Star Trek: Every Captain Ranked Worst To Best (2023)

Liam Shaw was one of only ten lucky survivors from the USS Constance, a ship that was destroyed by Locutus during The Battle Of Wolf 359. Likely due to this experience, Shaw was a particularly no-nonsense captain. He liked to do things by the books, and he considered the adventures of the Enterprise-D to be largely 'irresponsible'.

He served as captain of the Titan-A for five years and gained a reputation for being generally unfriendly. He was openly hostile to his new first officer, Seven of Nine, by referring to her as her birth name against her wishes, because of his hatred for the Borg. We learned later that Shaw was actually going to recommend Seven to be promoted to Captain, and he finally referred to her by her real chosen name before he died, but he still made things unnecessarily hostile for Seven for a long time, and that's not a quality of a great captain.

Overall, Shaw was great at his job, but it seems like he was very unapproachable to his crew at times, and he didn't take risks, which really held him back from being one of the greats.