Worst Captain in Star Trek

[Lord Garth]

Estaban is a bad Captain. Any excuse to do nothing and hide behind regulations to justify it. Fortunately, his inflexibility meant Saavik, David, and Child Spock didn't have a chance to be beamed aboard the Grissom before the Klingons arrived. So, even bad Captains have their place. Bad captain, but not the worst Captain.

Ransom is probably the worst Captain. Turning Slimer from Ghostbusters into fuel to power the Equinox, along with all his fellow Slimers. Not good. Generation Alpha would be especially upset, because Ransom was destroying slime, and slime is the Big Thing right now.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

It was most definitely a warship. Galaxy class ships fought in the dominion war (in fact, they kind of started it, from one side's point of view). The kind of arrogant gunboat diplomacy of flying into inhabited systems in a fully armed battleship full of kids and civilians and pretending it's not a warship because they say it isn't does kind of show just how bizarre a show TNG season 1 was, and how stuck they were with some of the elements from that, later on.

You can put a couple of kids in the back seats of a B-52, but it's still a bomber.

The ships of the Galaxy class didn't become a warships until one of them got smeared across the face of the Gamma quadrant. Weknow from the USS Venture model, that the Galaxy class under went a significant upgrade after Dominion first contact and were fitted with extra phaser banks etc.. Before this the Galaxy class was the epitome of Federation arrogance and Starfleet's complacency. It was a glass cannon designed to go beyond the Federations borders under the assumption they could diplomacy their way out of conflict. But the Federation didn't count on encountering the Borg or the Dominion or the Husnock, and the Galaxy class was not at all prepared to face of capable of facing these threats.

 

[Uhura's Song]

Lorca the Imposter.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Discovery's replacement captain waiting on Vulcan at the end of season one. Probably still waiting.

 

[Vger23]

There are many compelling cases here, but none are going to change my mind away from Captain JT "Standby for Evasive" Estaban.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Discovery's replacement captain waiting on Vulcan at the end of season one. Probably still waiting.

Dude didn't even get a chance to be bad.

 

[Farscape One]

Dude didn't even get a chance to be bad.

Unless it was Ron Tracey before he got command of the Exeter...

 

[Nerys Myk]

Unless it was Ron Tracey before he got command of the Exeter...

So that's what pushed Ron over the edge.

 

[XCV330]

Lorca the Imposter.

In fairness he managed to get D.A.S.H drive to actually work by putting together a good team and emotionally blackmailing them to actually do something. On his own, Stamets might never have done so.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

"If anything happens to Porthos, I'll be the one watering their sacred trees, and committing genocide with Dr. Phlox!"

 

[Mudd]

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.

He was working with people who knew more about their jobs than he did.

How many Borg invasions did Jellico stop dead?

 

[seti alpha]

This is a strange kind of pointless analogy. One: There were no finished Defiant class ships when the Galaxy class began being used, and there were never more than a handful, apparently, two of which were destroyed. A big deal is made of Defiant being Starfleet's only warship (despite contrary evidence) but somehow Starfleet had plenty of wars without them, and even in their biggest war, they only used a few.

I feel like it's an idealistic thing, that Starfleet really, really wants to have no 'warships,' but just ships that can be used for all sorts of exploratory and humanitarian and utilitarian purposes *and* have some weapons and defenses, just in case. It kind of goes against their whole grain to have a ship designed to be a weapon, and not all of the other things.

They don't want swords. They want plowshares, that they are begrudgingly willing to pick up and beat you over the head with, if you force them to.

There is the logic that if one has a whole bunch of hammers, one is predisposed to go hunting for some nails to pound. The more weapons and warships lying about 'in case we need them, because space is dangerous' the more belligerent folk will be agitating for them to be used, even in cases where they are not the best tool for the job... It might be a bit idealistic, in the face of non-negotiable threats like the Borg, but our history has plenty of folk who seem to feel that 'as long as we've got this big ass saber, we should be rattling it, all those other people should be more respectful and compliant if they don't want a stabbing.'

 

[XCV330]

I feel like it's an idealistic thing, that Starfleet really, really wants to have no 'warships,' but just ships that can be used for all sorts of exploratory and humanitarian and utilitarian purposes *and* have some weapons and defenses, just in case. It kind of goes against their whole grain to have a ship designed to be a weapon, and not all of the other things.

They don't want swords. They want plowshares, that they are begrudgingly willing to pick up and beat you over the head with, if you force them to.

There is the logic that if one has a whole bunch of hammers, one is predisposed to go hunting for some nails to pound. The more weapons and warships lying about 'in case we need them, because space is dangerous' the more belligerent folk will be agitating for them to be used, even in cases where they are not the best tool for the job... It might be a bit idealistic, in the face of non-negotiable threats like the Borg, but our history has plenty of folk who seem to feel that 'as long as we've got this big ass saber, we should be rattling it, all those other people should be more respectful and compliant if they don't want a stabbing.'

but that is like calling the Roman legions an engineering force primarily building roads and walls. They did that but it's not why the existed. The Federation starfleet was born out of war, and such as the incident at Battle of Binary Stars, they often had ships that could reach a disputed area in minutes *except when Earth is threatened by a gigantic space cylinder or multy AU energy cloud casually making its way to Sol). It doesn't seem like they were just around exploring already explored areas. They did science but they were primarily a defensive force.

 

[CoveTom]

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.

Leonard Nimoy had this thing about making everyone other than the Enterprise crew appear incompetent, and he played the Grissom crew as if they were a joke. Hence why he chose to make their bridge chairs all pink. It's too bad. You could have easily had them appear as a highly competent and respectable science vessel crew who were just outgunned by a Klingon ship.

 

[XCV330]

Leonard Nimoy had this thing about making everyone other than the Enterprise crew appear incompetent, and he played the Grissom crew as if they were a joke. Hence why he chose to make their bridge chairs all pink. It's too bad. You could have easily had them appear as a highly competent and respectable science vessel crew who were just outgunned by a Klingon ship.

Not sure about the upholstery color. I liked it. Still, it would have been nice for historical reasons if they hadn't named a ship after Gus Grissom and then, you know, had it go out in a horrific fireball. I hope his widow or son wasn't watching that movie.

 

[CoveTom]

Not sure about the upholstery color. I liked it. Still, it would have been nice for historical reasons if they hadn't named a ship after Gus Grissom and then, you know, had it go out in a horrific fireball. I hope his widow or son wasn't watching that movie.

I honestly don't think the upholstery looked too bad either, but I believe it was Nimoy himself who commented on his motivation for the color. And, yeah, perhaps Grissom wasn't the best choice of name for that particular ship.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Kirk, CORBOMITE, Act One, for exposing his crew to potentially lethal radiation just to prolong the drama.