Actor Michael Dorn would like to bring Star Trek back to TV. He’s been saying as much since 2012, when he began circulating the idea of a Trek spin-off tentatively subtitled Captain Worf. Another J.J. Abrams-helmed Star Trek movie has come and gone since then, and production continues on a third, but Dorn’s famously surly Klingon has yet to be named the captain of anything, let alone his own TV show. The actor still talks the concept up in interviews—promising a story that takes place between the events of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Nemesis (and outside of the parallel continuity of Abrams’ films), in which Worf has been reintegrated into the Klingon Empire—but Captain Worf remains nothing more than the pipe dream of a fan-favorite actor.
One devoted band of Trekkers hopes to change this, however, and they aim to do so with muffins. Not just any muffins, mind you: mini-muffins. One million mini-muffins.
Led by Dorn and The Cinema Source (the place for entertainment news, reviews, and muffin-based canvassing on the internet), fans are being urged to send diminutive breakfast pastries by the gross to CBS Television Studios, which holds the rights to any future Star Trek TV project. Though the connection between Worf and mini-muffins isn’t entirely clear, the effort isn’t without precedent: When Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek was on the ropes during its second season, NBC was inundated with hundreds of thousands of letters requesting a third season. The plan worked, and Trekkers blazed yet another trail for intense fandom, just as they would do for the practices of cosplay and writing fan fiction about their favorite characters fucking.
According to the #WeWantWorf movement’s official online tally, 26,132 mini-muffins have been sent into the breech in the service of Captain Worf, at a cost of $32,665 (as estimated when The A.V. Club punched “26,132” into the website’s customizable order form). With less than a month to go in the campaign, Dorn and Cinema Source’s Dan Deevy continue to roll out the particulars of Captain Worf in a series of YouTube interviews, the most recent of which posted on Friday. In this conversation, neither Dorn nor Deevy illuminates why they’ve chosen mini-muffins as the vessel of their continuing mission (maybe they’re the perfect size to serve up on all four points of a bat’leth?), but they do discuss the romantic prospects of Captain Worf’s new posting. It’s a bold move, one guaranteed to make Deep Space Nine fans rescind their mini-muffin orders. “Worf, you said you’d never love anyone but Jazdia Dax!” they’ll say through mini-crumbs, their thoughts turning to the tragic events of the Dominion War.