Star Trek: 10 Dumbest Decisions By Starfleet Officers
You'd think that being an officer means you need to be smart. No one told these folks.
There is nothing to say that smart people don't make mistakes from time to time. It's natural, human nature even. Captains, Commodores and everyone else in the fleet are prone to the odd slip-up and poor judgment call. When this is about which tool they use to get the job done, then it's not always a big deal. When it becomes a matter of life and death, things change drastically.
This list is about those colossal blunders that usually ended up costing people their lives or, in one case, costing them their chance at a new life. There is a lot to be said for having great power and great responsibilities, yet sometimes having a bit of common sense would do the trick too.
There are some names here that may be either a little unfamiliar, or less heard than others, but don't think that the main cast of the shows are exempt from making mess-ups as well. Star Trek may show us all a bright and glorious future but you need to remember that it is being written by people from the fairly bog-standard present.
10. Deactivating Ripper's Forcefield - Ellen Landry
Ripper is the giant Tardigrade who powers the spore drive of the USS Discovery in the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. This Tardigrade is a big and beefy creature, one who can survive in the harshness of space and is, frankly, tougher than humans. Why Ellen Landry thought she had a chance with a knife and phaser simply baffles the mind.
Ripper is beginning to rebel against his captors, which is exactly what the Starfleet crew are toward him. In order to force him to cooperate, Landry decides that she will deactivate his containment field and beat him into submission. In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Ripper lives up to his name and tears into her.
Landy is an officer who survived the destruction of the USS Buran and managed to endear herself to the Mirror version of Gabriel Lorca, even though she didn't know that he wasn't her original captain. Still, all are forgiven for not realizing that. So, her previous achievements and strategic victories seem to have abandoned her memory as she decides that her little knife stood a chance against Ripper.