It's a tough call, but one of my favorites is actually "Kain Blueriver" and "The Swordbreaker", one of the few times I'll actually nominate an anime. That's pretty obscure though.
I really liked the show "Farscape" but the nature of the ship and crew sort of prevents it from a nomination here since the ship is a living entity (a character unto itself) and they really don't have a "captain" or even a clear chain of command, which is half their problem.
"Dylan Hunt" and "The Andromeda Ascendant" was a pretty good team too (Andromeda) but the inconsistant writing and some of the "huh, what?" plot points in that universe that spill over onto the characters and ship also mean that I can't give it a heartfelt nomination.
In my heart I'd like to say Captain Kirk beause he was the first great captain of this sort to get massive recognition in pop culture, but I think a lot of things have done it better since. Picard is okay, but I am one of those who always preferred Kirk. "Star Trek" has put out some great shows, with some good casts of characters, but Kirk was the only captain that had me always cheering for him. All of the other ones (Picard, Sisko, Janeway) just never got the same reaction, as all of them went through periods where I actually found them more annoying than anything. At least when Kirk was an arrogant schmuck he made it entertaining
as opposed to me simply wanting them to dump him out the nearest air lock so we could get on with the plot in a more common sense fashion.
The whole "captain and his spaceship" thing is such a trope through so much media that it's really hard to narrow it down to one if your familiar with a lot of material.
While my opinions of Anime are mixed (as I mentioned above) one other one that should probably get Honorable mention even if I'm not a huge fan is "Captain Harlock" and "The Arcadia". I'm not a big fan, but I'm kind of surprised that nobody mentioned him right off the bat with all the anime fans here. One of the longest running, and most spin-off intensive anime universes out there has largely been built around that character.
I really liked the show "Farscape" but the nature of the ship and crew sort of prevents it from a nomination here since the ship is a living entity (a character unto itself) and they really don't have a "captain" or even a clear chain of command, which is half their problem.
"Dylan Hunt" and "The Andromeda Ascendant" was a pretty good team too (Andromeda) but the inconsistant writing and some of the "huh, what?" plot points in that universe that spill over onto the characters and ship also mean that I can't give it a heartfelt nomination.
In my heart I'd like to say Captain Kirk beause he was the first great captain of this sort to get massive recognition in pop culture, but I think a lot of things have done it better since. Picard is okay, but I am one of those who always preferred Kirk. "Star Trek" has put out some great shows, with some good casts of characters, but Kirk was the only captain that had me always cheering for him. All of the other ones (Picard, Sisko, Janeway) just never got the same reaction, as all of them went through periods where I actually found them more annoying than anything. At least when Kirk was an arrogant schmuck he made it entertaining
as opposed to me simply wanting them to dump him out the nearest air lock so we could get on with the plot in a more common sense fashion.
The whole "captain and his spaceship" thing is such a trope through so much media that it's really hard to narrow it down to one if your familiar with a lot of material.
While my opinions of Anime are mixed (as I mentioned above) one other one that should probably get Honorable mention even if I'm not a huge fan is "Captain Harlock" and "The Arcadia". I'm not a big fan, but I'm kind of surprised that nobody mentioned him right off the bat with all the anime fans here. One of the longest running, and most spin-off intensive anime universes out there has largely been built around that character.
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