Friday, March 3, 2023

That time I went on and on about Worf's ears:

Are we just not going to talk about them? Worf's ears I mean. Here, look:
What? I think about these things.
Pictured: an orc? I guess?
Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything for the new season of Star Trek: Picard that wasn't already spoiled in the advertising beyond the fact that we see Worf and he has ears. I mean, obviously actor Micheal Dorn has ears, and I always assumed that the character he plays has ears. And we've seen other Klingons over the years with ears, from the problematic incarnations seen on the 1960's show to the redesigned ones we're all used to now. Although the ones on Star Trek: Discovery didn't have ears. Well, ok, they had ears, but not an outer ear and pinna--I think it's called--which is what I'm getting at. There was not in-universe reason given for why they looked so weird and everyone kind of hates the redesign, so who knows if we'll ever see them again, but the point is Worf's ears.
Dilemmas like whether or not to let those
weird swingers euthanize Wesley for
messing up their flower bed.
I, with some amount of embarrassment, consider myself to be an expert when it comes to Star Trek. Some people go to med school or learn second and even third languages. Me? I've spent several doctorates worth of time watching, re-watching, reading about, and just generally nerding out about a bunch of TV shows about post-scarcity secular humanists flying around space and beaming down to planets kind of like Earth except for one societal difference that poses a dilemma which Captain Picard or whoever has to solve with brains rather than phasers. And what do I have to show for it? 

Pictured: Worf.
Not pictured: Worf's ears.
Just the certainty that in the thirty five years Dorn has played Worf across seven seasons of TNG, four on DS9, and four TNG movies, we have never--not once--seen his ears. I've even tried an internet search in case my memory's not as good as I think it is, and I can't find a single picture before the new series where you can see them. They've always been covered by his hair. We've seen the actor's ears when he played a 1950's baseball player in a dream sequence and in Star Trek VI he played Worf's grandfather, also called Worf, but never when he played the Son of Mogh.

And now, decades later, Micheal Dorn is back in the forehead, only this time his long, snowy white locks are pulled back to reveal a pair of ordinary human ears. I'm not complaining mind you, like I said, I always figured he had ears. But now that we can see them I can't seem to look at anything else.
Above: A seen from a recent episode in which Worf
and his ears rescue Raffi from a tough spot.


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