What would you say are the most sympathetic and unsympathetic villains in the Star Trek franchise?
Most sympathetic and unsympathetic villains in Star Trek
- Thread starter The Overlord
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I would think that Dr Soran from Generations, and the Vidiians from Voyager, are rather sympathetic as villains. I also felt a bit of minor sympathy for the Trabe (not the ancestors who oppressed the Kazon, but the younger generations who cannot find a new home).
For unsympathetic, I feel the Romulans are usually up there, as are most of the Ferengi (except for Quark when he is a "villain" of an episode). I think the most unsympathetic in my mind has to be Q.
For unsympathetic, I feel the Romulans are usually up there, as are most of the Ferengi (except for Quark when he is a "villain" of an episode). I think the most unsympathetic in my mind has to be Q.
Most Trek villains are sympathetic in some manner. If there were any who were unsympathetic, I'd say Weyoun. For the most part, he seemed to enjoy just being a douche. But even he yearned to please the Founders, or even just Odo.
I guess the Xindi Reptilian Commander from Enterprise was pretty heartless, given he allegedly killed his baby grandchild.
I guess the Xindi Reptilian Commander from Enterprise was pretty heartless, given he allegedly killed his baby grandchild.
And yet, how much of Weyoun was the genetic programming? The Vorta were, he said, little more than tree-dwelling creatures before geneticists blessed them with greater sophistication. I wonder how much of that was increased loyalty programming.
I think it says something about the importance of programming too that we should consider as we develop AI's and robots in the real world.
IMO, the Romulan commander in "The Enterprise Incident" was a highly sympathetic villain--if one can consider her a villain at all.
^ I wouldn't consider her such. Charvanek was a Romulan patriot, nothing more ominous than that. She was not villainous in any way, that I could see.
@Wormhole: Agreed on the Xindi commander. What a bastard.
@Wormhole: Agreed on the Xindi commander. What a bastard.
In my opinion, the least sympathetic AND unsympathetic villain (aside from crappily written paper villains like the Xindi commader) is the Borg. Every other character has an emotional human (or human-like) motivation. The Borg are just a force of nature. (Discounting the Borg Queen, whom I also regarded as a crappily written paper villain up until the Destiny novels.)
Agreed about the Vidiians and the Trabe, and the Ferengi and the Q.
I don't feel like we're given enough about the Romulans onscreen to decide - certain leaders, yes, but not Romulans in general. And going by some of the novel materials, I find their motives understandable.
I can't sympathize with Soran AT ALL. He understood what it felt like to lose people he cared about but was more than willing to inflict that on others just to get to what he knew was *an illusion* of having his family back - something he could have also achieved with readily available holodeck technology. F*ck that guy.
Agreed about the Vidiians and the Trabe, and the Ferengi and the Q.
I don't feel like we're given enough about the Romulans onscreen to decide - certain leaders, yes, but not Romulans in general. And going by some of the novel materials, I find their motives understandable.
I like Weyoun. He was witty, and actually *incredibly* reasonable and even nice most of the time, within the restrictions that genetic (and probably cultural) engineering put on him.
Agreed.
She was willing to let Spock die a horrible death despite their previous intimacy.
Indeed. (shudder)@Wormhole: Agreed on the Xindi commander. What a bastard.
He was guilty of espionage and subterfuge. She can't go soft just because they shared a moment.
I was thinking of the Romulans we see on episodes. Commanders Tomalak and Sela for example. The Romulans in "The Next Phase" and "Timescape", etc. They cannot be trusted and are always backstabbing. I'd rather deal with a Ferengi than a Romulan: at least the Ferengi have a sort of code of honor and are interested primarily with gain. The Ferengi won't kill you just because, it would have to be directly profitable. Romulans are something else entirely.
You beat me to the punch, M'lady.
She too was at the forefront of my mind.I also would even go so far as to say the Romulan Commander in Balance of Terror. Yes, he tried to start a war, apparently via orders of the Praetor. When he started realizing the folly of it all....for the glory of the Praetor, something that Decius seemed to covet more than the commander himself... I kinda started feeling a bit sorry for him. When he lost his friend, the Centurion, I felt a little bit more for him.
Decius kept trying to press him into attacking what he knew was a superior ship. Realizing Decius' underlying power, he did what he could to stay Decius' hand.
The most sympathetic moment was the final conversation between himself and Kirk.
It makes me think of Das Boot, in some ways. The captain, and the officers and sailors aboard the ship (with the exception of the first officer--who acted more like a political officer-- and he eventually seemed to see the light), were about as far from being a Nazi as they could get. Yes, they were young, and full of piss and vinegar, ready to carry out orders for the Fatherland....but they also did not wish to kill needlessly. They had orders that they could not take prisoners...and when they saw the chaos and loss of life that was happening when they attacked a cargo fleet... they wished they could say to hell with orders and take a few poor souls aboard. (Although I honestly do not know how the U-boat crew would have treated such prisoners.) Some of them even wept as they watched fellow (if enemy) sailors suffer and die in the fires of that attack. The Captain angrily wondering why there were no allies of the victims around to rescue them.
Sorry for the off topic relation.
If you go back and consider what appeared to happen to them in the past when they extended themselves to others, one can see a mitigating rationale, but as to philosophy that they subsequently adopted and implemented to such devastating effect, I would put the Founders on the negative side of the ledger. Perhaps needless to say, the Sphere Builders were even further down, inculcating false beliefs and fears simply to grease the wheels for establishing an immense galactic hegemony.
The most sympathetic would be the average Borg drone, a helpless slave, with no control over their own actions, yet aware of the acts and monstrosities their body is preforming.
The absolute least sympathetic would be the Federation President in The Undiscovered Country, throwing two Starfleet officers over to the Klingons without even the smallest protest, just so "his" administration could be seen in a good light.
What a piece of filth.
The absolute least sympathetic would be the Federation President in The Undiscovered Country, throwing two Starfleet officers over to the Klingons without even the smallest protest, just so "his" administration could be seen in a good light.
What a piece of filth.
Sympathy and villainy don't really even apply to the Borg, because they are a machine-driven programmed race. They do what they do because they literally have to do it. The Borg, strictly speaking, are no more 'villainous' than a computer virus.
@TGirl: The Federation president in ST VI was not acting to protect his administration. He was observing interstellar regulations. Remember - "This president is not above the law." He wasn't selfish in his motivations, he was trying to observe the law while simultaneously keeping the peace with the Klingons. There's nothing villainous in that.
If he had sent a Starfleet commando team to retrieve Kirk and McCoy, that might well have resulted in outright war with the Klingons. Just because the president was weighing Kirk and McCoy's lives in the overall context of interstellar peace, does NOT make him a villain. It makes him a realist.
@TGirl: The Federation president in ST VI was not acting to protect his administration. He was observing interstellar regulations. Remember - "This president is not above the law." He wasn't selfish in his motivations, he was trying to observe the law while simultaneously keeping the peace with the Klingons. There's nothing villainous in that.
If he had sent a Starfleet commando team to retrieve Kirk and McCoy, that might well have resulted in outright war with the Klingons. Just because the president was weighing Kirk and McCoy's lives in the overall context of interstellar peace, does NOT make him a villain. It makes him a realist.
I think its hard to apply unsympathetic as a quality to a civilization rather then an individual. Quark claims the Ferengi balk at things like slavery and genocide and really the Ferengi became too silly to see as truly evil in short order. We seem very sympathetic Romulans in TOS. The Q we see interact with Picard all the time has a lot of sympathetic moments. Its hard to condemn all people of a nation due the actions of its government. The Cardassian government may be evil, but many of the Cardassians we see have sympathetic moments.
I personally I think the original Khan is pretty sympathetic, the Romulan commanders from TOS, Dukat before he became a demon worshiping super villain in season 6, the Q we see interact with Picard.
This a good list of really evil Star Trek villains:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Monster/StarTrek
I think Quark may well have been bullshitting when he said the Ferengi have never engaged in slavery. Either that, or he was just ignorant of his own history.
Maybe so, but frankly the Ferengi went through such quick decay as villains, its hard for me to see them as something truly unsympathetic. They seemed more like used cars salesmen, rather then a terrifying example of the type of capitalism gone wrong we see in the real world. They lacked any true sinister qualities and quickly became jokes, that is not what I think when I think of truly unsympathetic villains. Kivas Fajo is a better capitalist villain then any Ferengi I have seen.
The Ferengi are more scary on a conceptual level then anything we see done with on the shows in terms of execution.
In fact, the Ferengi consider at least one group to be their slaves: women.
Ferengi females are slaves. At least they were until Ishka came along. She helped bring about a reformation in Ferengi attitudes towards women, but before that, Ferengi women were definitely enslaved.
I mean, they couldn't wear clothes, leave their homes, earn profit, or speak until spoken to. If that isn't slavery, what is?
Ferengi females are slaves. At least they were until Ishka came along. She helped bring about a reformation in Ferengi attitudes towards women, but before that, Ferengi women were definitely enslaved.
I mean, they couldn't wear clothes, leave their homes, earn profit, or speak until spoken to. If that isn't slavery, what is?
In fact, the Ferengi consider at least one group to be their slaves: women.
Ferengi females are slaves. At least they were until Ishka came along. She helped bring about a reformation in Ferengi attitudes towards women, but before that, Ferengi women were definitely enslaved.
I mean, they couldn't wear clothes, leave their homes, earn profit, or speak until spoken to. If that isn't slavery, what is?
Except that the Ferengi's sexism is played for laughs sometimes, it makes them seem backwards and kinda piggish, but compared to what the Cardassians, the Borg and the Dominion do on a bad day, they seem pathetic in comparison. I assume Ferengi women are not sent to die in a labor camp, like the Cardassians did to their Bajoran slaves.
Ferengi society being sexist is not pleasant, obviously, but they pale in comparison to some of the actively genocidal societies we see in Star Trek. For me being unpleasant and being truly unsympathetic, are two very different things. In terms of villainous stuff we see on screen, they don't measure up to other civilizations.
If they were true evil capitalists, they should be dumping toxic waste on planets and resource striping less developed planets, instead they engage in silly antics or in their first episode, act like monkeys.
