Ed Ranks the Main Characters of Star Trek: The Next Generation

10. Dr. Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur)

Did you even remember that in Season 2 they didn't renew Gates McFadden's contract and Dr. Crusher was quietly replaced by Dr. Pulaski? This character was universally disliked. I'm talking about a beyond Wesley-level of dislike (hence coming in last). The character was also just a lazy copycat of Bones McCoy from the original series, as Dr. Pulaski hated transporters like McCoy did and got into snippy arguments with Data like McCoy did with Spock. Eventually, they just brought Crusher back and pretended Season 2 never happened. Good.

9. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby)

Unlike Dr. Pulaski, at least Tasha got an awesome scene where she got to be killed off in a season finale (rather just just forgotten about and never mentioned again). Actress Denise Crosby even got to come back in later seasons after she exited the show... albeit in the form of alternate universe versions, time-loops, and a half-Romulan identical daughter.

8. Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton)

Shut up, Wesley! Nobody likes you. Not even in the nanobot episode. Just kidding, the nanobot episode is great. And you're nowhere near as bad as Pulaski. Just because Wil Wheaton would go on to become a nerd legend later in life doesn't make this whiny boy genius character any more palpable. And since Stand by Me isn't an episode of ST:TNG, you don't have that going in your favor either.

7. Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden)

Not that Wesley's mom was much better, or that the producers of the show were that mistaken to try to cast a new character to replace Crusher. Bev Crusher wasn't outright terrible - but was just kind of boring. All attempts to provide her with any sort of deeper character usually just wound up with her romancing some wacky alien being. Or occasionally having some sexual tension with Picard. At least after they got rid of Wesley she had opportunities to do more things than just worry about her stupid rainbow-shirted son.

6. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton)

So much better than annoying shutter shades

Look, if this rank by was how awesome looking a character is (or if Reading Rainbow was able to influence the rankings) then Geordi would be #1 by far. This dude and his ass-kicking VISOR were cool as all hell. But how much did Geordi really do other than random engineer stuff? Yeah, you jettisoned the warp plasma manifolds AGAIN Geordi, huh? Okay. Sure. As for having romantic love interests or getting to drive the story much himself - that never really happened. He couldn't even get any action on the Holodeck. Which is crazy! You can't realistically tell me that some alien girl shows up on the ship and they're not going to immediately go for that smooth brother with the flashy metal shades.

5. Data (Brent Spiner)

I kinda hate Data, but I honestly can't rank him lower than this since they made him such a damn important character in the show. It seemed like almost every other episode circled around his stupid robotic ass. Yeah, he's weird because he's almost human but not quite. We get it. The uncanny valley and all. And did Dr. Noonien Soong really need to make Data anatomically "fully functional?" What was the exact scientific purpose of that, Doctor? Data really liked "cats," and we can tell what that's supposed to be a metaphor for. He hooked up with Tasha Yar and Jenna D'Sora (and the Borg Queen flirted with him). That's three more love interests than La Forge, an actual human being, ever got. Soong essentially made a glorified sexbot that's  always having Albert Camus-style existential crises about the meaning of his existence and whether or or not it's good to have emotions. That and shitty holodeck episodes where he likes to think he's Sherlock Holmes. At least Geordi got to wear a bowler hat in those episodes though. While getting absolutely no game.

4. Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis)

Not a standard issue uniform

Look, I didn't rally want to spend all of my time on Deanna Troi talking about breasts, but that's just how this is going to have to wind up. Did they ever bother to actually explain why the half-human, half-Betazoid Enterprise physic emotional counselor of the ship gets to wear a completely different Starfleet uniform than every other character? A different uniform that, coincidentally I'm sure, shows about as much cleavage as was legally allowable on broadcast television during the 1980s? Crusher's outfit didn't look like that. Tasha Yar's outfit didn't look like that. The only episode in which Troi didn't have her giant mammerjammers hanging out was the pilot episode - and even in that episode they decided that she should wear a super short skirt that hung about two inches lower than her cooch (if that). I'm sure that Troi had completely decent plotlines and story arcs and I'm vaguely recalling her on-and-off romance with Riker, the complicated relationship with her mom, and all the times they used her emphatic abilities for stories. But mostly I just remember bouncing and spandex. Lots of bouncing. If they were to find a similar character for the new Star Trek: Discovery show that's debuting in 2017 - the only example I could think of would be casting Kate Upton as the starship's "Chief Trampoline Testing Engineer."

3. William Riker (Johnathan Frakes)

Let's set aside boring Season 1 Riker who was a by-the-books lame-ass with no epic beard and only talk about the Riker with an epic beard who appeared in Season 2 and lasted the duration of the show. Did they try too hard to make Riker a ladies' man in a similar vein to Captain Kirk? Yeah, sure they did. But the show kind of needed someone like Riker to counterbalance a Captain like Picard. Do I really care for the Riker teleporter clone episodes? No. Is it sort of rude that Picard just called him "Number One" all the time - a synonym for urine? Yeah.

2. Worf (Michael Dorn) 

Worf kicked all kinds of ass, and Klingon or Worf-centric episodes were always good episodes. He had all these crazy fighting skills and his own language. As a character who sort of "didn't belong" and was "different than everyone else," Worf was so much better than Data. No wonder they moved him over to Deep Space Nine after TNG ended. And by the way, I just wanted to let you all know that despite the fact that I'm ranking TNG characters - Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek show. I know that's a controversial statement, but I don't care.

1. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart)

The man

This one is a no-brainer. Picard is the best. Picard is better than Kirk. Picard is Patrick Stewart and Patrick Stewart is awesome. I'm not sure if they bothered to explain in the series why the "Frenchman" Picard spoke with a British accent, enjoyed British Earl Grey Tea, had a fondness for British playwright Shakespeare, and knew the lyrics to British Navy songs. But outside of the series the answer is obvious - Patrick Stewart just owned the character and turned it into himself. Picard was intelligent and considerate, and was able to give the show some much-needed catch-phrases. Stewart brought a level of gravitas to Star Trek that never existed with the original series or movies - one that has not been matched and likely never will be.