Star Trek Writers Had To Fight Gene Roddenberry For One Worf-Focused Episode

Season 4 was an important moment for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" — we've even named it the best "TNG" season. With the fourth season, the show had officially gone for more years than "The Original Series" had and even reached 100 episodes with its season finale. That season finale was "Redemption, Part 1," scripted by prolific "Star Trek" writer (and future "Battlestar Galactica" re-creator) Ronald D. Moore.

The episode tilted its eye away from the Federation and towards the Klingons, capping off a running subplot about discontent in the empire. In the season 3 episode "Sins of the Father," the Klingon Duras (Patrick Massett) accuses Worf's (Michael Dorn) father M'ogh of having been a traitor to the Romulans. Due to Duras' political power, Worf is forced to accept the dishonor. Season 4 episode "Reunion" was a sequel, following Duras competing with the rival Gowron (Robert O'Reilly) to become the empire's chancellor. Worf kills Duras and Gowron wins the chancellorship.

Both "Sins of the Father" and "Reunion" had been written in part by Moore and in "Redemption," he completed this trilogy. The episode follows Worf, still stripped of his honor, as the Klingon civil war finally kicks off. Gowron has to defend his title against the remaining House of Duras, backed in secret by the Romulans. Worf, eager to restore his family's honor, leaves Starfleet to fight alongside his brother Kurn (Tony Todd) against their Duras foes.

The previous year's two-parter "Best of Both Worlds" closed out "TNG" season 3 with only the first half of its story, and then opened season 4 with its resolution. Similarly, "Redemption, Part 2" was then the "Next Generation" season 5 premiere; it solidified the show's tradition of season-ending cliffhangers (carried on today by "Strange New Worlds").

Looking back now, "Redemption" is a clear lay-up. Making it wasn't so, according to Moore when he spoke to the Hollywood Reporter in 2021. The biggest roadblock? "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry.

Roddenberry passed in October 1991, about a month after "Redemption, Part 2" premiered, so this would've been one of the last behind-the-scenes battles he fought on "Trek. (He obviously lost, with Moore saying producers Michael Piller and Rick Berman backed him over Roddenberry). What was his issue? As we've written before, Roddenberry was never the biggest fan of Worf and had to be pressured to truly make him one of the leads on "Next Generation."

"[Roddenberry] didn't really see Worf as a primary character. ["The Next Generation"] was about Picard. He was the captain," Moore explained. The Enterprise crew isn't absent in "Redemption," but Worf is the episode's protagonist, no doubt. As for Worf not being a main character? Sorry, Gene, but by season 4 that ship had long sailed. Other writers, especially Moore, saw the opportunity a Klingon main character afforded and took it. "When I started at "Star Trek," the Klingons were already part and parcel of the franchise. But when you really broke it down, you didn't know that much about them," Moore explained to the Hollywood Reporter, and so he helped fix that emptiness. 

The other issues Roddenberry had with "Redemption" were the tone and subject matter: "This was the first time that ["Next Generation"] — that "Star Trek," really — had ever done a big war story like this," recounted Moore. It was Roddenberry's luck that he didn't live to see the Dominion War play out on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." Indeed, Moore's "Next Generation" trilogy of Klingon episodes feels like a test run of the storytelling that "Deep Space Nine" used all the way through. That series, the darkest and best of "Star Trek," had the right kind of TV serialization. Not every episode had to be just a chunk of a whole, but series-long threads where conflicted characters are challenged and changed make viewing extra rewarding. It in turn makes total sense that Worf joined "Deep Space Nine" during its fourth season; he already felt like a character who belonged there.