# WORST fictional captains?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 11, 2004, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742 "2004-02-11T23:21:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/21 "2004-02-12T13:24:22Z")
Captain Veer, from “Billy Budd,” no question, hands down. Hell, he hanged Billy Budd even though he knew Billy wasn’t guilty of the crime he was accused of. All because he had to show his strength as a commander.
And then Billy Budd goes and says “God Bless Capt’n Veer” right before the rope snaps his neck.
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### Author:  [@Leechboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leechboy)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/22 "2004-02-12T13:49:13Z")
\*\*The Captain \*\* -
Thae man barely had command of his piano, and I all always got the feeling he was Tenille’s bitch.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/23 "2004-02-12T14:05:35Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Oh c’mon, I liked Janeway.
Janeway was a weak-willed post-watcher with no leadership and no brains, who nearly got her crew killed on many occaissions because she was so venal. She scrdweed her own crew over god knows how times. She was the absolute worst person for the job.
Which makes it odd that she’s supposed to be some vision of feminism.
I could vote for Picard, but then, I always got the sense that he really, really, wanted to strangle Troi during that show. Still, his method of combat was decidedly odd.
_BAM_
“Captain, we’ve been shot!”
“Don’t fire back!”
Of course, it did work many times…
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### Author:  [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/24 "2004-02-12T15:30:02Z")
> [@Starguard](#):
>
> My worst (but funniest) captain is “Captain Stern” from the first Heavy Metal Animated Movie
>
> STERNNN…
>
> He’s nothin but a…
>
> Low Down
> Double Dealin
> Back Stabbin
> Larcenous
> Perverted Worm
But he’s never done anything immoral… Unless you count those times he sold dope dressed as a nun.
Seriously, I would second the nomination of Lt Hornblower’s Captain (whose name escapes me.)
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### Author:  [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/25 "2004-02-12T15:36:31Z")
The Captain of the Golgafrincham ship was never given a name, just addressed by his title all the time. He had an unnatural relationship with his rubber duck as I recall.
Back to Star Trek, Captain Decker in THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE was pretty lousy, although perhaps understandably so given the trauma he’d undergone.
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### Author:  [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/26 "2004-02-12T16:11:31Z")
The unnamed captain of the _Vanguard_ in Heinlein’s _Orphans of the Sky._ It’s never made clear what he did, but he must have been a pretty piss-poor leader. He inspired a mutiny, led by Huff “the accursed, first to sin” and apparently backed by most of the crew; the devastation caused by the year of all-out civil war was so vast that their descendants forgot the outside world and believed the Ship was the entire universe.
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### Author:  [@WILLASS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WILLASS)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/27 "2004-02-12T16:23:52Z")
I vote for Captain Pugwash the captain from the British 1970’s cartoon that was supposedley littered with sexual euphimisms; pugwash was supposed to mean rimjob and the cabin boy was supposed to be called Roger but was actually called Tom. Basically the guy was a bumbling, incompetent buffon and Tom always saved the day but Pugwash got the credit.
Oh, and one of the crewmates was apperentley called Seaman Staines but wasn’t.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/28 "2004-02-12T16:26:44Z")
> [@Mehitabel](#):
>
> Back to Star Trek, Captain Decker in THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE was pretty lousy, although perhaps understandably so given the trauma he’d undergone.
“Don’t you think I know that? _ **Don’t you think I know that?!!** _ THERE WAS!! BUT NOT ANY MORE!!!”
You gotta give kudos to the only character in _Star Trek_ history who could out-overact William Shatner.
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### Author:  [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/29 "2004-02-12T17:28:13Z")
About half of the captains in Hornblower books were pretty awful. I can’t rememeber any names, but either giving Hornblower impossible orders which he managed somehow and saved the day, or flogging their crew until they mutinied, after which Hornblower had to clear up the mess…
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### Author:  [@LibrarySpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LibrarySpy)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/30 "2004-02-12T18:01:11Z")
Poor Janeway!
It was precisely because she stood by her morals and Starfleet ethics even though it was impractical to in a non-Starfleet world and led to sacrifices, that I respected her. Refusing an offer to go home in a moment, just because it was morally deplorable, and having to tell a group of 80 people that you’ve screwed them over takes _balls_.
She never ran her ship by committee, she took no shit from whiny-assed crew. I’d never heard the word before, but I looked it up, and “venal” seems the opposite of Janeway. She screwed her crew over precisely because she wouldn’t play dirty to get what she wanted.
Seeing Janeway in her tank top uniform, all sweaty, holding a phaser rifle is almost enough to forgive the Victorian mistress holonovels, or the Borg Queen silliness, or the constant hairstyle changes. She only sucked when they were forcing her femininity.
Ahem. Back to the thread. Any Trek captain not in the credits? Especially anyone who takes command of the Enterprise when Picard’s been kidnapped. How does Starfleet manage to turn these people out?
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### Author:  [@Vezer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vezer)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/31 "2004-02-12T18:31:39Z")
Basically the whole of Catch-22. Except for Major --------De Coverly.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/32 "2004-02-12T19:31:29Z")
**Captain Ahab** doesn’t exactly have a reputation as a good guy, either.
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### Author:  [@pcarney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pcarney)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/33 "2004-02-12T20:35:45Z")
Captain Chaos from Cannonball Run II. Dom Deluis assumes an alter ego when he’s troubled. I don’t think crack was popular when this movie was made, but I swear Burt and Dom were on it…
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### Author:  [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/34 "2004-02-12T23:21:18Z")
**Hendrick van der Decken** of the Flying Dutchman.
**President of the Colonies** from the original Battlestar Galactica.
Who at the approach of 1000 Cylon fighters agreed with Baltar that it was “undoubtedly a Cylon welcoming committee.”
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2004, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/35 "2004-02-13T01:52:24Z")
> [@Darkhold](#):
>
> Janeway. I wasn’t really digging on voyager anyway but then I watched a show where they stole some guys lungs (Neelix?) they chase down the bad guys only to find the lungs are implanted in an alien and they can’t take them out without killing the alien. Her reply? Some b.s. about not dropping to their level. WTF! It was done in a really sappy morality play but it couldn’t be clearer. They stole a guys lungs and left him to die. Take them back. Heh and Neelix was in this huge thing that if he moved an inch either way he would die. And here’s Janeway dooming him to a life of that. Good thing the ship never gets tossed around.
I agree that many if not most of the Janeway scripts were terrible (sanctimony driven into the audience with the subtlety of a railroad spike), that particular episode contains one of the two funniest lines ever presented on _Voyager_:
Chakotay, as part of an away mission: “Still no sign of Neelix’s lungs!”
The other line, and my personal favourite, was delivered during a tense moment:
Torres: “Get the cheese to sickbay.”
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### Author:  [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2004, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/36 "2004-02-13T01:59:43Z")
> [@Mehitabel](#):
>
> Back to Star Trek, Captain Decker in THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE was pretty lousy, although perhaps understandably so given the trauma he’d undergone.
Wasn’t he actually a Commodore?
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### Author:  [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2004, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/37 "2004-02-13T02:10:14Z")
> [@Michael Ellis](#):
>
> Wasn’t he actually a Commodore?
No. you’re thinking of Lionel Richie.
😃
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### Author:  [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2004, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/38 "2004-02-13T02:53:00Z")
> [@Fish](#):
>
> Golgafrincham, wasn’t it, **LL**?
Ah yes, that’s it. Good memory. Ginnan tonnix all around.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2004, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/39 "2004-02-13T14:02:18Z")
The paranoid captain in C.S. Forester’s **Lieutenant Hornblower** (referred to above) was **Captain Sawyer** , and I agree that he’s the worst captain I’ve encountered in literature. He made Ahab look like a saint.
I disagree about most captains in Forester’s books being bad – I’ve read his books many times over, especially the Hornblower series, and most of the captains were pretty fair and decent. Sawyer was the extreme exception.
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### Author:  [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2004, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-fictional-captains/228742/40 "2004-02-13T14:49:21Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Wasn’t he actually a Commodore?
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#):
>
> No. you’re thinking of Lionel Richie.
>
> 😃
Damn damn damn damn!!! Now I have to clean up the coffee I just spewed across my desk!! 😛
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