4. Captain Marie Batel
Captain Marie Batel initially appears as Christopher Pike’s off‑duty love interest, the person who reminds him he is more than his foretold fate, but she steadily evolves into a key player in the show’s Gorn storyline and in how Starfleet actually operates. Her dual roles, as a front‑line captain and as a legal actor during Una Chin-Riley's (Number One) court‑martial, let Strange New Worlds explore how regulations, politics, and personal loyalties collide inside the Federation.
Season 3 makes Batel even more pivotal by having her survive Gorn infestation, effectively turning her into living evidence of the enemy’s horrors and a test case for how far Starfleet compassion extends when someone is biologically compromised. Yet because she appears intermittently and is framed through Pike’s perspective more than her own, Batel lands lower on this list than the Enterprise regulars; her impact on plot is huge, but the audience’s window into her interior life is still relatively narrow.