Michael Dorn’s Most Challenging Worf Storyline On Star Trek: The Next Generation

Over the course of more than 35 years, actor Michael Dorn has portrayed the Klingon warrior and Starfleet officer Worf, son of Mogh, in the “Star Trek” franchise. He’s the actor who has appeared onscreen in the most episodes of “Star Trek,” and that means both he and his character have gone through quite a number of challenges. Worf has survived murder attempts, grieved the loss of his Par’Mach’kai Jadzia, and went from being a violent grump to a pacifist grump. But there was one aspect of Worf’s personality and actions that Dorn found the most difficult to deal with: his strained relationship with his son, Alexander.

In “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” we are introduced to Worf as a sort of stuffy man with a silly haircut who takes being a Klingon almost as seriously as he takes being a Starfleet officer. Despite developing romantic feelings for Counselor Troi (Martina Sirtis), Worf wasn’t exactly the type to be having trysts… until he met K’Ehleyr (Suzie Plakson). K’Ehleyr was a half-human, half-Klingon ambassador who pushed Worf to challenge his own ideas about what it meant to be Klingon, and after a brief affair returned some years later with their son, Alexander. Unfortunately, K’Ehleyr was killed shortly after, leaving Worf not only reeling from the news that he was a father, but leaving him a single father as well.

Worf is not the type to join his fellow crew members for games of sport or chance, and he’s even less likely to engage in something as frivolous as a holodeck adventure. However, when he discovered that he had a son, he was suddenly thrust into all kinds of tomfoolery in the name of trying to make the kid happy. He tried to be a good dad to some degree, but mostly didn’t have the patience for poor Alexander, who just wanted his father’s approval. Eventually Worf shipped the boy off to Earth to live with his adoptive parents, the Rozhenkos, and their relationship grew even rockier. In a 2012 interview with StarTrek.com, Dorn revealed that Worf and Alexander’s story was tough for him to portray:

“The one challenge was the son, having a son, because Worf was not a great father. He basically shoveled his son off to someplace else. That was a big challenge and the episodes were pretty good. The evolution of Worf was great, especially on ‘Deep Space Nine.’ It was just fantastic. The father thing, I thought, was a real challenge. […] People may expect me to say the Worf-Troi romance, but I actually liked that. I felt that was a good thing because Troi was so not like Worf.”

Dorn went on to joke about how Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes, who played Troi’s eventual paramour William T. Riker, hated the Worf-Troi romance subplot, but he didn’t really mind. The only thing that he really hated was the “Next Generation” episode “Code of Honor,” and we kind of agree. Still, Worf really was kind of a crummy dad.

Worf wasn’t expecting to be a father and had it thrust upon him, but he really struggled to live up to the challenge. He wasn’t great with family in general, as his relationship with his lost brother Kurn (Tony Todd) was strained at best and his marriage to Trill science officer Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) only worked because she had the wisdom of seven lifetimes in addition to her own. (Thankfully, it was easy for Dorn and Farrell to play husband and wife on “Deep Space Nine,” as they were good friends.) Heck, when he takes an assignment on Deep Space Nine, he gets so annoyed by being around everyone that he ends up using the Defiant as his own personal apartment. While that’s kind of relatable, it also shows that maybe Worf just isn’t great at being personable, which makes his familial relationships a little more troubled than most. 

Towards the end of “Deep Space Nine,” an older Alexander ends up trying to prove he’s a true Klingon by serving on General Martok’s vessel, the Rotarran, and it doesn’t go particularly well. All the same, Worf does at least realize that he has to let his son make his own choices, and he’s officially brought into the House of Martok. We’ve yet to find out what happened to Alexander after that (he’s not even mentioned in season 3 of “Star Trek: Picard”), but I like to imagine him in charge of his own Klingon vessel somewhere, showing those who laughed at him that he has what it takes — because he is Alexander, Son of Worf.