Most hated characters in Star Trek

[Whizkid]

Which are your most hated Star Trek characters? You get 3.

Rules:

1. Please don't say Neelix. I really loved him in VOY.
2. Don't say Wesley either. I don't love him but give the kid a break!
3. Say Picard, if you can. And justify it.
4. Everybody loves Leonard Nimoy so if I hear that name on this list I'll personally persecute you.

My list:

1. Khan (Space Seed/WoK). Overrated as a villain. The Borg were truly terrifying and they would have assimed Khan in a second.
2. Geordi (TNG/PIC). The man needs to have some principles. Every "relationship" of his on TNG was .... cringe! Except Data.
3.Travis Mayweather (ENT): Who selected him?

 

[Cicero]

1. Deanna Troi (TNG except "Face of the Enemy") — I actually like her on VOY and in the movies; she's a great character, but I hate the way she was used on TNG
2. Jonathan Archer (ENT) — An angry, intolerant racist, a torturer, a thief-cum-likely murderer, and for some reason a John Wayne impressionist
3. Jean-Luc Picard (TNG) — A self-centered, patronizing, and deeply amoral man who nonetheless prides himself on his morality

1. Khan (Space Seed/WoK). Overrated as a villain. The Borg were truly terrifying and they would have assimed Khan in a second.

Khan is Satan from Paradise Lost (and Melville's Ahab in Moby Dick). He exists to personify opposition to Star Trek's philosophy of a Heaven/Nirvana of endless self-improvement (why Kirk is expressly associated with God at the beginning of The Wrath of Khan). His value is thematic.

I think Buddhism's equivalent would be the demon/force Mara.

3.Travis Mayweather (ENT): Who selected him?

I like Travis—he's nice, genuine, and good at his job. Other than Phlox, he might have been the most professional character on the show.

2. Geordi (TNG/PIC). The man needs to have some principles. Every "relationship" of his on TNG was .... cringe! Except Data.

LeVar Burton believed that the failure of Geordi's relationships (other than his implied future marriage to Leah Brahms) was due to racism:

​

It’s insulting. Whether they are aware of it or not, those white men who wrote the show had an unconscious bias that was on display to me and to other people of color. Their blind spot is revealed in the fact that a Black man never was successful at one of the basic and most … My wife says, “There’s a lid for every pot.” It’s true. The idea that Geordi never found a lid for his pot is ludicrous. It’s preposterous, and it’s insulting.

 

[ichab]

Leuaxana Troi, Moogi and Q. All had cool debut episodes, but too many returns led me to just rolling my eyes and thinking, "Not this tired act again."


I never understood the hate for Wesley. Maybe it was because I was a young pre-teen myself when TNG came out. I could identify with adults always looking down on you and not taking what you said seriously because you "aren't old enough to understand."

 

[BillJ]

Hated? I don’t think I truly hate any Trek characters.

Dislike? Kes, Neelix, the weird Romulan elf from Picard.

 

[Starflight]

3. Say Picard, if you can. And justify it.

Right, let's rock.

On balance, I really do not like Picard. He works in some episodes, but frequently he's one of the most irritating characters in Star Trek. Spoilered for length

Spoiler

First up, the Prime Directive episodes. I think this isn't too controversial to state nowadays - he comes across as genuinely monstrous in episodes like "Homeward".

But let's give him a break and cut out those four or five episodes and focus on the rest of TNG's 170-whatever episode run. Next up we've got the sneering disaffected 80s cultural relativism stuff - haughtily dismissing Beverly for objecting to a woman being shipped as cargo for an arranged marriage in "The Perfect Mate", declaring that abducting war orphans is heartwarming in "Suddenly Human" (at a time when the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo was still a vivid image in the news), immediately suggesting Riker should consider killing Worf in "Ethics", etc.

Let's give him another break and ignore those, though we are now ignoring a significant chunk of TNG. The real problem with the character comes from the fact that many scripts exist to validate him at all costs. Obvious ones are "The Drumhead" (which goes to great lengths to ensure that Satie is portrayed as objectively wrong and insane so that no viewer can make the mistake of accidentally taking her seriously for even one second), "Ensign Ro" (where the admiral exists entirely for Picard to give a a self-satisfied takedown to at the end), "Silicon Avatar" (where the scientist exists mostly to look bad next to Picard, who as usual is given an airtight case by the script, so she can be humiliated and devastated at the end), and so on. "Insurrection" might be the funniest longform example.

People who defy Picard don't tend to last long before being destroyed, publicly humiliated, or sent into personal breakdowns, and Picard's response is often self-congratulatory sneering. Compare that with how people who defy Kirk are often treated - Finney gets Cogley and Kirk expresses no hard feelings, Lenore (an assassin!) gets sent to receive the best possible care, Rojan gets invited into the Federation, etc. Situations only infrequently exist to challenge Picard; typically they instead exist to vindicate him and grow his ego.

This really starts to take shape around the third or fourth season, which is when the writers decide that Picard is a moral and intellectual paragon, and the character thus becomes totally unbearable. Despite common wisdom, I actually like him more in the first two seasons, because while he's still haughty and dismissive, the scripts don't always rush to justify him, and his irascibility at least sometimes backfires.

None of this is Stewart's fault, who's pulled in lots of different directions by different scripts and tries to make it cohere. Said it on here before but his own oft-mocked wish that Picard do more "fucking and fighting" might not have been far off-base, because he's a good actor who has a lot more range than the role typically allows, and is always good fun when he gets to do some silly shit like "Gambit" or "Captain's Holiday", or even just in regular action/adventure episodes.

 

[BillJ]

Right, let's rock.

On balance, I really do not like Picard. He works in some episodes, but frequently he's one of the most irritating characters in Star Trek. Spoilered for length

Spoiler

First up, the Prime Directive episodes. I think this isn't too controversial to state nowadays - he comes across as genuinely monstrous in episodes like "Homeward".

But let's give him a break and cut out those four or five episodes and focus on the rest of TNG's 170-whatever episode run. Next up we've got the sneering disaffected 80s cultural relativism stuff - haughtily dismissing Beverly for objecting to a woman being shipped as cargo for an arranged marriage in "The Perfect Mate", declaring that abducting war orphans is heartwarming in "Suddenly Human" (at a time when the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo was still a vivid image in the news), immediately suggesting Riker should consider killing Worf in "Ethics", etc.

Let's give him another break and ignore those, though we are now ignoring a significant chunk of TNG. The real problem with the character comes from the fact that many scripts exist to validate him at all costs. Obvious ones are "The Drumhead" (which goes to great lengths to ensure that Satie is portrayed as objectively wrong and insane so that no viewer can make the mistake of accidentally taking her seriously for even one second), "Ensign Ro" (where the admiral exists entirely for Picard to give a a self-satisfied takedown to at the end), "Silicon Avatar" (where the scientist exists mostly to look bad next to Picard, who as usual is given an airtight case by the script, so she can be humiliated and devastated at the end), and so on. "Insurrection" might be the funniest longform example.

People who defy Picard don't tend to last long before being destroyed, publicly humiliated, or sent into personal breakdowns, and Picard's response is often self-congratulatory sneering. Compare that with how people who defy Kirk are often treated - Finney gets Cogley and Kirk expresses no hard feelings, Lenore (an assassin!) gets sent to receive the best possible care, Rojan gets invited into the Federation, etc. Situations only infrequently exist to challenge Picard; typically they instead exist to vindicate him and grow his ego.

This really starts to take shape around the third or fourth season, which is when the writers decide that Picard is a moral and intellectual paragon, and the character thus becomes totally unbearable. Despite common wisdom, I actually like him more in the first two seasons, because while he's still haughty and dismissive, the scripts don't always rush to justify him, and his irascibility at least sometimes backfires.

None of this is Stewart's fault, who's pulled in lots of different directions by different scripts and tries to make it cohere. Said it on here before but his own oft-mocked wish that Picard do more "fucking and fighting" might not have been far off-base, because he's a good actor who has a lot more range than the role typically allows, and is always good fun when he gets to do some silly shit like "Gambit" or "Captain's Holiday", or even just in regular action/adventure episodes.

This is pretty spot on. Picard hasn’t aged well.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Chapel, Troi and Claudius.

 

[Whizkid]

1. Deanna Troi (TNG except "Face of the Enemy") — I actually like her on VOY and in the movies; she's a great character, but I hate the way she was used on TNG
2. Jonathan Archer (ENT) — An angry, intolerant racist, a torturer, a thief-cum-likely murderer, and for some reason a John Wayne impressionist
3. Jean-Luc Picard (TNG) — A self-centered, patronizing, and deeply amoral man who nonetheless prides himself on his morality

Khan is Satan from Paradise Lost (and Melville's Ahab in Moby Dick). He exists to personify opposition to Star Trek's philosophy of a Heaven/Nirvana of endless self-improvement (why Kirk is expressly associated with God at the beginning of The Wrath of Khan). His value is thematic.

I think Buddhism's equivalent would be the demon/force Mara.



I like Travis—he's nice, genuine, and good at his job. Other than Phlox, he might have been the most professional character on the show.



LeVar Burton believed that the failure of Geordi's relationships (other than his implied future marriage to Leah Brahms) was due to racism:

​

This is insulting.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

This is insulting.

All of it?

 

[Whizkid]

Kes! Yuuuuuucckkkk! Sorry. I could never get on board with that character.

In the 60s when Star Trek began, humans had not yet gone to the moon. JFK was alive, like martin luther king and Malcolm x. Star Trek was genuinely a good show. I'm too young to have watched it.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

LeVar Burton believed that the failure of Geordi's relationships (other than his implied future marriage to Leah Brahms) was due to racism:

??? The only people in TNG who had a successful relationship were O'Brien and Ogawa.

I don't think I really hate any Star Trek characters and I certainly don't blame the actors for my frustrations with them. But you want three names so I'll come up with something.

I got very tired of anything to do with mental health in Discovery, so Counsellor Culber became a character I dreaded seeing.

Rizzo in Picard. I was always disappointed whenever she appeared in a scene.

Third spot I'm going to give to Captain Pike, because he was fantastic in Discovery and he's been letting me down recently.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

1. Garrett Wang: Talent-less actor who keeps spinning his series credits into convention appearances. I'm glad his character never got promote: it meant we suffered less of his acting. If only they could have killed his character and transferred Nog in.

2. Marina Sirtis: Obsessively rude and mean-spirited. Just because the Roddenberry's adopted her does not mean we should trust her. I'm tired of the one-line insults she tosses around.

3. Patrick Stewart: Post-TNG, he made bad decisions on scripts and stuff that hampered the health of the franchise on big and small screen.

 

[Mudd]

This is insulting.

Every opinion is going to offend someone. There's nothing wrong with this.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I got to be honest here, there are no characters in Star Trek that I "hate". I might get mildly annoyed at Neelix, early Wesley or early Bashir for instance, but "hatred" is just far too strong a word to use for any character on Star Trek, even the malevolent bad guys (who you love to hate).

 

[Firebird]

Which are your most hated Star Trek characters? You get 3.

Rules:

1. Please don't say Neelix. I really loved him in VOY.
2. Don't say Wesley either. I don't love him but give the kid a break!
3. Say Picard, if you can. And justify it.
4. Everybody loves Leonard Nimoy so if I hear that name on this list I'll personally persecute you.

Starting off with rules doesn’t seem very conducive to having a conversation.

That being said, I do detest the character of Neelix and the questionable relationship angle with Kes that started off the series.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Not to mention, the topic of the thread is to name characters subject to extreme criticism, albeit subject to some weird rules. Avoiding insulting the named characters seems like a big ask in the topic.

Re the weird topic rules, are we to have a discussion, or are we playing a game?

 

[Farscape One]

I don't think I have any characters I hate... even some of the bad guys. (Who can be very written well. Dukat and Weyoun, for example.) But there certainly are those that I don't like at all and/or annoy me endlessly. I guess if I were to narrow it down to three...


1. Michael Burnham - I've detailed in other threads why. I'll see if I can copy and paste them here later.

2. Sylvia Tilly - she actually started off okay with me, but she really, REALLY grated on my nerves more and more.

Spoiler: SFA Spoiler

And her appearance in SFA was extremely bad. I absolutely detested her forcing a shrink session, publicly, with those cadets. Particularly with Tarima... that was just wrong.

3. Caleb Mir -

Spoiler: SFA

He gets away with FAR more than he should, and not only does he know it, he USES IT to his advantage... AND basically says so to Ake's face. I can't stand people like that in real life, I sure as hell don't like them in my fiction.

Having said that, he DID improve slightly for me at the end of the season. But not enough to take him off my annoyance list.

 

[fireproof78]

There are characters I just generally avoid or find unfun to watch rather than hate them, per se.

Lwaxana: the personality is one I find too over the top to be believable or enjoyable.

Barclay: awkward stereotype that never grows and then gets verbally insulted by a CO. That's just bad.

Kor: a villain that somehow gets hero treatment with no other explanation than "it's ok now". Man showed no redemptive aspects from his TOS days.

 

[CetiAlphanEel]

Emperor Georgiou, which was a terrible concept, being a space Hitler who Discovery kept trying to tell us was a great badass awesome character but just was annoying. Then she got her own movie and it was of course absolutely awful.

 

[Whizkid]

I love Michelle Yeoh!! Space Hitler is the best concept.

Clearly, everyone hates Kes. Me too.