There are a lot of characters in Star Trek. While plenty are dearly beloved, many others are loathed, despised, or simply forgotten. Sometimes, those sentiments are deserved. Sometimes, but not always. Here, we’ll explore some characters that deserve more attention or credit than they get.
Of course, it’s hard to determine what makes a character underrated. In some cases, it can be that the fans don’t rate or praise a character as highly as they deserve. Other times, it’s that the stories themselves underserve the characters in some way. Making these judgments is obviously subjective, but I will try to explain my rationale all the same.
Also, for this list, characters who were introduced in the current era of Star Trek (basically Discovery till now) will not be included. There are certainly underrated characters in these shows, but their newness means that the fandom’s estimation of them has not settled yet. Maybe an update will be in order in the future, once it's clearer who really is underrated.
6. B'Elanna Torres
It’s not so much that B’Elanna Torres is overly disliked as it is that she just seems to have been forgotten. Along with Neelix and Kes, B’Elanna is one of the only main cast characters from Star Trek: Voyager who has not made an appearance in a newer series, and she is the only one who is feasibly based in the Alpha Quadrant.
Granted, cameos aren’t everything, and it’s possible that Roxann Dawson—who portrayed B’Elanna in Voyager—does not wish to reprise the role. Even setting that aside, though, B’Elanna is a really cool character who doesn’t get the attention she deserves.
For one thing, the half-human/half-Klingon, former Maquis chief engineer of the USS Voyager had a lot of interesting avenues to explore in her backstory. We see this in the early seasons of Voyager, with Captain Janeway often mentoring Torres to be her best. This doesn’t last long, though, and it’s really a shame, as it could be a good counterpoint to earlier Trek characters, like Spock or Worf.
Additionally, B’Elanna Torres is almost certainly the best engineer we have seen in any series. While all of the ships’ engineers have to improvise on occasion, B’Elanna has to do so without any support from the larger Federation and Starfleet infrastructure. She can’t rely on a layover at a Starbase as the ship trundles through the Delta Quadrant. Despite this, she kept the ship going.
Honestly, I am willing to argue that almost any of the Voyager characters who aren’t the Doctor or Seven of Nine deserve to be on a list of underrated characters. This can’t just be a “Voyager has a good crew” list, however, and B’Elanna is both my favorite character from the series and notably ignored within the series itself at times, so that is why she is on this list.