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All Five Star Trek Captains Share a Stage
An anonymous reader writes "Just after half past seven on the evening of Friday 19th October, history was made at the Destination Star Trek London event at the capital's ExCel centre; when Captains Archer (Scott Bakula), Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Sisko (Avery Brooks), Picard (Patrick Stewart) and James T. Kirk (William Shatner) appeared together on a European stage. This momentous event, which had occurred just once before, at the Wizard World Comic Con in Philadelphia in June, not only lived up to the expectations of fans, but exceeded them by a good light-year."
...but I think that only counts as "history" in the very loosest sense.
They're forgetting Jeffery Hunter and Bruce Greenwood. They were also captains of the enterprise, albeit for one episode. Some will say they don't count , but being an captain is worthy of recognition.
The one who came before Kirk in the original series pilot. Last I saw he was either cavorting with a lady in his imagination or in a bad wheelchair, going "beep beep" (no) over and over.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
The trouble with Janeway was that the writers seemed to think she should fill the role of the series' primary antagonist. Also, she was a bit of a micro-manager, essentially the Jimmy Carter of starship captains.
How is it history if it has already happened once before?
Well, can you name any other female leader roles that didn't seem arrogant to you? Excluding eye-candy actresses?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Hmmm . . . not quite right . . .
I can't watch voyager because of her. The arrogance in her voice grates on me enough to outweigh watching 36 of D.
. . . that's better . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Maybe because he'll only pose with other actors? *ducks*
I am officially gone from
They forgot Captain Sulu!
They're using their grammar skills there.
Can you name a StarTrek captain that didn't seem arrogant to you? I'm pretty sure that's a job requirement. Providing episodes with story-lines by working against the interests of her crew, however, is not a job requirement, and it's curious they cast her in that role. It makes a situation where we're rooting against her instead of for her.
I suppose she was meant to contrast with Sisko, who was willing to break pretty much any rule for the benefit of his crew or society in general. In one episode he collaborates with Garak, who eventually assassinates a member of the Romulan high council to bring them into the war. In the end of the episode he concludes that he'd do it again. Janeway, on the other hand, have never met a rule she didn't like. At one point she happily complies with the rules of an alien society and foregoes an opportunity to cut 50 years off of their journey! The conclusion you can draw is that following rules is only for people who hate themselves and hate everyone else.
Trying to amass so many geek in one place that they form the critical mass of a black hole?
Troi was rarely arrogant, although sometimes somewhat preachy - I like that in a psychologist. She was, especially in the later seasons, among the calmer, most professionally behaved characters.
Beverly Crusher was, for my money, the sexiest woman on TV due to her BRAINS - she kept her head cool in many instances when everyone else was going apeshit. She became my hero when she willed her hallucinations away in "Night Terrors" - that appeal to reason is one of the core values of humanistic Star Trek.
Does the physical beauty of characters make their arguments invalid? If so you fall in the same trap as jocks do, and you should turn in your nerd card: looks, good or otherwise, do not make a person. I never felt that TNG was trying to sell itself to me via sex appeal. It simply did not need to. Voyager, on the other hand....
Picard was a dweeb & well past his due date start of season 1 lol! (only time I got a sense of real authority from him was when he was Locutus, eh).
Now Worf - he could have made a fine captain I tell ya!
...was Rachel Garrett (played by Tricia O'Neil), captain of the NCC-1701-C. Her decision to sacrifice her ship and crew averted all-out war with the Klingons, saved the Federation and saved billions of lives. That's a tough act to follow.
I SWEAR that the original concept name was 6 of 9, but was changed for obvious reasons :).
Neelix is the Jar Jar Binks of Star Trek.
Um... Commodore Decker was a Commodore, not a Captain. That's why they called him Commodore.
Picard should have been a Commodore. There are a couple of episodes where he is commanding a flotilla of ships.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Janeway's rule following didn't bother me. It seems to be the natural character of a woman in that sort of position of power, at least in my experience. Picard had a stick up his ass the first couple of seasons but that seems somewhat fitting for a his position too. However, he had mellowed out quite a bit by the end of TNG and was much more charismatic to me by then. Now Riker...i would hate to serve under his ass. Yeah, he was a cool, laid-back, easy-going fella most of the time but when things got tense and everyone was under pressure, he would angrily bark orders at people like they were dumbasses. Sisko was always my favorite. His temperament always seemed appropriate for whatever situation he was in (except when dealing with Picard in the pilot episode). He was smart but not cerebral. He was thoughtful and considerate but in a manly way. He is the only captain that never did or acted in a way that seemed ridiculous to me. Kirk is cool. All there is to it...except for a scene in Star Trek The Motion Picture. It was early in the movie. He told some young ensign to get out of the way like she was incompetent and took over the beam-in controls. The person being beamed-in died. He got this look on his face like "oh. i fscked up. did anybody see?" LOL other than that one scene, he was always cool-headed and wise enough to sit back, trust his people, and let them do their jobs. Archer was a likable guy but there were some instances where he suffered from Janeway-rule-following and angry temper-tantrums that just didn't seem in-line with his character and too forced. They're all great actors. The problems i have with any of them i believe stem from the writing/directing of those particular scenes...except with Riker. I think Jonathan Frakes over-did it on his own sometimes. Then again, all real characters will have their own unique quirks and flaws.
Captain of the space mall? Good for him... only took five years.
I don't get the "primary antagonist" part. As for "micromanager", isn't that true of all five? If they say, "Huh, I need to spend some time actually running the ship, I'll delegate this to Ensign Reshirt" then the series lead actor has almost no screen time for that episode, and the economics of TV doesn't allow for that.
. Kirk is cool. All there is to it...
I always liked Kirk. Basically in every first alien contact situation he either got into a fist fight, killed one or more, or fucked one of the (green/blue/shape shifted/whatever) women.
except for a scene in Star Trek The Motion Picture. It was early in the movie. He told some young ensign to get out of the way like she was incompetent and took over the beam-in controls. The person being beamed-in died. He got this look on his face like "oh. i fscked up. did anybody see?" LOL other than that one scene, he was always cool-headed and wise enough to sit back, trust his people, and let them do their jobs..
It's been a while since I saw that, but I thought he did it so the transporter operator didn't have to be the one to kill them. I believe the transporter operator even thanked him for it.
I suppose she was meant to contrast with Sisko, who was willing to break pretty much any rule for the benefit of his crew or society in general. In one episode he collaborates with Garak, who eventually assassinates a member of the Romulan high council to bring them into the war. In the end of the episode he concludes that he'd do it again.
Sisko networks then?
Except for brief periods of time in the US navy, commodore has always been a temporary title, not a rank. You got to be a commodore (temporarily) if you were put in command of a group of ships and either the admiral liked you and wanted to give you a chance to wear extra gold braid, or there was some need to clearly elevate you above the other captains (for example, if one of the others was senior to you but you were supposed to be in overall command).
So Decker would have been a captain with the title of commodore while he was commanding a task force, and IIRC Picard generally commanded multiple ships in emergencies and impromptu fleets, where he would have taken command as senior captain.
Well, I think her uncaptainness can be explained by her being completely out of her league. Her ship is absurdly far from home, half her crew had to be replaced with terrorists, she has to get everyone to get along for seventy years without shore leave and Starfleet regulations (which she had previously decided to be some tasty Kool-aid) don't really cover that. Her raging caffeine addiction doesn't really help. She's not the captain they'd hand a flagship over to but the Voyager isn't exactly a flagship, either.
I think VOY's weak point was that the writing wasn't exactly of consistently good quality (especially the final episode, which is like a bad fanfic). The characters are mostly fine. They work - even Neelix, from time to time.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Shup up Wesley. Oedipus stories belong to reddit.
Didn't the series end with Janeway breaking all the rules, committing multiple acts of insubordination, to get her crew home through the Borg nexus more than 10 years early so Tuvok wouldn't be a vegetable, 7 of 9 wouldn't die, and Chakotay wouldn't end up a broken husk of a man?
Maybe that was the whole point of her character, the evolution from one who blindly followed rules to someone who chose to make her own rules. That and someone who put the needs of those she cared about and for above stroking her own ego. That's actually pretty cool if you think about it.
I hope so! I haven't seen the end yet, I'm on season 5.
but I tried going back to S1 about a year ago & nearly lost an eye! :)
That's true for all (newer) Trek series, but on the other hand it's a sign of how much the characters (and actors) grow over the years. Compare first season Worf to DS9-Worf. That whole Klingon backstory gave him charackter depth. S1 now looks like pushing cardboard-cutouts around on the stage.
Even worse with Voyager. You might think, each character was limited to one character trait only! Daredevil Tom Paris, Mystic-indian Chakotay, funny Neelix, stubborn B'elana and "Captain I sense something"-Kes. Oh, and Spock-copycat Tuvok. Got slightly better, but as they never could go back to a planet (boldly going forward cause we can't find reverse...) there wasn't a chance to pick up again a narrative thread and develop it into a long story arch. Random encounters with popup-Borg and funny numbered species didn't quite fill that spot.
bickerdyke
5 actors, doubtless paid large sums of money, appear together on stage for the second time in the space of 4 months. It's of earth shattering importance.
For the young uns ....
There was another Captain in the Star Trek series - Captain Pike - played by Jeffrey Hunter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Pike_(Star_Trek)
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Sisko all the way. Plus he got the best stern-telling-off (of Worf, no less) bit out of all of Star Trek:
"As your captain, it is my duty to inform you that you made the wrong choice. I don't think Starfleet will file any formal charges -- even a secret court-martial would run the risk of revealing too much about their intelligence operations. But this will go in to your service record... and to be completely honest, you probably won't be offered a command on your own after this."
"I understand."
"I have also issued new orders -- you and Jadzia are not to be assigned to a mission on your own ever again... and one last thing: as a man who had a wife... if Jennifer had been lying in that clearing... I wouldn't have left her either."
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Troi---the officer on the bridge whose job it was to make sure the other officers and crew were thinking right.
The Soviets had those too, but they called them a zampolit, not councilor.
--- Mercutio was right.
Really, that's a better telling off than this one?
Picard: "The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based! And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform! I'm going to make this simple for you, Mr. Crusher: Either you come forward and tell Admiral Brand what really took place, or I will."
Wesley: "Captain..."
Picard: "Dismissed!"
I am officially gone from
According to my wife, Avery Brooks played two characters on DS9. The first few seasons it was "Commander Cisco". Then Brooks shaved his head, grew a goatee, and played "Captain Hawk".