Highest upvoted helmsman in this thread will be declared best helmsman in the fleet.
I think advances in special effects give Ortegas and Detmer a pretty solid advantage over the others, just because fancier flying is now within tv production values.
But as far as I know, Sulu is the only one to make captain, get his own command, and have a ship named in his honor. Plus, he got to strut around in monster maroon.
And Tom Paris is a dick.
EDIT: of course, there is a guy who wore monster maroon at one point, got his own command, and made admiral. But for some reason, the helmsman of the Stargazer isn’t an option.
Tom. Gotta be Tom
My vote is Sulu 100%
Oh my!
My vote is for Ortegas.
My vote goes to Erica
Erica has to win. Being the pilot of the Enterprise is her only character trait, so it would be unfair to pick anyone else.
Also, SNW writers, GIVE US MORE ERICA ORTEGAS. After the strike, of course.
She needs someplace to put all that nonconformist sex appeal.
I’m going with Mayweather, because of reasons that I couldn’t possibly explain in four seasons.
He’s the best stick and rudder man of all time.
Gotta go with Tom. Going from prison to full redemption, while at the same time growing into a loving father married to a hot badass half-Klingon is definitely life goals. Not to mention his affinity for history and classic cars.
Dude designed and built his own shuttle, then had a breakthrough in warp field theory that let him exceed warp 10. In addition to scraping through multiple battles with Borg and other fleets of enemies. How is he not the clear winner?
He broke warp 10 before he designed the Delta Flyer. Season 2 for warp 10 and season 5 for Delta Flyer.
He loses points for the time spent as a lizard, I think
Also that sweet transition from literally no attitude control straight into warp drive when they got shot by Species 8472. Dude’s got skills.
I was thinking of the same scene! He was great at getaways and evading.
It’s not official canon but since the actor appeared in TNG as a different cadet who engaged in risky shuttle maneuvers to show off, it’s assumed that Paris was generally the same.
Yeah the two characters have different names (Nick Lacarno vs Tom Paris), but I always assumed the TNG character was the inspiration for Paris.
Iirc he was supposed to be the same character, but then voyager would need to pay royalties to the tng writers every episode he was in
lol, that sounds about right. I’d be pissed if I were the writers. “Hey we used the same actor and the same back story, but we used a different character name so go fuck yourself.”
I don’t care who wins as long as Wesley Crusher loses.
I love the choice of picture here. Wil appears to be wearing his “I know everyone hates Wesley” face.
There’s a kind of magic here that this is a game, and Wil’s entry is going to lose badly. (We love you Wil.)
Tom Paris
Underrated best pilot for sure. The only pilot in the show who constantly just wanted to pilot things.
Enters a space race, designs his own shuttle and makes it look like a hot rod and configures the controls for manual operation. Works on classic cars on the holodeck. He breaks the warp 10 barrier.
dont forget he has children with Janeway (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
I’m not sure breaking the warp 10 barrier is such a positive, knowing how that episode ends…
But I agree. Paris has my vote too.
Is that the episode I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to forget?
Its not the warp 10 barrier itself that matters. Its more that hes actually interested in being a pilot. Where all the others are very thin characters.
Sulu easy win
Target the other candidates and fire.
If anyone says to vote out Sulu, I’m coming at you with a fencing saber.
Foil.
Yeah, he took the foil and left me with the saber.
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.
The people demand Ortegas. She has the killer instinct.
How is Lt. Commander Data not here?
Because he wasn’t a helmsman, he worked the Conn position.
If I remember correctly, he rotated between stations over the course of the series. I could be wrong, but I can swear I remember him performing helmsman duties, especially when they needed fancy flying.
Sulu FTW!
