A New Klingon Threat

Story: The Way of the Warrior
Written By: Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Year: 1995

The feature length “The Way of the Warrior” is a game changer for DS9. Sisko shaves his head, Worf joins the show, and it really brings in the Klingons with a presence they had not had in the series before. Without this episode I doubt we would have such great Klingon stories in the future of this series.
Fear of the Dominion has sort of made the Klingons nervous and crazy. They are paranoid that anyone is a Founder and are illegally searching ships in fear. In order to try and talk with the Klingons, Sisko makes a call to Starfleet, hoping he can get some help from the one Klingon that Starfleet knows, Worf. Next to O’Brien, there really isn’t a more suitable character from TNG that could have worked with the general tone in DS9 as Worf.

Another character introduced in this episode is the Klingon General Martok. He is kind of dick in this episode, but in the future we will get a Martok that is one of my favorite characters, and the perfect Klingon.

The episode is fantastically written to slowly build up to one of the greatest battle scenes in the franchise. We get ship-to-ship combat, the station vs. Klingon warships, then hand to hand combat…it is really a great episode. I haven’t even mentioned how well the characters are all handled. Knowing that bringing in Worf was meant as a way to get some TNG followers to begin watching DS9 as well (the ratings weren’t that great at the time) I think that they do a good job of re-introducing all of our characters to a new audience without hindering the story.

Definitely a great opener to this season, and it seems for now that the Klingons are what to worry about this season, not the Dominion.

NEXT TIME: Sisko Dies, Jake Lives A Lifetime