Highest upvoted helmsman in this thread will be declared best helmsman in the fleet.
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 like this breakdown, particularly the contrast between Ortegas and Paris. I think Ortegas is a better overall character, and gets big points for having her skills and progress matter to her character development. Paris, though, was an elite pilot before he showed up on Voyager, and then he spent years doing the most insane piloting anyone in Starfleet has ever seen. Ortegas is sort of the ideal of a relatable, blue-collar pilot with a promising career ahead of her, whereas Paris was a savant when he left with Voyager and a legend when he got home. He's a tier above everyone else on the list, you gotta hand it to him.
Isnt Wesley effectivly a traveler? Being able to "blip" into any part of the galaxy on demand is a pretty hard to beat feat for a helmsman.
Doesn't count unless you're actively commissioned/enlisted in Starfleet, though.
Doesnt that invalidate Tom then? He was given a battlefield reinstatement by Janeway, and most of his feats fell in the time period before it was "official" from Star trek command.
Whose to say that ol "make it so" Picard cant pop a commision on Traveler Crusher on demand?
Tom Paris is an amazing pilot but he's the most bland bad boy ever. At least some of the others are interesting!
Tom is such a good pilot he broke the warp barrier, turned into a lizard, made his CO turn into a lizard, had sex with her, and returned back to human form all in a 30 minute episode. Top that
his XO turn into a lizard
*CO, ahem. if he had managed to have lizard babies with Chakotay (the eXecutive officer), perhaps the episode wouldn’t have been so stupid. also, the episode was more like 48 minutes.
I will not stand for this Jadzia Dax erasure. Does any one else have TWO lifetimes of being shuttle pilots? No.
Didn't the first Dax pilot die in a piloting accident, though?
I don't know if she ever said if it was pilot error or not though. He was a test pilot, so the accident may have been due to a flaw in the shuttle he was testing
How many other pilots survived dying in a crash? You can't buy that kind of experience!
If anyone says to vote out Sulu, I'm coming at you with a fencing saber.
Are we considering their piloting skills or their personality off the bridge?
if so, Laren is off the list. Such a drag, always going on about starving in a Bajoran refugee camp while her people were being genocided. What do I need, a drinking problem?
Tom Paris literally broke spacetime and did direct action to save a water planet.
Is there any question?
I question the inclusion of Gavin the Botanist as the Lower Decks entry--doesn't Boimler at least man the helm when he's on the bridge, including the season 1 and 3 finales?
(While federation ships have some variation on which front console is main ops vs. helm, the Cerritos' ops is stage left, mostly indicated by Ensign Barnes' occasional presence there.).
Gavin, the pilot, was really only included because I couldn't think of an 8th pilot and I had just gotten done watching Lower Decks. But if I ever repost it I will include Boims for you.
Rutherford probably would have been a good choice for Lower Decks. We know his past self was a champion sublight racer, and his current self beat him in a race piloting the Delta Flyer. He just doesn't get much time behind the helm because he's now an engineer first and foremost
