Worf was always an outsider. But unlike Data, he always had a chip on his shoulder. From day one, while Data was whistling, Worf was asking for permission to clean up the bridge. While Data was making friends and doing poetry recitals, Worf was off using the holodeck for sword fights and target practice. And while Data was beloved by his crewmates and Star Trek: The Next Generation fans alike, Worf was bested in combat and had his advice rebuffed by Captain Picard over and over, only to have YouTubers add insult to injury through a raft of compilation videos.
He was perpetually annoyed, always one bad moment away from bearing his teeth and growling. But most unlike Data, who had no worlds to call his own, Worf had two. Born to Klingons and raised by humans, Worf served as a pioneering test case in Federation multiculturalism by becoming the first Klingon to serve in Starfleet. But while the humans found it in their hearts to accept him, he always had a hard time accepting himself.
Right off the bat, the leadership of his own people forced him to accept a public shaming on behalf of his dead father for a crime they knew he did not commit, all to conceal the guilt of the real culprit, a powerful political wheeler-dealer with the power to spark civil war. From this moment, Worf was slapped in the face by a cold new reality: his people were not beneath rank hypocrisy.
But Worf never stopped loving his people. He kept his Klingon weapons and candles in his quarters, always wore his family baldric, and practiced tai-chi-esque routines from his home planet known as Mok'bara.
And even though his job as the USS Enterprise-D's chief of security — following the tragic death of Tasha Yar — put him into contact with a steady stream of dishonorable Klingons. He was always proud to be one of their kind. However, while Worf did not have Data’s charming aloofness to endear him to his crewmates, he had something Data did not: a profound moral conviction that he was doing the right thing.
Worf’s internal conflict over his cultural and moral identity came to a premature crescendo during the Klingon civil war, when he left his post to fight for Chancellor Gowron, a bold and calculating politician whom he hoped would restore honor and purge corruption from the empire. Gowron won and acted quickly to reverse Worf’s public shaming and restore his family’s honor.
Worf realized something was wrong at a bar on Q’onos during the war, where Klingon warriors on opposite sides of the conflict were toasting and joshing with each other, as if this unholy feud was a joke to them. When he tried to protest, his brother Kurn advised him to pipe down and just enjoy it. Essentially, the explanation was a simple “boys will be boys.” Worf conceded, but it did not sit right with him.
Years later, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Worf was stabbed in the back with the cruelest stroke by the man for whom he had put his life on the line. Gowron’s government, in a vague counterterrorism push based on little more than speculation and hearsay, invaded the Cardassian Union in a thinly veiled attempt at imperial expansion. Worf was forced to watch as his homeland’s reputation as honorable warriors self-destructed before the eyes of the galaxy.
Worst of all, Worf was forced to tell Gowron to his face that he could not support his Cardassian invasion, only to be excommunicated from the Klingon empire as a result. Everything he believed in was throttled to death by power mad bureaucrats. I suppose that anyone reading this will not need to look far for modern parallels.
Having seen his idealized dream of the Klingon Empire destroy itself in real time, one could have forgiven Worf for shrinking away from his duties and becoming a recluse. But after briefly considering resigning his commission, Worf doubled down on his commitment to the only home he had left: Starfleet. He remained on Deep Space Nine, helping to protect not just the Federation but the entire Alpha Quadrant against his kith and kin. And because he did, Worf not only became a better officer, but a better warrior.
When Cardassia allied with the Dominion after the Klingon invasion, the Klingons suddenly found themselves the underdogs and Gowron was forced back into an alliance with the Federation to defeat a shared military threat. Just like that, Worf was no longer persona-non-grata because he stayed the course and remained the same trustworthy officer he always was — the shifty Klingon bureaucracy eventually shifted back to him.
Worf’s finest moment as a Klingon came at the tail end of the Dominion War. The Federation's forces had been hobbled by a new enemy weapon that drained the power from their ships, leaving the Klingon fleet the last line of defense until Starfleet could troubleshoot the problem. It was at this moment that Gowron chose the worst possible time to fly into megalomania.
Seizing control of the Klingon fleet from his own generals, he ordered his forces into unwinnable battle after unwinnable battle, claiming that the element of surprise and their warrior courage would be enough to even the odds.
Unable to reason Gowron out of his madness, Sisko ordered Worf to do whatever was necessary to terminate Gowron’s command. It was a difficult choice for Worf; no matter how power-mad Gowron had become, he was still the man he had put his life on the line to install as chancellor all those years ago. It was time for Worf to unblinkingly confront his self-contradictory outlook on Klingon righteousness.
His conception of his people as a happy, head-butting band of brothers could no longer suffice; if it did, the Dominion would sweep to victory. Worf had to kill Gowron, and with him, tear out the roots of Klingon hypocrisy. At a meeting of Gowron and his senior military staff, Worf stood up, removed his Starfleet badge and accused Gowron of laying down Klingon lives for a petty ego trip, knowing full well such a challenge would mean a duel to the death.
Gowron took the bait, a clash ensued, and Worf prevailed by the skin of his teeth. As the chancellor lay dead, his military brass declared Worf the new chancellor of the Klingon empire. But by then, Worf had cultivated enough self-awareness to know who he was: not a politician, but a loyal soldier. He
handed off the chancellorship to a friend he could trust: General Martok, who was also the Supreme Commander of the Ninth Fleet.
When the Dominion War finally ended, Martok rewarded Worf for his efforts by appointing him as the Klingons’ Federation ambassador. Leaving Starfleet with honors, Worf had achieved his ultimate dream: he had succeeded as a Klingon and as a Starfleet officer. His unyielding sense of honor had finally paid off for him.
Worf was not a flashy man. He was not a quipster, or a showboat, or a guy who you could have a beer with. He was an angry man with deep seated fears of inadequacy, one who refused to sugarcoat hard truths even to a dying man. But at the end of the day, he had a strong sense of what was right and wrong. For my money, he remains Star Trek’s finest exhibit of multiculturalism: a man who was willing to learn from humans, Klingons, and whoever else he found to be just and righteous.
He never took off his Klingon baldaric, never sold out his Starfleet commanders, and emerged respected by both societies — and more importantly, by himself. The lesson — one that the Star Trek franchise swears by — is that even notwithstanding the Prime Directive, some value systems are simply universal.
Worf really is a character that many of us have grown up with. As for me, I am an observant Jew who spent 23 years of my life growing up in America. When I am unsure if I am doing the right thing by Jews and gentiles, I cannot go wrong by asking myself: what would Worf do?
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