The real answer of course is Commander Susan Ivanova. She may not be from some... some... deep space franchise, but dammit, she's something.
Spock never threatened to eject someone out of an airlock when they were annoying him. Riker never opened hailing frequencies during a battle and declared "I am the right hand of vengeance!" to his doomed foe. Kira... okay, Kira was pretty fucking awesome and almost reaches Ivanova levels of glory. Chakotay never threatened to twist off someone's head and use it for a chamber pot. T'pol never... did anything remotely interesting. Ransom is fun to watch, but not exactly deep.
I'm sure that Picard and Generic Prequel and STD have first officers, but I can't be arsed to waste time watching those shows. I wish I could get back the time I spent watching their pilot episodes.
That show was so frustrating. I was so hyped for Ivanova to have a whole gay little arc with Talia. Then Talia drops out and we get the fedoralord Marcus niceguying at Ivanova all day.
In fairness to the show, Talia's departure was the actress's decision after her divorce of Jerry Doyle. (And fair enough to her in turn for divorcing him, that man was a colossal chud and must have been insufferable to live with.) The showrunner/writer and Ivanova's actress were fully on board for a proper relationship arc, but those real-life circumstances forced otherwise. I think the writing room backup plan of Ivanova hardening her heart after Talia's departure was actually the most realistic outcome for her character.
And I think it's unfair to call Marcus a nice-guy-ing fedoralord. He was an interesting person in his own right. He simply wore his heart on his sleeve. He had healthy friendships and professional relations with other characters of all genders, a trait not really seen in the fedora crowd in real life. He found Ivanova interesting (and who wouldn't?) and tried to openly woo her in his own quirky old-fashioned way.
In fairness to the show,
Well yeah. There's a lot of "in fairness to the show." It's a great show that was absolutely marred by production issues. The departures are fair, but there's a lot. And the replacements are awkwardly 1:1. Then it gets cancelled early so it has to rush, etc etc.
I'm not too into reboots, generally speaking. But B5 is the one property I'd like rebooted. I'd love to see it executed properly, without having to hustle and improvise the whole time.
And I think it's unfair to call Marcus a nice-guy-ing fedoralord.
My man canonically a virgin mall ninja who practiced his bo staff skills. He was an obviously intended to be a fan insert for the type of nerd who watches these shows. I love the show, grew up on it, but he makes me cringe every time he's on screen.
