Who is the worst Captain?

[ScreamingDoom]

Yeah, it's kind of a toss-up between Janeway and Archer. I mean, they both were quite happy with comitting genocide for ideological reasons (Archer and Dr. "Mengle" Phlox in "Dear Doctor" and Janeway ordering Paris not to warn the Planet of Soccer Fashion about their impending doom), but I don't recall Janeway actually ordering genocide to happen, unlike Archer.

That said, Janeway was really all about the personal evil. The way she tortured that crew member of the other Federation ship trapped in the Delta Quadrant. Murdering Tuvix. Constantly brainwashing and re-brainwashing the Doctor. Sentencing Paris to solitary confinement for a month. The list goes on.

Archer may have been a crazy hobo who casually signed the death warrant on an entire civilization, but he didn't seem actively malicious on a personal scale.

Unless it was about pissing on a species who didn't make the absurd leap of logic to account for any random animal that might come along he owned to a diplomatic meeting. He took that pretty personally.

[Durandal_1707]

I don't think this judgment is really fair, at least for the Star Trek Captains, because none of them are really written consistently. As others mentioned, sometimes Kirk is great, and sometimes you just want to punch him in the face ("Requiem for Methuselah" probably being the worst). Picard's a deadly mix of arrogance, incompetence, and assholishness in his first two seasons, but then gets much, much better after the writing staff turns over. Archer's much the same way—idiot for the first two seasons, pretty good captain after that. Janeway's all over the map depending on who was writing the script that week. Sisko's probably the most consistently written overall, but then he kinda goes nuts in the last season with all the "Space Jesus" crap in it. So...

Also: Bab5 shouldn't be excluded from this. You really think Sheridan with his Messiah complex, hiring people based on nepotism, etc. won't go over badly with anyone?

[Admiral X]

Honestly, even in the later seasons, I still saw Archer as a very poor captain who failed to live up to all the praise the show was heaping on him. For example, the episode where he agonizes over the necessity of destroying an enemy listening post to prevent the exposure of his ship and the failure of his mission, then later goes on to refuse to order a member of his crew to his death and instead goes on said suicide mission himself, thus placing his mission (literally saving his species and planet) in danger. When he talked about his reasoning for it, I couldn't help but think of a bit from the movie U-571 which is also something that was drilled into me when I was in AFROTC.


youtu.be/3VKQkg9cpio

[Ghilz]

Archer is a worst character, but come on, Janeway got her crew stranded half way across the galaxy, on a return trip so damn long most of them wouldn't live to see it home if it werent for the Borg's Deus Ex Machina galactic highway bypass. All coz she doesn't know what a timer on a bomb is.

Every death that occurs on the series is on Janeway.

[Durandal_1707]

You know, though, if you made a list of all the times on all five shows where, if the situation were real and the crew member in question weren't a main cast member with a contract, the right call would probably be to sacrifice that crew member for the sake of the ship/planet/galaxy/whatever, and nonetheless the captain doesn't... that'd be a really long list.

(edit: this post is in response to Admiral Teddy Roosevelt with Sunglasses)

[Admiral X]

And yet there are plenty of instances where it actually was done and shown to be correct even if it really played up the drama. Like Troi's version of the Kobayashi Maru test, where she had to sacrifice Geordi to save the ship and therefore pass the test. But the reason it really set me off with Archer is because of the scene where he explains his reasoning to T'Pol, who is really obviously not fit to command in spite of his insistence that she be left in command while he goes off and dies. His "I can't order someone else to go off and die" explanation frankly makes him unfit to command himself and made it stick in my craw that much more that he was being presented by the show as some kind of awesome commanding officer who Captain Kirk would totally see as a hero, and not as the incompetent, indecisive captain that abandoned his post and put his ship, his mission, and his entire planet at risk due to his inability to make the tough decisions that he was.

[MissKittyFantastico]

I feel like the Star Destroyer lads get a bum rap. Ozzel (from memory) screws up the worst in real terms, mishandling the approach to Hoth and giving the rebels a heads-up that they were coming - there's the theory that he was a rebel sympathiser and did on purpose, which I like, but it's not made explicit on the screen so it can't be counted (this is why there's that bit in Miranda about "it may harm your defence if you do not include in the film something you later rely on in a fandom debate"). Assuming he was a loyal officer just doing his job, it comes off like he assumed Hoth really was just some nobody smugglers, and half-assed it as a result. The rebels were getting ready to make trails anyway after intercepting the probe droid, but if the fleet had come in silent and maybe been able to land a storming force from the air, rather than having to walk through the shield on the ground, they probably could've stopped a lot of transports from escaping. So bad show Ozzel.

Apart from him, there's the idiots who managed to collide while they were chasing Han - although you have to think that it's kind of helm/navigation's job to notice when something like that's going to happen and warn their CO, and besides, it's Han, he probably set it up that way on purpose - and Piett for not making sure the Falcon's hyperdrive was 'deactivated' in a way that meant it couldn't just be switched back on; R2 may be exceptional even for an astromech, but there's no harm in just removing a critical component, so that falls on the officer who oversaw the work and Piett for not making sure it was done right. Maybe a fairly minor oversight - sabotage not necessarily being the kind of thing line officers generally have to set their minds to - but when Vader's on your bridge that's a really bad time to figure near enough is good enough. So for carelessness despite having a seven-foot-tall homicidal cyborg incentive standing right next to him, Piett kind of earned himself that A-Wing in the face. (Although while we're throwing blame around, whoever designed the SSD shield configuration...)

That said, I don't have much hesitation in placing the lion's share of blame for any screwup the Imperial Navy commits in ESB at the feet of Vader himself - unquestionably the winner of 3AY's Lorth Needa Memorial Award for snuffing out any hint of competence in his own officer corps. It's no wonder the rebel fleet put on such a strong showing above Endor despite being caught in a hellish trap - they probably had every half-decent Imperial officer who wasn't dead defected to them by that point.

It's kind of an easy choice since it was the whole point of him (Nog even says it out loud) but when I think bad captain, I think of Watters from 'Valiant'. Say what you will about being thrust into a bad situation years beyond his level of training, the kid hadn't just joined the Academy two days earlier - to have gotten where he was, he must have been given the education to realise what the smart call was, and he didn't make it. Not to forgive him, but it makes you wonder whether that 'face your greatest fear' thing Wesley did in 'Coming of Age' was the entirety of the Academy's psychological screening process, and he just happened to fluke it and sail through. Even Deanna could've flagged him as a command disaster waiting to happen.

[ScreamingDoom]

(Although while we're throwing blame around, whoever designed the SSD shield configuration...)

The Imperial Super Star Destroyer has all the hallmarks of a bloated military boondoggle project. It looks really impressive, but its ability to actually wage war is poor for the resources spent.

I always had the impression (though I could be wrong) that the Alliance ships were ton-for-ton far superior to anything the Empire fielded. A Mon Calimari Cruiser would, in a straight up fight, rip the face off a Star Destroyer. The Corellian Corvette design was ancient by the time of the original trilogy, but it still seemed able to put up a pretty good fight.

Even if its not true for capital ships, almost certainly the fighter craft of the Alliance were orders of magnitude better than the Imperial TIE Fighters.

Not to forgive him, but it makes you wonder whether that 'face your greatest fear' thing Wesley did in 'Coming of Age' was the entirety of the Academy's psychological screening process, and he just happened to fluke it and sail through.

Hell, that test may have been the reason Waters acted the way he did. The test only deals with paralysing fear, not sound judgement. It emphasizes action in the face of terror; reacting quickly to personal fear and not hesitating for introspection. Going up almost insurmountable odds for a comparatively minor tactical advantage? I'm not afraid, the psych-test proved it! Come with me friends, towards the maw danger and almost certain death!

Sometimes a little fear is healthy.

Even Deanna could've flagged him as a command disaster waiting to happen.

Let's not go crazy, now.

That's her patients' job.

[Mickey_Rat15]

Archer, for being procedurally totally unprepared for what was, at the time, a deep space exploration mission and proud of it. The Apollo program astronauts in the show opening credits would be horrified that he was their successor and Archer would likely think of them as obsessive/compulsive killjoys for trying to map out a response beforehand to everything that could go wrong

[thisithis]

And let's not forget Matthew Marcus the Captain of the Resolute of Exosquad with Chuck reviewing his death. being behind Admiral Winfield wanting to just go in and attack the pirates, witch gets Winfield knocked out. And the Neosapian start there plan to take over Earth, Mars, and Venus. Marcus's great plan is to straight up attack the Neosapian leaving half the fleet behind for being to slow, and trying to imprison and execute the top Exo-feet squad leader J.T. Marsh. The funny part was when Marcus accuses J.T. Marsh of mutiny. And after Winfield wakes up seeing that half his fleet being wiped out by the Neosapian, and J.T braking out of jail trying to save the Exo-Fleet from Marcus's stupidity. After that he mostly stays behind Winfield doing what ever Winfield tells him to do. Leaving the big mistakes to Nara Burns, but she was just worried about her Family.

But then you couldn't keep an idiot down, Captain Matthew Marcus comes back. First he leads JT on a bogus assignment, and then commits mutiny. The same mutiny that he accused J.T of. And what's his great plan for the Exo-Fleet when he takes over, Same plan as before. Take the Exo-Fleet in and start blasting there way to freedom. But with a half a wrecked fleet thanks to the Graf shield, and him not understanding or just impatient as hell at the idea of trying to rebuild a fleet. And with the Neosapian having there fleets rebuild and reinforced by the Earth and Mars fleets Marcus sends most of his fleet to there deaths. Way to go Marcus. Then finally killing himself for his own clusterfuck and taking out four Neosapian ships and The Resolute (The Exo-Fleet's main flagship), as well as himself. Even in death, Marcus can't stop fucking up.

And then his replacement turn out to be a better Captain, his replacement being Jonas Simbacca, the head of the the pirates. When your first enemy makes a better Captain then you, you screwed up in life.