Opinion: Ranking the 5 original captains of Star Trek

All right. Here is where some of you will probably navigate away from my piece, in favor of a piece proclaiming Kirk to be the best captain to ever adorn a Starfleet uniform, and if so, that is perfectly fine.

First, before anything else, let us establish some undeniable, inarguable truths about Captain James T Kirk.

He was cool. He was charming. He was tough. He was decisive and impetuous.

Kirk took the mold for a Starfleet captain and shattered it, and for that, he has achieved a legendary, even mythical status, that frankly no other captain on this list or any other similar list could ever hope to achieve.

He will always be deeply revered and respected, as he very much should be, and for some, all of that is enough to have him sitting at the #1 spot of any list.

I embrace all of these truths about the celebrated Captain Kirk, so why isn’t he crowned as the best among the five original captains?

While every word I wrote above is the absolute truth, there are some other truths about James Kirk that must be stated as well.

Kirk was reckless, a loose cannon, who often displayed a blatent disregard for the rules if he didn’t agree with them.

He sometimes acted on emotion, rather then rational decision making.

Things always seemed to work out for Captain Kirk, and he used that to justify putting himself and those under his command in precarious and sometimes downright dangerous situations.

He was a womanizer, an egotist, but fortunately for Kirk, he was also incredibly lucky to get out of a lot of the situations he found himself in.

Is Kirk the coolest and most entertaining Captain to watch? Without question. But were you to be assigned to the USS Enterprise under the command of Captain Kirk, are you willing to place yourself in the hands of a Captain who uses blind luck to escape from his sometimes reckless behavior? For me personally, while Kirk might be the James Bond of outer space and certainly the coolest captain to serve under, he wouldn’t be my first or second choice, like the two captains listed above.