Said Android had the same weakness as Lal.
Khan, because he got the girl, and earned a full-length movie sequel.
Dr. Soong was a spark. He created some very impressive machines, but he didn’t seem to really understand how he was doing it: Even he had difficulty re-creating his own work.
Cmdr. Scott, however, was a genius. He understood enough to realize what was and was not possible, and then did the impossible anyway.
The Traveller said Wesley was special. A possible next step for Humanity, or something like that. It was why he arranged to come to the Enterprise.
Wesley was a Mary Sue character, sure. But, as written, he had to have loads of smarts. He figured out The Game, helped fix a derilect starship, was instrumental in resolving the nanite problem, etc…
Of course, sometimes it was problems he had caused himself that he outsmarted. Still, he should be in the running.
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Voyager era Barclay was no slouch, brainwise. He was always smart. Just needed to mature.
The alien influence was only in that one TNG ep. It didn’t stick.
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Keep in mind Geordi was a Lieutenant and Data was a Lieutenant Commander. They were both senior enough to order Ensigns and LtJgs around, but too junior to really socialize with the Senior Officers, unless Riker was in a slum around mood. Fraternization between an Lt and a LtCdr is normal on a huge ship. Especially when the Lt is the Chief Engineer and the LtCdr is NOT the CO or XO. He was probably next in the chain of command after Data.
I’ve been watching DS9 now. Never saw it before. Chief O’Brian has to be the smartest human on the station. Regardless of what he was on the Enterprise, he’s got to be a Chief Warrant Officer by DS9.
Hmmm. I’m wavering a little on my early support for Scott. Those who are stumping for Soong make good points. That guy certainly had a little on the ball too.
But then Scotty was not only an engineering genius but also adept at managing his boss, Kirk. When Scotty turned up on TNG he tried to coach Geordi on how to manage expectations to preserve his reputation as a miracle worker. Geordi, enjoying the luxury of TNG’s pure meritocracy, would have none of it. But Scotty was a skilled politician as well as engineer.
I could convince myself either way. I’ll let my emotions tip the scales. Scotty gets bonus points for being useful in a bar fight with the Klingons. Maybe not a sign of intelligence, sure. But if you’re able to rise to the rank of chief engineer on the flagship while still finding time to learn how to drink and brawl along the way, you apparently have brains to spare.
My vote goes to a much less well-known character, but one played by Brent Spiner: Dr. Arik Soong. He as a master geneticist on top of being a cunning manipulator, and eventually developed the technology that created Data and Lore - even designing prototypes. His work was sufficiently brilliant that the tidbits he was able to write down on paper were stored as both too valuable to destroy and too dangerous to release. Further, he didn’t confine himself simply to basic research, but invented and perfected entire medical treatments.
There’s actually a fan theory that he doesn’t just look like his descendant, but actually is the same guy who built Data and Lore. It fits oddly well. All the Soongs he seems to have have a bad habit of outsmarting himself, and creating things he can’t entirely control - it would not be surprisingly if it were actually the same one.
I would point out that the novels suggest that some of Barclay’s smarts may result from residual effects of the alien influence. Not canon, I know, but the reverse is never stated either. Just to be on the safe side, he should be disqualified.
As for who gets the vote, we saw a whole planet of genetically enhanced folks in TNG and the so-called “Jack pack” in DS9.
Dr. Louis Zimmerman. He created the Emergency Medical Hologram on Voyager that eventually became sentient.
The versions I’m aware of have him as a clone. Maybe even the second clone, which would make the canon grandfather aspect work.
Actually, the original episode supports that. At the end he suddenly has a skill at playing chess that he never had before.
I got the impression that he’s more of a manager than an engineer. A team of clever people created the EMH, not Zimmerman himself.
People sell Kirk short - he always seemed to be at least as intelligent as his underlings, and often it was he, himself, who figured out how to beat the MotW in TOS.
Not that he’s my vote, that goes to Soong. Cochrane was in the running, but warp drive seems like one of those things someone was going to find at the right level of tech dev. Positronic brains, though, seem to be a rare thing in the Federation universe.
[Scotty nearly beat the ‘no-win’ Kobayashi Maru scenario and without cheating](‘Scott tricked the simulation into overestimating the effectiveness of a theoretical attack against the Klingon ships’ overlapping shielding. Faced with proof that such attacks, although quite valid in theory, would not work in reality and that Scott knew this, Academy staff reassigned Scott from command school to Engineering (his true love – he had used this “solution” precisely because of these consequences)) (unlike Kirk :smack: .)
According to the reboot, Original!Scotty pioneered transwarp beaming.
It’s got to be Wesley. The kid can control the space time continuum! The Traveler seems to think he’s pretty smart.
Does the Sisko count? I realize that technically he was half prophet but he managed to defeat the dominion, he practically planned the entire federation battle plan and had an entire religion based on how awesome he was.
Novel, so it doesn’t count. These are my rules; I make them up.
Anyway, it is impossible to beat the Kobyashi Maru, because defeating or escaping the Klingons is not the point. The point is to emphasize to the cadets that, in the real world, they may well face a circumstance in which, no matter how clever you are, either you will die or somebody you love will. It’s supposed to teach that their are limists to what balls and cleverness can accomplish.
Those idiot cadets from Red Squad in that DS9 episode (“Valiant”?" did not learn that lesson. I blame Old!Kirk for that.
No, that was New!Scotty. But I don’t hate him nearly as much as I hate Ndew!Kirk (in fact I kind of like him, if only because he called told off New!Kirk twice), so I will not release the bees on you or anyone else today…
:: releases bees::
As I have written before, I believe Scott accomplished exactly what he wanted in that bar fight with the Klingons. He was managing in career in a very sly way. As we all know, he was a perfectly competent commander, but didn’t really want that job; he wanted to be a chief engineer of the fleet’s top ship – i.e., the job he already. As the recipient of many glowing reviews from Kirk, he was possibly facing the prospect of being promoted to first officer on another ship, and eventually a captaincy, either of which would have frankly driven him crazy. So when he stopped Chekov from starting the bar brawl, he grabbed the opportunity to give himself a black mark, so the next promotion board would would see it and say "Hmm. Montgomery Scott is a great engineer, but possibly too hot-headed for a command posting. Thus he never has to go through the crap Kirk did.
Like you said: Scott was an able politician.
I’d agree that New!Scotty was doing pioneering work in transwarp beaming – but remember how Old!Spock shows him the missing piece of the puzzle, which prompts New!Scotty to say that he never would’ve thought of it, which prompts Old!Spock to plainspokenly explain that, as it happens, Old!Scotty did?
I hate that movie so much that I have blocked out the vast majority of it. Pretty much everything but Cameron’s shapely legs and Veronica’s pretty face.