Star Trek Captains

[PRC]

Picard is clearly the best with Kirk a moderate second and Sisko a distant third.  Archer and Janeway don't even make the scale.

Jean Luc Picard is a renaissance man... Captain, archaeologist, Shakespearean actor, legal advocate, wine connoisseur, barroom brawler (albeit a bad one)... all that and he's a better pilot than Riker too.

Yes but the question includes the 1st officer as a leadership combo.  In that respect, Spock is a major force multiplier over Riker.

It's a good point.

Riker makes women and androgyns wet and he's also a good poker player. 

Spock needs to get laid once every seven years and to make it happen someone usually has to die.  That's a plus for him.

Spock is a great first officer but does the crew trust him?  McCoy constantly curses him out in front of all the senior staff.  Riker has his ships trust. 

[jimmy olsen]

Let's see:

James T. Kirk/Spock - gung ho leader, likely to shoot first and ask later; might get you killed if a redshirt
Jean-Luc Picard/William T. Riker - Riker's a douche, but Picard is a good, levelheaded leader who genuinely cares about the folks under his command


I'll take Picard any time.

Picard was way too strict on the prime directive. If there were no loopholes available he was fine looking the other way on genocide on a planetary scale.  Kirk wouldn't stand for that shit.

[Syt]

Picard was way too strict on the prime directive. If there were no loopholes available he was fine looking the other way on genocide on a planetary scale.  Kirk wouldn't stand for that shit.

He was not as fundamentalist about it as Janeway. Picard followed the letter and spirit of the law whenever he could and didn't forget about the big picture (would this cause a major diplomatic incident that may make things worse than they are?).

[Tamas]

Picard is clearly the best with Kirk a moderate second and Sisko a distant third.  Archer and Janeway don't even make the scale.

Jean Luc Picard is a renaissance man... Captain, archaeologist, Shakespearean actor, legal advocate, wine connoisseur, barroom brawler (albeit a bad one)... all that and he's a better pilot than Riker too.

Yes but the question includes the 1st officer as a leadership combo.  In that respect, Spock is a major force multiplier over Riker.

It's a good point.

Riker makes women and androgyns wet and he's also a good poker player. 

Spock needs to get laid once every seven years and to make it happen someone usually has to die.  That's a plus for him.

Spock is a great first officer but does the crew trust him?  McCoy constantly curses him out in front of all the senior staff.  Riker has his ships trust.

That Riker character was ridicoulously cheesy. Or at least the choice of actor was.

Yet I'll go with Picard

[katmai]

Sisko.

[MadImmortalMan]

Sisko would be my first choice, but you had to throw in Kira with him. She's an unstable loose cannon likely to get me killed.

[Razgovory]

for the longest time i though levar burton was actually blind

On behalf of the generation that still remembers Roots,

Just to make you feel old: i was 3 when TNG came out

Didn't you watch Reading Rainbow?

[Razgovory]

Probably Picard.  That ship wasn't in the shit, most of the time.

Never understood why a ship like that--a warship with research functions, not vice versa, and sent off to the far corners of the universe, alone--would have families on board.  Talk about a fleet going soft.

I was talking Trek once and came up with the idea that a starship--being heavily armed and mobile--may be the safest place in the universe, given that all of the Federation's enemies have access to weapons that can kill a planet, and one of the most important of them also has cloaking devices that would permit them to attack without warning.

I mean, where would you rather your family have been during Fail Safe?  In the B-58, or in New York City?

You know those planes weren't going to make it back right?  Fuck, they'd be lucky if they didn't nuke themselves.  Apparently the airforce found it had a bunch of "time over" events, where planes suppose to be over a target when another bomb went off.

[Syt]

Sisko.

The guy who will volunteer his crew for suicide missions?

He's the most badass, but not the one I'd want to serve under for a long, prosperous career.

Though for career stability, Janeway might be best: seven years marooned in space and Harry Kim is still an ensign.

[Phillip V]

Though for career stability, Janeway might be best: seven years marooned in space and Harry Kim is still an ensign.

bamboo ceiling

[Agelastus]

A hard choice between the Picard/Riker and Kirk/Spock combinations; finally decided the Enterprise-D had better facilities and used that as the tie breaker.

I think the people who would prefer to serve under Janeway need psychiatric help. 

[Ed Anger]

Bitches represent - and now there are two.

Now 4. 

[Grey Fox]

@HVC - And we're all in such different life places!

That quite scary to think about, eh.

[Viking]

Probably Picard.  That ship wasn't in the shit, most of the time.

Never understood why a ship like that--a warship with research functions, not vice versa, and sent off to the far corners of the universe, alone--would have families on board.  Talk about a fleet going soft.

It wasn't supposed to be a warship, though.  DS9 makes clear that the Defiant-class was the first true warship Starfleet ever built.

meh, a mere White Star 1 wannabe, just like DS9 is a Bab5 wannabe.

[Neil]

Katherine Janeway/Chakotay - stranded her crew 70k ly from home due to incompetence, irrational and changing her stances all the time

It's called being flexible.

There's a reason that she got 'promoted' up from starship command.