First, assume your ship will be a TNG/DS9/VOY-era ship, let's say a Galaxy class, with a primary mission of exploration and a secondary purpose as a means of defense against hostile powers.
Second, you must fill eight positions. These positions are: Captain, First Officer, Chief of Security/Tactical Officer, Helm/Navigator, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Engineer, Chief Science Officer, and Wildcard (can be any kind of position; can even be a civilian/non-Starfleet member, but no one who would radically change the ship's operations like a Q or some other being of great power, and it can't be any kind of position that makes one of the other positions redundant)
Third, you can select main or recurring* characters from the following: TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and any of the canon movies.
Fourth, you can't use more than two characters from the same source. Characters like Worf and O'Brien are exceptions because they were main characters in two different shows. With this rule in mind, choose wisely.
Fifth, assume that despite differences in eras, all characters have been collected and put through an education program so that they all have roughly equivalent levels of knowledge in history, technology, and tactics as of the DS9 era. We're judging them not by their eras but by their personal skills and strengths.
Sixth, you can't use characters for positions outside of their canon positions, tempting as it is for me to imagine a ship with Picard as captain and Kirk as his first officer. Again, a character like Worf might prove an exception as he was portrayed as alternatively first officer or commander of the USS Defiant in DS9 as well as being Tactical officer in DS9 and TNG.
*To be recurring, let's say they had to have been in at least 3 episodes.
Okay, so I'll begin.
Here's one possible crew:
Captain: Picard. (TNG) This is the hardest choice because I don't think there's a single bad captain in any of the shows. But Picard is just the best for a lot of reasons. He's incredibly smart and charismatic, he's probably the most level headed and deliberative of any captain in Star Fleet history, and yet for that thoughtfulness he's still quite decisive when he needs to be. To add to that, several episodes of TNG showed that he can throw down, so he even scores points for being rough and tumble despite his polish.
First Officer: Spock. (TOS) It would be a lot less interesting for sure than the interplay between Kirk and Spock, but this combination of Picard and Spock would arguably produce a better team.
Tactical: Worf (DS9) He's the only tactical officer who I don't have to try to remember.
Helm: Data. (TNG) An easy choice.
Science: Seven of Nine (VOY) This is another easy choice. At first I considered T'Pol, but when you think of it, Seven of Nine is just a stronger, smarter T'Pol with nanoprobes that can basically do anything with the right application.
Chief Engineer: O'Brien (DS9)
Medical: The Doctor. (VOY) There are a lot of great doctors. This was a close one, with Bashir from DS9 and Phlox from ENT almost taking it, but the Doctor's advantages as a holoprogram make him a natural pick. He's the only doctor who can treat his patients with essentially no chance of contamination.
Wild Card: Silik (ENT) I admit, this is a stretch, but he was a recurring character and he did cooperate with Starfleet when it suited him. I could see him serving in a sort of cloak and dagger role, doing Starfleet's dirty work on behalf of Section 31 while constantly butting heads with the more morally enlightened crew members.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Last edited by Omega Vision on Dec 28th, 2014 at 08:36 PM
Captain: Kirk
Commander: Spock
Tactical/Security: Worf
Helm: Tom Paris
Medical: EMH
Engineering: Miles O'Brien
Science: Jadzia Dax
Wildcard: Data
Reasons:
I picked Kirk and Spock because as much as I wanted to mix and match from other shows, they just compliment each other the best from the options I had.
Security is Worf, because as much as he might have sucked in TNG, he was a total badass in DS9.
Tom Paris at the helm. My favourite character in Voyager, and he's as good as any pilot that's been in the shows imo.
EMH as the Doctor. I wanted Bashir so he and O'Brien could bro it up, but I had spaces to fill, and the EMH by season 7 is the total package as far as doctors go.
O'Brien in engineering. While he's more of an "everyman" than an officer, he's, imo, Star Trek's McGyver. That and the Dublin thing.
Science for Dax as, while she doesn't have Seven's expansive knowledge, she does have centuries of experience, and, **** it, she's gorgeous.
Data because, well, he's Data. And I wish Nemesis had never happened, even taking in to account the later comics.
It's unfortunate that the Doctor from Voyager is so broken, because I really like Phlox and Bashir, but there's just no way you can argue for either of them.
Maybe if Bashir had ever shown off his Augment prowess in any real way...
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
In terms of personality, Phlox is definitely my favorite. So, again, it's a shame the Doctor is so broken.
Then again, Phlox is no slouch himself in the hardiness department. He put up a better struggle against assimilation than any organic being this side of Species 8472. Using only 22nd century medical treatments and his own immune system he fought assimilation for what, two days? The crew of Voyager (with the Doctor's help and 24th century tech) could barely manage the same feat.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Last edited by Omega Vision on Feb 6th, 2015 at 03:35 AM
Phlox would be my third favourite doctor (behind Bashier and McCoy), but he's easily one of my favourite characters in Enterprise. Dude was awesome, and I generally thought that, even outside of the medical stuff, as a character he was at times a better representation of how different species could be compared to humans than T'Pol was.