Great Idea: Michael Dorn Developing ‘Star Trek: Captain Worf’
via Michael Dorn Confirms He’s Working on a ‘Star Trek: Captain Worf’ TV Series.
Geek favorites Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer have been forthcoming about their hopes for bringing Star Trek back to the small screen, after the release of J.J. Abrams’ elusive sequel to his Trek movie reboot next summer. However, it turns out those two aren’t the only ones with big dreams about a new TV series set in that sci-fi universe – Michael Dorn is also taking steps to reprise his signature Trek role on a spinoff, tentatively titled Star Trek: Captain Worf.
Worf, Son of Mogh, of course, is the first Klingon main character on a Star Trek TV series. He appeared on The Next Generation throughout its seven-season run, then became a Deep Space Nine regular for its last four seasons. Dorn portrayed Worf in all four Next Generation films; in addition, he played Worf’s grandfather, Colonel Worf, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Rumors and reports about a prospective Worf spinoff began circulating earlier this year – which, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, marks the 25th anniversary of The Next Generation. Trek News caught up with recently with Dorn, who gave them the following exclusive “scoop” on the project:
“I had come up with the idea because I love [Worf] and I think he’s a character that hasn’t been fully developed and hasn’t been fully realized. Once I started thinking about it, it became obvious to me that I wanted to at least put it out there, which I have, and the response has been pretty amazing. We’ve been contacted by different individuals–I can’t say who and all that–about wanting to come on board and be part of this. ”
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I’d rather see a Lt. Barkley series. Oooooh, that’d be fun! I’d cough up a few Quatloo’s to see that.
No, I’m not a nerd. Why would you think that?
I like Michael Dorn, but I’d prefer to let ST:TNG and its offspring rest in peace. I like my Trek old school, where Klingons are Klingons and starship captains can beam down to planets, have fistfights, and make love to beautiful alien women.
Gee … I dunno. Worf was always a little toooo willing to die (“Today is a good day to die.”) Might a Captain Worf be a bit over-eager to engage the enemy? Maybe the Captain could command a special forces team.
10,000 Quatloos against the Robert L. Mayo!
A Worf series would kick ass! W/ a mostly Klingon crew on a starship. But w/ an Andorian, human, and a Romulan/Vulcan (i.e. Saavik) science officer. Species that really don’t get along w/ Klingons.
I’m seeing a very un-PC, action adventure show. Not the soap-opera w/ lasers that other recent SciFi has been.
Herbert
Hey, we reach, brother.
The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series crapped all over the original due to the far superior quality of it’s writing.
The same can be said for the later episodes of TNG compared to the first 3 seasons.
Star Trek: Captain Worf has potential provided the scripts are up to the task. If not it will suck…
If they can get Dr. Bashir filling in for “Bones” that would rock. Let’s get away from the Logical 1st Officer and put somebody slightly chaotic (maybe a new character with Savant-like tendencies) in the position. That would put ole Worf in the position if wondering whether an Away Team is really the smart thing to do…
Best choice for Worf’s XO? Kira Nerys.
Imagine the fireworks.
cheers
eon
Cap’m Worf had better be gettin’ in on somea that Kirk alien babe action yo! He’s a playa, not a sucka.
OK, kidding aside, I hope they pull it together. Worf was always neglected in TNG.
If it’s done “right” (not sure what that would entail) I would watch it because I found the Klingon storylines in TNG some of the most entertaining.
Much more so than in the original series where the “Klingons” as they were seemed to be just an alien biker gang with better weapons. I think we can all remember the opening scene of the first ST movie with the Klingon battle cruiser and you see the captain and it’s a case of WHAT IS THAT?
The original series Klingons were a classic example of “characterization mugging”, i.e. what the creator had in mind got changed, mostly by the customer, namely NBC.
In Gene Roddenberry’s original conception, it was the Romulans, not the Klingons, who were to be the Federation’s main adversary. The UFP was conceived as being rather like the Greek city-states (independent worlds forming an alliance), while the Romulans were more like Imperial Rome. (Rome. “Romulan”. Pretty obvious, actually.)
As for the Klingons, Roddenberry conceived them, not as a barbarian horde, but as space-going samurai. Specifically, the samurai of the Tokugawa Shogunate era in Japan, the two and a half centuries between the end of the Warring States period in the early 1600s, and the Meiji Restoration following Japan’s opening by Commodore Perry’s task group in 1854-56.
The Klingons were conceived as honorable warriors, from a clan-based culture putting great emphasis on correct behavior, the honoring of debts, and especially the systematic, almost ritualized settlement of differences. In Japan’s case, this culture evolved from the chaos of the Warring States; Roddenberry hypothesized that the Klingons had gone through a similar period before achieving spaceflight, and the customs carried over.
The Klingons would be a culture which set great store by the military virtues, but would not start a fight unless provoked. Once that had occurred, though, it would be “war to the knife”- no quarter asked, none given. And those who fell in battle would be celebrated in songs. Again, very like Tokugawa Japan.
All of this was apparently just too complicated for NBC. Instead, they wanted the Klingons to be a cross between Mongol hordes and the Soviet Union. The only time they really got their wish was in “Errand of Mercy”, the Klingons’ very first appearance, in the first season. By the time of “Day of the Dove”, in the third season, they were much closer to Roddenberry’s version. John Colicos’ Kor was a Soviet officer straight out of a 1960s spy novel; Michael Ansara’s Kang could have been any Toshiro Mifune character from a Kurosawa film.
In the process, the Romulans pretty much got lost. By the third season, they were using Klingon-designed ships, for production cost reasons only partly lampshaded by a supposed “alliance” in a throwaway line in “The Enterprise Incident”. (Those interested in the dynamics of geopolitics are invited to consider the ramifications of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact- and the improbability of such a pact between the likes of, say, Japan and Imperial China.)
The Romulans were essentially ignored throughout the original movie era, mainly because Paramount still wanted the Klingons as “bad guys”. It finally took a special episode of Next Generation to bring them back, in new ships, saying, “we’ve been busy elsewhere, but now we’re getting around to you“.
Today, I suspect the new J.J. Abrams version will do what Roddenberry originally intended. Namely, portray the Klingons as the honorable warrior allies of the Federation. (Notice how fast Uhura found out about the loss of 40+ Klingon capital ships in the movie; this strongly indicates at least back-channel connections.) And the Romulans as the unified, systematic, and ultimately very dangerous adversaries, who don’t want to destroy the Federation; they just believe that they should be running it, and the Klingons, and everybody else.
Which means that after fifty years, they’ll be back where Gene Roddenberry intended things to be right at the start. I regard this as a classic case of that old mechanic’s axiom, “when all else fails, read the instructions.”
cheers
eon
That makes sense. I had always thought Klingon culture seemed to be an idealized Bushido culture. The readiness to fight was played up a bit making them more thuggish than honorable. They also engaged in a lot of political infighting, but then Star Trek did mostly focus on the elite levels of any society so perhaps politicians are just the same the galaxy over.
I’mna thinking something closer to B’Star G, 2d take. Though I guess the question will be spin off from where? There are a couple of points in the various TV shows and movies that turtlehead could spin off from, each of which would lend itself to differing treatments. My preference would be Governor Worf from ‘All Good Things’. P’raps showing how he got there and beyond.
Not a good idea if they stick with the Star Trek writers!
There were some good storylines, like the Dominion wars, the theocratic power struggles on Bejor, the Cardassian aggression, the Trill multiple personalities. The Klingon and Romulan episodes were pretty good also.
But all of the Star Trek series suffered radiation poisoning resulting in outbreaks of terminal PC. The first source was the element Pulpium, which caused endless recycling of 1930s era plot lines. The other was Preachium, a consistently invasive gas which caused outbreaks of social justice psychobabble that would have embarrassed the Democratic National Committee . Commander Cisco going back in time to fight racism? “Alternative universe” episodes every time they ran out of ideas at the end of the season? The Voyager crew sprinkled with Native American guerrillas, African Vulcans, and Hispanic Klingons? Oh, and free markets as purely vile ( the Ferengi?) As they say on Raisa, baby, puh-leeze!
Want to turn Worf loose with a starship? Fine. Just make sure to set phasers on “get over yourself”.
If Berman or Braga are involved the series will suck harder than Sagittarius A*, if you know what I mean and I think that you do.
Having recently gone back and rewatched all the ST shows on Netflix, it was the first three seasons of TNG that sucked harder than a Sagittarius A*, not any of the subsequent shows.
Sagittarius A* is the black hole at the center of our galaxy.
A Worf series wouldn’t be my first choice, but it would beat the hell out of anything based on that awful JJ Abrams movie.
I only hope it would include quality, adult writing with story arcs like DS9 and Enterprise, not hokey, cheesy writing with an alien-of-the-week with a new and uninteresting forehead ridge like TNG or TOS.
If I had my way, a new series would be set about 20 years after DS9 ended so we can see how the end of the Dominion War shook out and affected the rest of the Alpha Quadrant. That could make for a seriously interesting new plot setting.
Make Capt Worf head of a Mission:Impossible style team. (1960s, not the Cruise crap.)
His cover is that his family is too dangerous for the Klingon Empire, so they bury him in some ceremonial diplomatic post to rot away. But Empire insiders know he is too valuable, so he is constantly being dragged into impossible situations fending off plots against the Empire, all of it completely secret.
The actor Michael Dorn is a little long in the tooth to be credible beating up on twenty something muscled actors, but he would be highly effective as a brains behind the scenes sort of leader, employing his crack team expertly. Plenty of opportunities for guest stars so show up as villians, damsels in disress, etc.
He isn’t stuck on a ship, he gets to go where the action is, and that could be almost anywhere. His team could consist of other Ronin style warriors; Samurai without a master, but still with a deep sense of honor.
If my spinoff fantasies had The Force behind them, Laurel Goodwin would have had her own ship (and, of course, series) by now.
Well of course Dorn is working on a Captain Worf series. He can’t get regular work doing anything else. His acting jobs since Trek have been one off or short stints as a guest star on TV for the most part. Not sure he can sustain a series on his own merits.
Actually he does pretty well with his voice-over work. But agreed, I don’t think he could pull off a series without a baktag load of help.
If/When this gets on, sure, it’s gonna have some adjustments to make.
But this series on a fair day, will beat hell out of 25 Pickers and Pawn Shop shows and Bravo/”E”/Lifetime crapola nightmares.
LifeTime is doing an all Af-Am version of ‘Steel Magnolias’.
How could this concept be any worse?
I dunno, they could do Steel Magnolias in the original Klingon.
This story is pure hype. CBS Television owns the exclusive TV rights for Star Trek, and nobody can do squat with it unless they approve the project. The fact that Dorn acted in Star Trek does not give him any special privileges in this area. The most he can do is to lobby the CBS executives to create a new series with him as the star, but they are free to ignore him. And as far as I can tell, that’s exactly what they are doing. I see nothing in the ScreenRant article that indicates the slightest CBS support for Dorn’s proposal.
When CBS actually green-lights a new Star Trek series, this will be a real news story. Until them, it’s nothing but rumors.
You are my cha’Dich. You obey.
One problem with the popular concept of “warrior” societies especially that of the Japanese Shogunate was that the Samurai did a whole lot more book keeping than they did fighting. The Ferengi always struck me as being more like the old British mercantile Empire. I suspect that they would have a technological and financial edge when it came to warfare. Imagine Ferengi in power suits.
As noted it is hard to build a good movie or series unless you have good writing and producers/directors who will not piss on it.
Of course you have to have the obligatory cleavage and boob babe to attract young male viewers.
Errk, I just had this image of Worf and a Ferengi woman getting it on. Excuse me I need some coffee and a lie down.
How about a series based on Quark’s bar, where he and Moog can remanence and then any of the better stories from any of the ST series could be replayed. Low budget and lots of interesting propositions.
I want the next Star Trek series to be the adventures of Vic Fontaine and the Yoyager’s doctor in the holoworld (which, of course, remains *elsewhere* when the machines are switched off and the players go home). You could tell any story conceivable…
Yes, I’m nuts. Got it.
An even bolder idea: They assign him to the dead end posting as “technical adviser” to the most ancient warship in existence: Battle cruiser “Vengance”, which had been a staple of Klingon TriVee for 247 years. Discovering that the ship is actually operational and upgraded to modern technology (the chief engineer loves her “children” beyond all reason and the supply officer/accountant is quite creative at finding “unused” parts), he gets the High Command to send him on a ‘guaranteed suicide mission’ to put an end to the ship and its misfit crew (the science officer will be a notorious duelist and seducer of hapless alien males, the Gunner will be the most wimpy-looking Klingon imaginable – and a holy terror with Disruptors, the ships Doctor will on hid 45th career attempt, with the lines like “as matter of fact, I am a carpenter”).
It would be awesome!