Picard Showrunner Clarifies Worf’s Rank, Starfleet Standing

With the nearly 60-year history of Star Trek, it’s easy to get overwhelmed as far as the attention to detail, especially when it comes to something as subtle as the uniform. For example, the current standard for command on ships is red for bridge officers, blue for science officers, and yellow for engineers and tactical. This was different in The Original Series, with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk donning yellow and sometimes green, operations, chief engineer, and security wore red, and helmspeople and tactical typically wore yellow. To dive deeper into semantics is an exercise in futility, so one fan speculated on what happened with Michael Dorn’s Worf given what was featured in Star Trek: Picard tagging showrunner and executive producer Terry Matalas and production designer Dave Blass in the process.

Star Trek: How Worf Became the Most Decorated Klingon in the Federation and Klingon Empire

“[Terry Matalas] [Dave Blass] the fact that Worf wears a yellow uniform despite ranking Captain means that an officer revert to its original section’s color after leaving command of a ship? #StartrekPicardSeason3,” the fan wrote. Matalas responded, “[Worf’s] rank is Captain but he is not in the Command tier, so yes, we think yellow makes sense working in Intelligence/Security. He has Captain pips. We’ve also seen admirals in yellow (Toddman) and Data never switched to red when he was in command of the Sutherland.”

For those keeping scores at home for the status of The Next Generation crew, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is an admiral, William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) is a captain, Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) is a commodore, Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) is a commander, Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) is also a commander, Worf is a captain, and Data is a lieutenant commander. Now before we end the show, Matalas, please introduce us to the U.S.S. Sutherland! Star Trek: Picard streams Thursdays on Paramount+.