Every main Star Trek ship's chief engineer, ranked by ability

Chief Engineers can often be Star Trek's unsung heroes, and I feel like it's time we shone a light on them. It's obviously very easy to shower the Captains and First Officers in praise. After all, we see them pull off all sorts of amazing feats on a near-constant basis. Most of the time, all we get is a brief visit to the engine room for a quick check-in with the ship's most senior engineer, trying to keep things running in the middle of a heated battle. Still, Chief Engineers are essential to a Starfleet vessel's continued operation and success. They're an incredibly talented bunch who can often take very unique routes to get there. Almost every Star Trek TV series has a Chief Engineer as a main character, with the only exception being Star Trek: Picard.

The overall well-being of a starship isn't really a primary concern during most of the Next Generation legacy follow-up. Sure, Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton) does return for Season 3, but his role isn't the same as it was back in the classic-era show. So, we're left with 10 central Chief Engineers to rank by ability. I can't quite bring myself to add three of them to the list proper, though. I'll talk briefly about them in the honorable mentions section. The remaining Chief Engineers will be listed in order from "worst" to "best," although those are incredibly loaded terms in this respect. I'd hire any of these seven officers as my Chief Engineer, were I a Starfleet Captain. Regardless, ranking criteria will include raw talent and feats accomplished, as well as other, less tangible metrics.

Honorable Mentions

• Lt. Hemmer – Strange New Worlds' first Chief Engineer was unquestionably brilliant, but it's tricky to give the hard-nosed but likable Aenar a proper appraisal, considering he only appeared in Season 1 before dying.
• Jankom Pog – Star Trek: Prodigy has no official Chief Engineer (at least not a Starfleet one), but Jankom filled the role aboard the USS Protostar and did tremendously, given his lack of formal training.
• Chief Miles O'Brien – After being introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation, his jump to Deep Space Nine is where Chief O'Brien earned the title of Chief of Operations while part of Sisko's crew. He was the Chief Engineer while aboard the USS Defiant, but there's a level of inconsistency there that makes O'Brien difficult to rank among his more traditional peers.

Commander Pelia

Stationed Aboard: USS Enterprise

Carol Kane's Strange New Worlds character was the franchise's first Lanthanite, a race whose lore expanded with Captain Ake's (Holly Hunter) presence in Starfleet Academy. While Commander Pelia deserves her place on the Federation's 23rd-century flagship, her compelling backstory is a little too distracting.Strange New Worlds rarely explores her technical expertise, preferring instead to focus on her more eccentric qualities. This has been especially true since Scotty (Martin Quinn) came aboard, and he has slowly been handed the baton we know he'll eventually inherit. Still, Pelia's engineering know-how can't be denied. I just feel that if she were more naturally talented, her centuries of existence would have amounted to a lot more than a Chief Engineer posting by the time of Strange New Worlds.

Lt. Commander Andy Billups

Stationed Aboard: USS Cerritos

Star Trek: Lower Decks, understandably, focuses more on the Cerritos' junior officers than the more senior members of the crew. That being said, the show never forgets to highlight key officers. The ship's Chief Engineer, Lt. Commander Billups (Paul Scheer), has a few great moments, but most are comically charged rather than making it clear that he's among the best in his field. That's the thing, though: I don't think he is the best in his field. The Cerritos is famously tasked with low-priority missions like Second Contact assignments. As such, there's no need for its crew to be the best of the best; they just need to do their jobs to Starfleet standards. Billups ticks all the necessary boxes. He's nothing too flashy, but there are very few everyday engineering problems that are beyond his skill set.

Lt. Commander Paul Stamets

Stationed Aboard: USS Discovery

When Star Trek: Discovery brought the franchise back to TV screens in 2017, the era of rockstar Chief Engineers seemed to be over. The classic shows forever championed those who held the ship together against all odds, finding creative ways to keep the Warp Core from exploding, that sort of thing. Lt. Commander Stamets (Anthony Rapp) did a little of that, but his primary role (as far as the story went, anyway) was showcasing the capabilities of his life's work: the Spore Drive. Say what you will about the plot holes that the Spore Drive very arguably creates, but there's no denying it's an incredibly sophisticated piece of tech that was way ahead of its time. While Stamets was fairly pedestrian as an everyday engineer, his sheer intelligence bumps him up a couple of notches.

Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker III

Stationed Aboard: Enterprise NX-01

Few Chief Engineers in Starfleet history have had to face the same challenges that Commander Tucker (Connor Trinneer) was constantly forced to overcome. Tasked with keeping what was essentially an experimental Warp engine running smoothly, as well as all the other systems aboard humanity's first deep space vessel, Tucker's talents were pivotal to his crew's survival on more than one occasion. Sure, he had his training to fall back on, but said training was, by its very nature, incomplete. Those who taught Tucker back on Earth had never been faced with the problems that he was always solving. My hat comes off to this man. However, I struggle to believe he would thrive if dropped into eras beyond his native 22nd century.

Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge

Stationed Aboard: USS Enterprise-D (Primarily)

While he began Star Trek: The Next Generation as the Enterprise-D's helmsman, LeVar Burton's character became the ship's Chief Engineer in Season 2 and beyond. It was a role he also held in the show's follow-up movies, during which he would go on to serve aboard the Enterprise-E. I can't think of a sticky situation that Geordi wasn't at least partially responsible for during that two-ship stretch. Perhaps his most valuable contributions were those developed to help contain the Borg threat. The Federation went rapidly from being defenseless against the Borg to standing a fighting chance due to Geordi getting a first-hand look at their capabilities and formulating the earliest countermeasures aboard the Enterprise-D. He perhaps loses a few points for his near-constant collaboration with Data (Brent Spiner). The partnership was fruitful, but I think it saps some of Geordi's innate brilliance.

Lt. Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott

Stationed Aboard: USS Enterprise

James Doohan's legendary Star Trek character exists right in the sweet spot of space travel being an everyday occurrence, and its status as something that's actually still quite new to humanity. As such, the associated technology to pull it off has been pretty much standardized, but the methods of repairing and improving them on the fly are still wildly open to the interpretation of the engineers aboard the ships. There weren't many engineers around during this era who had what it took, and Scotty is the prime example of someone who did. He was constantly rolling up his sleeves and doing things himself, and what he was able to do has gone down in Starfleet history as boundary-pushing innovation. That being said, there is one more Chief Engineer who could do everything Scotty did, and more.

Lt. B'Elanna Torres

Stationed Aboard: USS Voyager

I know, I know. Everyone was probably expecting Scotty to come in first, but hear me out. While Scotty had to constantly balance existing Starfleet procedure with filling in the blanks, Roxann Dawson's B'Elanna Torres had a much more challenging undertaking while making it look easy. Far more accustomed to keeping worse ships running during her time with the Maquis, B'Elanna's forced addition to the crew of an ultra-advanced vessel like Voyager meant the effort levels rocketed down, and the results increased tenfold whenever she was called upon.

Furthermore, Torres' time as Voyager's Chief Engineer resulted in her becoming a much more well-rounded individual. Rather than the aggressive loner she once was, being placed in such a senior position (one that many members of the crew initially objected to) allowed her to also reach her additional potential as a leader. A by-the-book Chief Engineer wouldn't have cut it in a volatile area of space like the Delta Quadrant. Keeping Voyager going took far more than book smarts. The responsibility required a tasteful disregard for the rules, infinite adaptability, and the kind of talent that some are simply born with. Other Chief Engineers have displayed some of these traits, and some, even all of these traits. None of them have been quite so vividly embodied as they are in B'Elanna, though. In this respect, she's the best Chief Engineer in Star Trek history.