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Also Star Trek handles Worf's character strangely. He is a Klingon raised on Earth by human parents. Yet he is intensely obsessed with ancient Klingon rituals even beyond what the Klingons themselves are. Yet somewhere ostensibly there could highschool/college football with Worf and I think that would make for an amazing spinoff movie.
It's weird that he is never seen to celebrate Christmas or human holidays despite human stepparents living in 2170 Russia. And apparently as an adult he is still on good terms with them. It's always weird how removed Worf is from human culture.
Almost like an oversight on culture versus genetics.
I think Worf's ultra-devotion to Klingon culture is understandable; he may be raised on Earth by human parents, but he's not even part-human himself. He sticks out in every way (and this is echoed in B'Elanna Torres who may be half-human but, as visibly Klingon, also is an outsider) and so his foster-parents probably tried their best to include his native culture in how they raised him.
So he's over-reacting, he's as much a Klingon as any born and raised on the home world, and to prove that he's as good as they are, he is going to be The Best Klingon Ever. It's partly the zeal of the convert and partly the kind of radicalisation you see in second- and third-generation immigrants today, where they haven't been raised in their native culture but they still are visibly not part of the mainstream culture around them, so to compensate they discover their roots and are even more traditional than their parents or grandparents.
The "not celebrating Human religious holidays" thing is very Star Trek; Roddenberry's original vision is that humanity would have moved on past religion, and while he accepted and indeed expected that people would celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving, by the 80s/90s 'political correctness' as it was then called was happening, and having a celebration of (say) Christmas would have been Problematic. It's a Christian religious festival, you see, and showing people standing around a Christmas tree drinking eggnog would have been privileging one tradition over another and claiming that America was a Christian nation (because these shows all take America as the template; when they have an obscure Earth sport played by Vulcans it's baseball, not hurling or kabaddi). Unless you had Worf also celebrating every other religious and secular holiday, that was a non-runner.
I got the strong impression that Worf's foster parents were Jewish, so we could have had him celebrating Hanukkah, but the Space Jews are the Bajorans and that was a later show.
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Not sure if this was ever explained, but I interpreted this as a kind of rebellion by Worf - a bit like a second-generation immigrant getting REALLY into their parents' culture, even moreso than their parents. Ironically, this results in Worf living up to ideals that most Klingons do not. That's why Worf is more stereotypically Klingon than many characters who grew up in the Klingon Empire and are frequently dishonourable.
Yeah I get it. But just once I'd like to see Warf as a human. Like a weird love for cheesy philly hoagies. Our ice fishing. Or something just human that he excelled at... jiu jitsu maybe. I would love a Worf origin story. I wouldn't even mind if it went ueber woke.
Is that weird?
Does that make me a xenophobe?
Edit: I want to see Warf: the Origin Story. In theaters soon!
Maybe just a xenoskeptic:
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Prune juice. Soccer, until he accidentally head butted a kid to death.
I'd also definitely watch Worf: Origins. I'd want any wokeness to be "natural" to the plot rather than forced, but "refugee from stereotypically violent/hostile culture turns out to be honorable/awesome person" is kind of a freebie there.
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Pretty sure I saw Worf in a kimono several times. The martial art may have been made up though.
I think that was the Klingon version of tai chi that he was doing, and taught Deanna (if I'm remembering correctly).
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It was. And more importantly in this context, it was a made-up Klingon martial art, not a human one, though he was teaching it to humans.
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