Worf Destroyed Star Trek’s Enterprise-E?
Toward the end of the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Picard, the heroes hint that Worf may have unintentionally destroyed the Enterprise-E.
Michael Dorn’s iconic Worf, in the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Picard, may have hinted that he destroyed the Enterprise-E — the ship that first appears in 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact and which hasn’t been seen since 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. Toward the end of the most recent episode, after unveiling a rebuilt Enterprise-D, Geordi (LeVar Burton) says, “And obviously, we can’t use the Enterprise-E.” This prompts the heroes to exchange dark glances with each and other and Worf, who responds, “That was not my fault.”
What wasn’t his fault? We don’t know because the Klingon doesn’t elaborate. But because of a few clues here and there, we can make some guesses.
Back in February, Paramount’s official Star Trek Instagram page posted official profiles of the heroes. Worf’s Star Trek Logs profile suggests that he was eventually made captain of the Enterprise-E, but that he left command “after the incident above Krillar Prime.” It doesn’t give us more details about the incident in question, but it seems likely something bad happened to the Enterprise-E while under Worf’s command.
In the past, Trek media outside the shows and films have been considered strictly non-canonical, but between Worf’s hint in the latest Star Trek: Picard episode and Paramount’s personnel file, it’s the closest Trek has come to making Una McCormack’s 2020 tie-in novel The Last Best Hope canon. Worf is named captain of the Enterprise-E in the novel, though there’s nothing about an “incident above Krillar Prime.”
While Worf’s line is used largely for comic effect, it could shed some light on how he’s changed in Star Trek: Picard. The Klingon has been acting kind of like the New Age version of Worf, preferring meditation and passive acceptance to Bat’leth swinging. Maybe whatever it was that led to the “incident” aboard the Enterprise-E is what inspired the Klingon to adopt a more peaceful (but it seems, still, pretty bloody) way of life.
That would make sense. If Worf was, in any way, responsible for the destruction for Star Trek’s Enterprise-E, can you imagine what that would do to the Klingon?
We should remember that in Worf’s first episode as part of the cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “The Way of the Warrior,” he endures an internal crisis leading him to consider leaving Starfleet for good. A discussion with Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) reveals that in spite of all the other reasons Worf had given thus far for his inner conflict, the chief one was the destruction of the Enterprise-D in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations.
If the destruction of one Enterprise shook the Klingon so much it made him consider leaving his Starfleet career behind, imagine what the destruction of another would do, particularly if he was the one in command.
We’re sure Worf has a lot more greatness to show us before the story ends, when the final episode of Star Trek: Picard streams next Thursday on Paramount+.
