Shaenon Rates the Star Trek Movie Villains

Shaenon K. Garrity

This is where I write stuff.

20th-May-2009 07:33 pm

On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being awesome. My judgments are perfect and final.

SPOILERS FOR "SWORD OF SHANNARA" AHEAD!

Wait, no. SPOILERS FOR ALL THE STAR TREK MOVIES AHEAD!

Star Trek 1
Villain: The Voyager Space Probe... With an Attitude!
Shameful confession #1: I always liked the goofy "V'Ger" plot twist in the otherwise plodding Star Trek: The Motion Picture. If we're going to send pictures of prime numbers and naked people out into the reaches of space, we shouldn't be surprised if it comes back to bite us on the ass a few hundred years down the line. The basic concept would later be recycled for the amusingly dopey horror movie Event Horizon, which suffered from a dearth of Persis Khambatta.
Rating: 8

Star Trek 2
Villain: KHAAAAAN!
He sticks bugs in Chekov's ear, he's responsible for Spock's death, he drives William Shatner to his peak of scenery-devouring histrionics, and he's got boss Labyrinth hair. Ricardo Montalban and his big plastic chest are the most formidable villain duo this side of Master-Blaster and the gold standard of Star Trek movie antagonism. Unbeatable.
Rating: 11

Star Trek 3
Villain: Klingon Christopher Lloyd
Do you realize this is the only Star Trek movie where the Klingons are out-and-out bad guys? By #6 they're trying to forge diplomatic relations and stuff. Anyway, Christopher Lloyd tries his best, and he and Kirk have a great final showdown on the collapsing Genesis planet ("I... have had enough... of YOU!"), but the real focus of the movie is Spock's resurrection and the bad guy is too much of a weak Khan retread to make a strong impression. Plus, c'mon, it's Christopher Lloyd.
Rating: 6

Star Trek 4
Villain: The Norwegian Whaling Industry
At first glance, this would seem to be the weakest Star Trek villain, but consider that Kirk and company had no trouble defeating a superintelligent space probe, the Klingons, and Khan, whereas the whaling industry is still among us. The entire Enterprise crew only manages to rescue two and a half whales from one damn whaling ship. However, the whaling ship only gets ten minutes of screen time and fails to distinguish itself in combat with a Klingon Bird of Prey, so meh.
Rating: 5

Star Trek 5
Villain: God
Given that everybody in the Trek future seems to be some kind of agnostic secular humanist, they probably defeated this guy years ago anyway.
Rating: 3

Star Trek 6
Villain: Shakespeare-Quoting Klingon Dude
Everybody forgets about #6, the Tom Clancy movie of Star Treks, and everybody forgets about this guy, played by Christopher Plummer. He's awesome! This is what you need in a Star Trek villain: an operatic obsessive played by a gravitas-laden actor who can quote from the Western canon without cracking up. If Patrick Stewart hadn't become a Star Trek hero, he could have been an excellent Star Trek villian.
Rating: 9

Star Trek 7
Villain: Malcolm McDowell + Big Space Ribbon
Since this is the movie with two Star Trek casts (Original Flavor and Extra Crispy), they had to roll out two threats. First you think the problem is Malcolm McDowell (actor with gravitas) as a guy seeking eternal life (operatic obsessive), but then he summons his tag-team partner, the Nexus, one of those magic anomalies that puts you in a fantasy world where all your dreams come true and that's bad for some reason. Kirk gets to play cowboy on William Shatner's horse ranch, and Picard gets to star in Patrick Stewart's stage production of Dickens, but eventually they admit they have to get back to kicking the shit out of Malcolm McDowell, so they do.

It's not too bad as far as villainy goes, but McDowell's character isn't as good as Khan or the Klingon Shakespeare guy, and my favorite iteration of the fantasy-fulfillment trope in sci-fi is still that episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer ruins the whole thing with his bad attitude and they all wind up buried in the desert and covered in jelly.
Rating: 7

Star Trek 8
Villain: The Borg
You know why the Borg are the perfect Star Trek villains? Because they're the evil mirror version of the heroes. The Federation is a cooperative socialist republic; the Borg are a commie hive mind. The Federation embraces infinite diversity in infinite combinations; the Borg want to assimilate your uniqueness into their collective. The Federation is a technocracy; the Borg are technology gone amok. That's why, despite the silliness of adding a sexy dominatrix Borg Queen, the first all-TNG movie manages to deliver on the villainy. Cyborg zombies taking over the Enterprise are super scary; add unexplained bullshit time-travel powers, and even Picard starts freaking out. As corny as it is when Worf growls, "Assimilate this!" before blowing a bunch of the little white buggers into deep space, you totally high-five him with your mind. Admit it.

Shameful confession #2: Teenage Shaenon thought it was way hot when Data (her TNG crush of choice) got seduced by the Borg Queen, and Adult Shaenon secretly concurs.
Rating: 10

Star Trek 9
Villain: Who Cares
Okay, it's some corrupt Federation reps who want to exploit a utopian planet that gives off Fountain of Youth rays. Man, I hate utopian planets where people live in harmony with nature and wear earth-toned fabrics. Utopian hippie planets are even worse than magic space ribbons that make all your dreams come true. Actually, the real villain in this movie is Troi, who shaves off Riker's beard, the only object with the power to make Next Generation good. But if the villains are supposed to be the evil Federation guys and their friends, they're even lamer than God.
Rating: 1

Star Trek 10
Villain: Emo Picard Clone
Yeah, remember when I said Patrick Stewart could've been an excellent Star Trek villain? I meant actual Patrick Stewart, not a kid with a shaved head and a vinyl suit playing his wangsty clone. He even fails at killing Data, his one big evil deed, because they make a backup.
Rating: 2

Star Trek 11
Villain: Aggrieved Romulan Miner
What the hell? This guy is like a conglomeration of all Star Trek movie villains. He's obsessed with revenge against the heroes like Khan. He squats in a vast, dank spaceship looking all tormented like the Picard clone, he's mad about his wife getting killed like Malcolm McDowell, and he carries a harpoon like the Norwegian whalers. (Dude misses a key Star Trek villain opportunity by not quoting Moby-Dick, maybe because Picard already quoted it in the one where they fight the Borg). Apologies to my lady friends who want his tribal-tattooed peen, but this one just didn't do it for me. I mean, he goes around in a black trench coat. Add a leather hat, and you've dropped from Star Trek villain to Star Trek fan. I'd rate him as low as God if he wasn't kinda hot.
Rating: 4

Tags:star trek

Comments

21st-May-2009 03:53 am (UTC)

zia_narratora

EVERYONE THOUGHT IT WAS HOT WHEN DATA GOT SEDUCED BY THE BORG QUEEN. THIS IS NO SECRET.

Also, I would give the aggrieved Romulan miner at least one more half-point for being the only role Eric Bana has ever not been remarkably annoying in. Mostly because you can't tell it's Eric Bana.

Edited at 2009-05-21 03:56 am (UTC)

21st-May-2009 11:28 am (UTC)

lurkerwithout

I liked him in Troy. But then I'm one of four people who likes Troy...

21st-May-2009 04:11 am (UTC)

westrider

People forget about ST6? Dude, that one was possibly the best until the current one.

I rather liked the Aggrieved Romulan Miner dude, but he was pretty generic, yeah.

21st-May-2009 04:12 am (UTC)

weds

Plus, c'mon, it's Christopher Lloyd.

Hey. HEY. I totally had a crush on Christopher Lloyd growing up ~~and still might~~ and there were GOOD REASONS for that. Like Roger Rabbit.

21st-May-2009 10:07 am (UTC)

linxan_terrano

You thought Judge Doom ... was hot??

Words cannot adequately express my inability to understand that. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a straight male, but Judge Doom?
*twitch*

21st-May-2009 06:11 pm (UTC)

weds

Threatening man in dark glasses, black outfit and latex gloves?

If you can't run with that concept, I can't save you.

21st-May-2009 07:33 pm (UTC)

linxan_terrano

I suppose I can see that concept and maybe I can grant the character as well, right up until the point where he gets rolled flat and the truth comes out. It's really the genocidal toon-balloon that he turns out to be that's goes over the line of feasible attraction in my head.

21st-May-2009 04:25 am (UTC)

dvandom

As others have pointed out, Nero isn't the villain of Star Trek, he's merely the threat. Young Spock is the villain, the obstacle that Kirk must constantly overcome.

21st-May-2009 04:37 am (UTC)

demiurgent

And I believe Young Spock even quotes from the Western Canon now and again.

21st-May-2009 08:22 am (UTC)

shaenon

Really, I think Young Spock is just a big screwup. There's only one thing he does right in the whole movie, and we all know what that is.

OH YEAH ROCKIN UHURA'S WORLD

21st-May-2009 12:06 pm (UTC)

paradisacorbasi

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah!

21st-May-2009 04:53 am (UTC)

skywaterblue

Star Trek 11, though, is totally a movie where they could have fought an abstract and everyone would want to suck its peen because of how awesome it is. (See 4.)

You got the baddie of 4 wrong, btw: the Norwegian Whaling Boat Guys (aka: easier to have sympathy for post-Deadliest Catch) are just the antagonist to V'Ger-Rehashed-But-This-Time-It's-Into-Whales.

Star Trek 6 is totally great, btw. Underrated by a lot. I watch it all the time - way more often than Khan!

21st-May-2009 05:02 am (UTC)

clodia_risa

If I'm not mistaken, there were only rumors that Montalban's chest was enhanced. It's been said by the director and others that that was his real chest on screen.

21st-May-2009 01:46 pm (UTC)

belmikey

+1. That was Ricardo's real chest, hard as that might be to believe. He was in magnificent shape for his age.

21st-May-2009 02:13 pm (UTC)

onalark

+2. I was made to watch "KHAAAAAAN" just last night because the Guy was horrified that I'd never witnessed it. There are way too many close ups on that magnificent chest for it to not be fo' reals, yo.

I just don't have faith in the prosthetic technology of the early 80s to make a chest that...touchable-looking.

28th-May-2009 12:21 am (UTC)

good_the_third

You mean Animaniacs got it wrong? And I trusted that show!
At least shaenon knows when to use a good Red Dwarf reference! Better than life! I read the book about that one

21st-May-2009 05:13 am (UTC)

coccinellidae

Shameful confession #3: Teenage Liz thought it was hot too.

21st-May-2009 01:09 pm (UTC)

reasdream

Can we at least give Villain #11 some credit for having a very awesome interior decorator? I mean, Art Design clearly had a field day imagining a mining-rave-in-space. It was fun, you can jump places and fly a ship through it and it looks like an angry beetle from the outside.

(acting? there was acting? I was looking at the set design and lighting...)

21st-May-2009 01:45 pm (UTC)

belmikey

I don't forget #6, or Christopher Plummer's excellent turn as the best Klingon foil since Kor. STVI is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, because really, the plot (like so many Trek plots, including the new one, which I've seen 5 times anyway) falls apart if you blow on it. But Chris Plummer and David Warner make up for it in spades.

21st-May-2009 02:44 pm (UTC)

rohantm

You are so hot when you talk Star Trek. I'm sorry, did I say that out loud?

Khan also quotes the hell out of Moby Dick. Picard can only wish he could work that many quotes into his angsty dialogue.

Trek Trivia: Nicholas Meyer, the director of The Wrath of Khan, says in his commentary on the WoK director's cut DVD, "I am here to tell you that that is Ricardo Montalban's real chest."

21st-May-2009 02:56 pm (UTC)

autumnwinds

Aw man, I liked Insurrection.

21st-May-2009 05:29 pm (UTC)

_fluffy

The big issue I had with Star Trek 8 was that they fundamentally changed the nature of the Borg. It went from insect-esque hivemind to popular-culture-version-of-insect-esquue-hivemind (in real insect colonies, the queen doesn't direct the individuals so much as they are instinctively programmed to protect her - at least for ants and bees the queen is one of the stupidest members of the hive), and whereas the Borg originally cared about assimilating advanced technology, in 8 they were suddenly all about assimilating cultures and people and they did this by going back in time to prevent Earth culture from developing. Which is a bit silly.

Basically they turned a truly scary species with a very foreign idea of intelligence into a ridiculous cliche with henchmen. (Not that there is anything wrong with that ridiculous cliche on its own - I mean I loved Narbonic, after all - but it just wasn't the right thing for the Borg.)

9 was originally written as an episode of TNG, which had ended up not being produced because it sucked (which is why they had to retcon Data's emotion chip FROM THE MOVIE RIGHT BEFORE IT into being something he could turn on and off, and why he suddenly had his weird third-season sensibilities and morals). I have no idea why they decided that a shitty episode was worth becoming an excellent movie.

Regarding 11, Nero makes a tiny bit more sense (at least for why his crew didn't mutiny during the 25 years while waiting with the hope that Spock would just show up somehow) if you read the prologue comics, but yeah, he's basically just a rehash of 10, without even having the good sense to go back to Romulus with his advanced technology and warn people about the impending catastrophe. It would have been a lot more foreboding if he'd managed to give the Romulans all sorts of insane technology [spoiler: some of it from the Borg] 300 years early and then the Federation would have had to contend with a whole FLEET of evil dudes with the capacity for galactic domination.

21st-May-2009 07:56 pm (UTC)

linxan_terrano

Yeah, the "one baddie with one big, bad-ass ship" thing does seem rather silly ... I can't really see why Nero wouldn't have gone to Romulus, seeing as they'd already irreparably changed the timeline by going back in the first place. The only thing I can come up with, from a writing standpoint, is that if Nero had done that the UFP would have been so far beyond f*cked that there'd be nothing to tell beyond "whoops, Spock pissed off the Romulans, who then went back in time and conquered the galaxy." Not nearly enough interest in that for a feature film.

22nd-May-2009 03:31 am (UTC)

dejadrew

THANK you. Hated them sticking the borg with a queen. Pasting a face and a personality into the baddies whose whole THING was the faceless mindless absence of personality was the single DUMBEST thing Trek ever did.

21st-May-2009 08:33 pm (UTC)

miyaa99

Wait...Christopher Lloyd, the Doc from Back to the Future series was a Klingon villain in a Star Trek movie? This completely and utterly blows my mind.

22nd-May-2009 05:13 am (UTC)

cmstephens

Oddly enough, John Larroquette (of Night Court fame) was also a Klingon in ST3. He had a few lines, and very little face time, most of which was around the time where Lloyd's character met his end.

22nd-May-2009 01:07 am (UTC)

uridium

Great list! I am surprised to see that 6 is considered forgotten, though. On the other hand 9 and 10 were so forgettable that I had an entire conversation about them on Sunday but did not realize until reading your post that they were two separate movies.

22nd-May-2009 04:14 am (UTC)

prodigal

Star Trek 11 was an infinitely superior remakr of Wrath of KHAAAAAAN! than Star Trek 10 was.

22nd-May-2009 05:44 am (UTC)

johnwwells

I liked the movie in spite of its villain. But the Whinin' Miner's most gratuitous reference/homage/ripoff of Khan did annoy me, because the script just didn't do much with it.

If the screenwriters were going to put a gun on the mantelpiece and never fire it, they should not have done so under circumstances that suggested the name "Chekov."

Also, the Miner's scheme calls to mind First Contact, and one of his victims refers to himself as an endangered species, so we can safely say that he's cribbing from at least 50% of the movies that came before. Did the writers have some kind of bet going?

25th-May-2009 06:35 pm (UTC) - I win!

idat

I suddenly realized I've never seen Star Trek 9 OR 10 and missed both the beard shaving and the emo Picard clone. Go me!

1st-Jun-2009 05:48 am (UTC)

illogicalvulcan

People forget about 6?? It's the Skakespeare one, for crying out loud. I think it's also the first one I saw in the theater. Generations holds a special place in my heart, because I got my driver's license that day and I got to drive myself to the movie. Also, Kirk died. #9 remains the one where I had to explain that my brother knew Donna Murphy, winner of multiple Tonys, from Superman. KIDS THESE DAYS!!!

I still need to complain about the newest Trek. Meh, I say. MEH! However, the new kids in Trek fandom are frakking adorable!

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