Star Trek: Voyager's Main Characters, Ranked From Worst To Best

From their ship's first ill-fated venture into the Badlands, the crew of "Star Trek: Voyager" was in for a weird, messy ride. But the kind of nonstop chaos that comes with a little slip-and-slide into the Delta Quadrant is a piece of cake for the larger-than-life personalities that come to call Voyager home.

Unlike your standard Starfleet operation, which is mostly stocked with starched onesie types in all their shiny-pipped primary color glory, Voyager starts off regulation but quickly becomes a melting pot bubbling with Starfleet, Maquis, and all of the strays Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) picks up along the way. The Enterprise-D might have a positronic cat guy and a prune-juice-loving Klingon, but Voyager's got an opera-singing "Star Trek" hologram doctor (Robert Picardo) who loves little more than harmonizing with their very own former Borg drone (Jeri Ryan).

But just as one Tuvix (Tom Wright) is more valuable than Tuvok (Tim Russ) and Neelix (Ethan Phillips) put together to everyone but Janeway, some "Voyager" characters would make for much better company on a long shuttlecraft trip than others. From the folks no one wants to invite to their mutinous holonovel party to Voyager's biggest MVP, here's our worst-to-best ranking of the "Star Trek: Voyager" crew.

Kes (Jennifer Lien), the Ocampan stray who spends a few years living aboard Voyager (before leaving the series due to a personal tragedy in Jennifer Lien's life in "The Gift"), is one of the most poorly conceived and mismanaged characters in the "Star Trek" universe. Kes first comes aboard "Voyager" as Neelix's plus-one in the pilot episode "Caretaker." But she's not just another mouth to feed — Kes quickly gets to work in sick bay, where she uses her soothing, monotone audiobook voice to reassure patients while studying under the Doctor. A pioneer of Space Cottagecore with her adorable elven aesthetic and gardening skills, Kes helps with the Voyager's food supply problem by tending to a hydroponic garden she builds in a cargo bay.

And yet Kes is still the most disappointing Voyager character. Her nine-year Ocampan lifespan complicates Kes's age progression so much that writers mostly just ignore it. Mathematically, she would have been a teen in the pilot episode, which bears uncomfortable implications for her age when she and Neelix first linked up. And then there's the nonsensical Ocampan reproductive system with its "one child per couple" yield and complicated, life-threatening fertility phase.

Although she's technically a dynamic character who has something of a personal journey, she's written so inconsistently that it's almost like watching different Keses in different episodes. Between the controlling Neelix and man-child Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), she has the worst taste in men in all four quadrants. Even her hair is rough, transitioning from young Kes with her awkward Peter Pan cosplay aura to an older Kes' D'Artagnan curls. And her supercharged telepathy-to-blue-light transformation is so poorly explained fans have to read the wiki to understand it.

A Talaxian jack-of-all trades picked up by Voyager in the pilot episode, Neelix comes to be the ship's morale officer and chef. Sort of a Schrodinger's alien, Neelix is the "Star Trek: Voyager" character who somehow manages to be lovable and distressingly grating all at once. With his constant gaffs and boundary violations, there's a general sense that Neelix was meant to serve as comic relief — except he's not really that funny. As one Reddit user put it, "He's basically Steve Urkel in space — cringe-inducing, boring, embarrassing."

While he's actually kind of a decent cook, something that pairs nicely with his girlfriend's cargo bay garden, his meals often come with a side of desperate, sycophantic fawning that makes them kind of tough to stomach. He can be empathetic and sweet, but his annoying personality, neediness, over-enthusiasm, and general lack of insight tend to negate any goodwill that might elicit from his fellow crewmen.

And then there's the creep factor hanging over his relationship with Kes, who again was very likely a child when he met her. Outwardly, he appears to be a loving and doting boyfriend. But the moment she begins to exercise a little independence and he feels her slipping away, Neelix becomes controlling, even cruel. While he eventually shows an iota of character growth by coming to accept their breakup, there's really no serious contemplation or amends made on Neelix's part. Overall, he's written like yet another "nice guy" whose good behavior is a thin veneer over the volatility lurking just below the surface.

If Neelix is the Schrodinger's alien of "Voyager," Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is the oatmeal. Made Janeway's new first officer after she loses the first one in "Caretaker," Chakotay brings a mild-mannered, low energy presence to the Voyager bridge, making him a good counterweight to Janeway's ferocity. And while it's probably lovely to have an agreeable first officer in a real-world military scenario, Chakotay has a general "meh" quality that feels consistently anticlimactic for a character who is literally a freedom fighter when we meet him.

Other than his Maquis resume, Chakotay's only interesting character traits center around his Native American heritage and his desire to follow his ancestral traditions. But rather than put in the work to present audiences with storytelling that integrates genuine Indigenous cultures, "Voyager" gave its viewers an amalgam of Native stereotypes through Chakotay's face tattoo, spirit guide, and other vaguely Olmec traditions. It would come as no surprise to many when the show's spiritual advisor and Native American expert, Jamake Highwater, would eventually be exposed for having faked his Blackfoot and Cherokee heritage.

But the problematic treatment of Native cultures aside, Chakotay is just another one of those underdeveloped "Star Trek" characters whose potential never gets seen. When he finally gets a personal story arc that doesn't center around his magical Nativeness, Chakotay gets thrust into a pairing with Janeway or Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) as part of an unearned relationship we didn't actually get a chance to watch develop naturally in the series. It's all very disappointing for a guy with lovable space dad energy.

Voyager's hot rod space pilot Tom Paris is a chaotic man-child who inexplicably manages to maintain generally healthy relationships for most of his time on Voyager. Before he links up with B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), the one gal tough enough to whip him into shape, Tom's only saving grace is his enduring bromance with Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) — that, and all the holodeck LARPing the pair does together.

When we first meet Paris, he's in a Federation penal colony where Janeway approaches him for help on her first Voyager mission. But we soon learn he's not a bad boy ... he just has poor impulse control, an issue that continues to plague him throughout the show's run. And as B'Elanna and Harry can attest, he's also kind of a brat.

Like all quasi-bad boys who chronically fail to achieve their full potential, Paris tends to get himself into the stupidest pickles. At one point, he gets the hots for a sentient spaceship and shuts out everyone in his life. Another time, in an absurd twist nobody could have seen coming, he literally turns into a salamander boy, kidnaps the captain, transforms her into a salamander, and has babies with her — babies everyone conveniently forgets to retrieve by the end. Tom Paris is, as one Facebook poster lamented, "About as useful as a cheesegrater in a pet store with half the potential."

Tuvok's character suffers from some of the same problems Chakotay does, but he's just a little bit more interesting while he's doing it. Once a double agent Starfleet officer posing as a Maquis, Tuvok's secret spy back story shows just how competent and capable he is for a mild-mannered Vulcan. But so much of what makes Tuvok a good "Star Trek: Voyager" character begins and ends with his portrayal by actor Tim Russ, who also acted in "Deep Space Nine" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

As Tuvok, a reliable, competent, and all-around Vulcany Starfleet Vulcan, Russ presents a guy with a whole lot of personality underneath his quiet, calm exterior — something that doesn't always translate in other Vulcan portrayals. He does a great job of presenting a character forced to exercise constant patience while knowing full well that he's heads and tails above everyone else in the room in terms of competence.

But he's more than just a good officer. Tuvok is also an excellent holonovelist, something he learns accidentally after his fellow crew members stumble across "Insurrection Alpha," a program he developed while testing potential security vulnerabilities. And despite getting stranded in the Delta Quadrant, for all he knows permanently, Tuvok remains deeply faithful to his wife back home.

Easily one of the most underrated characters in "Star Trek: Voyager," eternal Ensign Harry Kim is the yin to bestie Tom Paris's yang. While Tom is a ne'er-do-well who somehow keeps failing upward, Harry is the good kid who studied hard and does what's right only to watch rank and privilege pass him by. Literally retaining memories of life as a fetus in his mother's womb, Harry was his parents' pride and joy, even accompanying them on humanitarian missions as a kid. Besides absolutely killing it in Starfleet academics, Harry also excelled in sports and eventually took up playing the clarinet in the Juilliard Youth Symphony.

No matter what happens to Harry, he's consistently upbeat despite enduring enough suffering to compete with Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). Throughout it all, he remains a stable, even-keeled force in Tom Paris' life, always ready to hang out on the holodeck with his bud. And while he does tend to have pretty bad luck with women, he's still one of the best catches on Voyager. 

Harry's overall goodness makes it that much more tragic and disturbing when our original Harry Kim accidentally gets killed in the Season 2 episode "Deadlock" after a spatial anomaly makes a copy of the ship and everyone on it. When his copy steps in to take his place, no one seems to react to the unspoken horror of this "Star Trek" storyline. This also means that, no matter where the ship goes for the rest of the series — including back home to his family — everyone will always be interacting with a copy of Harry Kim, a man destined to never get a funeral after dying unceremoniously in the Delta Quadrant.

In a franchise with a historically disappointing record when it comes to writing female characters, one that "Star Trek: Voyager" seems to get right almost across the board is B'Elanna Torres, the strong-minded former Maquis freedom fighter-turned-Voyager chief engineer. The child of a Klingon mom and a human dad, B'Elanna is a complex character with a well-developed personality who may resonate with anyone who has struggled to find balance in their own life. 

As a hot-tempered, often mercurial individual, B'Elanna could have been portrayed as a one-dimensional, overly-harsh woman if not for the stellar performance of Dawson, who brings a nuance and complexity to her portrayal. She's a strong woman, but far from a reductive feminist stereotype, B'Elanna is multifaceted, flawed, resilient, vulnerable, and dynamic. 

Like just about every chief engineer in the "Star Trek" universe, B'Elanna is a hardworking genius with a knack for performing at her best under pressure. But she also has a good sense of work-life balance, and, despite the pressure to get everyone home to Earth before they've all grown old or died, she manages to make time for pursuits like rock-climbing, dates with her fella, and exploring her Klingon heritage. She's also just about the only woman who can wrangle Tom, and she does a good job of keeping him from becoming his own worst enemy — no easy feat, given his track record.

Captain Kathryn Janeway is everything a great "Star Trek" captain should be. Drawing on his own military career, Looper's Jonathan H. Kantor opined that she's the one "Star Trek" captain you'd actually want as a commanding officer if you were serving in Starfleet. Strong, focused, and unwavering, Janeway can be tough-as-nails when she has to be. But at the same time, she can also bring a feminine empathy, connecting with her officers on a human level when she needs to without sacrificing her control and authority.

But that's just the beginning of what makes the coffee-powered Janeway such a fantastic character. Even while faced with the tremendous pressure of having to get her people home on the world's longest unplanned road trip detour, Janeway never loses sight of the scientific curiosity that drives Starfleet's missions, and she goes out of her way to keep discovering new things along the way.

She may not be the diplomat Picard is, but Janeway proves herself one of Starfleet's most powerful negotiators as she wheels and deals her way through the Delta Quadrant, working out arrangements to help aid Voyager's crew in their journey home. She's down-to-earth, plain-spoken, and best of all, a dog person with a litter of puppies waiting to greet her back home — even if they'll be long grown by the time she makes it back.

Few characters in the "Star Trek" franchise undergo more dynamic growth in their Starfleet tenures than former Borg drone Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Born Annika Hansen, Seven was aboard her parents' ship as a child as they studied a then-little-known threat the Federation would eventually become all too familiar with.

Convinced the Borg would not attack them because they were too small to be of interest to the cyborg species, Annika's parents arrogantly continued to follow and research the Borg, placing their young child at risk. After the family was assimilated, Seven would grow up in the Borg matrix, where she lived until she was assigned as a liaison to Voyager, with the Doctor later liberating her by removing most of her implants.

Over the course of her time on Voyager, Seven gradually begins to discover her own identity apart from the collective, a journey that later continues on "Star Trek: Picard." Despite her rigid way of speaking in her early post-collective days, Seven eventually comes to discover her own dry but often whimsical sense of humor and develop a deep camaraderie for her fellow crewmen as well as a strong sense of justice. This would one day serve her well in her post-Voyager years working as a freedom fighter with the Fenris Rangers before ascending to captain of the Enterprise-G.

The MVP of Voyager, the Emergency Medical Hologram known simply as the Doctor, shows up to replace the ship's recently deceased doctor after the catastrophic events of "Caretaker," and quickly becomes one of the most important (not to mention beloved) officers on the ship. Originally intended to run only for a short time, the Doctor is left running for so long, due to their circumstances, that he begins to evolve. It doesn't take long for him to become sentient and self-aware.

While he could easily feel resentful at his forced servitude aboard Voyager, the Doctor truly values the crew and his job. But more than that, he values his own humanity, or at least the facsimile thereof, devoting a good deal of his free time to personal growth and character development. At one point, he even runs a family program, a program that feels real to him as he allows it to run a natural course, leading to a tragic loss he never fully recovers from. He eventually gets a chance to love again in his post-Voyager life as he adopts and raises SAM, the Series Acclimation Mil (Kerrice Brooks), on "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," sealing his title as the best space dad in "Star Trek." 

Robert Picardo is effortlessly charming and funny, stealing each scene he's in. With his endless sarcastic quips, dry wit, deeply caring personality, and achingly beautiful opera voice, the EMH is easily the best and most interesting character on "Star Trek: Voyager."