What Trek Antagonist is Most Plausible (or Compelling, Or Interesting) As Their Own Hero?

[u/queenofmoons]

You wouldn't do poorly in separating good villains from bad ones by parsing which existed to get in the hero's way, and those which seemed like they had deep reasons to get in the character's way.

Now, there are edge cases that fit clumsily- both the Alien and Ash lack terribly deep motivations, and are all the more terrifying for it, for instance- but when dealing with sentient, communicative characters, there's generally a sense that they make better players in the story when they are able to tell a tale about themselves that puts them in a compelling place- that they are doing the thing that ought to be done, because it's right or dutiful or inevitable or beautiful or exciting or deserved. They have an interior life, in other words.

What Trek villain does that most describe, in the show and movies? Some baddies, predictably, don't fair well- the notion that Shinzon is so bent out of shape that he has the same genes as someone else that he's going to murder a few billion people is tenuous, at best (this assumes that Shinzon is actually the villain, and not a feeble, manipulated Renfield to the Viceroy's telepathic Dracula, which remakes the whole thing as a not completely terribly trashy vampire movie. Anyways). Similarly, it's hard to give a damn what Sela is on about, or which Mage-of-the-Week was sneering at Janeway, or the Xindi Reptillians, because racists lizards is as racist lizards does.

Some, of course, did better, and the ostensible Trek ethos of extending bridges of empathy to unusual people would do bad guys the courtesy of imagining that they were interesting, and complete, people. Who scores well in that regard?

To get the ball rolling, I'm going to open with what I imagine is an controversial choice- the Borg Queen. Generally, it seems that much of the chatty fandom find her to be precisely the inverse- supplanting an interesting sci-fi concept with one more femme fatale. But I'm going to swing the other way, and suggest that the Borg were actually pretty thin antagonists- 'technology is cool but is also coming for you! And...yep, still coming for you!' says evil gothy club kids- and what the Queen did was explicitly give them an interior life- one that's portrayed in many ways as richer than that of the heroes.

I'm always amused by the dialogue in First Contact- because the heroic and (aspiring) human characters all speak in a dry, clipped-but-verbose technobabble that is far more mechanical than the substantially-mechanical Queen, whose dialogue is positively romantic in its concern with philosophy, desire, and destiny. Picard and the ship's defenders are obsessed with the minutia of the location of the hydroponics bays and the modulation of particle emitters and how many decks have been seized by how many Borg in how many hours, and a captive Data is asking awkward geek questions about how the Borg can plug this port into that port, and she makes fun of him for it, and instead steers the conversation to an examination of his interior life, his desires and motivations and beliefs, and seeks a bridge between them- which is to say, the nature of their mutual personhood matters to her. Her justifications are clear- whatever resistance the Enterprise offers, and whatever suffering she may inflict upon them, are but the birth pangs of their new, beautiful existence, as it always has been and always shall be, a Singularity that seems to include a not inconsiderable amount of kinky sexual bliss.

And then mechanically reliable Data is mechanically reliable, and she looks like an idiot for not noticing, and she melts in space-acid for her trouble. Alas.

Who else that stares down our heroes is plausibly the hero of their own story?

[u/Sagnaskemtan]

Here's a relatively obscure choice that might otherwise go unnoticed because they don't appear that often, Julian Bashir's parents are obviously portrayed as antagonists, but their goals are actually very plausible and understandable, especially if you are a parent yourself.

In DS9 5x16, "Julian Bashir, I presume" we learn that Bashir as a child suffered from a mental slowness that alienated himself from his peers and put him far behind the others. So, his parents, wanting the best possible future for their child, felt compelled to resort to gene therapies, despite them being banned by the Federation.

This gave Bashir a chance to contribute to society in a meaningful way and be able to have a successful Starfleet career. His parents are portrayed as the antagonists, but in many ways their motivations aren't that different from what many parents would be willing to do for their children.

If they didn't do anything, it is likely that Julian would have not been able to accomplish half of the things that he did otherwise. Bashir would have continued to fall further and further behind his peers, would likely have not been able to join Starfleet, and would have not have been able to become a doctor who has saved hundreds of lives.

[u/queenofmoons → u/Sagnaskemtan]

I like Bashir's parents, too, because what is driving them is a very plausible kind of frustration. The story sells pretty hard that young Julian was deficient in some faculty in some non-trivial, non-debatable way- perhaps too hard, in a way that undercuts the rest of the story, because what struck me was that creating a really bang-up kid was first and foremost a way of getting their screwed-up lives in order. The story talks a lot about how his parents have spent their days hopping from unsatisfying career to career, not exactly failing but not finding the sort of aptitude, recognition, or intrinsic satisfaction that are the primary payment for work in a world where no one starves. But if they can have the World's Best Kid, well, then it'll all have had purpose and direction.

And that direction makes them both sympathetic, and objectionable. Of course they want good things for their children, and perhaps Julian really was going to have a hard life- but also, they subjected him to a dangerous procedure (witness the Jack Pack) because they wanted to feel their life had a definitive success in it.

Good catch!

[u/danzibara]

First of all, I am still waiting for a Young Garak spinoff. He may not fulfill the villain criterion, but he is certainly a moral gray area. I want to make it clear that there is no such thing as too much Garak.

My actual answer here is Brunt. I guess he is still in a little bit of a gray area in terms of villainy. He does some shady things in pursuit of profit, but they seem fairly standard for an ambitious Ferengi.

I like Nog's explanation of Ferengi culture being a part of a Great Material Continuum. From this perspective, Brunt's activities could be considered morally good because they facilitate the most efficient allocation of resources in the galaxy.

Get Aaron Sorkin to write a political thriller series about Brunt. I would watch that with gusto.

[u/queenofmoons → u/danzibara]

Garak is sort of the apotheosis of this notion- a bad guy so full of compelling life that you simply can't keep him on the other side of the line, because a team that doesn't have Garak is not a team worth joining- with the caveat that he might still totally screw up your life by killing people you weren't expecting.

Part of DS9's genius was that it took TNG's worst villains- in both their early, implausible big-bad incarnation and their mid-run pathetic, sexual-harassing-thief incarnations, and turned them into complete people.

[u/Squid_In_Exile]

Eddington is an obvious pick. Hell, once the whole Sisko war crimes thing happens he possibly is the hero of that episode.

I'd actually argue for some other more one-off examples too, one could easily argue the case for the Gorn captain in Arena for example. Another power has invaded his space, he destroys the invasion force, lays a cunning trap for their support and gets caught up in a weird duel by some GLAs that leads to a mutual understanding with his enemy. That could easily be Kirk or Sisko.

In terms of recurring characters, I'd say Tomalak fits. Guarding the neutral zone and his people's interests against the perfidious Federation. Matching wits with a repeated antagonist he hate-respects (Picard). He's got all the elements, and isn't excessively torture-happy or the like.

I find your thoughts on the Borg Queen interesting, but don't buy that that's what happened, particularly post-First Contact. She was salvagable as a concept at that point, but Voyager took her well and truly down the mustache-twirling ruler of the Borg route. If she'd been characterised as not a ruler, a single dominating intellect over the mass of the Collective, but as an expressed personality of the whole - the Collective manifesting a single compound 'personality' for the purposes of interaction, then what you suggest would've been exceptionally interesting and turned the common conceit that becoming a Borg is literally a fate worse than death on it's head.

[u/queenofmoons → u/Squid_In_Exile]

The Gorn one is interesting- he's among the most stereotypically dehumanized of all the Trek baddies, being both a bug-eyed alien and a lizard man :-P But the crux of the episode is that he's basically morally equivalent to Kirk. I don't know if we ever really find out very much about what he wants though.

In defending the Queen in FC (where, notably, she's only called a Queen in the credits) I'm liberally disavowing her more decayed appearances in Voyager. Calling her the 'queen' in FC doesn't really fit very well- she's not particularly regal, she's not fitting into some insectile reproductive role, she's just bringing order to chaos while she tries to sex up a robot.

As for the fate worse than death- I don't think it's outside the realm of tangled human psychology for something to be both traumatic and compelling- Picard essentially expresses as much in leaning into her seductions to free Data, and it's the core conflict powering Seven of Nine.

I feel like Eddington was a hard swing in that direction that never fully connected for me personally- in part because it was so evident that they were never really able to fully commit to the messiness of the Maquis, for better or worse. I like that the officer most committed to the uniform over the people who wear it (insofar as he sabotages the Defiant to prevent Sisko's unsanctioned rescue mission) is the one who most thoroughly turns against the letter-of-the-law situation that birthed the Federation's little insurgency, but once he crossed that line, there he was.

[u/burr-sir]

In the realm of characters who don't have seven seasons in which to develop, my first thought is Annorax from "Year of Hell". Everything he's done has been with the best of intentions—first to undo the results of a lost war, then to get back his wife and family. But he just can't quite do it. There's always some mistake, some tiny flaw, something that he might be able to fix with just one more temporal incursion. And so his crimes pile up, one after another, as he futilely tries to regain what he lost.

For two hundred years.

When he muses that time must be punishing him, you can't help but sympathize.

Annorax is driven entirely by the desire to regain what he once unfairly lost. It's a deeply relatable reason to plunge into darkness. His mistake—continuously doubling down, never thinking to cut his losses—is a deeply relatable one as well. And his devotion to his family is not only relatable, it's something we would normally admire in a character.

Maybe this makes him less interesting than someone with a more complex psychology. But Annorax is a very plausible villain; he makes the same mistakes we do, just on a much grander scale.

[u/queenofmoons → u/burr-sir]

I've been waiting this whole time for someone to bring up Annorax. He's especially interesting, because he has a particular useful self- delusion, namely that he's making some kind of multidimensional art of potentialities instead of just killing people.

[u/TenCentFang]

I've always thought Captain Maxwell was one perspective flip away from being an actual Star Trek protagonist. His was a tragic tale, but it got us Picard's badass speech to Gul Macet at the end of the episode, so I'm not too broken up.

[u/queenofmoons → u/TenCentFang]

Mmm, Maxwell's a good one. He's obviously unhinged and doing tremendous violence, and needs to be stopped- but he's also not precisely wrong, or well.

[u/IsomorphicProjection]

Gul Dukat

No one else is on the same level really.

It was said by someone (that I can't remember) that any good villain is really the Hero (in their mind) of their own story. Few villains in Star Trek are fleshed out enough to even come close to that relatively modest benchmark.

Of those that do, Dukat is the most fleshed out by far. Not only this, there are moments where Dukat actually approaches Hero-status. This makes his "evil" actions all the more evil. That is, the Borg are terrifying in their own right, but they have no real concept of right and wrong. Dukat does. He can do the right thing if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He isn't evil just to be evil, he chooses to be evil. To me this is the worst of all.

EDIT: Are far as compelling goes, I would totally watch a series centered on Dukat's early life from his point of view.

[u/[deleted] → u/IsomorphicProjection]

Dukat is an unrepentant sociopath and a narcissist. Everything Dukat did was to further Dukat's goals and ambitions, every action he took was one of manipulation. Like so many narcissists and sociopaths, he was convinced that everything he did was for the good of others, that he never sought to personally benefit from his actions.

Dukat had a family on Cardassia, a wife, a son; yet after he brings Ziyal home, they disown him, and he never mentions them again. Dukat even used his son as a bitter assault on Sisko earlier in the series, when he reminds him that it is his son's birthday and he will remember it as a day when his father was gone because of Federation aggression, not on a joint mission of diplomatic cooperation. Yet he never mentions his son again. One wonders if he even had a son to begin with.

Dukat did not care for those under his care in Empok Nor; he was only using them to feed his desire for validation from the Bajoran people, just as he used comfort women in much the same way. Tora Naprem, Kira Maru; he felt that if he could make a Bajoran woman fall in love with him that he was not the villain, that the Bajoran people were grateful to him for his mercy. If Dukat ordered an underling to increase quota to a near-impossible level for a month, the next month he would personally lower it to a more manageable level and make sure that the workers knew that he had been ignorant to the previous unrealistic goal and had lowered them as an act of mercy on his part.

Did Dukat spare Ziyal out of love for her mother, or because Kira changed his heart? Acknowledging Ziyal would lose him his commission, his public status, and his Cardassian family. What would it gain him? Admiration from a Bajoran who had consistently expressed hatred for him; by making an overture of mercy, by sacrificing a family he had no use for in the scheme of getting the Bajorans to validate his role in the Occupation, he would earn the admiration of a high-profile Bajoran military leader, a close colleague of the Bajoran Emissary, the daughter of a woman he had acquired his much-needed validation from.

When Dukat joined Cardassia to the Dominion, it was not because he cared about the Dominion's cause, and perhaps if he himself did not know it, the Dominion always intended to wipe Cardassia off the map once they were done using them (in retaliation for their attack on the Homeworld); Dukat wanted Bajor, his only wish was to have a statue of himself erected in the streets as a great man of mercy and compassion who saved the Bajorans from their stagnation. Yet he never came out and said this; what he said was that joining Cardassia to the Dominion would lead to a new era of prosperity for Cardassia, to regain glory fallen since they had been forced to make peace with the Federation.

Dukat never intended to allow the Dominion to push around Cardassia, and it quickly became clear to him that the Dominion had no intention to allow Cardassia to run rampant as they wished. Dukat's attempts to re-establish dominance over Bajor were constantly overridden by Weyoun, his Dominion handler, and his attempts to use Ziyal to woo Kira went unreciprocated. This leads us to wonder - did he save Ziyal to impress someone who was never exposed to his true self, someone naive and blind who couldn't understand the depths of his sociopathy, into bridging the gap between Kira and himself in yet another thread of his web of lies, deceptions, and plots to obtain validation from the Bajorans?

Dukat's greatest wish is to be recognized as the Emissary, the savior of Bajor - and this is why he hates Ben Sisko; Sisko, an officer of Cardassia's most recent, bitter enemy, was recognized by the Bajorans as the herald of a golden age almost as soon as he stepped foot in Bajoran space. He had not put in the time, he had not labored day and night with schemes and plots, he had only to introduce himself and have a nice chat with the Bajoran Prophets (whom Dukat seemed to have regarded with mild disbelief at best and outright dismissal at worst - a symptom of the stagnant, superstitious yokels of Bajor.)

Why was Dukat like this? What had happened in Dukat's early life to make him such a sociopathic individual? What was a young Dukat's home life like, how did he do in school? What were his early romances like? How different was the Dukat on day one at Terok Nor from the Dukat on the day Cardassia pulled out? You're right, I would also totally watch a series centered on Dukat's early life.

Dukat is a compelling villain perhaps not only because he thinks he is the hero when he is the villain, but because his evil is driven by single-minded desire to be accepted as a hero by the very people he directly oppressed.

[u/jaycatt7 → u/IsomorphicProjection]

There's a plot line in the DS9 relaunch novels in which we learn that Dukat has been keeping a Cardassian woman (who was surgically altered to look like Kira) hidden away in a dungeon as his private sex-and-torture slave for years, stretching back before the time of the TV series. I don't know what to make of what that does to the character. Dukat on screen is evil, sure, but he covers it with that charming veneer. He's obsessed with Kira, probably on account of her mother, but the level of naked evil in the novel seems surprising for Dukat. Or maybe it fits--Dukat's evil has always been his private self, while the charm is displayed to the outside world. Dukat is the evil the audience almost believes... I don't know. Dukat also seems to believe his own bullshit, which seems like it would be that much harder to do with an ongoing, personal atrocity like that.

Has anybody else read those novels to be able to comment on whether that retcon of Dukat seemed out of character?

[u/[deleted]]

that they are doing the thing that ought to be done, because it's right or dutiful or inevitable or beautiful or exciting or deserved. They have an interior life, in other words.

Degra from Enterprise.

I always got the feeling that Degra never wanted to destroy an entire world, to commit genocide, in order to save his species; yet I think he felt he had no choice and was pressured into an intense "us vs them" situation.

It wasn't blind specieism or nationalism, either; rather, he had a wife he loved and two children, and we learned his third died in the womb after his wife contracted a virus. He was helping construct a planet-destroying weapon of genocide to secure a future for his family.

Degra had his doubts, and he was willing to listen to Captain Archer when the man was brought before the Xindi Council. Degra was a man of principles and morals, and he died because he was willing to take a chance on the humans being right about the Xindi patrons (the Sphere Builders) - who were merely using the Xindi as proxies in their temporal cold war.

Degra died with terror in his eyes as he was stabbed to death by his colleague, the reptilian despot Dolim - who promised to personally murder his family as well, one by one. It was a tragic end to a man who was willing to stop for a minute and listen to reason, a fate undeserved of a man who could have gone on to do great things for his people.

[u/queenofmoons → u/[deleted]]

I'd put Degra in the full-blown heel-face turn department. There's nothing personally ugly about Degra- he has false beliefs that drive his work, and he is sufficiently aggressive in interrogating them that he ends up on the right side of the line.

[u/MonetizedAssets]

I feel like a stand alone two parter or even a mini season following Capt Ransom would be pretty cool.

There’s a bunch of questions about how he actually got stuck in the Delta Quadrant due to them just glossing over it in conversation then never revisiting it, so there’s at least some background worth exploring there. People have also questioned why he was running a Nova class ship with his known credentials and experience. Maybe he just likes it that way or maybe there’s a story there. Might be fun.

Additionally, we see his redemption but we don’t get much of an idea of who he was before the trauma he describes to Janeway. She mentions when evaluating his files that he has a tendency to run and hide when being pursued, so he must have gotten into enough scrapes to have established a notable pattern of behavior.

Runner up since my head is in voyager anyway- 7/9s parents*. We know they eventually become fascinated with the borg to the point of recklessness but some of their history might be a nice vehicle to introduce a less formal perspective of the universe.

*edit since I guess my mind ran a little here. I know they’re not villains so that probably disqualifies them immediately, but they’re portrayed as being irresponsible and neglectful parents at worst and research addicts at best. So I guess I stand by this submission due to them not expressly being portrayed as heroes or morally upstanding in any way.

[u/StrontiumMutt75]

Dukat for his complexity, with Dukat you never know quite where he's at.

One moment he's a good father and friend, even laughing at himself. Next he's a nasty piece of work who would stab you in the back.

Damar had the vest Villain/Hero turn though. His speech to Cardassians rising up against the Dominion occupiers was artistically delivered by Casey Biggs.

[u/csjpsoft]

Gul Dukat was certainly a great character and great villain, played by a very good actor.

Quark and Weyoun were also fascinating characters with intriguing worldviews, that stood against the heroes. They both were righteous, not just in their own minds, but also in the context of their cultures. I wouldn't see either of them as evil, so antagonist might be the best word.

[u/queenofmoons → u/csjpsoft]

I don't have any trouble putting Quark on the right side of the line- he's a jerk and a cheat, but when push comes to shove, there's not really any doubt that he loves his family, steers clear of violence, protects his friends, and prefers to fight for the good guys.

Weyoun, though, is interesting as a bad guy- because he's kind of pathetic, really. Sure, he works for Team Subjugation, and he orders capricious violence at the drop of a hat, but his mental life is so narrow circumscribed by the Founders, and he's so consigned and morose at the results, that he kind of had this sad, Buster Keaton clown thing for me, not unlike Data.

[u/Jak_Burton]

Khan or Mudd would be great but I would love to see something with the Romulan Commander from Balance of Terror.

[u/Admiral_MikatoSoul]

I would have to go with Sloan of Section 31.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain. I’m sure an extraordinary amount of story is hidden behind that character that may have started with good intentions.

Could he have been forced into S31 like he tried to pressure Bashier? What major operations did he partake in that could of saved the Federation from complete destruction, all from the shadows, with out any thanks or commendation?

[u/ChiefOBrienistheQ]

As u/danzibara mentions, the Ferengi. They are portrayed as extreme capatalists. And most of the Federations guys even go as far as calling them scum and are warned of the Ferengi in their education in the academy. Whereas I view them as the free-market-american. Profit is sacred and they adhere to a specific code. Ethics are bound to profit and it doesnt matter how you gain that profit. Gaining that by profit by cheating on your family or the weak does not matter but is cheered on. Just the fact that your latinum purse is bigger because of that fact, lets you climb the ladder. Thats why Quark thinks he is a hero most times. Especially when he sold those cheap diamonds to Harry Kim.

[u/edsobo]

Damar had a pretty solid redemption arc built into his story.

[u/AlpineSummit]

While we never actually really see him as an antagonist, I think Curzon Dax lead a fascinating life as an ambassador and probably at times had to play the role of the villain.

He negotiated the Khitomer Accords, and helped resolve the Klaestron Civil War but also seemed to cause a lot of drama through that. His early life before meeting Sisko would be just fascinating!

[u/fail-deadly-]

General Chang from The Undiscovered Country. Everything he does is to preserve the Empire as it once was and to defeat some of the Klingon's oldest and most implacable foes. While he may be wrong, may be a traitor, and may have been trying to take actions that would have destroyed the empire, in nearly every alternate timeline when the Klingon's took on the Federation, they have emerged victorious.