test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Why Captain Jonathan Archer is the worst Captain ever.
worffan101
Member Posts: 9,518 Arc User
And yes, I'm including Riker, Janeway, and JJKirk in that, as well as all of those bloody Kirk ripoffs in-game.
1. Archer condoned and encouraged genocide by negligence; specifically, he refused to assist a species that was going extinct from an illogical disease despite having an easy cure ready and available at the time because of some twisted interpretation of noninterference with nature. According to hypotheses put forth by Chuck Sonnenburg, a veteran Trekkie and DS9 fanboy, Archer's actions in this case may have been the genesis of the Breen and Pakleds, making the Breen attack on Earth and the disastrous Second Battle of Chin'Toka his fault indirectly. (C.F. ENT: "Dear Doctor", and SFDebris's review of the same episode)
2. Despite ostensibly being a trained diplomat, he managed to violate every possible rule of diplomatic protocol short of actually killing the other ambassador while in sensitive negotiations for a part that was absolutely critical to his crew and his ship. He did this by (a) bringing his dog to a sensitive diplomatic meeting with a highly protocol-obsessed race, (b) losing track of said dog, which peed on the aliens' most sacred relics, (c) blamed the aliens and whined about their noncompliance after they were rightly upset about this, (d) ranted at and verbally abused his first officer for about five minutes, including being outright self-contradictory on whether he wanted her to apologize on his behalf or not, (e) was more concerned about his dog than the hundred-odd men and women on his ship who would be hosed without the aforementioned part, (f) threatened to personally further desecrate the aforementioned sacred relics by urinating on them from a shuttlepod, and (g) after being browbeaten into apologizing, he even managed to flub the apology due to not checking the instructions. (ENT: A Night In Sickbay)
3. He regularly engaged in and encouraged racial profiling and hatred against his species's only reasonably powerful allies in the universe, the Vulcans, up to and including regularly abusing his aforementioned first officer, a Vulcan. (various)
4. Likely due to his incompetence, a cure for Borg assimilation that his team developed was never spread to the Federation or the galaxy at large. This may be Phlox's fault. (ENT: Regeneration)
5. He insisted on going into space without half of the gear that his ship needed to survive and survive combat, necessitating constant jury-rigging and likely causing crew deaths.
6. He showed incredible hypocrisy in declaring that freighters being attacked by space pirates should not shoot back at the pirates, only to reverse his opinion two weeks later when he was in the freighters' position, even calling up his enemies to tell them how great he was and how he was going to defeat them. This is beyond hypocrisy and verging on outright idiocy. (ENT: Fortunate Son, Silent Enemy)
7. He employed and encouraged Doctor Phlox, a man who kept live animals in Sickbay, clipped his toenails in sterile areas, committed genocide by negligence, created a fully-sentient clone for the express purpose of harvesting it for organs, and kept open bottles of biohazardous material just lying around.
In short, this man, Jonathan Archer, is a fountain of towering ignorance, arrogance, stupidity, and general incompetence bordering on insanity who is also a self-righteous jerk. He's almost as bad as Janeway, if not worse.
This post created for cmdrscarlet. You're welcome.
1. Archer condoned and encouraged genocide by negligence; specifically, he refused to assist a species that was going extinct from an illogical disease despite having an easy cure ready and available at the time because of some twisted interpretation of noninterference with nature. According to hypotheses put forth by Chuck Sonnenburg, a veteran Trekkie and DS9 fanboy, Archer's actions in this case may have been the genesis of the Breen and Pakleds, making the Breen attack on Earth and the disastrous Second Battle of Chin'Toka his fault indirectly. (C.F. ENT: "Dear Doctor", and SFDebris's review of the same episode)
2. Despite ostensibly being a trained diplomat, he managed to violate every possible rule of diplomatic protocol short of actually killing the other ambassador while in sensitive negotiations for a part that was absolutely critical to his crew and his ship. He did this by (a) bringing his dog to a sensitive diplomatic meeting with a highly protocol-obsessed race, (b) losing track of said dog, which peed on the aliens' most sacred relics, (c) blamed the aliens and whined about their noncompliance after they were rightly upset about this, (d) ranted at and verbally abused his first officer for about five minutes, including being outright self-contradictory on whether he wanted her to apologize on his behalf or not, (e) was more concerned about his dog than the hundred-odd men and women on his ship who would be hosed without the aforementioned part, (f) threatened to personally further desecrate the aforementioned sacred relics by urinating on them from a shuttlepod, and (g) after being browbeaten into apologizing, he even managed to flub the apology due to not checking the instructions. (ENT: A Night In Sickbay)
3. He regularly engaged in and encouraged racial profiling and hatred against his species's only reasonably powerful allies in the universe, the Vulcans, up to and including regularly abusing his aforementioned first officer, a Vulcan. (various)
4. Likely due to his incompetence, a cure for Borg assimilation that his team developed was never spread to the Federation or the galaxy at large. This may be Phlox's fault. (ENT: Regeneration)
5. He insisted on going into space without half of the gear that his ship needed to survive and survive combat, necessitating constant jury-rigging and likely causing crew deaths.
6. He showed incredible hypocrisy in declaring that freighters being attacked by space pirates should not shoot back at the pirates, only to reverse his opinion two weeks later when he was in the freighters' position, even calling up his enemies to tell them how great he was and how he was going to defeat them. This is beyond hypocrisy and verging on outright idiocy. (ENT: Fortunate Son, Silent Enemy)
7. He employed and encouraged Doctor Phlox, a man who kept live animals in Sickbay, clipped his toenails in sterile areas, committed genocide by negligence, created a fully-sentient clone for the express purpose of harvesting it for organs, and kept open bottles of biohazardous material just lying around.
In short, this man, Jonathan Archer, is a fountain of towering ignorance, arrogance, stupidity, and general incompetence bordering on insanity who is also a self-righteous jerk. He's almost as bad as Janeway, if not worse.
This post created for cmdrscarlet. You're welcome.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Jonathan Archer's sole qualification for command was the fact that the ship's engine, capable of reaching Warp 5 (sometimes), was designed by his father, and the United Earth Space Probe Agency runs on a level of nepotism that would have some monarchies asking pointed questions.
I mean, I always thought of Janeway as someone who was a victim of the Peter Principle, thrashing about in a sea of responsibilities far beyond her area of competence - but at least she had some command training before taking the center seat. Archer, not so much.
He was utterly incompetent, tho. Yeah, it makes Starfleet look competent by comparison... In Janeway's favor, she actually seemed to care for her crew, and when they were main characters other than Harry Kim she'd go full Mama Bear to protect them. Archer didn't have any of that.
I'm nowhere near a fan of Janeway, but she'd better than Archer.
Next you should do a summary of why ENT was the absolute worst show and how it utterly destroyed continuity.
Oh, and you might want to speak softer about Grand Imperial Marshal Overlord Janeway, least she hear you.
Archer claimed to be a good starship captain, too. With, apparently, about as much basis.
Yeah, he's slightly worse than Janeway and her blatant hypocrisy. At least Janeway never seriously claimed to be something she wasn't more than once.
I mean, she claimed to be a moral, upstanding Human being while clearly an evil psychopath, but at least she never feigned skills like Archer did.
Archer was like Janeway crossed with Neelix. And he was awful.
Really? You're seriously going to blame him for this? He was returning Klang (Karg? I forget) to the Klingon homeworld - the Klingon's bloody CHANCELLOR! He was trying to make sure that First Contact with the Klingons went smoothly! It was a humanitarian mission! A mission Admirals Forrester and Gardner authorised and encouraged! At the end of the day, the buck lies with them!
As for the other points... I can't really dispute them. However, I wouldn't call Archer's relationship with the Vulcans racism, more like frustration at the Vulcans essentially controlling Earth's every move. And you're overstating how often he spouted abuse at T'pol. Unless you seriously include those occasions when he was making jestful remarks about the Vulcans, in which case, both Kirk and McCoy are guilty of the same thing. Most of the time he did go off at T'pol, he actually had a legit reason to be angry (even if not necessarily at T'pol, in which case, he would usually apologise as I recall).
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Give Klangarg to Vulcans. Vulcans return Klangarg to Qo'noS on behalf of humanity. Humanity continues to work on the NX-01 Enterprise until it's ready.
Archer introduced the precedent of not listening to the vulcans.
"I'm going to do the thing!"
"I don't think it would be logical to do thing."
"Okay, I'm doing the thing now!"
"Ugh."
The Vulcans already said no to returning him based on the grounds that they felt it would be better for him to die.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Still counts as not listening to the vulcans.
At the risk of introducing a "Right-to-die" talking point into an otherwise productive thread, it was the Klingon's right to die. It is the last conscious decision a person is allowed to make, and in terms of interstellar diplomacy, if that was something the Klingon wanted, Archer and Derptastic crew of the Enterprise had really no say in it.
If the vulcans said they wanted him to die because klingons, then really, that has more to do with Enterprise's bad writing than anything.
Which, if we're going to put Archer on trial, we should really just be putting the writers of Enterprise on trial.
Yes, but he was never conscious to make the decision, so it's a moot point.
My point is that you can't fault Archer for taking the Enterprise out on a humanitarian mission anymore than you can blame Harrison of the Ent-B - especially given both were the only ships available/in range.
On your writers' trial point - agreed. Except Coto. Coto should be given a frickin' medal for making Enterprise a good show after 3 years of mediocrity.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
I can blame the vulcans for not doing more. If anything, they should be held accountable for putting Enterprise in danger. They willingly allowed Archer to leave without half of the ship's equipment, and allowed him to put himself and others at risk due to their own opinions regarding Klangarg.
That's what friends do.
I've had friends do stupid things and I've gone along trying to help them even if I thought it was a bad idea. Sending T'Pol to Enterprise wasn't help. It was more like sending a Miranda when somebody calls for Fleet Support. A sick joke.
Vulcan could have solved the issue entirely by sending him back to Qo'noS on behalf of humanity.
Once again, the buck comes to rest at the feet of the godawful hacks known as Berman/Braga.
Seriously, someone should do a in-canon short with starships named Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, explain how those "ships" went completely off the rails, lost sight of everything holy to Starfleet and The Federation (Star Trek), and blow them out of the stars. Or better yet, have the President of the Federation (named Berman), who was the hand picked successor to the deceased wildly popular predecessor, and Admiral of the Fleet (Braga), his golden boy, and have them arrested, tried for Treason, and make an exception to Federation law and execute them for their egregious and terrible crimes.
Really. Those guys suck.
Under no circumstance do I ever believe a half-finished Excelsior without a full crew is the only ship in range located in the very beating heart of the Federation.
That's another thread. Shame on you!
Okay...
/tencharacters
As for the Vulcan thing... The Vulcans wanted to push back Starfleet's mission for 100 more years because they felt Humans weren't ready and the engine design wasn't absolutely 100% perfect. Humans aren't logical. They're emotional. They're risk takers. They also aren't as long lived as Vulcans. If Archer hadn't gone out, there would probably still be an armed conflict between the Vulcans and Andorians, the Romulans might have stirred up more trouble, the Klingons might be in worse shape due to whatever the Suliban were doing...
Archer may not have been the perfect Captain, but he did have an impact on events in the 22nd Century. If anything... I think Archer showed humanity's inexperience.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
You know, given Archer threatening to urinate from a shuttlepod onto the most sacred relics of an alien culture whom he was negotiating with in full view of their halls of government, I can't help but agree with the Vulcans that another hundred years were necessary.
Thank you! Its good to know I'm not the only one on the planet that recognizes this. It is the reason Phlox is always at the bottom of my list of "best Trek medics".
Wait , was it mirror Sisko or normal Sisko that killed a man in order to bring war to the Romulan people? Said war weakening the Star Empire to the point where it was easy for the Iconians to end them.
That was Elim Garak, actually.
Number 1 was a blatantly bad episode that is generally considered to have been one big excuse for a les mis reference. Number 2 is "the Rommies are sitting by while the Breen and Dominion kick us six ways from Saturday, we NEED this and f*ck ethics."
Archer was incompetent, and his incompetence led directly to problems that overqualified people like Malcom "Neo" Reed and Hoshi "The most beautiful omnicompetent person you will ever lust over pathetically while T'Pol is supposed to be the eye candy but fails" Sato had to clean up. Sisko had 1 terrible episode (2, if you count Paradise), and killed a guy because he was going to doom the entire quadrant.
Starsword can do the Sisko arguments better than me, tho.
What is the first duty of a Starfleet officer again?
Oh, you're right... Sisko should have totally admitted the truth. That way Elim Garak gets arrested, the Romulans stay out of the war, and the Dominion conquers the Alpha Quadrant. Great work, Mr. Starfleet Officer. :rolleyes:
Well said, and I don't say that to you often.
This is probably the sole case where I would say that the ends justify the means, because there literally are no other options. The only two options are (a) get the rommies into the war through this means (and the dude was already dead when Sisko found out, can't resurrect him) or, (b) watch as literally everyone you love and care for dies.
That's Sisko looking into the dark place in his soul, and realizing that that is his limit. And that is what makes him human.
So what I'm hearing is Starfleet's ideals are meaningless whenever the Feds need someone dead, bullied, poisoned, moved out of their land, or anything else for the "greater good".
Sisko was a blunt battle-ax used by everyone. He was pretty much made to be a weapon of the wormhole aliens.