re: Star Trek TNG

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Now to Worf TNG:

I note "To a Little Smaller Degree" and I stand by this. Thanks to Worf, we were able to begin deep dives into the Klingon Culture which took them from being an adversary to a noble warrior race that get's a little fricked up with politics.

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Fair enough to say that Worf was their conduit to Klingon culture, no character benefitted more by Yar's departure than Worf. In attempting to build on the classic TOS themes without obviously doing so, they did the Spock character with 2 TNG characters - Data and somewhat less obviously with Worf.

Spock was half human, half Vulcan and tried to suppress the human half, having been shamed by it while growing up on Vulcan. However, it was this blend/struggle that gave him his unique "humanity".

Data was the Pinocchio allegory. Artificial, created by a human and desperately wanting to transcend to the experience of being human. Perhaps more human than many who don't suffer from this struggle (very similar to Spock, but perhaps the other direction).

Worf on the other hand was pure Klingon, but raised by humans. Feeling like he lost certain aspects of it by this upbringing, he sought to prove his "Klingonity", while at the same time maintaining a connection to a human-dominated organization - Starfleet as opposed to full throttle service in the Klingon military (similar to Spock's loyalty to Starfleet where the Vulcan Science Academy would have offered him a greater chance to prove he was more Vulcan than human).

These characters are all fantastic - well-written, well-acted and have that built in conflict that never truly goes away.

Frankly, outside of some of the captains, probably the 3 (or 3 of the 4) strongest characters in all of Star Trek. The only other non-captain character close to these 3 is the Doctor, who has a similar conflict - shockingly similar to Data's without coming off as a pure ripoff. The Doctor probably a stronger character than TNG Worf, but not ready to put him above DS9 Worf or Worf overall.

(ETA: To further amplify Star Trek's decline, The Doctor is the only character from the later installments that can even compare favorably to most non-Wesley characters from the first 3 series. Yes, the TNG films largely sucked outside of FC, but they still had real Picard, Data and Worf, among other strong elements. Just a problem with the recipe or cook, not the ingredients. The later films and more recent series, even including fake Kirk, fake Spock, neutered Picard, etc., just can't compare. A bad TOS or TNG episode is better than the best of what the post-2008 dreck has to offer, that's for sure.)