LogFAQs > #934293466

4. Worf
Honor.

I actually spent some time debating about Worf or #3 for this place, but I ultimately decided on Worf. Lets just get this right out of the way: Worf is so silly. I love him. The Borg have no honor; that is their greatest weakness. The heroes go on to defeat the Borg in a way that involves no honor at all. This happens to Worf every episode in TNG, because his job is not to be a really good security officer, its to always be wrong. Worf has a very specific job in TNG: suggest the most aggressive possible course of action so Picard can prove his own enlightenment by rejecting it, fire completely useless phasers, and lose every fistfight to show how strong his opponent is. I think every single character in TNG schools Worf at least once, and that includes Wesley and Counselor Troi. In Worfs defense, Troi was possessed by a mystical whatever spirit at the time, but I still count it. Point is, Worf is basically the Batman of TNG: he takes himself completely seriously no matter how stupid the situation is, and it makes him way funnier than anyone else.

Im going to go ahead and say that Worf makes no sense. His parents were killed by Romulans and he was rescued by humans, fine. Worf isnt a nobody Klingon child, hes the heir to a Great House. Dude is going to get sent back to the Klingon Empire and raised by his uncle or something so fast itll make your head spin. And even if he did get adopted by Russians (why does he have an American accent?), the vaguely racist Klingons are not going to just accept him back like that. But its okay, its in the service of the story. I feel like I had to say all of that because I have been very hard on Discovery.

Worf is one of the main Torn Between Two Worlds characters alongside Odo, but he takes in a different direction. Odo is all about wanting to belong and to rejoin his people, Worf is sort of straight edge personified. Dude is all about honor, to the detriment of actually being a Klingon. Like, the weirdest analogy I can make for this character is an ethnically Japanese person raised in the United States, whose entire knowledge of Japan comes from anime, inventing a hyper-weeaboo persona for himself. Like, what is that sash. Even other Klingons dont wear that sash. Dont tell me its some noble house thing, we meet a thousand Klingon noblemen and none of them wear that sash. It is guaranteed some ancient Klingon thing they were expected to wear that got phased out over centuries, and Worf thinks Klingons should all keep wearing it because he saw a picture of one in a human history book about Klingons.

What makes Worf work is that he can be used to explore wacky Klingon shenanigans. Everyone else is human, which makes their society boring, Betazoid, which makes their society irrelevant, or an android, who dont really have a society unless you count it as technically being a civil war when 50% of the population help freed Borg screw with the Federation. But Worf can be dropped into a Klingon civil war and play backroom Klingon politics, and all of that works because Worfs only skill, sword fighting, is how you get ahead in Klingon politics. Like can you imagine if the President of the United States was just screwing around at a party, a convicted felon broke in and challenged him to a sword fight, and the Secret Service said Yeah, yeah, lets see where this goes? But it all works because Worfs weeaboo beliefs make him butt heads with everyone else so much that just being in the room is going to cause problems. I cant think of a single Klingon set where Worf didnt cause a problem. Maybe the hovel with the old lady that only Picard visits, but even then, Picard gets attacked just outside of the hovel by assassins because hes helping Worf. Point is, after every time Worf is kicked out of the Empire (it happens more than once, and he never, ever thinks about how his actions will affect his family because he only cares about honor), he can brood and be like one day I shall reclaim my familys honor, which makes for great television.

Worfs Klingon episodes define him so much that its hard to think of Worf episodes that arent about them. Its basically just his stupid son Alexander (so glad we didnt include him in the rankings) or Jadzia Dax. I never bought that Dax could keep up with Worf physically. Suzie Plakson, the woman who played Alexanders mother, was 62, she looked like what a Klingon woman should look like. Worf would break Jadzia Dax in two so fast.

Worf also gets a lot to do in DS9, of course. DS9 is more Worfs style. Worf works great in TNG, where its an adventure of the week where the lesson is always dont use violence, but DS9 is ehhhh use violence sometimes, and the one using the violence is usually Sisko or Worf. I never really understood what Worf saw in Picard. He was sometimes like IF YOU WERE ANY OTHER MAN ID KILL YOU, but like, Worf and Picard have nothing even remotely in common and Picards beliefs are the exact opposite of Worfs. Sisko seems like the kind of human Worf wouldnt mind serving under.

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Started: July 6, 2005