1.) Kirk: The Ultimate Captain. He may not be a finely polished diplomat, but if you need someone to win a fight, then you pick Kirk, hands down. He can find a solution for most problems and is eternally resourceful. He’s out there on the frontier, and dealing with two species as powerful as the Federation: the Klingons and the Romulans.
2.) Picard: He’s a good captain and the perfect diplomat (he would have an excellent second career as a Federation Diplomat), but I don’t think he ever showed enough of a warfare side. One reason I liked Nemesis was because it showed him as a battle-ready captain, nearly on par with Kirk. He’s a bit too passive in most circumstances though, in my opinion. Also he tends to “outsource” problems more than Kirk. Admittedly, part of being a captain is having good people, but the number of times he calls a conference and asks “Options?” sort of gets tedious after a while. Even so, he’s a solid number two.
3.) Sisko: Has a good mixture of the good elements of Kirk and Picard, just not to the quantity that those two have. Admittedly, I never liked DS9 as much as TOS and TNG, but Sisko stands as a solid captain. Plus he’s actually led massive fleet engagements on screen.
4.) Janeway: A bit too touchy-feely in my opinion. She isn’t bad as a captain, considering the circumstances she’s been thrown into – no Federation support, no allies, a ton of enemies, and lots of problems to deal with on the way home. A good point in her favor – she often made tough ethical choices at the drop of a hat. She stranded her crew 75 years from home to destroy a piece of technology that would lead to the enslavement of entire races, most likely. Downside: She wasn’t smart enough to think of placing self destruct charges on board the thing, set to detonate about ten seconds after they got home.
5.) Archer: Even though he’s at the bottom of the list, that doesn’t necessarily mean I dislike him. He’s just not quite right for the time. He needs to be a lot more Kirkian or Picardian, but he isn’t either. If he was more like Kirk, he’d be brash and kicking butt without too many qualms. If he was more like Picard, he’d be a lot more diplomatic and ensuring more peaceful settlements to many things. For example, that episode when the Klingons were raiding a colony for fuel, Kirk would have ordered the Klingons to surrender, than blasted them when they didn’t. Picard would have been ten times more subtle and succeeded in making the Klingons leave without lots of destruction. Archer… he puts his crew and the colony at great risk to perform an elaborate trick on the Klingons. Admittedly, it works, but there’s nothing to keep the Klingons from coming back tomorrow and eradicating the entire colony without notice. Kirk’s solution is far more direct, and more permanent. Kirk wouldn’t have had any “moral qualms” over it either.
I agree with Aesiron… I like lists. Therefore:
Ships
1.) USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E. A cool battleship with a finely honed crew. Picard is quite at home in this ship and follows the Teddy Roosevelt theory – speak softly, and pilot a big starship. A nifty battleship.
2.) USS Enterprise NCC-1701. The premier ship of its day, capable of outfighting anything else in that sector of space. It didn’t carry any families; they were out there for years at a time and knew it. They had to – and did – deal with anything and everything that came up. Not to mention it was destroyed in the best fashion – self destruct with the enemy on board. Janeway and Picard tend to order self-destruct sequences at least a few times a year. Kirk is the only one with the balls to carry it out – and no “Going down with the ship” for him. He’s going to keep on fighting.
“My God, Bones. What have I done?”
“What you had to do. What you always do. Turned death into a fighting chance to live.”
-Admiral Kirk and Doctor McCoy while watching the remains of the Enterprise burn up in the atmosphere, Star Trek III
3.) USS Defiant NCC-74205 (A). I didn’t really draw much distinction between these two ships, perhaps because I never watched the series as much as any other. It’s a very nifty ship, though, a frigate built for war.
4.) USS Voyager NCC-74656. A good ship, even if I didn’t like Janeway all that much. Tough for her size. Not much else to say on this one.
5.) USS Enterprise 1701-D. A decent enough ship, although it wasn’t nearly streamlined enough for my tastes. As the Federation flagship, even in a time of peace, why the heck was it carrying so many civillians on board? Bad idea, I think. They should have just skipped right to the E.
6.) USS Enterprise 1701-A. Yeuch. Lasted for a whole two movies before being decommissioned. It didn’t do anything!
Enemies
1.) Klingons (TOS). The original Baddies. Straightforward and direct. If a Klingon doesn’t like you, he’ll tell you and then rip your heart out. Unlike the Romulans, for example, which have to go to elaborate schemes. For example, observe the Romulan scheme in Nemesis. Klingons would just come and start killing you right off. Even in the time of DS9, they were direct. They decided they didn’t like the way the Federation was doing business, and decided to assault DS9. They later became allies again, of course.
2.) Borg, Version 1. TNG through First Contact. Faceless enemies coming towards you over and over and over again, nearly unstoppable. Single cubes wipe out fleets. Almost absentmindedly swats aside other ships that it doesn’t care about. For example, when the Borg were first encountered, they just sat around scanning and stealing pieces of the Enterprise while Picard waffled about what to do.
3.) Romulans. Just… because. They may be sneaky, but they make a good enemy.
4.) Dominion species. They don’t have nearly the political intricies of (1) and (3), and aren’t as terrifying as the Borg.
5.) Borg, Version 2. The Voyager version. Wimpy. Yeuch. They still do damage, but they should have stuck with Version 1.
6.) Cardassians. I dunno. They always sort of struck me as the weak sisters of the Alpha Quadrent.
Oh, and Spoofe, I disagree with you about Janeway <smirk>. (Disagreement is a big surprise, right?) Once she entered the Badlands (on a Starfleet ordered mission) and encountered the Array wave, they were bound to end up in the Delta Quadrent. Wouldn’t matter if Kirk or Picard or the Borg Queen was at the helm… they’re going to be caught up in the wave. The ship just isn’t equipped to escape. Once she’s there, she chose not to return in order to destroy technology that would allow the massacre and enslavement of many Delta Quadrent species. I’d court martial her if she didn’t do that. Of course, as I remarked above, she was too stupid to think of planting charges on the station to be triggered afterwards.
I do think she was promoted to Admiral so she wouldn’t have to command a ship again, though. She did show a great concern for the larger picture in many cases. She may have sucked as a starship captain, but she worked well as a fleet officer, in my opinion.
-Psi Cop