I spent some time in the Navy when I was a young man and I picked up a few things like how to make a bosun’s chair (boatswain  for the real salty dog), how to avoid working parties like the plague and how to convince a prostitute that your wallet must have gotten stolen earlier without getting stabbed or arrested.  I made that last part up.  Seriously.  I was just kidding.  Layoff man, what’s with the 3rd degree?

But one of the most  important things that I picked up in the Navy was how to spot a good Captain.  I watched and saw how the worst Captains could make you want to go man-overboard in the middle of the Atlantic.  But the best Captains, ahh… they could get you to shovel shit 12 hours a day, eat that same shit for breakfast, lunch and dinner and beg them for seconds.  I used to tell snot-nosed 22 year old Ensigns straight out of college that “you can’t demand respect, you have to earn it. But once you earn it you can command them to do whatever you want.”  I don’t if any of them ever took my advice but I hope so.

But I am both a sailor AND a dork.  A dork who has watched a shitload of movies (enough to get me on a gameshow and earn the nickname ‘The Human IMDB’) and enough television to rot the brains of an entire developing nations’ children.  As such, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a nice list of the greatest fictional Space Captains that is constructed wholly of my singular opinion.  If you don’t like my list, piss off.  That’s why it’s called MY list.  I’m sure there are going to be some pretty steamed fanboys out there who will take a couple of minutes off of W.O.W. to bury me, digg me down, or send me nasty emails (please guys, no genitalia pics.) All because I screwed the order or missed someone.   Like my Mom used to say “Tough titty said the kitty.”

Oh, and I go backwards from 5 down.  That’s how you’re supposed to do “Top…” lists.  It creates suspense.  I hate it when people start with the best.  So without further adieu, Number 5 on the list of Greatest Captains in Space.

5.  CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK (USS ENTERPRISE, NCC-1701)

See how I did that.  I set you up to be pissed.  You’re reading how I start with the worst, and BAM… Bill Shatner’s Kirk!!!  How did I come to this fact?  Let me explain.

First of all this is NOT a complete list.  Had I the time, energy or desire I could very well have compiled a Top 20 or even Top 50 (ok, that might be a stretch) Space Captain list.  Truth is, 5 isn’t that bad. In all of Science Fiction coming in 5th is an achievement.  Let’s take a look at Kirk, shall we?

WHAT HE DID RIGHT:
Well first of all, the man is a fucking Starfleet Admiral!  Being a Captain is one thing.  Shit you can be a Captain without ever actually making the rank of Captain (weird I know) just so long as you’re the Commanding Officer of a ship.  But making Admiral is no bullshit.  It takes a life of dedication and hard work.  And James Kirk certainly did those things.

It’s staggering to think of all the shit he’s done; battled Gorn (a giant man lizard capable of hurling giant rocks) in a hand-to-hand-death match, battled an evil version of his own damn self (more than once), gone back in time to the 1930’s (New York) to save the planet at great cost to his love life.  And that’s just the show!!! Never mind the movies.

The sad truth is that Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) was well ahead of it’s time.  Very liberal in its desire to exact equality through gender, color and species.  Captain Kirk was a civil rights pioneer in many ways.  He shared the first interracial kiss on television.  He had Asian and Russian officers on his bridge (in the midst of the cold war no less.)   He tutored many female officers in the ways of love.  And he taught a Vulcan (ok, half Vulcan) how to feel damn it!  It’s a shame that TOS only managed to birth 79 episodes before its untimely cancellation.  Viewers felt that they didn’t get to fully experience the Greatness that was Captain Kirk.

But in 1979 James T. Kirk came back to roaring life in the aptly named “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.”  It is in those films where he managed to further the legend of his name by battling Kahn, burying his best friend, bringing him back to life, going to 1984 (Los Angeles this time) to bring a Whale back to the future.  Seriously they built a tank, partied in L.A. and BROUGHT A FUCKING WHALE BACK!!!  That is how a Starfleet Captain keeps his pimp hand strong.

But for all his epic adventures and success’, he also had a few notable failures.

BEST MOMENT:
Man there are a bunch to choose from here.  But I think that most Trekers will agree that in all the excellent moments in the stellar (no pun intended) career of James T. Kirk, the most defining would have to be isolated to a single word.  Delivered in only a way that Willam Shattner could.  In utter hatred and contempt for his arch nemesis Khan Noonien Singh (played with perfection by Ricardo Montalban) he simply yelled his name.  Watch… enjoy.

WHAT HE DID WRONG:
A Captain is charged with the care and custody of the lives of his men.  In the grand scheme of things, outside of orders and mission plans, it’s really his number 1 goal.  Keep your men alive!  If that’s the case, then as a Captain Mr. Kirk failed, and failed pretty miserably.  Think of it in today’s terms and not the 24th century.  Can you imagine that the Capt. of a U.S. Navy ship sent a boarding party out to some country.  In the party was the Capt. himself, the Executive Officer (XO), the Science Officer, maybe the ship’s doctor and a bunch of junior officers.  Now imagine that 43 times, the junior officers died!  Seriously, can you imagine the heads that would roll if that happened once let alone 20 times? And that’s just the landing parties a full 23 additional deaths befell Red Shirts on the Captain’s sting on the Enterprise.  What I always wanted to see was the letters he had to write to that family of the fallen red shirt, or the time taken to console their best friend onboard.  That’s a pretty big failure as a Capt.

The Captain’s other big no-no has been discussed before by a great number of dorks, bloggers and stand up comedians alike.  It certainly bears repeating though.

Do you know that “The Prime Directive” is? I’m guessing most of you do, but I’ll explain it for the unversed.   Every Star Trek begins with Kirk saying, among other things, that the Enterprise’s mission was to “Seek out new life, and new civilization.  To boldly go where no man has gone before.”  Ok Jim, that may be true, but what you forgot to mention to the faithful viewer is that your precious Starfleet’s Prime Directive told you exactly what NOT to do once you got there.

Starfleet’s Prime Directive, or General Order No. 1 (so you get how important it is) states:

“Nothing within these articles of Federation shall authorize the United Federation of Planets to intervene in matters which are essentially the domestic jurisdiction of any planetary social system, or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under these Articles of Federation;”

I took that from Wikipedia but I’m pretty sure it’s verbatim because you just know that some mega Trekie (sorry…. Treker)  spent a lot of personal time and passion creating, editing and monitoring that article.  Basically what the Prime Directive says is that when you get to a planet or moon or wherever the hell in time and space you are… you DO NOT mess with those peoples shit!  They have a civilization, leave it the fuck alone.  And nowhere is this more important than in civilizations that haven’t figured out how to manage interstellar travel, or are “pre-warp” in Star Trek Terms.  From the same wiki article:

“It has special implications, however, for civilizations that have not yet developed the technology for interstellar spaceflight (“pre-warp”), since no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or the existence of extraplanetary civilizations, lest this exposure alter the natural development of the civilization. Although this was the only application stated by Captain Kirk in “Return of the Archons“, by the 24th Century, it had been indicated to include purposeful efforts to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society”

Again, don’t fuck with shit.  Especially if they don’t already know your ass exists.  You do realize that this was the entire premise of the 8th film, right?  Where the Enterprise crew, in a frantic race to stop the Borg from assimilating all of humanity, travel back in time and teach Zephram Cock-ring how to create a warp drive.  Sorry, just did some research and realized it’s Zephram Cochrane (played by James Cromwell in a rare couple-rungs-down-the-prestige-ladder role) not Cock-Ring as I had remembered it.  Makes sense that it got a PG-13 rating now… always thought that was a bit vulgar. Thus he makes interstellar travel possible for man-kind subsequently making “First Contact” with the Vulcans.  I guess it’s somewhat of a time travel paradox because if they hadn’t gone back and tutored him, would we ever learn to travel into deep space?  That’s some deep shit right there boy.  Shit, now that I’m thinking about that I realize that it wasn’t Kirk but rather Jon-Luc Picard, No.2 and those TNG a-holes who did that.  We’ll get to them in *SPOILER ALERT* No. 2 On Our List of Greatest Space Captains Ever. So where was I again?  Oh, Kirk and the Prime Directive.

So yeah, whether Jimmy Kirk was completely disregarding Starfleet regulations, or his Captain’s Handbook for Starfleet rules was buried under the supple naked backside of some hot young officer that Kirk was fraternizing with (see: boning or banging… and that’s a completely additional set of failures that Kirk displayed because trust me when I tell you that Captains are NOT allowed to bed hot female underlings no matter what kind of space disease they say took them over), Captain Kirk was infamous for pissing on the Prime Directive.  Take the New York trip previously mentioned for example.  Rated as IGN’s Number 1 Star Trek (TOS) episode of all time, “City on the Edge of Forever“, Kirk completely disregarded the Prime Directive ostensibly for some ‘old world’ tang.  Ultimately, he made the right decision but it didn’t stop him from messing with shit in the first place.  Take your pick of TOS episodes.  Go to youtube and check it out and your bound, no matter where you land, to see Kirk messing with some indigenous culture.

WORST MOMENT:
I’m going to take flack for this one, but read the title on the video. It says “WORST FIGHT SCENE EVER” and man is that appropriate.  I understand the context, budget and all that… but this is seriously laughable.  I don’t know what school of martial arts Kirk belongs to, but  a trusty ‘weak-double-temple-slap” isn’t enough.  What makes truly wonderful though is the odd physics that seem to acompany the rock thrown by Kirk.  At first it seems to weigh 300 lbs, but then it flies at Gorn at rocket speed.  Um… enjoy?

So now you can see, hopefully, why I’ve placed James T. Kirk at only Number 5 on the list.  Please stay tuned for our next submission when we bring you the 4th GREATEST SPACE CAPTAIN OF ALL TIME!!!