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This isn't about level of power btw... Its about being a damned good villain.
Been looking at generating some future bad guys for a RT roleplaying game and got to looking at villains from scifi shows and films.
Who's your choice for an all round great villain in science fiction and why?
My choice
Scorpius, from Farscape.
Intelligent, physically powerful, scientifically advanced, hybrid of two of the galaxy's most dangerous species. Scorpius is interesting because he's morally sound. He's not a ravening madman out for revenge or world domination, he does what he does for patriotism and to prevent the rise of the Scarran Empire. He can move from snarling warlord to quietly spoken diplomat to calm battleship commander easily.
What he does to John C in the aurora chair is, on the face of it, straight up torture, then episodes later we learn about just how smart and how dedicated Scorpius is when 'Harvey' begins showing up. Scorpius doesn't just hunt the crew of Moya and threaten like his fairly unintimidating predecessor, Crais, he gets into their minds, he sets them against each other, he drives Crichton mad and makes him kill his true love.
And when he's confronted by all this he freely admits to it, calmly explains his reasoning and you can sort of see why he's doing all of it, because he knows the enemy he's trying to stop, because half his blood is scarran and he is determined to stop their rise.
Weyoun. By far the sci-fi villain I've always found most memorable (and the only solid I've ever truly trusted ). By extension, I'm also praising Brunt here since everyone knows Brunt and Weyoun are the same person
I'm also fond of Apophis from SG1 and lest we forget the Smoking Man.
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
I think Q deserves a mention. Not technically a villain, but the greatest troll ever.
timetowaste85 wrote: Professor Cutter's wife in Primeval. If you haven't watched it, go do it. She's the most evil bitch to walk the planet.
Indeed. I almost cheered out loud when she died.
"Good boy!"
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
So many to choose from, depending on your definition of sci-fi (I, for example, count Super hero movies as as sci-fi, but I'm sure some will disagree) Anyway, my top 3 (and it's really too close to call here):
3) The Daleks. 'It's cheating' i hear yo cry, 'as they're not just one villain'. In answer, I'll just point you to the 2005 episode 'Dalek', the first time they appear in the new series. The first you see of it is the Dalek in chains, a prisoner buried miles underground in a top secret base. And you still know everyone in that base is screwed.
Because it will get out, and it will regain its power, and when it does it is going to exterminate every living thing in a hundred mile radius. As the episode goes on, the Doctor is furious, and scared, and that means trouble. He alone, and therefore us, know what kind of danger everyone is in.
The first kill the Dalek makes is merciless, as it uses its sucker to suffocate its tormenter. Then, its gun repairs and the slaughter starts in earnest. Guard after guard tries to shoot it down, each is killed in turn. The Dalek just waits for their ammunitin to run out, vapourising the bullets before they even hit, and returns fire when the humans are defenceless. An attempt to flank it ends in disaster as the midsection spins round, and the Dalek casually defends itself on two fronts.
In the end, even the Doctor is readly to kill it, but by then, only a handful of humans are left. Even though Rose is able to talk it into self destruction, for the last half an hour of the episode one Dalek has been more terrifying to face than a whole army, inexorable and unstoppable. To quote a later episode, 'the Daleks are death'.
Without even going into their other motivations or plots, if that one episode doesn't make you realise just how much of a threat they are, nothing will.
2) Loki: In the older Marvel comics, Loki has always been a little two dimensional, but in Thor/The Avengers/Thor 2, he's just excellently characterised. Merciless and brutal when he has to be, funny and terrifying at other times. Just to have made the character interesting would have been a feat, but to make him one of the most engaging and deepest characters in the MCU so far is a brilliant achievement of writing and acting.
1) Darth Vader: Of course it is. What other could there be? Not the Dark Lord of the Sith but his iron fist, his executioner and his butcher, just as ready to turn on his own men as the enemy should they disappoint him. He is rage and hatred and power incarnate, he will brook no opposition and accept no failure. Vader is iconic as a sci-fi villain in both character and design, and indisputably the best.
Honourable mentions: The Master (especially John Simm's version), Khaaaaan! (The original, of course), the Cybermen, The Winter Soldier, Magneto (both McKellan and Fassbinder), the Klingons.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
timetowaste85 wrote: Professor Cutter's wife in Primeval. If you haven't watched it, go do it. She's the most evil bitch to walk the planet.
Very true, that was great performance from her.
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Vader. Might seem too obvious, or old hat, or something, but I find his arc in the original trilogy difficult to beat. Shows up as the unrelenting and scarily powerful attack-dog of the Emperor; gets more personally involved and frightening in the next installment (though with a few subtle cracks showing); then brought to redemption by his son, in an instense and spectacular moment of self-sacrifice.
Then he turns into a ghost that looks like Sebastian Shaw. Sebastian Shaw, do you hear me?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Paradigm wrote: To quote a later episode, 'the Daleks are death'.
To quote another: "We would destroy the cybermen with one dalek!"
Never really saw old Who (until I started grokking the Horror channel recently), and never really liked NuWho, but the Daleks were so iconic and compelling that I had to watch their new episodes. At least up until that goofy daleks-in-new-york "I am a hu-man da-lek!" moment...
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d-usa wrote: "When the Internet sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending posters that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing strawmen. They're bringing spam. They're trolls. And some, I assume, are good people."
The Directorate from Firestorm Armada. A conglomerate of secretive and ruthless nazi-style scientists and corporations with experiments and weapons too horrible for words who manipulate the entire universe from the shadows.
For individuals, it would be Palpatine from Star Wars. Those manipulative, scheming and unscrupulous bastards just make the best villains imo.
Also, it may not be sci-fi, but having recently watched the 1995 Richard III movie, I think Richard is a most brilliant and hilarious villain. It would not be hard to put him in a sci-fi environment.
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Ever since the prequels came out, I've been more partial to The Emperor than Vader. - The prequels just made him into a pansy.
The prequels on the other hand? I think actually succeeded in making The Emperor even MORE awesome. He even managed to redeem Episode 1.
How? I hear you not asking... Remember the ending? The great cheery, happy song.
Spoiler:
Now listen to this...
It's why when I say the best part of The Phantom Menace is the ending, I'm not being entirely flippant.
And, onto the Star Trek side in second position and beating the pants off Wayoun in my view is, The Great, The Magnificent, Gul Dukat.
Sadly, the video misses the final line from Sisko. "And that, is why you are not an evil man."
However, my top villian, my absolute favourite villain of all time I think is... The Baron, Vladimir Harkonnen from Dune, particularly as portrayed by Ian McNiece in the miniseries. Now, whether you like the pseudo-theatricalness of the miniseries or not, The Baron is just the most magnificent of The Magnificent ****ards.
This is my favourite scene of him of all with so many of my favourite lines. - Spoilers for the book, of course. Admittedly, it's quite early on.
The less said about the David Lynch portrayal of The Baron, the better.
For me I never viewed Dukat as a villain (antagonist certainly) but until the last season of the series, Dukat was a man who wasn't a monster, but allowed his ambition and drive to blind the part of himself that was a good person. Dukat was a character all about duality. The good and evil in everyone. In his case, the part of him that was an evil person ultimately won. For me, he's more of a tragic figure than a villain, especially because for a Cardassian, his story is so woefully human.
Weyoun on the other hand did evil things, didn't care if they were right or wrong (because the Founders are always right), and was one charming SOB
(Hats is getting all philosophical up in here )
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I suppose it does depend on how strictly you define 'villain.' To Godwin the thread, I'm sure the Nazi's never saw themselves as villains.
I'd still see him as a villain, became a goody, then became a villain again. Then got worse, much worse after that scene and there's no doubt whatsoever that, aside from that brief period when he was a goody, Dukat was always a villain..
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/09/20 17:07:39
Well that and I've always drawn a line between 'antagonist' and 'villain.' An antagonist is a story role (and even when he was a goody, Dukat was always antagonistic towards DS9's heros), while villain is an evil person. I think the series really balanced Sisko and Dukat in this way, presenting them not as good or evil (Sisko does lots of morally questionable things) but as people. Just people in a world they don't control but that they do have to live in.
Sisko came out the better, built up by that world into a better man. Dukat desperately wanted to be the hero. He wanted to be like Sisko, but no matter what he did he always fell short due to his own failings as a person. Dukat was torn down one piece at a time until he finally broke and all that remained was the monster within us all. So yeah, definitely by the end of the series he was a villain, but I think to describe the character as a whole as villainous is to miss the underlying power that was the role.
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Dukat, Kai Wynn, Weyoun - DS9
Ba'al - SG1
Londo Mollari, Mr Morden - Babylon 5
Khan - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
General Chang - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Cohaagen - Total Recall
Roy Batty - Blade Runner
The Emperor - Return of the Jedi
Oh also honorable mention for this dude. I found him entirely fascinating for his brief appearances.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I am interested to see all the fuss about 'Mrs Cutter' but not sure I can stomach watching primeval. I tried when it first came out and gave up after 2 episodes.
Also I don't really get people nominating Londo Molari, he was always far more a trapped Faust-like character to me. Not a villain.
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Invader Zim. Alone, unsupported, unasked for, yet he waged a one Irken war on Humanity which at the very least resulted in the destruction of Mercury and Mars. He is so unabashedly over the top, and gleefully destructive. If he only had an ounce of common sense he would have conquered galaxies.
Klawz-Ramming is a subset of citrus fruit?
Gwar- "And everyone wants a bigger Spleen!"
Mercurial wrote:
I admire your aplomb and instate you as Baron of the Seas and Lord Marshall of Privateers.
Orkeosaurus wrote:Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.
Orkeosaurus, on homophobia, the nature of homosexuality, and the greatness of George Takei.
English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleyways and mugs them for loose grammar.
Ba'al is a great character. It's just refreshing to have such a genre-savvy villain - especially with his plan in Stargate Continuum, where I actually kinda thought, when you talk about having Apophis, Anubis, The Ori all sorts of really nasty, evil bad guys, Ba'al ruling the Earth really wouldn't be that bad.
He pretty much goes up to humanity and says, tell you what, accept me as your Emperor/master/ruler, pay me some taxes, get on with your lives, leave me alone, I don't really care about all the whole politics thing, you folks just get on and do that.
Then, "oh, yeah, Jaffa, tell you what, fight for me and I'll genuinely give you a free land to call your own, there's not even many humans that live in the middle of Australia anyway and it'd be perfect for you guys."
Generally speaking, life just wouldn't be that bad compared to the alternatives.
Spoiler:
Then, classically and cleverly, he's completely undone - A Goa'ulds still a Goa'uld and his Empress stabs him in the back.
Gitzbitah wrote: Invader Zim. Alone, unsupported, unasked for, yet he waged a one Irken war on Humanity which at the very least resulted in the destruction of Mercury and Mars. He is so unabashedly over the top, and gleefully destructive. If he only had an ounce of common sense he would have conquered galaxies.
One of the plots of an unaired episode was a sort of trial that would allowe the Tallest to execute Zim, but the trial instead concludes that Zim is the greatest invader in Irken history he doesn't even have to try to destroy, it just happens by his mere presence
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comes back from "the dead" aka time, doesn't tell her grieving husband, instead starts sleeping with his best friend, then puts the friend in a position to be eaten alive by all the nasty critters (velociraptors, bat-creatures from the future, sabertooth tiger, etc) and he is horribly killed at the end of the season. In season 3, she kills her husband, the main character, in cold blood by shooting him through the heart. She then travels back in time to wipe out human kind while man was still in its most primitive form through poisoning the water supplies. She exists outside of time, and was of course planning to survive after killing everyone else off. And no, the main character never came back: he stayed stone dead for the rest of the series.
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.
Scorpius is way up there. Vader is a classic. The Goa'uld from SG-1's first few series was pretty terrifying as well, although the series' most impressive villains I would say are the replicators.
Protectors (from Niven's Known Space) are pretty damn scary as well, although not necessarily villains - they can be reasoned with, for a given value of reason.
Although I'm not a Superman fan, I've always like Lex Luthor as his arch villain - no superpowers, just ruthless intellect.
In fact, I'm going to say that the evil geniuses if done well are the scariest villains, period.
). By extension, I'm also praising Brunt here since everyone knows Brunt and Weyoun are the same person 
At least up until that goofy daleks-in-new-york "I am a hu-man da-lek!" moment...
~4100
~1660
