based on a conversation i had with fugu re: JJ Abrams new Star Trek.
who was the best captain and why?
which series is the best and why?
oh - and this isn't about which captain or series you feel is the best - this is scientific and rational dammit.
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So do you mean "captain" as in who best filled the post? Or leader in general? If leader, then Captain Sisko, because he actually had to lead not just a crew, but an inter-organizational space station and having to diplomatically work, ally, and integrate with these other parties. The other guys just flew spaceships. As for best "Captain" of a ship...I'd have to say Picard. He had most of the common leadership dimensions (oral communication and presentation skills, initiative, sensitivity, appropriate influence, delegation, displayed administrative control, appropriate analysis, judgement, and decisiveness, competency,etc, etc.) And displayed them in a greater variety of scenarios than almost every commander short of Sisko. So that's my 2 bits. And then some.
"this isn't about which captain or series you feel is the best - this is scientific and rational dammit."
Kirk hands down... with heated battles like this using his scientific intellect to construct a canon.... which seems very rational to me ;)
Come on, we all know it's Kirk. He's the most multi-faceted of the captains. To some, he's an arms dealer. To others, a child molester. And to still others, he's basically Satan. A complex man, to be sure.
Agree with Heeero re: Picard. "Scientifically and rationally" I believe he would meet more requirements in regards to modern day leadership than would Kirk. While totally and undeniably charismatic (which is an important quality in a leader), Kirk is a rogue, swashbuckler, and loose cannon. This sort of leadership looks good on TV, but isn't practical in real life.
It depends on the situation. Intergalactic war? Kirk. Diplomatic mission? Picard. Running a space insurance company? Sisko.
As for best series, I will say TOS. I think I commented on this recently, but to reiterate, its tone is completely different from the other shows; it's like a Twilight Zone in space. All spooky and creepy and shit. It has way better music than all the other shows (not just the opening score, but the atmospheric music within the episodes). Matter of fact, it probably has the best range of tunes of any show EVER. Most important, it's stupider than the other shows, in the same way that the original Star Wars movies are stupider than the new ones. It has silly dialogue that isn't trying to rise above its intellectual station. The other shows have stiff writing by comparison, with pretensions to gravitas. Fuck em all in the ear, I say.
[Going to have to do this in multiple parts, due to the character limit]
Ok, I'm a little bit of a Trek nerd, so I thought I'd weigh in on this one.
*summary*
Best Trek Series: Deep Space Nine
Captain I would most like to serve under: Picard
Most entertaining Captain: Kirk
Most Improved: Sisko
*nerd rant*
TOS: Lunclops is right, the original Star Trek is a different kind of show. If you
haven't watched it recently, it's actually pretty dark. Some episodes are brilliant
("Balance of Terror", "The City on the Edge of Forever"), while others ("Spock's Brain", "And the Children Shall Lead") are idiotic. What they could have really used was a continuity editor, and something resembling a plot arc. It's a very monster of the week kind of experience. Still, there's a certain rayguns blazing kind of feel that's really lacking for Roddenberry's sterilized update…
Next Gen: I have a love-hate relationship with this show. Maybe love-embarrassment is a better way to put it. Huge chunks of the first couple of seasons were just plain bad ("Shut up Wesley!"). Strangely, the show really turns around right about the time they do the first uniform switch (Season 3). The sad part is that a lot of the initial suck can be laid at Roddenberry's feet. This is also the show that set the tone for the senseless technobabble that was to be the trademark of all of the new Trek to come. Don't get me wrong, I like it. I'll watch it if it's on, and I think this would probably be the safest Star Trek to be a crew member on. (Unless you're say, a Holodeck Janitor)
Deep Space Nine: I hated this show when it first aired, but it's really grown to be my favorite of the new Treks for a few different reasons. Unlike the previous series, we begin with a reluctant Commander assuming what is essentially the position of a military governor in the ass-end of the federation. He begins as an everyman, contemplating resignation from Starfleet following the loss of his wife at the battle of Wolf 357. As the series is set on a space station, the crew is forced to deal with the consequences of their actions in a way that hadn't been explored by previous crews zooming around the galaxy. This show also effectively explored the evolution of the characters. Consider Sisko's arc. He begins as a broken man, and eventually rises to be the key figure in both the Dominion war, as well as Bajor's mythology. The difference between the Picard of "Encounter at Farpoint" and the Picard at the end of "All Good Things" is that he's done a lot of cool shit, and he now plays cards with the bridge crew. As for Kirk, I think you could pretty much watch the TOS episodes in any order, and it wouldn't really matter.
I also enjoyed the way that they fleshed out a number of species that had only been touched on in the Next Generation. Examples include the Cardassians, the Ferengi, the Bajorans (called the Bajora in Next Gen), the Trill, and arguably the Klingons.
Final though: The later seasons had the best trek spaceship battles ever.
Voyager: Much as I love watching Jeri Ryan parade around in a catsuit with shit glued to her face, this show had some serious problems. I still maintain that if this show and Andromeda had been merged, it would have had one excellent series. Imagine if you will: One Starfleet ship, caught in time, recovered after the fall of the Federation. What happens to Federation ideals when there is no UFP? This show also generated one of the best and one of the worst characters in Trek history. I thought the holographic doctor was brilliant (see earlier rant about character development), but they also generated the Jar Jar Binks of Trek: Neelix. Not to say that there weren't some entertaining episodes, but overall I think it missed the mark. I wonder what this would have been like in the post-BSG era?
Enterprise: Oh god. Please make it stop. BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH! Oh wait, Berman and Bragga are gone? Cool! Oh shit, canceled. If they had started out doing what they did in the last season, this could have really been something. Sadly it wasn't. Consolation prize: Jolene Blalock in a Catsuit, and amusing line about Archer's dog in Abrams' film.
I gotta go with Kirk. I like his strategery. He's mean, but its a fun kinda mean. Like a captain of a whaling ship. Serieswise, I think DS9 had some really cool parts, and I still need to see the complete final season. I think Voyager had a neat first season, and up until Seven of Nine turned into a human with "implants" I was ok with it. I liked a lot of the ideas, but the execution was so doo doo. I thought the same of Enterprise. I always had problems with TNG. It was too diplomatic for my tastes. So I gotta say somewhere between DS9 and TOS.
Faka, did you see this?
Wait. I'm gonna change my series answer to the animated series.
Oh wow... thanks for that Panic. I liked the high speed cam vid.
Janeway.
Comments here made me realize that TNG (and to a lesser extent, DS9) spends a LOT of time apologizing for the insensitivity and irresponsibility of characters in TOS. It rings lame.
Agree with Heeero and Litcube, Picard was the best at captaining a big space ship. He was even, professional, and understood his mission. He was also the least entertaining to watch. (His mission was lame; see above.)
If we're talking about who's the most fun to watch, it's a harder question. Kirk was inconsistent and angry, and I love that. Sisko was deeply troubled; that was fun too. Janeway made me yell at the screen--she was, at best, violently retarded, and at worst, a plot device. I enjoyed yelling at the screen like that, until I didn't.
I like Deep Space Nine best, because it took us outside the military command structure of all the other shows, and really explored alien cultures and viewpoints, as well as the politics of reconciling these huge differences and finding common ground. Of course, in the Star Trek tradition, these explorations were surface and simplistic, but at least they tried, with sometimes interesting results.
Spock would have been The Best Captain.
On a side note, anyone ever notice how Bill O'Reilly steals all his moves from Captain Kirk? The sharp inhale, the self-congratulatory chuckle, the meanness.
On another side note: among many many many other sucky things in the Abrams movie, Chris Pine sucked. Know who should have played Captain Kirk? The Rock. Know who else would have been good? Bill O'Reilly.
Listen. I was kidding about Janeway. You can all just chill the fuck out, okay?
Who'd win in a fuck-fight: Janeway or Kirk? What I mean to say is, who would fuck whom right in half?
Remember when Counselor Troi was taking that officer's exam in the holodeck and she kept failing and finally she realized she had to order pretend Geordi to his death in order to pass? That was funny.
I think the pig demi-god has it spot on. Totally agree.
Best series: DS9 - politics, federation cloaking gun-ships, Dominion war.
Best captain: Picard - most professional. most likely to survive serving under.
Re: Janeway/Kirk fucking in half - I call Zeno's dichotomy paradox - they just keep fucking each other into half, and the half into quarters and so on - into infinite halves so neither totally completely fucks the other into inexistance.
The sound from that coupling would probably be played at 11 on infinite loop in my room 101.
Good Captain = Dull Bridge Scenes?
I really need to see that last season of DS9. It sounds groovy.
What about a fuck-off between the Doctor and Data?
Just once I'd like to see Dr. Crusher come onto the bridge, tear Picard's unitard at the shoulder, and administer a shot. If that's the doctor you mean, Panic, I don't think it'd work out, as Data prefers men, his rape by Tasha Yar notwithstanding.
Ok, what? Data is an gay?
*ahem* Minor correction to my post, since I can't seem to edit it: Wolf 359, not 357. Guess I have guns on the brain these days...
I was gonna say!
Litcube: of course he is.
I actually meant The Doctor from Voyager.
Huh, apparently wiki didn't agree with my edits.
Wikipedia would only be half as good if it didn't keep records of vandalism.
I'm surprised someone caught a small factual discrepancy regarding Star Trek so fast...oh, right.
Oh, I lolerskated.
I'm sure they have a twenty four hour "AI" watchdog for the Star Trek Wiki.
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