Here’s some news that’s somewhat related to my previous post: TV Guide is conducting an on-line poll of the favorite (and least-favorite) Star Trek characters. The results will be announced in an April issue of the magazine, to coincide with the final episode of Enterprise and the likely end of “The Franchise.”

So how, you may ask, does this relate to the previous post? Well, for many years now Wil Wheaton has borne the burden of having played Wesley Crusher, one of the least-liked regular characters in all of Trek history. I’m not a big Wesley fan myself, but if you read Wil’s blog (or his highly entertaining memoir, Just a Geek), you’ll soon discover just how vile supposedly grown-up human beings can be. Wil has taken a lot of crap over the years because of Wesley, including death threats and fanboy wishes for his character — and by extension, himself — to get gang-raped by Klingons. Isn’t that a lovely image? Wil doesn’t find such things amusing, and I don’t blame him. After all, it’s not his fault the character was such a putz. He was just an eager-to-please teenage actor saying the clunky lines that adults were putting in his mouth. He quite rightly views the “Most Annoying Character” title as an albatross around his neck, and he’s asked all his loyal readers to please take the poll and make sure that someone — anyone! — other than Wesley/himself gets the title. I’m going to pass that request along to my readers here on Simple Tricks. Even if you don’t like Star Trek, or even if you do and you despise Wesley Crusher with the furious heat of a million white-hot suns, try to imagine what it would be like to have pimply-faced strangers telling you day after day how much they hate you because of a job you did fifteen years ago. Does it feel like a raw deal to you? Me, too. That’s why I’m asking you to go vote for some other character in that category.

(Incidentally, I don’t think it’s hypocritical for me to ask some actor to take on the burden of “Most Annoying,” in order to spare another actor’s feelings. For one thing, Wil Wheaton, by dint of having been on the second-to-oldest Trek series, has been on the receiving end longer than anyone else. He’s done his time and is ready for parole. Secondly, he was just a kid when the crap-rain started falling whereas the other actors up for the title are grown-ups and thus should be a little better equipped to handle it. Thirdly, the dislike of Wesley has been unnaturally violent within fanboy circles, and an “official” poll naming someone else would go a long way toward lancing this festering boil. And lastly, I’m just plain sick of hearing everyone excoriate this character when there are plenty of others who sucked every bit as hard as Wesley. It’s gotten boring, and it’s time to hear a new tune. The same goes for you haters of Jar-Jar Binks, too!)

If you’d like a preview of the poll questions or if you’re interested in how I voted, keep reading below the fold. Otherwise, just go forth and vote!

Still here? Okay, then, let’s go full-bore geeky. The poll consists of six questions with possible answers taken from all five Trek series. Naturally, as an old-school Trekkie, my affections tend to run toward the original 1960s Star Trek, but I think I was pretty even-handed in my responses. I’m going to go through the categories, list the possible responses, discuss them briefly, then reveal my own choice.

1. What’s your favorite Star Trek catchphrase?

• “I’m a doctor, Jim.”
• “Highly illogical, Captain.”
• “Fascinating.”
• “Beam me up”
• “Live long and prosper.”
• “Make it so.”
• “Resistance is futile.”
• “Engage!”
• “Hailing… No response.”

I took a pretty high-minded approach to this whole exercise, which is another way of saying that I gave it far more thought than it was worth. What can I say? I take my geekery seriously. Looking at the possible options, I personally don’t believe that a single word can constitute a catchphrase, so “engage” and “fascinating” were out of the running right away. (I did feel a twinge when I cut “fascinating,” because it’s so closely associated with Spock, the most iconic Trek character of all.) Also, it seems to me that a catchphrase ought to be somehow representative of the entire series, or at least of the show’s philosophy, so the character-centric “I’m a doctor, Jim” — McCoy’s personal catchphrase — was out. Variations on “highly illogical” and “beam me up” have been used to make fun of Trekkies for years, so they were out. “Hailing… no response,” is just plain boring, and “resistance is futile,” while definitely catchy and useful for a wide variety of real-life situations, nevertheless is far too aggressive to represent a show that’s ostensibly about peaceful exploration. That leaves “make it so” — which I don’t think ever caught on the way ST: TNG’s producers thought it would — and my choice, “Live long and prosper”. I chose the latter because I thought it best expressed at least some of the Trek philosophy.

A quick tangent: I find it interesting that more recent Treks haven’t produced much in the way of catchphrases. Five of the nine options on that item were from the classic series, and the remainder all originated with The Next Gen. Nothing from DS9 or the two later series. Make of that what you will.

2. Which character would you most want by your side on an away mission?

• James T. Kirk
• Spock
• Montgomery “Scotty” Scott
• Jean-Luc Picard
• William Riker
• Worf
• Data
• Benjamin Sisko
• Odo
• Kathryn Janeway
• Tuvok
• Jonathan Archer
• Charles “Trip” Tucker III

Leaving aside my nitpick that “away missions” used to be called “landing parties” back in the old days, this is a tough category. If we’re trying to be logical about it, Spock and Data have obvious advantages in that they always know everything and can function as the voices of exposition when we want to know what’s going on. Scotty can, of course, operate or fix any technology we may find. Worf and Sisko are both useful if there’s any ass-kicking to be done (although Worf could be a liability because he’s too quick to start with the ass-kicking). Odo can be a refreshing voice of cynicism when the Starfleet philosophizing gets too thick, but he’s kind of a drag in general. Janeway vacilates between unnecessarily hostile and overly accomodating, so she’s too unpredictable to be useful (besides, her nails-on-chalkboard voice isn’t something you want to be stuck with on a long ground mission). Tuvok is just a second-rate version of Spock and if you’re going to go that route, you may as well take the original Spock. As for the last two names on the list, who the hell are they? (I joke… I know who Archer and Tucker are, but as I’ve already explained, I never had much interest in the fifth series, Enterprise.)

That leaves Picard, an excellent choice when a diplomat is needed, but he tends to surrender early and often (insert tasteless French joke here — hey, it’s a dumb stereotype, but it is present in the episodes), and his Number One, William Riker. Riker is kind of a cool guy… nice beard, plays a mean trombone, and always good for some indignant anger when the situation calls for it (or even when it doesn’t). But did he ever really do much besides say, “Shields up?”

The only really good choice in this category is a character who combines the best of all the other choices: cleverness, ass-kicking ability, diplomacy, the ability to philosophize when needed, and, of course, a pretty face. That would be the one and only James T. Kirk.

3. Who was the most annoying character?

• Leonard McCoy
• Janice Rand
• Q
• Wesley Crusher
• Lwaxana Troi
• Alexander Rozhenko (Worf’s son)
• Guinan
• The Computer Voice
• Quark
• Jake Sisko
• Neelix
• Kes
• Hoshi Sato
• Phlox

Here’s the category that started all the trouble. Wesley is not an option, for the reasons described above, and listing “Bones” McCoy as an option is just plain dumb — he isn’t annoying at all. Janice Rand can be annoying, but she’s easy on the eyes, so I’ll pass her. Q is obnoxious as hell, but he’s supposed to be. Lwaxana Troi reminds me of an aunt I’ve got; she is annoying, but she means well. Guinan is only annoying because you always get the feeling she knows what’s going on, but won’t tell you; I’ll let her pass because you never know when you might need a good stiff drink. The Computer Voice — annoying, yes, but not annoying like the neighbor’s car alarm, and at least the computer will comply when you yell at it to shut up. I happen to like the character of Quark, and Jake Sisko was just an ordinary guy. Nothing annoying about that. The Voyager and Enterprise characters were indeed annoying, terribly so in the case of Neelix and Kes, but is it fair to pick on them considering that their respective series were circling the creative sinkhole? No, for my money, it’s much more satisfying to go for a character who may have had potential, but was repeatedly mishandled by ham-fisted scripting and an obvious lack of purpose, a character who was created at the height of The Franchise’s success and so, arguably, had no excuse for being such a waste of videotape. No, I’m not talking about Wesley… I refer to Worf’s son, Alexander, who the writers never could figure out how to make interesting, not even after he abruptly became a clumsy and suicidal adult on DS9 (apparently Klingons have very short adolescences). I suspect the character was supposed to allow TNG to comment on the then-trendy concept of a single dad raising a child sans female help, but the writers never really came up with anything to say on the subject.

4. With which female character would you most like to spend a romantic evening in the Holodeck?

• Uhura
• Janice Rand
• Deanna Troi
• Beverly Crusher
• Tasha Yar
• Ro Laren
• Kira Nerys
• Jadzia Dax
• Ezri Dax
• Kathryn Janeway
• Seven of Nine
• B’Elanna Torres
• T’Pol
• Hoshi Sato

Ah, a category Trek‘s notoriously horn-doggy creator, Gene Roddenberry, could get behind. However, as I go down the list, there are damn few ladies there that really appeal to me. Hanging out with the consistently hostile Tasha, Ro, Kira, or B’Elanna is as likely to lead to bodily harm to as physical pleasure, so they’re out. Janeway doesn’t do it for me, Ezri Dax is too little-girly cute, and I can’t even picture Hoshi Sato. (Enterprise, right?) Jeri Ryan is a beautiful woman, but I never cared much for her Seven of Nine character, her severe hairstyle, or her catsuit. (Loose and potentially flimsy is a lot more appealing than skintight, people, something they understood on the original Star Trek.) Deanna Troi was sometimes hot and sometimes not, so I’d have to have more information about which version (from which season) of her I’d be meeting. Uhura, Rand and Beverly would all be pleasant enough, but my true favorite is She of the Sexy Spots, Jadzia Dax. Beautiful, smart, able to hang with the boys while remaining very feminine, Jadzia is probably the best female character ever done on any Star Trek series.

5. With which male character would you most like to spend a romantic evening in the Holodeck?

• James T. Kirk
• Pavel Chekov
• Hikaru Sulu
• Jean-Luc Picard
• William Riker
• Geordi La Forge
• Benjamin Sisko
• Julian Bashir
• Chakotay
• Tom Paris
• Harry Kim
• Jonathan Archer
• Charles “Trip” Tucker III
• Travis Mayweather
• Malcolm Reed

Being as I’m quite secure in my heterosexuality, I didn’t vote in this category. If you held a sonic disrupter to my head, though, I’d have to say, oh, I don’t know, Kirk. After all, he’s had the most experience of anyone on that list, so he’d have to be fairly good at the whole romance thing, right?

6. Who was the most fearsome villain(s)?

• Romulans
• Klingons
• Khan
• The Borg
• Cardassians
• The Founders & Jem’Hadar
• Species 8472
• Xindi Insectoids

Hm. Another toughie. Romulans and Klingons are ruthless SOBs, but they are admirable in their own ways. Khan was only one man, and anyway, he lost because he didn’t realize he could go up or down in space, so how scary was he? The Borg were damn frightening in their early incarnations but were steadily watered down with each appearance — especially all their appearances on Voyager — until in the end they weren’t much more frightening than Neelix. Cardassians weren’t all that, and I know not of Species 8472 or the Xindi. For my money, The Founders and their genetically engineered, drug-addicted henchmen, the Jem’Hadar, were the best villains because they weren’t just like all the other bad guys we’ve seen before, and they couldn’t be reasoned with. Not even the Borg were so hard-headed, not after they were exposed to the Federation superweapon that was Janeway’s grating voice.

So that’s it — my overly reasoned-out responses to a silly Internet poll. No doubt this is far more than you ever wanted to know about my feelings on this subject.

Now, here’s where the poll results stood as of the time I took this thing on Friday afternoon:

1. What’s your favorite Star Trek catchphrase?

• “I’m a doctor, Jim.” (20%)
• “Highly illogical, Captain.” (5%)
• “Fascinating.” (7%)
• “Beam me up.” (8%)
• “Live long and prosper.” (11%)
• “Make it so.” (20%)
• “Resistance is futile.” (22%)
• “Engage!” (7%)
• “Hailing… No response.” (1%)

2. Which character would you most want by your side on an away mission?

• James T. Kirk (15%)
• Spock (10%)
• Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (2%)
• Jean-Luc Picard (12%)
• William Riker (5%)
• Worf (10%)
• Data (33%)
• Benjamin Sisko (3%)
• Odo (3%)
• Kathryn Janeway (2%)
• Tuvok (0%)
• Jonathan Archer (2%)
• Charles “Trip” Tucker III (3%)

3. Who was the most annoying character?

• Leonard McCoy (4%)
• Janice Rand (2%)
• Q (10%)
• Wesley Crusher (9%)
• Lwaxana Troi (15%)
• Alexander Rozhenko (Worf’s son) (18%)
• Guinan (2%)
• The Computer Voice (12%)
• Quark (5%)
• Jake Sisko (3%)
• Neelix (13%)
• Kes (5%)
• Hoshi Sato (1%)
• Phlox (2%)

4. With which female character would you most like to spend a romantic evening in the Holodeck?

• Uhura (15%)
• Janice Rand (1%)
• Deanna Troi (11%)
• Beverly Crusher (6%)
• Tasha Yar (4%)
• Ro Laren (4%)
• Kira Nerys (2%)
• Jadzia Dax (15%)
• Ezri Dax (5%)
• Kathryn Janeway (2%)
• Seven of Nine (19%)
• B’Elanna Torres (3%)
• T’Pol (9%)
• Hoshi Sato (4%)

5. With which male character would you most like to spend a romantic evening in the Holodeck?

• James T. Kirk (36%)
• Pavel Chekov (2%)
• Hikaru Sulu (2%)
• Jean-Luc Picard (17%)
• William Riker (9%)
• Geordi La Forge (2%)
• Benjamin Sisko (3%)
• Julian Bashir (7%)
• Chakotay (4%)
• Tom Paris (5%)
• Harry Kim (2%)
• Jonathan Archer (3%)
• Charles “Trip” Tucker III (6%)
• Travis Mayweather (1%)
• Malcolm Reed (1%)

6. Who was the most fearsome villain(s)?

• Romulans (9%)
• Klingons (4%)
• Khan (9%)
• The Borg (60%)
• Cardassians (2%)
• The Founders & Jem’Hadar (7%)
• Species 8472 (8%)
• Xindi Insectoids (2%)

One final comment about these results… I’m happy to see that they’re generally in line with my own thinking, but in the case of the favorite catchphrase and the most fearsome villain, well, I just don’t get kids today.
Until next time, Bennion out.