Top Ten Least Favorite Star Trek Characters

Like my Top Ten Favorite Star Trek Characters I won't be ranking them in any particular order, but just taking a selection from each of the five series.  In the other list I avoided secondary or reoccurring characters, but with this list it's unavoidable, because there aren't many characters that I don't like in the Star Trek universe. I don't have any "runners up" in this case either for the same reason. Again, I'll remind you that I've not seen all of Voyager and only one season of Enterprise. So without further ado, I'll just get into it.

Nurse Christine Chapel,TOS.
Her character was just a total bummer most of the time to me.  She was so serious and so dreary in most cases. It wasn't a good display of Majel Barrett's acting ability. All of the other characters she played were much better than this.

That's not to say she didn't have her moments. There were even times when you could see the playfulness of Lwaxana Troi (which I have to assume was closer to Majel's real personality) surface in her interaction with other characters.  She even had her own subplot in an episode. But again, you could just feel how restricted this character was and consequently underdeveloped. Sulu and Chekov got better development than this and they were secondary as well at the time.

And her weird obsession with Spock didn't help things. Yes, Spock was an attractive character to most of the female members of the audience, and I normally appreciate an "unrequited love" theme, but it didn't play out very well with these characters, on this show, and in this time period (the 60's.) There was a lot of weirdness in love stories back in that day where the woman would always pine for a man who not only doesn't love her back but is also unkind in spurning her advances... the worse the better.  And there may be some psychological validity in that, but Chapel's longings seemed pathetic and well, juvenile. But a lot about TOS was juvenile.  At any rate, she's the only character that I couldn't abide in the original series.

Keiko O'Brien, TNG.
This one may seem strange since I don't often have anything negative to say about her, but that's because I always loved the concept of the ground up relationship - marriage- family building of the O'Brien family throughout TNG and DS9. Keiko presence was vital to that subplot.

It's just that on her own she was a little annoying and kind of ... bitchy? She didn't seem like a very fun person in most cases when they had her in... she seemed like a stereotypical nagging wife and career driven adult with no sense of humor who takes herself way too seriously.  It was most likely done to produce the necessary tension in the script - after all the Miles and Keiko story spanned two shows and displayed the process of an evolving family surviving in the 24th century through good times and bad. 

And Keiko was unhappily the focal point for conflict making her kind of a drag to watch with the exception of when she was utilized in comical moments.  But even then, she served in the "straight man" role while other characters got to deliver the funny material.

Wesley Crusher, TNG.
I've written extensively on Wesley as well, so I won't drag it all out again.  Suffice to say that his character was mishandled and I blame the writers, not the character.

He had so much potential and they were so close so many times, but they didn't hit on what he could've ultimately become until his last episode when it was far too late and it's just a shame.

Jake Sisko, DS9.
I guess it's just because I'm not a kid person, but I didn't like Jake either. They put another teenager in the series following TNG and although they tried going in a different direction with him, he just seemed flat and uninteresting compared to the more colorful characters on the station.

His best moments were with Nog and I appreciated the fact that he didn't want to be in Starfleet and do what everyone else was doing.  He wanted to write instead.  But the whole parent-child bond was unrelatable to me.  I'm even willing to admit it's because I'm kind of screwed up personally, but all the same, even though it wasn't as unrealistically perfect as the relationship between Beverly and Wesley, it still seemed to be a little too much on the perfect side. And then instead of just being a writer he became a reporter.  I have such disdain for reporters, even back then, and the character just became another ideology tool in the war story who didn't have much purpose otherwise.

Captain Benjamin Sisko, DS9
Sisko is another one of those characters that was more frustrating than anything because he was mishandled a little.

I think they were unintentionally trying to recreate Picard with a demeanor which didn't suit him.  He seemed restricted in the same way Nurse Chapel was in TOS, although I admit he got a little cooler after he shaved his head. But it took a long time for his character to grow on me... much longer than a main character, a captain, should.

Some of his best moments were when he technically wasn't being Captain Benjamin Sisko at all. His Joran Dax from the episode Facets where Jadzia has to confront all of Dax's previous hosts was amazing. Joran was a serial killer and Brooks was never more engaging to watch. When they started to do the Mirror, Mirror alternate timeline sequence, although he was still Benjamin Sisko, he wasn't the tightly wound captain of the show, but a carousing smuggler who was good, but also a little bad and definitely selfish and he was a  lot of fun to watch.  To me it proved that they could've made the original Captain Sisko much more versatile and give him a different kind of depth than they gave to Picard and it was disappointing to see the opportunity wasted.

Ezri Dax, DS9
Yes, I don't like Ezri. No, I'm not a hater. Once again it's a bungling on the part of the writers.  They actually started her out right in a way that was consistent with Trill behavior. But, it was the last season of the series and they decided to rush her though into what they wanted to be a happy ending since Sisko's ending, Garak's ending, Worf's ending, and even Kira and Odo's endings were to be bittersweet.

They tried to validate her character by having her psychoanalyze everyone while the real potential of an unjoined Trill having to emotionally and mentally deal with being suddenly joined was ignored. After all that work they put into the world building and rules of the Trill culture, they just discarded it entirely for some quick action.  They cheapened the character of Jadzia as well as Worf, and Bashir by throwing in a little "ex sex" (which is another violation of rules that they devoted and entire episode to) and her subsequent choosing of Julian as her new love to live happily ever after with, even admitting openly that he was Jadzia's second choice.  Really? And her Mirror, Mirror counterpart  didn't save her either overplaying the whole lesbian thing that they touched on in an episode with Jadzia that wasn't really about lesbianism.  Stupid, stupid. People like me who didn't approve of Ezri get labelled as "haters" a lot because we care more for the complexity of a story than those who accept all changes happily, with no apparent standards and expectations. Ezri is the picture of a sharp drop in standards.

Ensign Harry Kim, VOY
He exemplifies the harmless, neutered, Beta male persona which I'm just not all that into. He's got that whole "too nice of a guy" thing going on like Geordi, except he's not as smart, vital, or cool as Geordi LaForge.

In fact, although they developed him into a unique personality, I'm still not really sure what his purpose was on the show except to be Paris' sidekick and to moon over 7 of 9. I haven't seen all of Voyager it's true, but I'm still giving it a chance week in and week out and Ensign Kim is just plain boring.

Commander Chakotay, VOY
I just find him so smug and irritating.  It doesn't help that his character was just another tool for the blame America theme they'd regressed to as a Native American and all the card carrying victimhood trimmings that come with it in dialogue and character development. I've complained before that Voyager as a whole was a throw back to TOS and the early seasons of TNG for this reason and it's one of the reasons I just can't get into the show.

It's also a throw back in the sense that he's the stable element of the captain-commander relationship as Spock was to Kirk.  Kirk was the wild cowboy and Spock kept a rational hold on him.  Like the social justice whining, it was something that only worked well in the sixties when shows could be thick with melodrama and cheesiness without losing credibility.  But the pattern of a self-controlled captain with a warrior first officer was tried and true in TNG and DS9, and it just didn't work to go back to the opposite arrangement in a modern show.

He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer either as far as his Maquis command and personal life went either.  But that was all in the plan to make Janeway the dominant character of the show.

Captain Katherine Janeway.

 As all of the current memes are fond of pointing out... she was a political statement before the new Lady Doctor for Doctor Who.  It was all about her.

Because the only way you can be a strong woman is to be superior to everyone else. (Guess having perfect bodies all the time in cinema wasn't raising standards high enough for women?) They arranged it to where she didn't actually need any member of her team so that it wouldn't take away from her superiority. Even though she promoted Torres as part of the matriarchal leanings of the show, she didn't need her either... she was a scientist not a diplomat like Picard.  She understood engineering matters, medical matters, she could throw down with the boys because, lets face it, Tuvoc being a Vulcan security chief was probably meant to be an ironic joke.  Therefore she didn't have to rely on teamwork because she's super Janeway, strong woman. None of the other men ranked above lieutenant... in fact none of the other characters ranked above lieutenant. Only Chakotay had a senior rank and only because he'd been in command of the Maquis crew that Voyager absorbed which made his near equality to Janeway almost illegitimate. It's all about Janeway.

 They tried to keep her a little feminine at first even with her gravely, mannish voice and dominating posture, but they gave that up after a few seasons and it was probably for the best.  She became the ideological woman's woman and even though 7 of 9 was the only strong female character on the show I liked, she had to be Janeway's little personal project so as not to overshadow the political statement being made.  I still put it on every week trying to get past this but it's very hard when it disgusts me so much.

Ensign Travis Mayweather, ENT

I'm only halfheartedly putting Mayweather on this list and I only did so because I was trying to choose at least one person from each show.  My first reaction to Mayweather after seeing the first season is that he's kind of boring... just eye candy... too nice like Geordi (but not a wuss like Kim)... but I don't know what his character developed into as the show went on so he may have turned out to be special.  Mostly, I put him there because I actually do feel kind of bad about ragging on Voyager so much. I considered leaving Mayweather off in favor of B'Elanna Torres.

I didn't like Torres much either and not just because the whole "girl power" thrust of Voyager was tiresome, but the journey of a Klingon had been done already. Just like the Borg as an enemy had been done already.  I think Torres was opposite from Worf in that she preferred her human roots, but the subject had been so thoroughly canvassed in the past, she was just a redundancy. And the Torres-Paris romance didn't really do anything for me like other romances that had been tried in other shows.

So that's my Top Ten Least Favorite Characters of the Star Trek franchise.