Comments on: Science Fiction’s 10 Best Second In Commands

By: jake

jake — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:25:59 +0000

Kerr Avon!

By: I Need a Title, Yes? | Literary Escapism

I Need a Title, Yes? | Literary Escapism — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:37:26 +0000

[...] of lists, I have to say that I agree with MenWithPez’s Science Fiction’s 10 Best Second In Commands. Out of the entire list, there are only two that made the list that I wasn’t familiar [...]

By: LEO

LEO — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:12:55 +0000

Ivanova is God! Love Riker, Spock and Zoe. As far as SG-1 goes Jack O’Neill was an awesome second to Hammond for many years before he became the man. How about some SGA love too. John Sheppard did pretty good for himself.

By: ThatWeirdGirl

ThatWeirdGirl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:03:59 +0000

Overall, I think the list is pretty good. I know you never got into B5 or Blake or SG, so I won’t argue those points with you. I will however say to the commenters that out of those three only Ivanova makes my top 10.

Nice list.

By: lookitsjulia

lookitsjulia — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:54:00 +0000

I agree that Sam Carter is a great leader and a wonderful person in general, but she wasn’t really in charge of anyone except herself when a part of SG-1. As one of only two US Military people on the team, she couldn’t order Teal’c or Daniel around. As was said, you can’t have a second in command in a chain of command of two.

I know that the chain of command was never very clear, but what about D’Argo from Farscape? He was certainly the side to Crichton’s kick.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:35:34 +0000

I love the article, but c’mon… we all know that Will Riker is far and away the best of the bunch. I mean, he’s called “Number One” by Jean-Luc Picard, and you don’t fuck with Jean-Luc Picard, you agree with Jean-Luc Picard.

By: whatsername

whatsername — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:47:46 +0000

For what it’s worth I agree with your top five and the placings within them.

By: JavaChick

JavaChick — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:39:28 +0000

Zoe is awesome! It’s hard to pick a favorite character from Firefly, but Zoe was the one I’d most want to be.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:48:34 +0000

As much as I love Firefly (best show in the history of television) I would still have to argue that Mr. Spock is the greatest second-in-command in all of sci-fi. Always has been. Always will be. No one (not even my beloved Zoe) could ever hope to outshine Spock. So, I’d put Spock as #1 and Zoe as #2.

And, at the risk of inviting criticism, I’ve got to say that I never cared for Will Riker. He has to be my second least favorite Star Trek character of all time (after Wesley Crusher, of course). I always found Riker boring and officious. I kept hoping he’d get his own command and leave Enterprise so that Data could be promoted to First Officer. (Data would have made a much better second-in-command than Riker.)

So, I’d drop Riker from the list and maybe add Susan Ivanova from B5 in his place.

And what about T’Pol? Sure, Enterprise was pretty lame overall; but that doesn’t change the fact that T’Pol made a pretty good second-in-command. (I am working from the assumption that we are supposed to be evaluating the qualities of the second-in-command, not evaluating how much we like the show itself.)

By: Succatash

Succatash — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:41:39 +0000

As much as I love Firefly, I can’t see how anyone beats Spock, ever.