Who is the worst main captain in Star Trek history?

Being the lead of a Star Trek series is a high honor. Usually, the person who lands the leading role is playing the captain, or person in charge of their ship. That, or they become the captain after some time as a commander. It's these people we think about as series leads when we think about the men and women who are front and center.

This is a convention that has been broken more and more often in recent years. Shows like Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy do not feature a genuine captain or leading figure to start the show. While some may point out that Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine wasn't a captain, like the main characters from these other shows, he was still the individual who was seen as in charge.

Michael Burnham, Beckett Mariner, and Dal R'El are the main characters but none of them are in a real position of authority to start the series. While Picard featured the iconic Jean-Luc Picard, he too wasn't in a position of power when his show started. Burnham would eventually become one, while Picard returned to a familiar role as well. Yet, Mariner and Dal are still a long way from assuming the position that others have.

So despite there being 10 major television properties, only seven of them have a unique leading figure; James Kirk in the Original Series, Picard in The Next Generation (and Picard), Sisko in Deep Space Nine, Kathryne Janeway in Voyager (and Prodigy), Jonathan Archer in Enterprise, Burnham in Discovery, and Christopher Pike in Strange New Worlds.

It's a tight list, and trying to figure out which one is the best and which one is the worst is a hard task. One that ScreenRant took upon themselves and in our opinion, did a mixed job of evaluating. They had, from worst to best; Archer, Burnham, Pike, Sisko, Kirk, Janeway, and Picard.

Let's be very clear, the criteria for which you rank the captains will be different than ours. On any day you could make a case for almost any of these captains to be the sixth-best or the first-best. The one that you cannot, that you absolutely can't do, is Burnham.

While Sonequa Martin-Green is a stellar actress, they made her character of Michael Burnham just unbearable. Shoehorning her in with Spock and his family, having her commit mutiny, and getting her captain killed, while also starting a war with the Klingons...there's no getting past that.

They tried to make her too important to the franchise's history for some reason, instead of letting her find her own space in the universe like every other Star Trek captain was given the chance to do. She was a rushed character with little personality at first and it wasn't until they went to the distant future, far from the storylines she was hampered with, that she started to find her own voice as a character.

She got better. Much better. Yet, none of the other captains had to get "much better". For better or worse, they all stayed relatively the same. Save for a point or two off-center. Burnham had the biggest character growth from the first to the last episode, but in doing so, they bogged her down with so many unnecessary plot points, that it made it hard to sit through two full seasons of a Star Trek show.

So we can debate all day over who the best captain is, but sadly, there is no debate over who the worst is.