5 Worst Things Worf Ever Did On Star Trek, Ranked

Michael Dorn's Worf is easily the best Klingon character in the Star Trek franchise, bar none. Between "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," his movie appearances, and even his one last hurrah on "Star Trek: Picard," he has appeared in more Star Trek episodes than anyone else in the franchise's history. That's a terrific run for a great character. However, being a great character doesn't mean that Worf is a particularly solid person. For instance, even the Star Trek website roasts the Klingon for spending much of his Trek tenure as the embodiment of unsavory and misguided masculinity, especially during his "The Next Generation" era. 

Worf experiences plenty of personal growth over the course of his lengthy Star Trek career. But during his journey to become a (somewhat) better person, Worf does a lot of truly awful things — even at a stage of his life where he's supposed to be mellowed out and more or less at peace with himself and the world. Here is a look at five of the worst things that Worf has ever done on Star Trek.

It's one thing to say that Worf is somewhat impulsive on occasion. It's completely another to remember that this is a guy who's very happy to fire photon torpedoes at an unidentified ship, risking the lives of everyone on board.

Such a thing happens in the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Season 4 episode "Rules of Engagement," where Worf proves to be a little bit too trigger-happy for his own good while commanding the USS Defiant during an escort mission. When a ship suddenly deactivates its cloaking device in the vicinity, Worf's immediate reaction is to fire at it, without as much as confirming whether it's the kind of hostile Klingon vessel that he suspects it to be. Perhaps inevitably, it's a civilian ship, and the Klingons promptly demand that Worf stand trial, arguing that he has an uncontrollable desire to get revenge on the Klingon Empire over its slights on his family. 

Of course, "Deep Space Nine" doesn't turn a main character into a mass murderer, and the whole "destroyed civilian vessel full of people" thing turns out to be a cunning setup attempt by the Klingons. Still, the fact that multiple characters call Worf out on his decision and seriously question the idea of his unquenchable bloodlust speaks volumes about his character. There's also the fact that Worf eventually tells the less than delighted Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) that he was very much hoping to wreck some Klingons during the mission. In other words, Worf probably would have fired without looking regardless of the circumstances — he just happened to luck out when the Klingons decided to frame him, as opposed to running into a legitimate civilian ship.

Some "Star Trek" characters handle romance with tact, courtesy, and passion. Others are Worf. In one of the worst "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episodes — Season 5 episode "Let He Who Is Without Sin..." – Worf and Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) are dealing with some relationship issues on their vacation on Risa, a paradise planet with an artificially controlled climate that ensures great weather all around. Their existing tension and an encounter with the Dax symbiont's ex causes Worf to make some unwise decisions. For your average person, these might mean some jealousy, and perhaps a flaming row when the emotional kettle boils over. Worf, on the other hand, decides to become a terrorist and tamper with the entire planet. 

Yes, really. In lieu of getting over himself and learning to enjoy existence for once, Worf mixes up with the wrong company and joins a Puritan-style faction that wants to toughen people up by sabotaging the planet's weather control system. With Worf on board, their mission succeeds, and he quite literally rains on everyone's parade. 

What's more, this is an episode that features a plot line about Dax thinking that Worf is too restrained and doesn't show enough emotion, which we discover is because Worf is deliberately holding back after accidentally killing a guy during a soccer game. Since the episode features Worf dealing with a rough relationship patch by effectively joining a terrorist cell, one can't help but wonder how he would have reacted if he didn't hold back.

It is the fate of virtually every starship named Enterprise to get destroyed or decommissioned over time, only to be replaced by a shiny new version. Yet only one of them has met its apparent demise off-screen, and its possible destruction is presented as a joke — and, of course, it was all Worf's fault.

In the "Star Trek: Picard" Season 3 episode "Võx," the cast's collection of old hands dusts off the USS Enterprise-D for its one last rodeo. As Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton) points out, however, the classic "Star Trek: The Next Generation" ship might not have been the first choice for the task. It just so happens that the USS Enterprise-E is out of commission, thanks to an unspecified incident. Worf immediately denies all fault on the matter, but this is presented in a way that makes it pretty clear that whatever happened very much took place during the Klingon's watch.

Worf is something of a loose cannon when it comes to Klingon politics. Granted, Klingon politics as a concept gives a lot of leeway when it comes to loose cannons, but still, it's weird that he's personally killed no fewer than two prominent Klingon leaders — while working as a Starfleet officer, no less.

In the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" Season 4 episode "Reunion," the Enterprise crew has to deal with a complicated Klingon political assassination situation that involves the poisoning of Chancellor K'mpec (Charles Cooper). One of his potential successors, either Duras (Patrick Massett) or Gowron (Robert O'Reilly), is the killer — and making a wrong move could result in a full-blown war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. So, of course Worf challenges the culprit (Duras) into a duel to the death, and kills him before anyone can stop him.

Granted, Worf has his reasons, given that Duras just murdered his ex, K'Ehleyr (Suzie Plakson). It also ends up working for the best of the plot. Still, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) doesn't particularly like the fact that his underling just killed a candidate for Chancellor during an investigation-slash-appointment ceremony that Picard himself was supposed to be leading.

As it happens, the Chancellor-by-default, Gowron, gets his from Worf, too. Though the two are able to coexist for quite some time after the events of "Reunion," the events of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Season 7 episode "Tacking into the Wind" see Worf duel and kill Gowron, too. Again, there are mitigating factors, since Gowron's pettiness and insecurities are severely disrupting the course of the Dominion War. Still, the fact that Worf can't stop killing chancellors and wannabe chancellors is a peculiar character trait, to say the least.

The aforementioned "The Next Generation" episode "Reunion" also introduces another one of Worf's most dubious deeds: The way he treats his own son, Alexander Rozhenko (primarily portrayed by Brian Bonsall and Marc Worden). Ambassador K'Ehleyr has kept Alexander hidden from Worf up to this episode, which puts Worf in the strange position of learning that he has a child and becoming Alexander's only living parent within the span of a single story.

To say that Worf doesn't handle this well is an understatement. He immediately sends Alexander to live with his human adoptive parents on Earth. When the kid inevitably returns, Worf has a hard time dealing with a child who's unfamiliar with and uninterested in anything to do with Klingon culture and being a warrior, and who — understandably, given his history — has plenty of issues.

Worf proceeds to spend years being the epitome of a distant, overdemanding space equivalent of a sports dad, trying and failing to instill his own values to his son and driving a wedge between them. Their relationship does mend over time, but it's very telling that "The Next Generation" Season 7 episode "Firstborn" is all about a fully grown Alexander (James Sloyan) traveling 40 years back in time. Why? To undertake a complex mission to convince his younger self to become the kind of warrior Worf would be proud of. Talk about daddy issues.