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This question revolves around the most times a character from the TNG era (including DS9, Voyager and movies) died.

This question involves spoilers. Do not read on if you haven't watched all the episodes/movies and don't want to know.

"Death" here includes, temporary death, brain death, reversed death, presumed death, holographic death, imagined death, hallucinated death. The death doesn't need to be portrayed on-screen. Repeated death in the same episode or portraying the same event counts as one death.

Examples to clarify what counts:

* In "Cause and Effect", everyone on board died (then it was undone in a time loop)
* In "Skin of Evil", Yar dies. After the events of "Yesterday's Enterprise", we learn in "Redemption Part II" that she died in the past.
* In "Tapestry", Picard dies on the operating table, and then comes back, possibly due to intenvention from Q.
* In "Timescape", everyone on-board except Picard, Data, La Forge, and Troi die when the Enterprise exploded, but the time reverses itself.
* In "Thine Own Self", holographic La Forge is sent to his death by Troi.
* In Star Trek Nemesis, Data dies.

The point is not to argue over whether a particular event constitutes death or not. If it looks like death or is called death, it probably counts.

Inevitably I will be editing this more to clarify more as needed.

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  • 2
    Related: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/66290/3823
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 0:36
  • I would like to point out that in Cause and Effect the entire crew dies something like 17 times (17.4 days in the loop, and around 1 day or less for each loop). So any deaths that include this should start at 17 at least.
    – user11521
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 17:07
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    @Michael: Reread the description. This kind of episode, such as "Cause and Effect" and "Coda" are exactly the reason I said we count multiple deaths in the same episode as one. Furthermore, in "Parallels" there are going to be enough Enterprises to fill the sector. Out of our sample size of three, the one Worf is on and probably the destroyed one with Cast Away Riker have Picard dead. So you can assume out of trillions of Enterprises that there aren't only two with a dead Picard. Do you want to count this as billions of dead Picards?
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 17:15
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    I've downvoted this question. You've made the definition of "death" so fuzzy that debate about what is and is not included is essential, and apparently mods are cleaning up the comments intended to seek clarification. As such, this cannot receive a proper answer. (It probably ought to be closed. I think it falls into at least "Unclear what you're asking" and "Primarily Opinion Based." Maybe into "Too Broad," too.)
    – jpmc26
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 21:40
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    @ThePopMachine Except there are too many borderline cases here. You're not going to be able to cover all of them. The previous stretches made in Praxis' answer demonstrates that. Additionally, many comments seeking clarifications were deleted by moderators. Apparently, the level of discussion required to resolve the ambiguities is being discouraged, and without the opportunity to clarify, this question isn't answerable. Of course it's hard to define as you say, but the level of ambiguity here is making it a bad fit for StackExchange's format. That's not an attack; it's just a reality.
    – jpmc26
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 22:48

2 Answers 2

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I nominate Picard: 10 "deaths".

  • "Time Squared": Picard shoots and kills another Picard. (Not a hologram or clone and not an imagined death, but an identical Picard who was from a slightly different moment in time.)

  • "Samaritan Snare": Although not terribly explicit, some of the dialogue suggests that Picard may have been briefly, clinically dead on the operating table (he had no metabolic processes at one point). Ultimately, he was saved by Pulaski.

  • "Cause and Effect": Everyone on board dies (then it gets undone in a time loop).

  • "Tapestry": He dies on the operating table, and then comes back, possibly due to intenvention from Q.

  • "Chain of Command": Presumed dead after being captured by the Cardassians.

  • "Parallels": Picard is dead in various alternate timelines. The deaths are not shown on-screen, but that seems to be okay by the guidelines of the question. Also by the guidelines, this gets counted as one death (no matter how many timelines he dies in).

  • "Gambit": Picard is declared dead after he is "killed" by a transporter weapon.

  • "All Good Things": Two Enterprises blow up, presumably ending two Picards. Will count these as one death.

  • Generations : Picard looks to have died on Veridian III (due to explosion of the Veridian star) just as Kirk seemed to have died aboard the Enterprise-B. In actuality, Picard was saved by the Nexus (just as Kirk was), and we find this out a few moments later.

  • "Azati Prime": This is an Enterprise episode that takes place partly in the 26th Century. By this time, Picard would surely be dead. (I'm only including this one because of the "Living Witness" example in the Janeway answer, even though it means that Janeway's count should increase by 1 too, as a result.)

Fringe cases

These instances are debatable, but given the OP's loose definition of "death", they may be relevant. Here they are for posterity at the very least, or in case they are relevant to someone answering a future question.

  • "Lonely Among Us": Picard exists for a period of time only as some sort of energy field out in space. He eventually gets saved by the power of terrible sci-fi. I want to file this under "temporary death", even though his consciousness still seemed to exist...somewhere out there. Also discussed here.

  • "The Best of Both Worlds": Picard is declared a "casualty of war" by Admiral Hanson. He was not dead, but considered good as dead.

  • "The Inner Light": Picard's alternate probe-based persona presumably dies, outside of the simulation. But we'll never know for sure.

  • "Remember Me": Crusher is trapped in a static warp bubble and everyone else around her slowly disappears. Picard is one of the last to cease existing before we really know what is going on. It's true that Crusher has a hunch about what is going on before Picard disappears, but we (the viewers) don't know that she is right yet.

  • "Frame of Mind": Riker shoots himself and "shatters" his imagined Picard in the process.

  • Nemesis : Picard's clone dies.

Some of these are fringe cases, but do fall into the death "types" listed by the OP in the question.

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  • If I recall correctly, Picard doesn't die at all in The Inner Light. The simulation just ends after the rocket launches (and he gets to speak with some people who had passed away in the simulation).
    – jpmc26
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 21:43
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    @jpmc26 : I've reorganized the answer considerably in response to your concerns and other commenters.
    – Praxis
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 22:20
  • @ThePopMachine : I took it as a challenge to myself to see how many Picard deaths I could find, based mainly on your own hunch, and to see if I could top the Janeway count. I've been at my office for most of the day, and so I wasn't able to respond to most of your comments or make edits in response. Anyway, I've reorganized the answer considerably. I'm keeping "Samaritan Snare", but all the other questionable ones have been lumped out of the count.
    – Praxis
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 22:22
  • @Praxis: Nice work. I still personally would have put Lonely Among Us in the Fringe cases section. He's not thought dead, just irretrievable. Same case as BOBW...
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 22:44
  • @Praxis: But what I really take issue with is "Azati Prime". This is just an episode that happens to take place in the future, so you're assuming Picard is dead. The reason this is not like "Living Witness" is because in LW, there is actual dialog about the crew of Voyager, paraphrasing: "It is safe to assume all your friends (incl. Janeway) are dead." EMH is presuming Janeway is dead. There's no mention of Picard in Azati Prime and nor even any relationship between any character in "Azati Prime" and Picard. You're really pushing a loophole to the point of breaking here.
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 22:46
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Kathryn Janeway: 15 "deaths"

While I was researching the deaths of another Voyager character I stumbled across this video that sums 17 deaths of Kathryn Janeway:

Even if you count the 4 different deaths in the episode "Coda" as one, the count from the video is still 14:

  1. "Time and Again"
  2. "Deadlock": Voyager self destructs to save it's duplicate
  3. "Coda": Chakotay and Janeway get cought in an (imagined) time loop. She dies 4 different deaths in this episode.
  4. "Before and After": Janeway gets killed by an exploding console on the bridge
  5. "Worst Case Scenario": A holographic Janeway gets killed by a sabotaged phaser rifle
  6. "Year of Hell": Janeway steers Voyager in a collision
  7. ("Living Witness": Set far into the future. One could argue that everybody dies someday)
  8. "Timeless": Voyager crash lands on a planet
  9. "Course Oblivion": The copy of Voyager including crew from the episode "Demon" disintegrates
  10. "Barge of the Dead": Janeway gets stabbed in the back in B'Elanas death vision
  11. "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy": Janewaz gets killed in a daydream by The Doctor
  12. "Shattered": Janeway is told in a different timeline that she died
  13. "Relativity": Voyager is destroyed with Janeway on board
  14. "Endgame": Admiral Janeway lets herself killed by the Borg to allow her younger self to escape

Not mentioned in the video:

  1. "Message in a Bottle": We learn that the Voyager is declared lost by Starfleet Command and that the crew including Janeway is presumed dead
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  • By the rules set out, "Coda" counts for one, not four.
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 15:32
  • Nice work. But given some of these types of deaths, I can definitely increase Picard's count.
    – Praxis
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 15:40
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    Coda is not really a time loop. It's all just in Janeway's head.
    – O. R. Mapper
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 15:53
  • It just occurred to me that Voyager was declared lost by Starfleet Command (as learned by The Doctor in "Message in a Bottle"). Would that count as "presumed dead"?
    – Gerald Schneider
    Commented Aug 26, 2015 at 10:32
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    #7 doesn't count. We don't know that she's dead.
    – Valorum
    Commented Jan 4, 2016 at 13:40

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