Emperor_Cartagia

Wesley, Ro, and Bozeman Tourist are eliminated immedietly, we never see them do anything fancy at all, they input courses and hit engage, that’s it.

Of those remaining, Sulu is what most people think when they think fancy starship flying, but, if you really look at it, his top moments are manually flying a shuttle into a shuttle bay, and skillfully pulling rather relaxed but precise maneuvers piloting the Enterprise in V’Ger, the Bounty, and a Huey helicopter. No high speed are rapid maneuvering. So while he gets points for skill and for being able to fly anything he gets into, he’s not the top pilot.

Detmer has shown some fancy flying, including combat maneuvers, but only on the Discovery. We don’t know if she’s as skilled if she’s put into a shuttle or an atmospheric craft.

Mayweather, for all the failure to utilize his character, has been put in the hot seat with high pressure, rapid and precise maneuvering. Romulan minefields, combat against the Xindi, high warp precision formation flying, he really is a great pilot.

Ortega is right up there too, she flew into the accretion disk of a black hole while fighting the Gorn, even with her memory severely hampered she piloted the Enterprise through an asteroid field. She flies the ship, top marks, but…

Tom motherfucking Paris. This guy can fly through asteroid fields, through torn up subspace, fluidic space, quantum slipstream tunnels, shuttles, shuttles he designed, shuttles underwater, terrestrial vehicles, high speed combat maneuvers, you name it he can do it. Tom Paris is in my mind the unquestioned #1.

I never stab him if he’s cheating.

So you’re not fully committed, ok.

Ok, so as a starter, I’d recommend that someone going by the above do a kind of seven episode primer on Star Trek and what it’s about. Moral/Ethical philosophy.

TOS - Balance of Terror, is preemptive aggression ever justified?

TNG - Measure of a Man, what makes a person a person?

DS9 - In The Pale Moonlight, do the ends justify the means?

VOY - I’d go with Equinox parts I & II over Year of Hell, but also a “do the ends justify the means.”

ENT - Judgement, is justice arbitrary or universal?

Skip DISCO, plenty of issues to be examined but each one takes a whole season.

Skip LD, there’s a few issues but they’re not as well presented.

SNW - Strange New World

I think that instead of doing a TOS remake they should move forward in the TOS era but with another ship and it’s adventures. Imagine following Una Chin-Riley as Captain of, say, the USS New Jersey? Or a non-Constitution like the Reliant? Contemporary to the Enterprise under Kirk, on its own missions, and she takes Lt. Ortegas and (now Commander) La’an Noonien-Singh as her XO. That way we get new stories but still they get the nostalgia factor and the writing constraints of a lesser technological level.

And let’s not forget the NX-01 herself shows up onscreen in Picard Season 3.

Frakes is, in addition to an iconic Actor, the best Trek Director of the modern age. 11/10.