{"id":299,"date":"2017-07-01T15:07:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-01T15:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/?p=299"},"modified":"2017-09-08T22:53:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T22:53:07","slug":"m-y-o-p-i-a-3-surviving-a-starship-a-k-a-which-captain-would-kill-you-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/?p=299","title":{"rendered":"M.Y.O.P.I.A. #3: Surviving a Starship a.k.a. Which Captain Would Kill You First?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether you\u2019re a hardcore “Trekker,” or just a casual viewer who calls obsessed fans “Trekkies,” many people who have viewed the shows and movies have probably wondered what it\u2019d be like to serve aboard a starship. When people fantasize about being in Star Trek, they obviously don\u2019t want to die. Put ideas of amenities aside: the holo-deck, T\u2019Pol<\/a>, Worf\u2019s pizza slicers<\/a>, and consider which ship you might live on longest if you were just a plain old ordinary crew-person. What it all boils down to is your captain. Of the five main series, here\u2019s my analysis of which captain would best ensure your livelihood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Captain Jams T. Kirk:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He\u2019d kill you. Seriously, you\u2019d die fast serving under Kirk. This surely doesn\u2019t come as a surprise to anyone. Kirk is an extremely clever and strategic captain. He\u2019s willing to make big gambles that sometimes payoff with explosive results. But, he barely bats an eye when someone dies. His crew can get killed just feet away from him and he sometimes doesn’t even turn to watch. He often doesn\u2019t gasp or even shrug.\u00a0 I know, he\u2019s willing to risk life and limb for his officers, but he does this only for his officers\/friends. Kirk does accomplish some pretty big things over the course of the movies and TV show, but he also sets a standard for going through his crew like they are disposable paper cups.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Captain Benjamin Sisko:<\/p>\n

While he at times takes command of ships, Sisko more often oversees an important Starfleet space station. Sisko is considered by fans to be an amazing strategist; he makes moves during the Deep Space Nine series to turn the tide of a war for Starfleet. He also breaks rules and does things of questionable ethics to get results. While he is a good strategist, other captains on this list have outsmarted powerful cosmic beings, and have stopped universal conflicts before they begin. Sisko is competent, and I like seeing someone other than the standard-issue white male, but Sisko isn\u2019t afraid to send people to their deaths during the conflicts he\u2019s involved in. People also die randomly on his space station, and he sometimes seems more intent on getting promoted to admiral than of having a love for ship or crew.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Captain Kathryn Janeway:<\/p>\n

Again, it\u2019s nice to see variety in starship captains. Janeway not only proves she\u2019s competent, but is also the strictest in upholding Starfleet policies. She guides her ship through unexplored space\u00a0 independent of outside help. While losing crew seemed common early in the Voyager series, the death level tapered off over time. Yet, she has her flaws. Mainly, she\u2019s coldhearted. Janeway punishes crew for diverging from orders, even if disobeying means saving everyone\u2019s life on the ship. She has totalitarian moments, refusing to listen to others, even exacting revenge on her crew. Yes, she gets results, but her loyalty seems more to results than crew. Serving under her sounds nerve-wracking. Although Janeway and Sisko have good qualities, when it comes to Voyager and Deep Space Nine, these series are kind of like those students sitting in the back of the room who you forget even exist until one day the teacher calls on them and you look back and think, \u201coh yeah, that kid’s in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Captain Jean-Luc Picard:<\/p>\n

Picard commands a larger crew than any other captain on this list. He also has families aboard his ship. He encounters war-bent aliens, puzzling cosmic phenomena, and near omnipotent enemies. Starfleet offers him promotions. He turns them down because he loves captaining. Casualties happen, usually due to the unexpected, or when fighting more powerful enemies. Picard is concerned with preventing casualties. He listens to his officers and he inspires his crew. He sets a standard for a starship captain, and yet sometimes Mr. Earl Grey Tea also seems like a snob. Whenever he nods at common crew, he doesn\u2019t make small talk, just kind of stares off in the distance. His worst responses are to children. Early in The Next Generation, whenever he sees a kid he acts like it\u2019s some sort of little alien critter. He acts like he was born at age 38. Though you\u2019d be fairly safe under Picard\u2019s command, he gets edged out, slightly, by someone else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Captain Archer:<\/p>\n

Archer makes some of the dumbest mistakes of any captain on this list, often acting like, \u201chey what\u2019s the worst that could happen if a bunch of us go on an away mission to an unexplored planet, or, how about let’s move closer to that bizarre cloud of cosmic energy.\u201d Then, Archer learns from his mistakes. In his defense, he is chronologically, the first of all these captains in his Enterprise series. Archer actually helps establish some of the directives that govern the future of Starfleet. Once seasoned, he has a lot of Picard\u2019s best qualities: inspiring his crew, listening to officers, and having a concern for casualties. The big difference for Archer is that he smiles and chats with lower crewmembers when he sees them. Perhaps it\u2019s partly because his crew is smaller than the other ship captains, but he just seems to have a more positive rapport with crew than the others. For this, I give him the edge. So although Archer is almost as ignorantly as dangerous as Kirk in his first season, he gets much better at captaining later. The guy would know your name, and he\u2019d probably agonize if he lost you. That might almost make a hypothetical Star Trek death worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who cares who the so-called “best” captain might be. If I were serving on a Star Trek ship, I’d prefer to survive the first time I was beamed down to an unexplored planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[26,27,10,23,35,24,28,25,22],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-myopia","tag-archer","tag-janeway","tag-jeremy-schnee","tag-kirk","tag-myopia","tag-picard","tag-red-shirt-death","tag-sisko","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremyschnee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}