The cruelest villains of Star Trek

Oh, come on. Khan is a terrific and selfless lover. The way he looks at her with that fiery intensity and tells her, "I'm glad you came. Please do it again."

 

He still was a bastard in Space Seed. A megalomaniac who used others for his own ends. That's pretty evil in my eyes. But, playing devil's advocate... he kind of had a reason to be angry in Wrath... his wife got killed on the planet... and Kirk and co... had left them there.

In a way though, I figure they rose up and struck back against him.

 

Fred Freiberger

 

I watched "By Any Other Name" for the first time in years the other night, I'd forgotten what a smug a-hole Rojan was.

He's probably my top choice at the moment.

 

Redjack is #1 in my book. Robert Bloch ladies and gents

 

Not that it would matter so much now, because he'd be like 90, if he were still around today, but the actor who played Fleet Captain Garth had a heart attack and died in his late 30's! That's messed up! After seeing the episode again, recently, I noticed how he kept "feeding" off of the extras, during his Garthian Tirades, like he was trying to make them laugh, or using them to gage how over the top he was getting. It made me like his performance that much more. Good stuff ...

 

I completely forgot Red Jack.

And don't forget his cousin in Day of the Dove.

 

No love for the "Intendant"?

 

In this thread, we're using the title "Star Trek" in its original sense. DS9 isn't part of it.

 

...Although the TOS movies sorta figure in when Khan's change of personality from tyrant to lunatic is included in the discussions.

TNG and DS9 did have some pretty good optimized-for-their-shocking-cruelty villain types. But the spinoffs had other types of adversary, too. TOS is curiously bent on making every adversary a depraved sadist, an inhuman lunatic, or otherwise despicable character, with basically just two types of exception: the two Romulan commanders and the various humans from the past (and of the latter, most just stood in Kirk's way, rather than being active opponents of his).

Such treating of military opponents with military honor, perhaps to be expected from a militaristic show like TOS, didn't extend to Klingon adversaries, who were all given despicable traits in addition to their basic status as the enemy.

(Okay, so whether to consider Harry Mudd or Cyrano Jones adversaries is something of a matter of opinion. They weren't depraved, lunatic, or despicable, although "pitiable" is another epithet the spinoffs didn't overuse. Then again, the spinoff villains aren't quite as memorable!)

Timo Saloniemi