Star Trek: Every Ensign Ranked From Worst To Best

Typically, when someone graduates from Starfleet Academy in Star Trek, the first rank they are given is ensign. The title originates from traditional naval ranks, and is one rank below lieutenant or lieutenant junior grade.

In Starfleet, the role of an ensign is usually to assist senior officers with assignments in a department they specialised in while at the Academy, and to learn and grow their skills. This isn't always the case though. Some ensigns, like Pavel Chekov and Harry Kim were even given permanent postings on the bridge once they proved themselves capable.

In this list, we're going to rank every ensign from the main casts of all of the Star Trek series in order of how well they performed and how much they accomplished while they were ensigns. As Lower Decks has shown us, captains and commanders love to take all the credit, but they'd be hopeless without talented junior officers.

Few ensigns embody the unapologetic optimism of Starfleet as much as D'Vana Tendi from Lower Decks. Even when put in an uncomfortable situation (like being forced to manually pump a crewman's heart with her own hands), she always did it with a smile.

In her past, Tendi was an Orion pirate known as The Mistress Of The Winter Constellations, but she soon decided to leave her homeworld to join Starfleet, as she didn't feel like she fit in with her fellow Orions. She actually got rather upset when people would compare her to other Orions, who were known as pirates and smugglers throughout the Alpha Quadrant. This gave her a strong desire to prove herself.

Upon arriving at the Academy, she became so engrossed in her studies that she didn't even get a chance to explore places on Earth outside of San Francisco. She graduated as a member of the sciences division and eventually became one of the top junior medics on the Cerritos, and also worked on plenty of side projects like her genetically modified dog.

The only reason she's placed at the bottom of this list is because her achievements (so far, at least) are the least impressive out of all of the main character ensigns.