With One Line, Star Trek Reinvented Its Biggest Star
Sure. Klingons are hardcore. But what about this guy?
During the week of March 19, 1990, Star Trek: The Next Generation boldly sent the USS Enterprise somewhere it had never gone before — at least not on screen. In the pivotal episode “Sins of the Father,” Worf (Michael Dorn) has to head home to attempt to clear his family name from accusations of his father’s treason which would have happened when he was just a kid. The script was penned by Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran, from a story by Drew Deighan. To this day, it remains one of the most canon-defining episodes ever when it comes to the famed Klingon Empire.
While it seems like the Klingons were always fully formed in Trek canon, “Sins of the Father” did way more heavy lifting than may seem reasonable. Yes, we’d never visited the Klingon homeworld before, and no, we didn’t know Worf had a brother, and yes this was the first time a ton of rules about the Klingon governance and rules of honor were laid out. But a quick dive into various Star Trek books (The Fifty-Year Mission or The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion) or Wikipedia or Memory Alpha can tell you that. It’s a big Klingon episode, which influenced not only the rest of The Next Generation, but Deep Space Nine, and, at the time, the next Trek feature film, The Undiscovered Country, which hit a year later in 1991.
The name’s Picard. Jean-Luc Picard.
But what gets slightly overlooked in the praise and discussion of this episode is that as much as it's a Worf episode it’s also a very big Picard (Patrick Stewart) episode. If Season 3 represented a pivot in the direction of TNG (largely thanks to a new design aesthetic and the guidance of script editor Michael Piller) then part of the 1989-1990 TNG makeover was to change the audience’s perception of Picard. Basically, what “Sins of the Father” did was to assert that yes, Picard was a huge badass. If fans had previously assumed he was a boring guy who sat around the bridge giving orders, “Sins of the Father” threw him into straight-up knife fights with Klingons.
In fact, with one line, TNG changed the direction of Picard, without sacrificing his contemplative, philosophical nature at all. After Worf’s brother Kurn (the late, great Tony Todd) is felled in battle by some dirty-dealing assassins, Worf asks Picard to be his “cha'DIch,” a combination of bodyguard and moral support during the formal confrontation with the high council. When Worf names Picard as his Cha’DIch in open council, Duras (Patrick Massett), Worf’s rival, objects saying to Picard, “Then you must be ready to fight. Something that Starfleet doesn't teach you!”
And then Picard drops one of his best, and slightly underrated comebacks ever. Calmly, like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond, Picard says: “You may test that assumption at your convenience.” BOOM. If you think Picard can’t brawl like James T. Kirk, the captain of the Enterprise basically just suggested that you f*ck around and find out. For loyal fans of TNG, we already knew Picard was tough, but putting him toe-to-toe with the Klingons, historically the biggest enemies in classic Trek, was a big deal.
Later in the episode, while trying to unravel the conspiracy, Picard gets himself in that aforementioned knife fight and manages to take one of the Klingons. Keep in mind, that Worf’s brother Kurn —a full-fledged non-Starfleet Klingon who loves leather and pain —was taken out by three-to-one odds, meaning Picard more than holds his own in this scene. As Worf’s former Klingon nanny, Kahlest (Thelma Lee) says to Picard: “You are brave, cha'DIch. Worf chose well.”
Tell your kids this was the Insane Clown Posse.
From this point on, TNG made Picard more of an action hero than ever before. But, what makes “Sins of the Father” so great is that it mixes Picard’s Holmesian intelligence with his physicality. He’s just as good at gaming the Klingons in the conference as he is fighting them off with a knife. Yes, his skills as a talker and wheeler-and-dealer are better than his fighting skills, but even he admits that openly earlier in the episode when Worf asks him to be his cha'DIch. “I know that there are stronger and younger men from whom to choose,” Picard says.
But Worf, like the audience, was resolute after this point. Picard isn’t the tallest, strongest, or youngest guy in Starfleet. But if you think he’s a wimp, just watch it. Picard can make it so, but he can also make life a living hell for his enemies.
