Super nerd poll: Kirk or Picard?

[Dembadon]

You know that it's part of the official character description and envisioned by Gene Roddenberry that his one flaw is his arrogance and being too assured of himself right?

Do you have a source for this? I can't find anything mentioning "arrogance" or "being too assured of himself."

It's a common theme too in TNG episodes and films that they almost die because he overestimated himself and humanity's capabilities, especially with Q, the Borg, or a combination of both involved.

First of all, one is not given choices when dealing with Q. Q does as he pleases; you should know that.

The crew faces life-threatening situations due to the nature of their missions, which are commonly received from Starfleet Headquarters or distress signals while in an area. Picard's decisions within those missions are consistently selfless. I think your correlation is misguided.

You might be caught in the so-called 'narcissist web', 'self-confidence', and 'narcissism' is the same thing depending if you like a person or not, people for some reason find people that are self-absorbed 'charming', this of course has all its obvious evolutionary reasons, if your children are self-absorbed they will obviously have a higher chance of survival.

Using your logic, I could just as easily claim that your judgment is misted by your dislike for him. This is where we'll just have to agree to disagree, because the "You're just not perceiving him correctly" stance isn't very stable, for either of us.

 

[Galteeth]

You know that it's part of the official character description and envisioned by Gene Roddenberry that his one flaw is his arrogance and being too assured of himself right?

It's a common theme too in TNG episodes and films that they almost die because he overestimated himself and humanity's capabilities, especially with Q, the Borg, or a combination of both involved.

You might be caught in the so-called 'narcissist web', 'self-confidence', and 'narcissism' is the same thing depending if you like a person or not, people for some reason find people that are self-absorbed 'charming', this of course has all its obvious evolutionary reasons, if your children are self-absorbed they will obviously have a higher chance of survival.

Now, the true nigh infallible character on the show was Odo, until they ruined it in that one episode with that neural link. But they should've kept him infallible, because he was infallible without people noticing it because he wasn't 'charming', he wasn't out to court people with his words, he didn't tell people what they wanted to hear, he told them the harsh truth, and as such he's a difficult man to like. He had no praetence, no faked modesty, from this episode:

"It's like stepping on ants, Odo!"
"I don't step on ants, Major."
- Kira and Odo, discussing destroying the small protouniverse

If you think about it, of course Odo doesn't step on ant, it perfectly fits his character to not do so, but did he ever mention it before this? Does he make a show about it? No, Picard would announce his intentions to sacrifice himself for the crew with a pompous flamboyance, Odo wouldn't tell any-one, sneak away and do it, not being interested in their admiration. He wasn't about words, but about actions.

Of course, until his love for Kira started to be a theme, it was shown to be his one weakness, his one breaking of his principles. But before that, it showed the very realistic situation that the girl doesn't fall for the guy who's there for her, is honest, and doesn't lie, the girl falls for the guy who tells her what she wants to hear, likewise for 'friendship', Odo isn't a popular guy I can imagine, because he tells the harsh truth, he doesn't tell people what they want to hear, unlike Picard.

Odo wasn't really a "guy" at all. Picard was no way as irritatingly overconfident as Janeway. But Voyager was just terrible all together.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Odo wasn't really a "guy" at all. Picard was no way as irritatingly overconfident as Janeway. But Voyager was just terrible all together.

I can not think of anyone on Voyager that I really liked at all aside from the doctor. Not that I think he was very sexy or anything...

 

[Kajahtava]

Do you have a source for this? I can't find anything mentioning "arrogance" or "being too assured of himself."

Well, I did a Google search and a lot of profile pages list him as 'some-what arrogant', but no links to the original character description which admittedly is no-where to be found.

http://www.google.com/searchq=jean+luc+picard+character+description+arrogant

First of all, one is not given choices when dealing with Q. Q does as he pleases; you should know that.

And Janeway handled Q with a lot more caution.

I mean, an omnipotent and omniscient being comes to you saying 'You're not yet ready to explore the galaxy.' and he says back 'I think we are.' how bloody arrogant is that? You're talking to a being that can do all, and has seen all.

Encounter at Farpoint was a really bad episode, because Q had all the arguments, he had all the quotations from human history, Q was simply right and the crew of the Enterprise were savages that got aggressive because they couldn't handle being confronted with themselves, they had no argument back except some dogmatic gibberish saying 'you're wrong'.

But then again, Gene himself was pretty narcissistic about human capabilities, he gave technological progress and human morality a lot more credit than it deserved. After his death Star Trek became less anthropocentric and more realistic in showing that humanity isn't the perpetual good guy and the practice of the Federation is different than its idealized theory.

TNG was an extension of human narcissism. It tells people what they want to hear about themselves, that humanity will be the centre and focal point of some vast moral police of the galaxy that cannot fail. Later series were less flattening and consequently less popular.

The crew faces life-threatening situations due to the nature of their missions, which are commonly received from Starfleet Headquarters or distress signals while in an area. Picard's decisions within those missions are consistently selfless. I think your correlation is misguided.

So was Janeway's or Kirk's? They're larger than life characters. We're not debating if they're selfish or not, we're debating if Picard was arrogant or not, a little bit too in love with himself, a little bit too overconfident.

And there were a lot of episodes and a film which dealt with this theme, Picard's pride and arrogance.

Using your logic, I could just as easily claim that your judgment is misted by your dislike for him. This is where we'll just have to agree to disagree, because the "You're just not perceiving him correctly" stance isn't very stable, for either of us.

Oh, I'm perfectly willing to admit that Janeway wasn't arrogant even though I don't like her as a character. I love Dukat as a character and I can say without a trace of irony that he's arrogant as ****. I also love Bashir both as a character and as a person, but he's arrogant, come on, a central theme around Bashir was learning to cope with the fact that he could fail. The Quickening was one of my favourite episode, a central theme to it was Bashir's failing.

A lot of things simply went wrong, or almost went wrong, and wouldn't have gone wrong if Picard hadn't overestimate his or the Federation's capabilities, it's not really a thing you can say about ever-cautious Janeway or even worse, Garak.

Odo wasn't really a "guy" at all. Picard was no way as irritatingly overconfident as Janeway. But Voyager was just terrible all together.

Name me one example where **** went wrong because Janeway underestimated the situation or overestimated her of the Federation's capabilities?

The point is that Janeway was so flawless it got annoying, Picard still made some obvious mistakes, but Janeway didn't, she outwitted the Borg multiple times for ****s sake, it just wasn't believable any more. But yeah, purely in-universe, she was flawless, her command decisions were impeccable, she always took due praecautions, she was cautious, made flawless decisions and always had an ace up her sleeve, always another card when it turned out she was betrayed she was 'HAH, you think you had me, but this is Kathryn Janeway you're dealing with, I never take my chances so I had a backup plan!'

She was just too infallible for it to be realistic, she never made a single error in judgement.

 

[FrancisZ]

Seriously people, Picard?

 

[brainstorm]

I was watching the Wrath of Khan and something occurred to me when Ricardo Montalban sheds his cloak to reveal exploding, shaved cleavage framed by a low-cut shirt: i.e. Star Trek is designed to appeal to masculine self-images more than female heterosexual interest. It's not about who is sexier to women, but which self-image of masculinity is more appealing to which viewer at which moment. I think an argument could be made that all the characters in TOS are the many sides of Gene Rodenberry's personality, or at least the main ones (Kirk, Spock, and McCoy). Kirk = passion and arrogance (male sexuality), Spock = logic and service-ethic (honorable soldier), and McCoy is the cynic, traditionalist, humanist, etc.

Maybe Picard could appeal to older men's self-image as being a dominant CEO. He has Riker and Wharf to flex muscle for him, Troy to be empathic and emotional, and Data ? I think the Picard character might have appealed to ST viewers who had outgrown their cowboy sexual self-image that appealed to them with Kirk, but deep inside I think every man holds onto that cowboy arrogance even when cultural criticism stimulates them to repress it.

 

[mgb_phys]

One of Captain Picard's most admirable traits is his humility

Presumably that's why the character is French, rather than played with Patrick Stewart's own Yorkshire accent.

Now a Yorkshire captain would be interesting !

 

[brainstorm]

Presumably that's why the character is French, rather than played with Patrick Stewart's own Yorkshire accent.

Now a Yorkshire captain would be interesting !

I think Picard was French because French philosophy was a dominant force of intrigue in science and academia in the 80s and 90s. Just a hunch.