The final act of Worf, the Star Trek legend who deserved one most of all

polygon.com:

In television — as in sports — some records are simply unbreakable. No one will ever pitch more complete games than Cy Young, no one will ever hold pro wrestling’s highest title longer than Bruno Sammartino, and no one will ever make more appearances on Star Trek than Michael Dorn.

Between 1987 and 2002, Dorn portrayed Starfleet’s mighty and stoic Klingon expatriate Worf in 174 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 98 episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and four feature films. Add in his cameo as Worf’s grandfather in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and that adds up to 277. Even after the revival of the franchise in 2017, this still accounts for nearly a third of the entire Star Trek canon. Now, Dorn has picked up his mek’leth and bumpy prosthetic forehead once more to reprise Worf in the final season of Star Trek: Picard, which reunites the Next Gen cast for one last adventure. It’s the chance to give one of sci-fi’s most beloved supporting characters something that’s usually reserved only for Captains and Admirals: a glorious third act.

Though he’s now one of the franchise’s most recognizable figures, Lt. Worf was a last-minute addition to the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Series creator Gene Roddenberry hoped to avoid relying on familiar alien antagonists from the classic 1960s series, leading producer Robert Justman to suggest the addition of a Klingon to the crew of the Enterprise, symbolizing that their long Cold War with the Federation had come to an end. (It was 1987, after all.) Thus, security officer Worf was created, added into the final draft of the series pilot, and cast after the initial publicity photos for the series were shot. Thus, the early development of the character was