Worst Captain in Star Trek

[kkt]

So @Disco posted this on the alphabet game thread

E is for Edward Jellico (Star Trek's worst captain)

I don't think I'd agree.

My first thought is the Romulan captain in The Enterprise Incident. You had the Enterprise surrounded, in Romulan space, by three Romulan ships, and you let the Enterprise get away? With the cloaking device? It's a good thing the Enterprise took you with them, because you'd have very little to look forward to on Romulus.

If we just mean Starfleet captains, how about Captain Tracey in "The Omega Glory"? Knowingly violated the Prime Directive, changing the outcome of a war on a prewarp planet. And deliberately killed the redshirt of the week.

Jellico was just a bit of a hardnose. At least he got Deanna Troi into a uniform when she was on duty.

 

[Starflight]

Definitely hard to beat Tracey, he was unfit for literally any job, let alone Starfleet Captain. He's so insane that the episode is basically a comedy.

 

[Santa Kang]

Tracy is the gold standard of Captains gone bad.

 

[Disco]

Solid arguments. I was only (mostly) joking about Jellico.

Harriman and Ransom are two other candidates.

 

[Christmas Canon Spock]

Ransom.

Tracey.

Merrick.

But I'd probably give it to Maxwell who almost ignited a war with the Cardassians.

 

[King Bob!]

Commodore Stocker from “The Deadly Years”.

 

[Santa Kang]

Commodore Stocker from “The Deadly Years”.

Desk Jockey

 

[Nyotarules]

Pike in A quality of mercy, terrible soldier

 

[Santa Kang]

Pike in A quality of mercy, terrible soldier

Pike: I hear we're at war with the Klingon!
Command: Yeah...why don't you sit this out?
Pike: Ah, to held in reserve?
Command: Sure, lets go with that.

 

[Charlie Xmas]

What about captains who were incompetent?

 

[Nyotarules]

Pike: I hear we're at war with the Klingon!
Command: Yeah...why don't you sit this out?
Pike: Ah, to held in reserve?
Command: Sure, lets go with that.

And telling him they saved the best for last to sooth his ego, calling him a boy scout.
Boy scouts do not win wars, Siskos win wars.
If Pike was around in the 24th century in charge of DS9 the UFP would have lost to the Dominion.
And I love SNW Pike. TOS and Kelvin Pike seemed more soldier like

 

[Frostscape One]

And telling him they saved the best for last to sooth his ego, calling him a boy scout.
Boy scouts do not win wars, Siskos win wars.
If Pike was around in the 24th century in charge of DS9 the UFP would have lost to the Dominion.
And I love SNW Pike. TOS and Kelvin Pike seemed more soldier like

I agree.

Captains like Sisko are what the Federation needs during wartime. It's why Picard, despite being in command of a Sovereign class ship, was relegated to diplomatic duty during the Dominion War.


Captain Tracey definitely is a hard one to beat in terms of a captain gone bad.



Most incompetent... honestly? If we are to include a person as acting captain, I have to say Will Riker. For three reasons:

1. "Samaritan Snare" - he ignored his Security Chief AND Counselor about the danger of Geordi being sent to the Pakled ship. ALONE! Recommended policy is sending a minimum of two people on a mission. ("HUNTERS" from VOY, I believe.) Riker got duped by the Pakleds. The Pakleds!

2. "Rascals" - one of the reasons why this episode is one of THE worst in TNG is it makes Riker AND the command crew look utterly and completely stupid. They let the Enterprise get taken over by a pair of out of date Bird of Preys manned by Ferengi. FERENGI!!!!

3. GENERATIONS - that entire battle, and all you did was fire phasers once before the homing torpedo was fired. ONCE?! Even the Duras sisters knew they were no match for them. A couple more phaser shots would have taken them out. Especially after we see only a single torpedo do the trick. He lost the Federation flagship because he didn't fire a couple extra phaser shots. No wonder he wasn't offered a command until 8 years after that. (The incident with "The Pegasus" might have been a factor, too. But couple the two together? I doubt I would offer him one, either.)

 

[kkt]

Desk Jockey

A competent bureaucrat who reached his level of incompetence as an acting captain.

 

[Nude Colonel Stuart]

Kirky...for needlessly exposing the Enterprise crew with near-lethal radiation as long as he could to prolong the otherwise effective drama in CORBOMITE ....not to mention disparaging female yeomans in general off the cuff. Both moments ocur in that same episode.

 

[Shawnster]

Harriman gets painted with the same bad brush Jellico is. Both should not be judged by their one appearance where the story demands they not be liked or steal the spotlight.

Harriman was never going to outshine Kirk. Story wise the Enterprise-B was not prepared for launch.

Jellico's sin was taking Picard's command. He was completely competent for the task. Jellico was saddled with insubordinate Enterprise personnel.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I genuinely don't understand why people think Jellico was a bad Captain. He was incredibly competent and manged maintained professional distance but was also really personable. His call to change to a four-shift rotation in a combat situation was the right one. I think it's also telling about his personality that he refers to all of his senior officers by name, not rank, which i think shows how much he values his crew as individuals. Also, that he filled the ready room with his son's drawings, show what a loving, emotional man he is. However he can't really be touchy feely with the Enterprise crew, because they might be about to throw down with the Cardassians and he needs the crew to be tough as nails.

Riker was absolute prick to him for no reason because his ego was bruised at not being left in charge of the Enterprise.

Ransom is probably the worst Captain. Not only because of how he handled the Equinox, but we get hints through dialogue that he wasn't that great of a Captain back in the alpha quadrant and only got a captaincy because he lucked out with a first contact. It's stated that he tends to run and hide, avoiding confrontation and not facing things head on. This is also shown by his frequent escapes with the VR device that shows him the beach vista. It is because of Ransom's inability to come to terms with his circumstances in the same way Janeway did, that the Equinox crew falls apart and loses their values and morals.

 

[Starflight]

Probably a good thread to ask; how many different routes are there to becoming a captain?

Kirk's backstory is fairly ambiguous - in TOS, at least, maybe not in the films and later stuff - but he seems to have basically become captain by being uniformly good at everything and showing natural and obvious command ability. The same is presumably true of people like Tryla Scott, who seems to have done what Kirk did but even quicker. Picard's backstory is ambiguous but you get the impression he was in a similar situation (and also a true believer in the weirdest bits of Federation ideology, which probably propelled him forward, plus Stargazer experience).

But how did Janeway reach captaincy? Especially in the early seasons, she's very explicitly framed as a scientist who advanced pretty much entirely through the sciences division, and Voyager was iirc her first command. I guess she must have been a commander at some point but it doesn't seem to have been anywhere near as big a part of her life as her science work; even early on in the first season she's still working through how captaincy actually works. But then some people, like Beverly, wind up stuck as Commanders for years.

 

[Frostscape One]

Probably a good thread to ask; how many different routes are there to becoming a captain?

Kirk's backstory is fairly ambiguous - in TOS, at least, maybe not in the films and later stuff - but he seems to have basically become captain by being uniformly good at everything and showing natural and obvious command ability. The same is presumably true of people like Tryla Scott, who seems to have done what Kirk did but even quicker. Picard's backstory is ambiguous but you get the impression he was in a similar situation (and also a true believer in the weirdest bits of Federation ideology, which probably propelled him forward, plus Stargazer experience).

But how did Janeway reach captaincy? Especially in the early seasons, she's very explicitly framed as a scientist who advanced pretty much entirely through the sciences division, and Voyager was iirc her first command. I guess she must have been a commander at some point but it doesn't seem to have been anywhere near as big a part of her life as her science work; even early on in the first season she's still working through how captaincy actually works. But then some people, like Beverly, wind up stuck as Commanders for years.

Janeway was a commander on at least one ship, the Billings. (According to Tuvok, who told Chakotay a story about her time on that ship.)

She likely had someone who saw command abilities in her, and pulled her from science into a post that was more about command than science. (I'm thinking similar to how Leyton pulled Sisko off engineering and made him XO of the Okinawa.)

Her speed at a command may very well have been fast tracked due to her dad was an admiral, and she was on a first name basis with many other admirals (as she says in "COUNTERPOINT"). So possibly a combination of nepotism and 'it's who you know'.

As an example of this being quite possible: Will Riker. He went from Academy graduate to XO of the Federation flagship in about 6 years. While not explicitly stated, it's heavily implied that Pressman was working behind the scenes that got him the pushes to quick rank advancement, as a thank you for his actions in getting him off the Pegasus during that mutiny. ("I made you, mister, and I can break you!")

 

[XCV330]

Esteban gets portrayed as a bad captain, but his caution was warranted. If anything, he wasn't cautious enough. He was sent to the Genesis planet, where Starfleet knew fully well there would be other interested parties, in a tiny barely armed ship.


I'd probably say Jonathan Archer was the worst captain. Even allowing for the fact he was doing something relatively new, the survival rate on his ship was dismal. He made terrible ethical decisions, subjected his first officer to racial bullying, and didn't sort the mess out between his own security officer and MACO command.

 

[Frostscape One]

Actually, the survival rate under Archer was much better than most of the captains.

Archer didn't lose a single crewman until "ANOMALY", second episode of season 3. That means it took until the 54th episode before a death of one of his people. And on a larger mission like the Xindi one, you would expect casualties to occur.


Kirk? He's the reason 'redshirt' is a trope.

Picard? Oddly enough, more people died on the ship than on all away teams combined. ("Heart of Glory", "Where Silence Has Lease", "Q Who", 'The High Ground", "The Best of Both Worlds", "In Theory"... the list goes on.)

Janeway? Season 2 alone had a bunch, never mind the other seasons. (Or the initial hurl into the Delta Quadrant.)