Ever since the first nerd caveman took up his +7 Club of Cave Mastery, fashioned a crude pair of Vulcan ears from a wooly mammoth, and started quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail to all his nerd caveman friends, there have been questions which have ever dwelt in the hallowed halls of geekdom. Is Mr. Spock Jewish? Why can’t an Orc Shaman train in duel wielding? What exactly is in Hobbit Weed anyways? But greatest of all these timeless unanswerables is that most quanderous quandary of all: Who is better, Captain Kirk or Captain Picard? Now certainly greater minds than I have grappled with this mystery;
Beginning with points in his favor, Captain Kirk, much like Bill Clinton, boldly got it on with all sorts of alien life forms, often without even checking whether or not they were, technically speaking, female. Picard, on the other hand, mostly just stuck to having a major 5th grade crush on Dr. Beverly Crusher, who, while she was kind of hot in a space mom sort of a way, was also Wesley’s mother, for which she, and by association, Captain Picard, loses all potential coolness points in terms of romance.
In terms of punching things in the face, Captain Kirk is also the clear winner, for while every once in a while Picard would go out and manfully beat the space crap out of someone, I always felt like an episode hadn’t really gotten started right if Kirk hadn’t beaten something up by halfway through the opening credits. So yeah, when Picard punched someone in the face with a saddle or shot them with a crossbow, you knew that he was doing it because he really cared, but the fact is, in terms of sheer ass-beatitude, Kirk wins by a mile.
Concerning the manner of Klingons they hung out with, Kirk is the decisive winner as well. I know, I know, Worf is pretty cool, especially because he holds the intergalactic record for telling the most people that they will die without honor before breakfast on a single day (1,387), but think about Kirk’s Klingons for a second. They had shiny pants. Shiny, shiny, shiny pants. Seriously, I’m all psyched about the 23rd century just because of the anticipated breakthroughs in pants technology. Also, since Kirk was instrumental in helping Spock to establish the now axiomatic Evil Twin Goatee Rule, he gets bonus points in this one.
Also, when it comes to l337 I.T. skillz, Kirk pretty much has it in the bag, for his awesome ability to make evil space computers blow up. Granted, for him this was pretty much a weekly challenge, so he got aplenty of practice, but if I recall rightly, some of these evil space computers had been enslaving entire planets for centuries, and all Kirk had to do to make smoke come out of their ears was throw out a poser like this, “You claim to be programmed to help these people, but in fact you totally suck.” Or, “Everything I tell you is a lie; I’m lying to you right now.” True, every computer that Kirk ever met talked like Stephen Hawking on ‘shrooms, but still, being able to destroy evil computers just by saying stuff that doesn’t make any sense, that’s pretty sweet.
On the subject of gracefully dealing with hair loss, Picard is far and away the better of the two. I mean, think about how many fraudulent/fake-looking baldness cures we already have in the 21st century; by the time Picard starts getting a little thin on top there’s probably millions of different useless ways for middle-aged honky captains to feel like they’re doing something about male pattern baldness. So Picard gets all sorts of cool points for just not giving a damn. Kirk on the other hand, appears to have been wearing a cheap space toupee made from a dead tribble since at least 1967, and while his continued power over the ladies of the Alpha Quadrant in spite of this handicap is impressive, he still has a mop on his head.
In terms of who they are in real life, I’m afraid that Picard wins pretty much completely. I mean, sure Kirk was flying on a plane once back in the 60s (tickets purchased on Priceline, no doubt), and there was a Big Freaky Eskimo Sasquatch Leper on the wing (or, for those of you preferring the politically correct term, a Big Freaky Inuit Sasquatch Leper) and he had the guts to break a window and shoot at it, which would, under normal circumstances, mean a point in his favor, but just think about what he’s up against here. I mean, Captain Picard is also the leader of the X-Men. That means that not only does he get to fight Q and hang out with the guy who does Reading Rainbow, but he’s also the world’s most powerful psychic (more powerful even than Dion Warwick), he hangs out with Wolverine, and his nemesis is Gandalf the Gray. C’mon now, you just can’t beat credentials like that.
Finally we get to accents and nationalities, where Picard wins pretty much hands down. Sure, he’s supposed to be French, but what evidence is there that he lives like it? He’s always drinking tea, he has a totally British accent, he occasionally beats people up, and he doesn’t wear a beret. I think there’s only one conclusion we can draw here: that by the 24th century, mankind has discovered a cure for being French. Kirk on the other hand, is from
So yeah, in the end, for finding a cure for Frenchitude, and for being able to hold a serious conversation with a Ferengi without giggling himself silly, Picard wins. Sorry Kirk, you’re just too weird.
Please direct all Shatner-inspired hate mail to this address: ben@teacupmammoths.com
