Who is the worst Captain?

[Eishtmo]

Archer by a mile. O'Neill had other aliens that actually LIKED him.

[Durandal_1707]

I think it was just Thor that liked him. The rest just put up with him because Thor was the boss (but that didn't stop them from frequently making that angry-squinty-eye face at him).

[Eishtmo]

Well, again, an alien actually liked him. Archer couldn't even manage that.

[J!!]

he got along pretty well with the nox, and the free jaffa, if i recall correctly. and are we counting non-terran humans as aliens? because he made friends with a bunch of those guys.

[Durandal_1707]

he got along pretty well with the nox, and the free jaffa, if i recall correctly. and are we counting non-terran humans as aliens? because he made friends with a bunch of those guys.

In his one major encounter with the Nox, he pissed them off by not listening to them and got cut off from any further communication with them!

The primary contact with the free Jaffa was Teal'c, as I remember, not O'Neill, and we still ended up having tons of problems with them anyway.

He constantly mouthed off to anyone even remotely friendly, couldn't ever manage to even thinly disguise his hatred of the Tok'Ra, and once got into a (thankfully off-screen) cussing match with our one reliable ally, the Asgard, in which he managed to insult their mothers. Guy was basically a spoiled 10-year-old given a top-secret military assignment vital to Earth's defense. It made no sense at all.

Anyway, Archer had Shran. Add in that one asshole Vulcan whose name I can't remember who eventually came around, and Archer's (barely) ahead.

[TGLS]

Let's give one more point to O'Neill; he's a military officer who had to deal with his son accidentally killed himself with his gun. Archer's a trained diplomat who the worst he had to deal with until the end of season 2 is are Vulcan's telling people not to do things. Honestly, it's a wonder that there's even a discussion of whose worse.

[Durandal_1707]

O'Neill's backstory is tragic, but that still doesn't excuse whoever was putting the entire planet in grave danger by putting him in charge of these missions where diplomacy was a key component of what was needed. Imagine if the Asgard or the Tok'Ra had finally decided that they had been insulted one too many times and decided to just FTFO. Earth would have been leveled, and then everybody's son would have been killed with a gun. It's even worse since Daniel and Sam both were pretty capable diplomatically, and Jack was always overriding them, hardly ever to positive effect.

As bone-headed as Archer was in his first two seasons, he never put the Earth in mortal jeopardy to that extent.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Yeah, I'm willing to give O'Neill something of a pass, at least in comparison to Archer. The reality of circumstance may force O'Neill to be a diplomat, but he doesn't see himself as one. Neither does Stargate Command. I think those alien species with experience with intergalactic politics realize that O'Neill doesn't represent Earth in the same way that an ambassador or diplomat would. If he whines about the Tok'ra, they know it isn't a deal breaker. He also deserves credit for being extremely loyal to allies after they've gotten on his good side.

In the case of Archer, he's given the authority to make sweeping decisions. As far as an isolated alien planet is concerned, the Enterprise is Earth and Archer is its King. He's formally trained with this sort of thing. Archer also doesn't really endear himself to their most trusted allies, and his revealing a Vulcan base to the Andorians is a huge betrayal.

With all that said, what really makes the difference for me is the awareness of the writing. O'Neill is written to be a bad diplomat, which is fine, even if it is over the top sometimes. The aggravating thing with Archer (and Janeway, for that matter) is that the writers want us to think he's a living legend that built the Federation, saved the universe, and inspired every future Starfleet Captain. Instead we see an incompetent nincompoop, which points to incompetent, bad writing.

[Admiral X]

^Yeah, they'd keep telling us he was a trained diplomat and yet he'd keep failing to live up to that.

[Durandal_1707]

If both organizations were sending terrible diplomats into situations for which diplomacy was critical, the only thing Archer's training changes is that it introduces an explanation for how he could have fallen through the cracks and been put on the mission; he looked good on paper. I'm not sure what the SGC's excuse is.

The other major difference, for me, is that Starfleet had some limited ability to defend itself, since it had warp-capable starships with decent weaponry on them. The SGC's Earth was 100% dependent on allies for its very survival. The Asgard treaty was the only thing holding the Goa'uld back from nuking the Earth from orbit, and for most of the series, the Tok'Ra were Earth's only access to interstellar spacecraft, and bailed our heroes out on many occasions. Until they started building the Daedalus ships, Earth had nothing whatsoever to fight off these threats on their own, and yet they were still having a guy lead their flagship team who treated the Tok'Ra like, well, like Archer treated the Vulcans. Which was also a major F-up, don't get me wrong.