Board 8 > Eight Board-Eighters Rank Star Trek Characters

(+) Yeah! (+)

The time has come. With Star Trek's television renaissance now in full swing, it's downright nostalgic to look back several years ago and remember the first iteration of this topic series, when the future of Trek TV remained pessimistic. With Star Trek: Discovery filming its third season, Star Trek: Picard premiering in two weeks, and plenty more on the horizon, let's take a trip down Memory Alpha lane with 2020's jump to warp.

This year, we're a tad more restrictive. With Discovery's cast in the mix, certain DS9 folk like Weyoun and Martok haven't made the cut. You can expect me to probably write a few bonus entries along the way to encompass some of my favorite no-shows.

By my present tally, we have 59 characters here. If @Anagram would kindly confirm, that would be splendid, since I know he's finished his ranking. Officially, we'll begin this at midnight on 01/09/2020, meaning four hours from the time of this post. If anyone who is participating in the rankings happens to post write-ups prior to that time it's no big deal. You can safely anticipate my first few write-ups coming tomorrow.

The Cast:
James T. Kirk
Spock
Leonard McCoy
Montgomery Scot
Hikaru Sulu
Nyota Uhura
Pavel Chekov
Janice Rand
Christine Chapel
Jean-luc Picard
William T. Riker
Data
Worf
Beverly Crusher
Katherine Pulaski
Geordi LaForge
Deanna Troi
Wesley Crusher
Tasha Yar
Benjamin Sisko
Jake Sisko
Kira Nerys
Jadzia Dax
Ezri Dax
Julian Bashir
Miles OBrien
Odo
Quark
Kathryn Janeway
Chakotay
Tuvok
The Doctor
Tom Paris
Harry Kim
Kes
Neelix
Belanna Torres
Seven of Nine
Jonathan Archer
TPol
Charles Tucker
Malacoln Reed
Hoshi Sato
Travis Mayweather
Phlox
Michael Burnham
Saru
Ash Tyler
Sylvia Tilly
Gabriel Lorca
Christopher Pike
Paul Stamets
Philippa Georgiou
Q
Garak
Dukat
Nog
Rom
Reginald Barclay


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Tag. Looking forward to it.

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Tag

Impulse non-participant top 5 without any deeper thought or analysis, no particular order

-Data
-Q
-Garak
-Dukat
-Odo

DS9 so good...

I can confirm it's 59 ranked characters.


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So how many characters do we post per day?

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engage

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Tag.

Get hype, get hype!

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i want to guess who will be in overall last place but there's a lot of good (bad?) candidates

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Anagram posted...

So how many characters do we post per day?

1-3! Ill be posting 3 tomorrow.

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ZenOfThunder posted...

i want to guess who will be in overall last place but there's a lot of good (bad?) candidates

If it's not Kes or Neelix then the world no longer makes sense.

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wow i can't believe you cut weyoun. i was looking forward to see how weyoun 6 compared to weyoun 3

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At least Weyoun is better than a couple characters I could name.

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Weyoun is definitely cool and he will return eventually

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#59 Chakotay
"Akuchi Moya. It means no worries. For the rest of this show."

The first problem with Chakotay is that he's a nothingburger with few exceptions from season 3 onward. The writers realized how poorly he was written and went Occam's Razor on themselves, making him increasingly invisible as the show went on. The second problem with Chakotay is that for the seasons he truly existed as a character he sucked. I suppose technically that ought to be listed as the first problem but there's no going back. Speaking of no going back, I cannot return to my youth, when I recognized Chakotay was being written poorly but believed that he would come into his own as the seasons went on. That was a foolish hope for foolish Voyager fans who foolishly believed in love.

Chakotay is a Native American and a Maquis. Both of these things are perfectly fine additions to the crew taken on their own and though the "Native American as a Maquis" is a bit on-the-nose we can just go ahead and blame TNG's "Journey's End" for that one and pretend Chakotay's from that planetary tribe for continuity purposes. But also, who cares in the first place, because Chakotay's Native Americanism is all over the place. One episode he represents a certain belief system; the next he's on another edge of the spectrum. Sometimes -- oftentimes -- everything he cites is completely made-up nonsense. As a white guy this is problematic. Imagine being a Native American! And as for his role in the Maquis, the tension between Starfleet and the Maquis additions to the crew has a short handful episodes very early on where the writers act like they know how to do this sort of thing before admitting that they can't and it goes away. Until a neat episode near the end of the second season where they try to make it seem like the crew did a ton to get over that but they didn't. But I digress. The third problem with Chakotay, you see, is that he's far less interesting as a former Maquis than B'Elanna Torres, leaving his own lines flaccid.

The fourth problem with Chakotay is his actor. Robert Beltran tried to act early on to mixed results -- sometimes he was genuinely decent. But as his writers gave up, so did he. Beltran began earning paychecks just for showing up, and sometimes even that was not necessary. By the final seasons, Chakotay was about as relevant to most episodes as Harry... or less. Beltran is outspoken about his negative experiences with Star Trek: Voyager, and to a point I can appreciate that. But the fifth and final problem with Chakotay is that Robert Beltran was such a loser by the time his easy-money television show was ending that he dared executive producer Brannon Braga, who was dating Seven of Nine's actress, Jeri Ryan, to hook Chakotay up with Seven. Braga took the bait, resulting in one of the stupidest, least-earned, altogether lacking in chemistry, last-second romances in Star Trek canon.

It has been nearly nineteen years since Seven of Nine got together with Chakotay for ??? reasons. I pray this is nullified at long last in the weeks to come, as Seven will be a pivotal member of the upcoming Star Trek: Picard.

Chakotay sucks.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/0/00/Chakotay%2C_The_Fight.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20071024225236

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- Bad Tier -
Ive divided my characters into tiers. This is Bad Tier. These are characters who actively make their shows worse by being in them.

59. Neelix
Ive made a Star Trek character ranking like four or five times now, and the only placement that always remains the same is Neelix. Not even Star Trek Discovery is capable of unseating him from his throne in last place though well get to that later.

The only positive thing Ill say about Neelix is that I think the core concept of the character is interesting: an alien who agrees to support the Federation people and provides a new perspective opposite their own. You know who also did that? Quark. You know whos way higher on this list? Quark.

Neelix is annoying, possessive toward his girlfriend (who, spoilers, is also low on my list), and adds nothing really to the show. It would be one thing if he had some kind of critical skill the ship needs to survive, but his skill is cooking. Hes supposed to be charismatic and make people open up to him, but hes written so horribly that after a while, even the characters start complaining about him. Not enough to boot him off the ship, though. I cant understand who thought this character would be positively received.

His bumbling is responsible for multiple episodes of conflict theres even an episode where he almost destroys the ship by buying diseased cheese. Yet Janeway not only keeps him aboard, she gives him important diplomatic and managerial tasks. Theres an episode where Neelix orders a guy to pick up bones scattered in front of a mysterious cave they havent explored on a planet of hostile primitive aliens, the guy gets killed, and no one blames Neelix for it.

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So are you going to say who the eight people are or do I need to use deductive reasoning

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greengravy294 posted...

So are you going to say who the eight people are or do I need to use deductive reasoning

The latter because I wasnt 100% certain if that claim was correct and I had hoped no one would be intuitive enough to inquire but along came a gravy, the color of emeralds, being smart

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thank you

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tag, and taking a seat in the peanut gallery.

ive watched a lot of star trek in my time, but not enough to participate in a ranking like this


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i was stuck on a 4 hour plane ride and i flipped through the channels and saw voyager was on and of course it was a chakotay episode

then a neelix episode

then another chakotay episode

fuck u bbc america

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I should be able to start tomorrow; I just had some unexpected work-related problems to deal with today.

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I like the episode where the different sections of Voyager are in different moments of time. Think it was called Shattered? somewhere in Season 7.

And that's really it for Chakotay episodes.

....and the reason I like that episode is for the concept rather than Chakotay himself, so, yeah...

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Tag. Coincidentally I just finished Discovery season 2 yesterday. It's ok character-wise in general (when they can rise above the bad writing) but I better see some low ranking Tylers.

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i fell asleep 4 times while watching discovery season 2 and i think that was just in the first 6 episodes

i never fell asleep watching literally any other trek. that's basically my review of the show

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That's super unfortunate, Discovery season 2 is generally considered a pretty noteworthy improvement over season 1

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I'm laughing so hard fuck you Zen

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I will agree that Discovery season 2 is better than season 1, though I'm like the biggest Discovery hated on the board, so take that with a grain of salt.

58. Katherine Pulaski
Ive known people who liked Neelix. Ive never known anyone who likes Pulaski. Likes the idea of her, maybe, but certainly not the execution.

So Pulaski was brought in after Gates McFadden (Beverly Crusher) left the show. Someone stupid said McCoy, but a girl, so they made a doctor racist against robots in the way McCoy was racist against Vulcans. The problem is that McCoy was charismatic because he was ornery toward Spock, but Spock was way smarter and could give as well as he could take, so McCoys casual racism comes across as comical because it sets him up to get schooled. Data is too genuinely nice to even realize hes being insulted half the time and never shoots back, so any insults against him come across as way meaner.

Pulaskis other main character trait is that shes old school, and knows about things like tourniquets and the common cold. Barfffff. Get her out of here. No wonder even the hologram of Professor Moriarty, who met three humans when he gained sentience, didnt ask where she was when he returned.

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Unranked Tier:

This is a character I don't have enough exposure to to fairly rank.

N/A. Christopher Pike

I simply have not watched enough of season 2 of DISCO to have a fully formed opinion of him, sorry.

This is more an indictment of Discovery than it is of Pike himself. He seems fine and a definite retreat to a more Trekky feel but I don't know him.

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#58. Katherine Pulaski
"Two robots and a good old-fashioned vacuum cleaner enter a bar. Data, did that break you? Why, it's just that you're nothing more than a machine."

It's highly unfortunate that Katherine Pulaski's name sounds vaguely akin to "Roman Polanski" but that is not her fault. However, her casual racism (as fellow fifty-eighter board-eighter Anagram just mentioned) is certainly her fault. She strikes me as mean and vindictive even though that's not quite what the writers intended. We're supposed to regard her as "Bones II: Return of Bones" but despite her actress' best intentions she's more like a wet blanket who reduces the quality of all other actors around her. There is very briefly an effort to produce some sort of chemistry between Pulaski and Picard but thankfully it's soon expelled. Pulaski, too, is soon expelled.

My biggest grief against Katherine Pulaski is technically not Katherine Pulaski's fault -- she's never even name-dropped ever again after Beverly Crusher returns to the show. She's a title character for every episode of season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation whose name is avoided like Voldemort or whatever as of the season 3 premiere. It's like a big apology from the writing staff. Or maybe the actress would have received ten bucks in Burger King coupons if they'd dared to speak her name? Who knows. All I know is that it's silly and it makes it feel like Pulaski's even more immaterial than she was whist she was on screen.

There's this one episode where Pulaski tries to treat a peculiar case of an entire colony of folks rapidly aging and she, too, begins to age rapidly. I'm not saying her actress looked ancient in general or anything but it's really strange how, like, she doesn't really look much different in her make-up-overload hundred-year-old self. It's like she went from irrelevant somewhat racist wallpaper to irrelevant somewhat racist wallpaper with a few cracks along the edges. It doesn't matter that there are cracks along the edges in the latter picture because no one I care to associate with is going to cover their house with Katherine Pulaski in the first place.



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Ngl I was expecting Pulaski in dead last on most lists

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58. Michael Burnham
Oh look at me I'm spocks adopted sister!

Just a disaster of a character. Season 1 of DISCO revolves around her Poochyesque existence. So the least she could do was be interesting and worth that? That is incorrect. She is dry. She is calculating. This might have been somewhat acceptable if they'd gone ahead and just made her a Vulcan but no we didn't get that.

She tramples all over other characters spotlight episodes and is in general an omnipresent weight on anything the show might be trying to accomplish.

It is owing to her arc/presence that discovery is a show that I don't find especially watchable. Again if you're going to insist on departing from Star Treks ensemble format the character based drama you are replacing it with should at least be good or intriguing.

And it's not. And that's why she gets last place. A bad lead is just poison to a character based drama and that's exactly what Burnham is


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Wow. Burnham in last place? Really?

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scarletspeed7 posted...

Wow. Burnham in last place? Really?

I have no problem buying that.

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I get it off of season one, and I'm not a massive defender of the character, but she was SO much better in season two.

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I only got a couple episodes into season 2 before shelving the show which is why I didn't even rate Pike

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You didn't rank this man?

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/0/02/Christopher_Pike%2C_2259.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150912073237&path-prefix=en

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I quite literally ranked with a N/A rank like 15 posts up from here.

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#59. Chakotay

Chakotay. Must. BOX!
a very popular meme

Chakotay sucks. Not to put too fine a point on it or anything. There are characters in Star Trek that are poorly acted, characters that are poorly written, and characters that the writers never had any idea what to do with or how to use properly. Chakotay may be the only lead character in a Star Trek series who was a perfect storm of all three of these things at once. If the writers were going to try for some genuine Native American representation, which was, on its own, an admirable idea, they really should have done some actual research instead of relying on some con artist for the obviously fake, ludicrously stereotypical portrayal of Native culture on display in almost all of Chakotay's feature episodes. When people say that bad representation is worse than no representation at all, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. I genuinely like Voyager as a show, I do, but sometimes, especially in the early seasons (before the writers seemed to more or less forget he existed and just started acting like Tuvok was the second-in-command), it was really hard to get on board considering this guy was one of the leads.

So, okay, specifics. First of all, any time there was any sort of Vision Quest-related episode I just wanted to die. These episodes are, without exception, a blight on Voyager's record. Even that one Original Series episode where Kirk decides to become a Native American is handled more respectfully. Second of all, on the VERY rare occasion on which the writers found something halfway compelling to do with Chakotay, it would last for an episode and then get immediately dropped (a pretty common problem with Voyager, but particularly brutal when it comes to this guy). I'm talking, like, the second-season episode Resolutions, where Janeway and Chakotay get marooned on a remote planet for Reasons and end up starting up a kinda-sorta romantic relationship. The big twist of that episode is that the two of them actually have some pretty decent chemistry... but, of course, their relationship is never explored in such a way again and we're expected to act like it never happened.


I would have used a picture of Chakotay boxing but Quinton beat me to it.

Point is that they pulled shit like this all the time, and even though there might be three or four episodes over the series' 172-episode run where Chakotay was more or less all right, he spent the vast majority of that span as dead weight, and bringing the series' momentum to an utter crawl whenever the writers realized they hadn't done a Chakotay-centric episode in awhile and decided to give him another chance in the spotlight. For every Shattered, an actually pretty good seventh-season episode with him bouncing back and forth between time periods, there's countless outings like Tattoo or Nemesis or The Fight that I desperately wish I could forget. Although at least The Fight is hilarious in an ironic way. I guess.

PS: The fact that I didn't even think to mention he was a Maquis in my write-up is really kind of telling in terms of how much Voyager did with THAT particular concept.

#57 Chakotay
I am a Native American Indian Warrior. Let's do the Tomahawk Chop. Go Braves.

Speaking of lead characters who were nothing but a weight on the show they came from, sup Chakotay. I walked into Voyager HYPED. They had built up the Maquis vs Federation combat really well in DS9 and seeing that conflict presented as the central concept of a new show was a really fun idea. You can see the writers' project in the show's setup where you have federation officers Janeway and Tuvok aligned in one corner with Maquis officers B'Elanna Torres and Chakotay in the other with the slippery Tom Paris in the middle serving as the balance of power and Harry Kim as an after thought, even here at the moment of conception.

Chakotay's complete and utter lack of compellingness as a character - or really the actor's lack of chops as a dramatic lead in a genre television setting - nearly instantly quashed this entire setup. It didnt survive halfway though season 1 outside of being an important part of B'Elanna's character arc, despite the entire rest of the show undermining her dogged determination to have character development. And that....transformation of the show from what it could have been to what it was was quite the disappointment.

Chakotay has a couple episodes I quite like from a TOS-style schlock perspective - The Fight being the chief episode among those. It also seems quite clear to me that Chakotay's actor is far more comfortable doing romance and soap opera acting as those moments are the ones in which he shines - much to Quinton's chagrin re: Seven of Nine later in the show. The fact is he never really gets better. The show continues to suffer under the weight of having a terrible secondary lead until they quietly demote him from that role.

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#56 Ash Tyler
Oh Michael, I love you too much to execute my stupid plan

Michael Burnham's love interest from season 1 AKA Voq the Albino Klingon. He was theoretically going to be interesting with the big reveal that he was a Klingon sleeper agent but he was too IN LOVE with Burnham - who basically as far as I can tell did nothing to make that level of loyalty and affection happen besides existing as the perfect person in this universe. But then Star Trek has always sucked at love subplots, see the episode in TNG where they just sort of declared it was horny o clock leading to Troi and Riker and Yar and Data becoming couples (yes thats right Tasha Yar fucked Data in season 1 and it was weird, you're welcome).

Anyway, the big reveal that Voq, who had at that point been one of the few points of legitimate intrigue to me, was actually just this big loser he and the entire show plummeted some more in my esteem. Just a steaming pile of drizzling crap. The best thing I can say for Ash is he left the ship thus sparing us more of his stupidity. The worst thing is that I hear he did not actually leave the show as a result so we aren't entirely home free.

As an aside, I don't like being this negative about Star Trek, but Discovery is not a show that I like even a little bit.

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57. Wesley Crusher
Lieutenant, why do people use drugs?

Wesley Crusher is one of the most epic miscalculations in science-fiction history. Hes not as bad as Jar-Jar Binks or basically anything that happened to Terminator after the second movie, but hes pretty bad. Its a testament to how good the rest of TNG is that it still manages to be entertaining even when laden down with him.

I cant imagine anyone reading a Star Trek character ranking doesnt already know why this character is awful. Hes a boy genius with Gene Roddenberrys middle name, whose greatest problems are that adults underestimate him and that he doesnt understand why people would ruin their lives with drugs (someone thought that was compelling television in 1987). The idea that a ship full of the greatest minds the Federation has to offer would fail to figure out the things Wesley casually comes up with is preposterous. Despite this, Wesley does have a couple of episodes where he isnt actively ruining things, and they do eventually do one interesting thing with him in the episode where he covers up a friends death, so he places above Neelix and Pulaski.

Hell, even Wesleys stupid acting ensign uniform is bad. Everyone else dresses according to their position while he has a gray jumpsuit on. Its really easy to see why Wesleys scenes were cut from Nemesis and his role reduced to an extra at the table with all of the main characters.

Looking back on things, I might admit that Wesleys lows arent as bad as some of the people Ive ranked above him, but the idea of this character so offends me that Im sticking his ass in the bottom three anyway. Even ignoring how Wesley has Roddenberrys middle name as his first name, does anyone like boy geniuses outside of comedy cartoons aimed at nine year-olds? It wasnt until Joss Whedon made Angel that the name Wesley was redeemed for fictional characters.

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every time I watch the episode where Wesley destroys the flowerbed on the Hot Dude Sex Planet and the two almost naked guys trot over and take out the lethal syringe to execute him on the spot I literally lose my shit in an uncontrollable laughing fit

someone in a writer's room came up with that as an A plot for an episode

it's unironically one of the highlights of TNG for me

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Eddv posted...

I quite literally ranked with a N/A rank like 15 posts up from here.

You missed my joke.

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56. Chakotay
This reminds me of an ancient Indian saying: Wiseman once say, make up sayings as you need them.

Theres nothing I can say about Chakotay that hasnt been said by someone else in the topic. This character consists of approximately three elements: Native American stereotypes, writers having no idea what to do with him, and Robert Beltran just giving up.

Lets tackle the first one of those elements. Hiring a literal con man as your Native American advisor to ensure cultural accuracy is pretty bad, and it results in a character who is from no specific tribe and instead just a generic Indian. But hey, you know, its the future, maybe things changed in the whatever tribe hes from, Id be willing to let that slide if anything was ever done with it. Instead, Chakotays Native American heritage is used in precisely two ways: advise other characters with trite wise sayings and be the spiritual character. I think this isnt said enough: unless youre Star Wars, dont have spiritual characters in space opera science-fiction. It never works out. I believe there are some things you cant measure with a tricorder, how did this guy pass Starfleet Academy. Hes always the one using his Native American powers to psychically lead people in a dream or something stupid like that. Lets not even talk about the episode where its revealed that aliens came to Earth, were impressed at how in-tune with nature Native Americans were, and altered their DNA to live in tribes and always respect it. At best its stupid, at worst its offensive. And I said all of that without talking about how Robert Beltran is clearly Hispanic. Was it too much to ask that you hire an actual Indian to play a character who says lines like Looks like youre with the only Indian in the galaxy who cant make a fire by rubbing two sticks together?

In concept, By-the-book Starfleet captain and rebellious renegade must work together is a great combination. The writers drop this idea after like three episodes, and no one suffers from it more than Chakotay, because he has no personality traits (besides Indian) other than that he supposedly captained a Maquis ship. After this, he becomes just a guy. The show wouldve been better if anyone else was first officer besides him Maybe not Harry, but well get to Harry. Anyway, the writers instantly ran out of things for Chakotay to do, thats the point.

Robert Beltran is like a walking joke. He visibly gives up, to the point where you cant be sure hes even alive. For all I know, its a doppelganger whos using the show as an opportunity to work on its human disguise. Garret Wang (Harry Kim) has said in interviews that the human characters were told to act wooden, and no one mastered that better than Robert Beltran. He tried to get himself fired by asking for a salary raise, and they just gave it to him. He demanded they give his character a love interest, and they do it in the last episode by pairing him with a girl hes spoken like ten lines to.

Chakotay is used well exactly one time, and thats why hes above the likes of Pulaski and Wesley. He is used well only in Scorpion. Thats it. The episode where Janeway is like LOL I WANNA MAKE A DEAL WITH THE BORG and Chakotay is like Heres a wise non-Indian saying about scorpions trying to cross rivers, I dont approve of this course of action and theres a little thing I like to call tension. Even then, though, Chakotays best moment is when hes the fourth most important character in the episode.

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ZenOfThunder posted...

every time I watch the episode where Wesley destroys the flowerbed on the Hot Dude Sex Planet and the two almost naked guys trot over and take out the lethal syringe to execute him on the spot I literally lose my shit in an uncontrollable laughing fit

someone in a writer's room came up with that as an A plot for an episode

it's unironically one of the highlights of TNG for me

Early TNG has some fantastic bad episodes like that.

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Chakotay isn't my bottom spot I'm sorry guys.

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#58. Travis Mayweather
I was a main character on all four seasons of Enterprise. No, really, I was!

Of all the characters in Star Trek, I don't think there was one more ultimately pointless and underutilized than poor Travis Mayweather. I almost feel bad putting him this low, but the guy was a credited main cast member for the entire 98-episode run (only not appearing in three of them) and over that entire stretch of time had absolutely no personality or relevance whatsoever. Even the Original Series didn't shaft anyone quite as badly as the writers of Enterprise did Travis Mayweather. His entire function, for four whole years, was to sit there, wide-eyed at the helm, shut up, and drive.


Even in the mirror universe they didn't do shit with him.

Which is a shame, because the concept for the character was halfway decent: Enterprise taking place as it did in the early days of space travel, Archer's Enterprise turned to a guy who was born to cargo runners and grew up his space, ostensibly giving him more relevant first-hand experience than anybody else on the show. Unfortunately, the show went exactly nowhere with this concept, giving us a single subpar highlight episode for the guy in the second-season outing Horizon. Plot synopsis: He visits his family on the ship where he grew up. That's... pretty much it. The writers gave themselves the one chance to further explore his backstory, and by the end of an episode with him, we feel like we don't have any more information than we started with, apart from knowing his family's names. Hell, the most memorable part of the episode is in the B-plot where T'Pol reacts to the movie Frankenstein.

So yeah, that's all there is to say about Travis Mayweather, one of the most useless nothings of a character in franchise history. You have to feel bad for Anthony Montgomery, but it's hard to say if his performance was even good, they gave him so little to even work with. I wouldn't be surprised if even he forgets he was on Enterprise sometimes.