My partner used to refer to Worf as the Klingon equivalent of a Kantian. The Klingon-centric episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: DS9 make clear that Worf is committed to a deontological interpretation of Klingon ethics.

If you’re still reading this, you likely know that, first, Klingon ethics and morality are built around personal honor and, second, Worf was raised by humans. Because he spent his youth without much, if any, contact with other Klingons, Worf’s understanding of Klingon ethical duties is theoretical and idealized. This turns out, to say the least, to be out of step with the much more flexible, even corrupt, approach that prevails in the Empire.

The tensions this produces become something of a leitmotif in the two shows. Worf is an outsider to Klingon society, marked as different both by his positionally — adopted child of humans, member of Star Fleet — and by his unshakeable commitment to the values that Klingons espouse.

Tim Burke has a fantastic post about this and how, as he puts it, “Worf is a great example of how writers and showrunners on a long-running episodic television show can accidentally stumble into a compelling character arc that they plainly didn’t have in mind when they started out.” Go read.

The one thing I’ll add is that Star Trek: Lower Decks satirizes all of this in its Season 3 DS9 crossover episode, “Hear All, Trust Nothing.” Series regular Ensign Tendi, whose distinctly non-piratical, non-sexualized manner defies Orion stereotypes, meets another Orion member of Star Fleet, Ensign Mesk. Mesk’s overzealous Orion-ness annoys her to no end. But we eventually discover that, as his entry in Memory Alpha explains:

Mesk was adopted by Humans and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio on Earth. Though seemingly familiar with many aspects of Orion life, he had never, as of the 2380s, visited Orion, with everything he knew about Orions learned from bad holonovels, namely “the ones with the boobs on the cover.” He put on an exaggerated front of acting like people expected Orions to act, and because he never knew any other Orions in Ohio, no one ever checked him on it.