My ranking is, however, the correct ranking.
I woke up this morning with Star Trek on my mind, like you do, and decided to see how other fans and so-called Star Trek experts had ranked the Captains. To my surprise, they were all wrong, so I thought I would provide the right answers here for everyone’s edification.
First up, The Washington Post. This fancy newspaper alleges to be well-connected, but apparently not in the greater Delta Quadrant. The Post thinks the ranking goes like this:
7. Archer
6. Pike
5. Reboot Kirk
4. Picard
3. Janeway
2. Sisko
1. Kirk
Close, but no cigar, WaPo.
Next we’ve got Space.com. You’d think a website entirely about space would know the right way to rank Star Trek Captains, but sadly it is not so. Get yourself together, Space.com. You have one job. Space-y here thinks:
6. Archer
5. Sisko
4. Reboot Kirk
3. Janeway
2. Kirk
1. Picard
Not placing Benjamin Lafayette Sisko in the top three completely invalidates Space.com’s existence, so we’re moving on to Startrek.com, another site you’d think would be up on this sort of thing.
The site ran weeks of polls on which of the Captains exemplified various “Captainly” traits, and though they did not do a ranking, after 50,000+ votes the site ultimately declared Jean-Luc Picard the best Captain overall. How can so many people be so wrong?
Up to bat next we have Futurism, yet another website that claims to know things about science but not, apparently, the science of how to accurately calculate the best Star Trek Captain. This was their mistake:
6. Archer
5. Reboot Kirk
4. Janeway
3. Sisko
2. Kirk
1. Picard
Here is the correct ranking of Star Trek Captains:
6. Archer
5. Reboot Kirk
4. Janeway
3. Picard
2. Sisko
1. Kirk
You’re welcome.
Yeah, I’m not sure why we’re throwing reboot Kirk into the mix considering how little screentime he’s had compared to the rest—if we’re doing movies, we’d have to consider that Spock becomes a Captain and Spock always wins everything. Plus we now have Discovery‘s Georgiou and Lorca to consider.
Sure, Georgiou died in the premiere but it seemed like she was great, and, okay, maybe Lorca turned out to be the evil mirror universe Lorca, but he was also kind of a fantastic Captain while it lasted? Anyway, my ranking is unimpeachable, but I’m sure you’ll have things to tell me in the comments.
(images: Paramount)
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