10 Worst Ever Captains In Star Trek

There are many things which mark a captain as great in Star Trek, and the franchise has no shortage of people who've earned the description. There are Janeways, there are Siskos, and there are even Boimlers - when the situation really, truly, desperately needs it. Commanding a ship is a big responsibility - something these following people should have tried to remember.

There are traits that a great captain cannot possess if they want to be remembered with honour. One cannot be selfish. One cannot be impulsive to the point of wilful. One must put the lives and wellbeing of the crew under their command first. 

Some of them were tested and they didn't quite match up. Some of them had an unfair set of obstacles in their paths - but proved they were neither adaptable, nor willing to listen to reason. Becoming a captain in the Star Trek universe is supposed to be hard - so one honestly is left wondering how in the name of Boothby did they achieve it. 

While there is an undeniable element of tragedy to his story, as well as a certain degree of thematic vindication that came later on, the irrefutable fact is that Captain Benjamin Maxwell took a Starfleet ship and waged a one-man war. His actions were not simply anaethema to Gene Roddenberry's tenets for Star Trek, but ran the risk of plunging the Alpha Quadrant into a preemptive, bloody struggle.

His justification for his actions was weak. Claiming that 'information came [my] way', he attempted to sway Picard to his way of thinking. The Cardassians, he believed, were absolutely getting ready for a new offensive against the Federation. There was simply no other way of looking at it.

While he may very well have been correct, and the events the followed Dukat's negotiations with the Dominion certainly seemed to prove him right, Maxwell took matters into his own hands. Without any formal declarations, he ordered the Phoenix into Cardassian territory, attacking depots and ships, killing hundreds of Cardassians. This, added with his own personal trauma left over from the massacre at Setlik III, confirmed that, while there may be romanticised songs about the hero who tried to stop a war by fighting one, Maxwell misunderstood what it meant to be a captain in Starfleet.