James T. Kirk
Now I'm not going to get into the whole Kirk-Picard thing here, not just because it's essentially the nerdiest debate ever recorded in the annals of nerddom, but because I really don't have anything against Picard. I like him. I really do. However, this site isn't set up for the purposes of debating who the most capable starship Captain is -- it's to pay homage to the biggest badasses. And in terms of sheer badassery, it doesn't get much better than Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, the man who shot first, didn't ask questions, sucker punched the dead bodies and then made out with the alien widows.
In later years the United Federation of Planets got all touchy-feely with their "Prime Directive" and their "settle things through diplomacy" passive-aggressive touchy-feely bullshit, but back in the day Captain Kirk didn't give two craps about introducing himself to a newly-discovered alien species by fixing them a homemade spaceman knuckle sandwich and then stomping on their genitals. His unique fighting style of dishing out flying dropkicks, judo throws and double-hammerfists like Bruce Lee doped up on ten pounds of quaaludes was way more balls-out than any alien motherfucker could handle, and those who were tough enough to withstand his fumbling fists of fury found themselves on the receiving end of a patented James T. Kirk OPEN HAND JUDO MOTHERFUCKING CHOP. His technique of slapping someone in the neck with the blade of his hand was so vicious it could drop a fucking blood-lusted Minotaur in it's tracks.
On the (very) rare occasions that the face-punching and the hand-to-hand combat wasn't working out for Jim, it's not like he didn't have other options to fall back on either, because nothing gets in the way of a starship Captain and his insatiable need to jack up some bastard space aliens. He didn't have a problem whipping out the phaser and blasting the shit out of assholes, hopping in the Enterprise and firing enough torpedoes to destroy the solar system, or engineering some crazy makeshift weapon and using it to slaughter an entire civilization. He had no compunctions about self-destructing enemy vessels, violating long-standing peace treaties and basically doing whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted at all times. He didn't bow down to bullshit Starfleet regulations, and he certainly didn't fuck around when it came to weird xenomorph motherfuckers that were just asking to have their space shit wrecked.
But it wasn't all just about punching alien fighter pilots in their stupid space faces, breaking Klingon Bat'leths over his head and photon torpedoing Romulan vessels into the Delta Quadrant for Kirk. He understood the Holy Trinity of Space Captaining - you kick the asses of the hideous evil alien spacemen, you blow up any vessel that doesn't have your country's logo emblazoned on it's hull and you make out with every hot alien babe you can get your hands on. And holy shit was he a space player. The women he met on his intrepid expeditions could have six heads, purple skin, four arms, it didn't matter. All chicks in the galaxy understood the universal language of Captain Kirk's space package, and all of them swooned like wounded doves every time he emerged from a fistfight with a giant taloned alien monster with half of his uniform top ripped off. He had hot alien babes flinging themselves at him all across the universe, and didn't give two shits about ignoring Starfleet regulations, disobeying his direct orders and swooping down to the Bikini Beach Blanket Bingo planet for a couple days of 1960's-style surfing parties and scoring with every scantily-clad bipedal alien female he thought was even remotely attractive. He was such a space pimp that it's no surprise that he was in on the first interracial kiss in American television history - and I'm not just talking about that time that he got it on with Uhura either, because he was also the first televised Human-Vulcan kiss, Human-Green Skinned Alien Chick kiss, Human-Robo Cyborg Babe kiss, and Human-Alien Psycho Murdering Shapeshifter Woman make out session as well. Basically he was a pioneer in the art of space Frenching.
Now please allow me to take this time to summarize Captain James Tiberius Kirk's entire career as a Starfleet Officer in four pictures:
Basically, Kirk was awesome. He wasn't interested in any problem that couldn't be solved by making out with a hot babe or kicking an alien in the junk, he had probably one of the coolest sidekicks in the history of Science Fiction, and his job basically was just to fly through the galaxy in a top-of-the-line spaceship having all sorts of crazy awesome adventures. When he was on a planet and had to fight a dude in a green rubber monster costume he invented gunpowder, put together a homemade machine gun out of materials he found lying around and shot the alien in the face with his space cannon. Without even trying very hard he pissed off the tyrant Khan so badly that he swore revenge on Kirk at all costs. He even came face-to-face with God once, and was just like "whatever dude". Kirk rules.
