Star Trek: 10 Times Worf Was Ignored (But Was Absolutely Right)
How he resisted blurting out 'I told you so' is one of Star Trek's greatest unsolved mysteries...
'No, Mr Worf' is heard so often throughout Star Trek that you would be forgiven for thinking he had a reputation for bad ideas. But the truth is, his instincts were often spot on.
Granted, it wasn't unknown for Worf's suggestions to escalate from time to time. Mysterious anomaly? Raise shields. Territory dispute? Fire phasers. Strange new lifeform? Load photon torpedoes, just in case.
However, as Chief of Security, it was literally his job to maintain a suspicious mind in the face of the unknown. After all, the rest of the crew could hardly indulge their scientific curiosities without someone keeping them safe.
While Worf clearly never met a security protocol he didn't like, he also had an uncanny knack for being ignored, only to later be proven right. Whether it was warning against trusting strangers too easily, or simply suggesting that the Enterprise stop flying directly into danger, these are some of our favourite examples of when Worf totally called it.
10. Where Silence Has Lease
Don't trust the strange hole, he said. It might have a ship-eating monster in it, he said. So of course, Picard decided to poke around.
When the Enterprise sends a probe into a foreboding void and it disappears without a trace, Worf immediately suggests they move to yellow alert. A pretty sensible suggestion...until Picard asks why.
His embarrassment palpable, Worf is forced to admit that it reminds him of an old Klingon legend about a gigantic black space creature that devours entire vessels. Not the most convincing argument, but bizarrely, he ends up being spot on.
Picard naturally ignores Worf and takes the ship in for a closer look...and the void instantly swallows them up.
Things only go from bad to worse; a phantom Romulan Warbird attacks, a creepy ghostship escape room appears, and the enormous face of Nagilum emerges from the darkness.
The immortal entity thinks it might be entertaining to experiment with different ways of killing the crew, including the now infamous demise of poor Ensign Haskell. Of course, Picard refuses to play. He decides to blow up the ship rather than submit to such a terrible fate, forcing Nagilum to release them at the last second.
Still, Picard's final order of the episode is to give any holes a wide berth, so perhaps it was all a valuable learning experience.
Or they could have just listened to Worf in the first place.