10 Best Star Trek Characters Only In One Episode

"The Doomsday Machine" is a dramatic masterpiece of the original series. A world-killing alien weapon of ancient origin on a rampage across the galaxy. One commodore with a dead crew and a wrecked ship commandeers the Enterprise to stop the thing at all costs.

The half-mad Commodore Matthew Decker is the centerpiece of the story and quite frankly steals the show. His battle of personalities with the Enterprise crew is made all the more interesting by the fact that while his nerves are frayed and his tactical senses are in the wrong as he drives the ship towards what can only be a suicide mission, morally he is absolutely in the right.

It's impossible to hate Decker, even though the story sometimes wants us to. The audience is encouraged to take the side of Kirk and Spock, who end up disobeying the direct orders of a superior and essentially committing mutiny to save the ship. However, Decker is committed to saving the millions of lives that will be lost if the doomsday machine continues on its course. Lives which Kirk and Spock seem all too willing to write off to ensure the survival of their ship.

Decker is a character who shares a lot of traits with the crazy captains and evil admirals who recur in the franchise but who is in fact the antithesis. He always holds the moral high ground and while perhaps a tad suicidal, he is unquestionably heroic. It's that unwavering dedication to doing the right thing at the cost of all else which makes him such a legendary character.

Decker figures out the trick to killing the doomsday machine and makes the ultimate sacrifice in the attempt. While it's up to Kirk to finish the job, it's Commodore Decker's plan which gets it done. Of course, in the end Kirk is probably lucky that Decker sacrifices himself because he would almost certainly have been court-martialed for mutiny and blamed for any lives lost to the machine had it continued on it's course.