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17 Captain Kirk
From: Star Trek
A leader worth following
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James Tiberius Kirk is a character so sizzlingly iconic that, despite the naysayers, was able to withstand another actor taking it on. Capturing Kirk’s cocky charm and managing to look as though that chair was sculpted around him, Chris Pine is now as much the Captain as William Shatner was and is. We love Kirk for being the leader we’d want for a five-year mission. Imagine being an impressionable Ensign on that first mission of the NCC-1701 and looking up at this youthful, strong, brave, lusty and seriously cool commander-in-chief and just thinking, “F–k, yeah…”
Shatner himself describes his alter ego as an “expansive, randy, faintly ridiculous, and yet supremely capable leader of men, Falstaffian in his love of life and largeness of spirit”, while Chris Pine calls him “a charming, funny leader of men”.
With Shat, we travelled with Kirk from the athleticism of youth, through the trials of middle-age, to that thrown-away death in the heart of the Nexus. Now we’re starting all over again. And nobody, apart from James T Kirk, has ever smirked like that and not looked like a c–t.
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16 Cameron
From: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The killer robot it’s okay to fancy
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A nice Terminator. It shouldn’t have worked the first time around with Arnie in T2. The fact that it did again with Cameron in The Sarah Connor Chronicles was nothing short of a miracle, and almost entirely down to Summer Glau’s performance. The ex-River Tam may have form playing kooky, spooky, secretly rock-hard characters, but it was still a surprise just how well she pulled off the “killer cyborg from the future” shtick. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been. The original concept for the Terminator was that it would blend in perfectly and in that, Cameron succeeds, being neither Arnie, nor a ridiculous caricature of femininity like the “Terminatrix” in T3. There are no inflatable boobs or minigun hands here – just a woman who appears delicate, but is actually insanely powerful. Mind you, that same power came with some interesting loopholes. Like when Cameron was damaged in season two, and started trying to kill John, rather than protect him… Pleasingly, while taking the character along the same “implacable robot finds a heart” path that Data trod in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the show’s producers never forgot that Cameron could be as much a threat as she was a protector.
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