Star Trek: Ranking The Captains Worst To Best
Which commanding officer in Star Trek ranks the highest?
To be a great Starfleet captain isn't merely a matter of being the best at hitting objectives as laid out in the commanding officer handbooks or even necessarily being an unblemished character. It's about completing missions, adhering to the greater good, making tough decisions, keeping your crew together as a unit... It's a smorgasbord of requirements that make judging one person's achievements against another's a difficult prospect. But someone's got to do the difficult tasks.
Over the years, there have been many captains in Star Trek movies and TV shows, but for the sake of boundaries, we're only looking at captains of "main" ships in the universe. So no Defiant commanders, as much as they deserve acclaim.
There are, of course, other names to consider briefly in this ranking - officers as wide ranging as Saru, Wesley Crusher, Spock, Worf and Harry Kim have all been granted the position of acting captain on their various ships. But they're a consideration for another time.
So who is the best captain in Star Trek and who didn't fare so well?
10. Gabriel Lorca
Ship: Buran & Discovery
Strictly speaking, there are - of course - two Lorcas - but only one of them actually took command of the Discovery. It's not even clear at what point the "real" Lorca was replaced by his mirror version (because he didn't come with a handy "evil goatee" like might have happened in earlier Star Trek iterations).
It's hard to assume what Lorca was like as a captain, but presumably, he was well thought of. And the mirror version is absolutely not one of the better commanding officers, because, fundamentally, he's a bit of a sh*t. He also fails in his objectives as captain, no matter how nefarious.