STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's Michael Dorn Has Been Pitching a Captain Worf Series
Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Michael Dorn wants to return to the Star Trek franchise, and he has been pitching a Captain Worf spinoff series to the franchise producers. In the series, Worf would be the Captain of a Klingon vessel and it would focus on Klingon culture.
During a recent interview with Trek Movie, Dorn offered an update on how things have been going in his efforts to get this series made:
"There's interest and then there's not. Then there's interest and then there's not. And I guess it was two years ago I thought they would take it a little further. But that did not happen. So I don't know if the whole idea is dead – not in my mind. [laughs] I believe that they are missing a great opportunity to insert something into Star Trek that's always been part of the Star Trek lexicon, which is the Klingons."
The Worf series concept is set after Worf left Starfleet to return to the Klingon Empire, and he went on to offer some other details saying:
"Basically, the script I wrote was: Instead of looking at the Klingon Empire from Starfleet, we look at Starfleet from the Klingon Empire. And it has been going on for decades, the Klingon Empire just can't go on. It's the Russians, basically. And they decide that they have to either die with a sword in their hands and go extinct, or change with the times and become something different. And Worf is the guy that says, 'We have to change with the times, that is the mark of a warrior.'
"And so two things happen. They start letting other races into the Klingon world. And the only way they can do that is by letting in Starfleet officers. That's sort of the way it's done. 'We'll let in other people, but first Starfleet offers because we understand Starfleet. They're soldiers, we're soldiers.' The second thing they have to do is their resources are limited and dwindling, because the Klingon universe is just like the Federation. They have planets and worlds and societies that they own, but they do it in a brutal way. And so they have to go out to every one of these worlds and either give them their freedom, or try to work with them, which is something that's anathema to Klingons.
“And since Worf opened his big mouth and said, ‘This is what we have to do,’ then they say, ‘Okay, then you're the guy that has to go out to all these worlds.’ And every world is different. Some worlds are rebelling. Some worlds want to be part of the Klingon Empire. Some worlds want to be independent. And so every episode is that."
I’d love to see a series like that get made. From what I understand, in the Picard Universe, Worf is the Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E. It wouldn’t be hard to re-introduce the character in Picard and then follow his story from there with a spinoff. It might not be exactly the concept that Dorn is pitching, but they could definitely incorporate elements of his ideas into it.
Would you be interested in seeing Worf get his own series?