From the Starfighter to the Enterprise NCC-1701-D

Flying fast aircraft is like "meditation" for actor Michael Dorn.

Dan Pimentel

Thursday, November 24, 2022 at 02:18 PM ET

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Flying fast aircraft is like "meditation" for actor Michael Dorn. [Credit: Jeff Berlin]

Key Takeaways:

Michael Dorn, renowned for his role as Worf in the Star Trek franchise, creatively shaped the character's gruff persona and appeared in a record 276 episodes, despite the extensive and challenging daily makeup process.
Beyond acting, Dorn is an avid pilot with a profound passion for speed, having progressed from general aviation to owning and flying several decommissioned military fighter jets.
Dorn views flying his high-speed aircraft as a meditative escape from his acting career and prioritizes acquiring more advanced jets, like the F-104 Starfighter, over participating in commercial space travel due to safety and control concerns.

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From the late 1980s through the 1990s, Klingon Lt. Cmdr. Worf was one of the most visible characters on the popular TV shows Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Actor and pilot Michael Dorn, who was cast as Worf, made the character his own and ended up appearing in 276 episodes, the most of any other cast member in the Star Trek franchise’s history.

To Dorn, morphing into Worf each day was a lengthy process because of the amount of makeup and prosthetics required to bring the character to life. But when the cameras stopped rolling, it wasn’t the starship Enterprise that drew Dorn’s attention, it was a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. But there was a problem.