Character Insight No. 233: Torg

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review another memorable character from the TOS movies, the Klingon officer Torg from Star Trek III.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp233

Back when we covered the best Star Trek movie villains a couple years ago, Ken and I did an April Fools switch and he covered Commander Kruge for that list. However, his right-hand man Torg has yet to be covered by this segment, so we review this other prominent Klingon villain from The Search for Spock.

While serving on the Bird-of-Prey which would later become the HMS Bounty, Torg supported Kruge in his attempt to obtain the Genesis technology from the Federation. As discussed last week in the Ambassador Kamarag segment, the Klingons believed based on a stolen summary of the device that this was a potential weapon that was to be used against the Empire.

Torg is in command of the Bird of Prey when Kruge locates the stranded away team on the Genesis Planet following the destruction of the science ship USS Grissom. He wisely goes to cloak when the Enterprise arrives to look for the same away team, which includes the reborn Spock as well as Kirk's son David Marcus. While that tactical move gives Kruge the advantage in the eventual combat with the Enterprise, Kirk has the last laugh.

To this end, Torg leads the boarding party to take over Enterprise when Kirk surrenders to the Bird of Prey. Torg could not figure out that the ship was deserted because the self destruct had been activated until it was too late, and Kirk's ploy works as the Enterprise crew eventually takes over the Bird of Prey following the dramatic clifftop end to Commander Kruge. Unfortunately, Torg is just the henchman of a villain destined to fail when he battles wits with Captain Kirk. That being said, he's a good counterpart to Christopher Lee's Kruge in this movie, and the duo are arguably the most classic of the Klingon villains in the movies.

Torg is not really a recurring character, but we see archive footage of this character in Star Trek IV, when Ambassador Kamarag makes his case that Kirk should be punished for crimes against the Empire. So this character does show up in two of the movies.

Torg was played by Stephen Liska, who had a number of small TV and movie roles in a 30 year acting career from the 80s to the 00s. He can be seen as a chauffeur in Beverly Hills Cop II, and as a detective in Lethal Weapon 4.

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