The Terrible Star Trek: The Next Generation Line That Irked Michael Dorn

In the "Star Trek: the Next Generation" episode "Sins of the Father," Worf (Michael Dorn) is visited by his brother Kurn (Tony Todd) over a familial matter. It seems their late father, Mogh, is posthumously being charged with treason, accused of betraying his Klingon brethren to the Romulans as a vicious massacre many years earlier. Because of the mores and laws of Klingon society, Worf and Kurn would bear the dishonor. Worf travels to the Klingon homeworld to investigate the matter and to defend his father's honor. Trekkies are introduced to a new slew of Klingon characters, including the High Chancellor K'mpec (Charles Cooper), and the devious Duras (Patrick Massett). 

Late in the episode, Worf discovers that it was Duras' father who betrayed the Klingons to the Romulans, and not his own. Worf is rightly incensed and, at a heated moment, yells out in anger "Someone should feed this Ha'DIbaH to the dogs!" The Klingon word "Ha'DIbaH" is a pejorative, of course, translating roughly to "animal." Some Klingon dictionaries translate it as "dog," meaning Worf was saying that someone should feed a dog to a dog. 

It's a weird, bad line, and it seems that Michael Dorn hated saying it. That was, at least, according to the episode's co-writer, Ronald D. Moore. Moore is a prolific sci-fi author who has worked on various "Star Trek" shows, developed the reboot of "Battlestar Galactica," "Outlander," and "For All Mankind." Moore joined the writing staff of "Next Generation" at the beginning of its third season, right when the show began to improve exponentially. He recently appeared on the interview program "The Sackhoff Show" to talk about his career. Moore recalls the instance on the set of "Sins of the Father" when Dorn turned to him and said, very calmly and frankly, that the "Ha'DIbaH" line was really stupid. Moore recalls slinking away in shame.

The show's host, Katee Sackhoff — who played the hotshot pilot Starbuck on Moore's "Battlestar Galactica" reboot — asked Moore if there was anything he ever wrote that he was embarrassed about. She asked playfully, knowing that sci-fi dialogue can be odd, usually filled with alien words, or imaginary technologies. Moore recalled the "Ha'DIbaH" line right away, even remembering the title of the episode. "That first season on Trek," he said, "'Sins of the Father' was the episode. It was a Worf story." Moore doesn't bother recapping the plot, but he does recall being on set with Michael Dorn for filming. 

Dorn, it should be noted, loved the story for "Sins of the Father," and was likely relieved that his character was given such a personal sweeping arc. But, man, that one line was dumb. To Moore's recollection: 

"I was down on the set and I'm digging it. It was a big Klingon show, this is kind of cool. There's Michael Dorn, and he has this line in a scene where he discovers one of the other Klingons has betrayed them. The line is, 'Someone should feed this Ha'DIbaH to the dogs!' [...] And Michael immediately goes, 'You know what? It's a great script, but then somebody writes you a line of dialogue like that and the whole thing is just so stupid.' He didn't see me, but I was off-camera, and I was like '...Oh. That's a really bad line.' And I slunk off the stage."

Both Moore and Sackhoff had a good laugh at the memory. Moore kept on repeating to himself, "Oh, man. That was bad." 

Moore had to hear the criticism from Michael Dorn to really hear that what he had written was bad, though. While he was writing the episode, it seemed like a perfectly normal thing for Worf to say. Indeed, Moore defended himself by saying that "Star Trek: The Next Generation," even moreso than most sci-fi shows, was very heavy on the scientific technobabble and oblique alien terms. He got so used to doing it, Moore admitted, that it gave him some bad writerly habits. As he put it: 

"'Trek' kind of gave me bad muscles about stuff like that. Because that's sort of a classic technobabble line. And we did so much technobabble on 'Star Trek.' Poor Data or somebody has to ... 'Captain the warp core asymmetrical unit is frizting off the–' I mean, I can't even say it! There would be these lines of almost-indecipherable nonsense tech that characters had to say with a straight face, and we did it all the time. So I didn't even bat an eye when I wrote that." 

Data was the android character on "Next Generation" played by Brent Spiner. Moore's improv about an asymmetrical unit was just a nonsensical example of the jargon he had to write. 

It's easy to understand why Moore would have such instincts, though, as he is credited on 27 episodes of "Next Generation," on 30 episodes of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," and two episodes of "Star Trek: Voyager." He also co-wrote (with Brannon Braga) the two feature films, "Star Trek: Generations" and "Star Trek: First Contact." By the time he started in earnest on "Battlestar Galactica" in 2003, he definitely had some habits he needed to break.