A Starfleet captain who commands the USS Rubidoux and then the brand-new USS Solvang, losing the first to a spaceborne life form and the second, with all hands, to a Pakled attack.
Captain Dayton is a Starfleet commanding officer of the 2380s whose brief on-screen career is a run of bad luck. She is introduced in the Lower Decks episode Much Ado About Boimler as captain of the USS Rubidoux, which has gone silent. A boarding party from the Cerritos finds Dayton and her crew hiding in the dark from an energy creature that has infested the ship, and the vessel is lost when the creature consumes it and departs as a vast spaceborne being.
Dayton is next seen in the cold open of No Small Parts in command of the newly commissioned USS Solvang, of which she is fiercely proud. When a Pakled ship seizes the Solvang, she orders a jump to warp while still held fast, and the ship is torn apart. Its destruction is the first sign of the Pakled threat that the Cerritos and the Titan face later in the episode.