I was contemplating this list out loud today at Edward so I figured I’d write it down here for posterity. So here is my list of personal favorite [major] villains from the Star Trek feature films, in order, from least to most favorite.
9. Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Not a slap in the face to actor Luckinbill, but the writing for the character was rather tepid and the notion of Spock having an “evil” half-brother was sort of lame.
8. Nero (Eric Bana), Star Trek
There’s a lot of villains in the Star Trek universe whose motivation is paralleled by Melville’s Captain Ahab and his quest for vengeance against a certain white whale. Nero was the least developed, and least interesting of them all.
7. Dr. Tolian Soran (Malcolm McDowell), Star Trek: Generations
Not really a bad guy, Soran just wanted to return to paradise and was so tired of trying that he didn’t care who had to die for that to happen. McDowell is great, but his misanthropic antics came in a vast fifth place to all the other shenanigans going on between the other characters (the script seemed to think Data’s cat was more interesting). In the end, Soran was more of a slight nuisance than a great villain.
6. Ad’har Ru’afo (F. Murray Abraham), Star Trek: Insurrection
Some nice, evil moments from Abraham as the sadistic (and tragic) Ru’afo who wanted to pull the magic carpet out from under Aladdin and ride it himself. Both parts revenge and jealousy-driven, Ru’afo could have been a great villain but was hurt by not being developed enough to feel sorry for, a humanity that the character needed for depth; a humanity later shown between his lieutenant, Gallatin, who is forgiven by his mother.
5. Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy), Star Trek: Nemesis
Even with the borishness of underdeveloped villains, there is such as thing as over development and that’s what Shinzon ultimately suffers from. The writers tried too hard to give Picard his equal in evil; his nemesis — says so right in the title — but despite the great work by actor Hardy to bring us a rich and ultimately flawed (in a good way) character, we’re given someone that we have to think about too much and, as such, we can never full appreciate the character and let him be what any good villain should be: fun.
4. Borg Queen (Alice Krige), Star Trek: First Contact
The exact opposite of Shinzon, Krige’s villain is fun in all the right spots. From her grand entrance to her gruesome demise, the Borg Queen oozed smart, sexy and sinister in one finely crafted skin-tight latex package. The Queen was the devil, for all intents and purposes, and her use of lust and greed to lure poor Data into a twisted affair is just pure evil, and very well done.
3. Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
I love Kruge. Not only is he played with absolute demonic glee by funnyman Christopher Lloyd whose only previous work had been the sitcom Taxi, but Kruge thought the rest of the Klingon Empire was run by a bunch of bureaucratic pussies and decided to take on the Federation all by himself. Then he murders his hot Klingon lover because she knew too much, and had Kirk’s son killed just to prove he was “sincere” about being an evil badass. Then when a gunner gets a lucky shot and blows up an enemy ship when he wanted prisoners, Kruge whips out his pistol and incinerates the dude right there in front of everyone, and then calls the dead guy an “animal”. Kruge had the balls to attempt a sneak attack on the Enterprise which, he admits, outnumbered him 10 to 1. Later, Kruge totally didn’t give a shit about dying in battle with Kirk on the erupting Genesis planet, and he had a badass evil dog pet that he just fucking loved more than anything. He also gives Kirk the chance to give him one of the best deaths in any movie, ever: Kirk kicks him in the face yelling “I…have HAD…enough of…YOU!” until Kruge falls to his death, immolated in molten hot magma.
2. General Chang (Christopher Plummer), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Having Christopher Plummer play a Shakespearean-sized villain next to Shatner’s Shakespearean-sized Kirk was brilliant. Brilliantly written, cast and directed, Chang not only shared the same motif with Kirk as a larger-than-life celebrity hero of his respective culture, he also quoted fucking Shakespeare in a tactless battle of wits as he showered the Enterprise in cannon fire from an invisible warship. “In space, all warriors are cold warriors” he reminds Kirk with schoolboy giddiness. Chang wanted to fuck up Kirk right there at the dinner table, but couldn’t because he had bigger and meaner things in the works, like conspiring with Federation and Romulan agents the complete destruction of the Federation by forcing the Klingon Empire into galactic war. And Kirk is out of the picture Chang got his ass under arrest, completely humiliating the Federation into doing anything the Klingons wanted. This fucker had it comin’, Kirk style.
1. Khan (Ricardo Montalban), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
What can I say? Have you ever heard the Klingon proverb that revenge is a dish best served cold? It is, as Khan correctly points out, very cold in space. As far as Ahabs and white whales go, Khan was the Moby Dickest. A one-time prince of the fucking WORLD, beaten back and sent off into the vast wilds of space in cryo freeze to go be some other planet’s problem, Khan is found decades later by the sweet, trusting Enterprise and Khan begins his reign of terror again by taking over the ship and fucking all the hot chicks while Captain James “The Greener The Better” Kirk watched. But, ah!, a battle of wits ensues and both Kirk and Khan are so badass that they can’t out-badass the other. So they call a truce: Khan gives Kirk his ship back and Khan gets his own planet and the pick of the hot Enterprise nurses. Khan, obviously given the sweetest deal, shakes hands with Kirk as the captain promises to check up on him from time to time.
Well guess what? By the time we get to Star Trek II, Kirk didn’t do shit for Khan! While Kirk was gallivanting around the stars, Khan’s neighboring planet exploded and shifted the way his planet spins, causing the whole thing to become a desolate, bleak, inhospitable desert world that would make Dune look like a Caribbean beach resort.
When some Starfleet science flunkies decide to investigate Khan’s solar system for a shitty planet to play with their new toy upon, Khan takes over their ship, slaughters the crew and turns the toy into a weapon that could destroy everyone, everywhere. But he only wants one thing: to kill the man who betrayed and caused the death of his crew and his beloved wife: the pick of the hottie nurses. What a waste. Even his mates tell him, “dude you’ve saved us and proven how badass you are. You don’t need to kill Kirk” and Khan’s like, “fuck that, man, I’ll destroy the universe looking for this guy”. And when he finally catches up to Kirk he doesn’t even kill him, he toys with him more, leaving him stranded on some lifeless asteroid somewhere. “I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her; marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet… buried alive! Buried alive…!”
Khan would have won but as Spock pointed out, he was inexperienced behind the wheel of a starship and his blood lust for Kirk ultimately blinded him to the bitter end. The parallels between Khan and Ahab are completely opaque as he quotes from Moby Dick his last words: “To the last, I will grapple with thee… from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!”
Brilliantly conceived, written, directed and performed, Khan was the penultimate performance of the late Ricardo Montalban and one of the greatest movie villains ever portrayed. They don’t get better than Khan in Star Trek. Some get close (Chang), some try to hard (Shinzon) and others miss the mark completely (Nero), but there is only one best Star Trek villain: and that is saved for Ricardo Montalban’s Khan.
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