I think most people are misunderstanding what kind of a villain Q was meant to be. I've always seen him as an apathetic villain. In other words, he just doesn't care what the outcomes of his actions are on people. We see this a lot in stories with psychopaths, but Q takes the idea and expands it to encompass not individuals but the whole human race. To be fair, psychopaths probably do this too, but we usually see it enacted against individuals rather than whole species. Basically, Q views humans as so insignificant in the cosmic scale that he doesn't worry about his actions on them. Live, die, who cares? Q is bored. Humans make for interesting toys. Play some games with them, see what happens, when its all said and done, clean everything up and put it back the way it was. Mostly. Q challenged the fundamental assumption that human beings are valuable by presenting the counterpoint that no, they're not valuable. They are his toys, and there's nothing humanity can do about it. Yes, he's tremendously OP. He needs to be to create the problem of insignificance for a civilization with FTL capability, anti-matter torpedoes, ect. Yes, he's acts like a spoiled child. Most psychopaths do, too, because they lack the ability to empathize with others. It also fits with his tendency to view things as "games". On the whole, it makes him a compelling villain, but one that is very easy to mismanage. ST:NG had about a 50% success rate managing Q, IMO. Villains from Books/Literature I thought of some I like, so I'm adding them in the hopes of forcing this thread back on topic. Javert If you've never read Les Miserables, don't. Unless you can get a majorly abridge version. The story is very good but by modern standards the writing is very bad. Still, Javert stands out as a villain because of two things: His utter implacability in the pursuit of his prey and his equally great inability to understand Jean Valjean. Ultimately, Javert is destroyed due to his inability to understand. Jean's life so ruins his understanding of the world that the poor inspector goes quite batty. Honorable Mention: Cthulu An interesting take on the idea that we are fools, staggering blindly in a world that is fundamentally incompatible with our way of reasoning. Lovecraft's take on horror has since been way, way, way overdone by people who, I feel, do not really understand his viewpoint or appreciate how his tropes could have been meaningfully updated. But, like it or hate it (and I am not really a big fan of the genre myself), The Call of Cthulu is one of Lovecraft's few stories that combine his incredible management of foreshadowing and dread with a concrete figure at the end who humanity cannot hope to understand or permanently forestall. That makes him worthy of note.
If Q actually saw humans as irrelevant, then he would treat them that way (ie. ignore them)., But instead, he actually treats them the way a spoiled child treats his toys. He's not a sociopath -- he's a baby.
You'd be surprised at how much time thinking people spend on things that are irrelevant. Look at these forums. And I still contend that many sociopaths act like babies.
He's the result of an attempt to create a true cybernetic organism. Pure machine, made man. He wasn't ever about efficiency, he was about making as much of a person out of a machine as possible. Giving "humanity" to something completely inorganic. Trying to teach the unteachable (emotion, mainly) to a machine. He represents the scientific struggle towards and the implications of a true artificial life form. The fact that he possessed some superhuman abilities - technology IS still highly advanced and giving extraordinary resilience, strength and computing power to a being unhindered by the limitations of flesh and blood is not difficult in and of itself for them. Tasha Yar.
I never really cared much for Tasha Yarr. (Guessing at the spelling.) Wolf-man (The Klingon) was so cliché that I wanted to rate him as Q, but he was not a villain, so I omitted that. The entire TNG series felt like they were humming cumbaya and patting each other on the back every other minute. Hell. The only villain I liked and thought was not a complete waste of an episode was the tar guy that killed Tasha. I never liked him, but that was the point. It was not all powerful, but was a bit different from the normal junk. TNG was awful, but Voyager takes the cake for "Impossible situations on a daily basis, yet we manage to win by our superior morality and good will." DS9 was equally unwatchable for the infinite fake politics. It was like watching science fiction CSPAN. I need to rewatch "Enterprise" and see how much I hate that one and for what aspects. But suffice it to say I was unimpressed. I do however think enterprise was a better series than the rest of the Star Trek stuff. But that may be due to the physical appeal of a certain woman in the series. I swear they focused the camera directly on her rear every available chance. The villains in Enterprise were left more mysterious and they did not ever really explain them and why they did what they did, or to what extent they were doing this sort of ting. They clearly have a desire to make another series at some point and likely recycle some of that storyline. Odd. I have not owned a television in over a decade. Lol. (Yes, I am aware Enterprise was aired in that time frame. So was at least one other series mentioned.) *Edit* Everyone beat me in replying. Oh well.
I thought Babylon 5 did some interesting things with villains. The Shadows were great as the big bad for much of the series, but even more interesting were the Narn and Centauri. They seemed at times to take turns at being either good guys or bad guys. The politics of it made the show fun, and more complex than what you normally saw on television. IT wasn't a perfect series, particularly the last season was just bad. But I felt that the show treated its audience with a lot more respect than most science fiction (which too often treats its audience as idiots). /edit: Oh, and it helped that they had two really good actors playing the heads of the Narn and Centauri delegations.
Oh, and I would also comment on the Vorlons/Shadow relationship, but I'm afraid that I'd ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen the whole series. It was a really noble attempt at true philosophical depth, for a television show.
Oh, and as I'm thinking more about the show, let me mention "Mr. Morden". I remember when one of the episodes was up for a Hugo award at a worldcon I attended, and they were screening all the Hugo nominees. When he finally is killed, I've never heard a crowd cheer so loudly.
Lol. Babylon 5 is one of my personal favorites too. I tend to think the Vorlons were the greater threat to everyone. And I thought that a long time before the Shadows were even revealed. No spoilers in that I hope. If anyone has not seen the series, Do. The politics was pretty awful in Babylon 5 at times, but at times it was enjoyable and unpredictable. You could not ever in that series predict what any group would do. Nope. Not any of them. Yet it did not feel like the script writers were picking scraps of paper out of a hat either. They planned the entire thing. And they chose well in most situations. I liked Morden. He was one of the more honest and reasonable of the superior groups. He told you his terms and let you decide. If you accepted, well... You were going to do what you agreed to do. Evil perhaps, but I am not entirely convinced he and the group he was associated with were evil at all. I suppose most would consider him and the group he represented as definitively evil. Perhaps he would even be a good entry on this topic as a villain. But I disagree. It is hard to discuss this in any depth without spoiling the whole thing. The Narn and Centauri were factions, but they were represented very openly by G'kar and Londo respectively. No spoilers there. Their relationship and interactions were also well scripted except at the very beginning where it seemed no-one had decided how things would play out. But by season three, every last detail was pretty much set in stone. One thing I really liked about Babylon 5 was that *EVERYONE* was at one point or another a villain, and at other points a hero. It was more believable. And no 'effing warp drives too. Munitions were matter launched at the target to vent the target of atmosphere. No stupid beams and fields except very late in the series, and even then it was believable.
Exactly. At different points you could hate or respect almost any of the characters. The more I think about it, the more I see Morden as being modeled after the devil. His modus operandi was to make faustian deals with anyone he could tempt. He literally gave people what they wanted, and in a way, it cost them their souls. So I'd say that he's evil in a very classical sense. /edit Darn it! Now I have to go back and watch the whole series again. It's been so long since I've seen it, and I really want to watch it again. I'll see if Hulu has it.
Lorrelian had it right. I think it's best if we all agree to disagree here. I'm much more of a spoiled child than Q is. Much more. Let's leave it at that.
Lol. You have a charm all your own. DavidB1111 is the villain of the thread. AKA Cthulu. (I am kidding, You are not too spoiled, nor too crazy.) Remember that sanity is relative. Thus everyone is insane to everyone else if you look closely enough.
"You were right all along, Mr. Kent, I am the Villain of this story!" Lex Luthor. I don't mind the promotion.
Because villains require heroes to appear villainous. Otherwise, they're just normal. And normal is boring.
And you say I use the world literal before saying something silly... Good Villains? Like Honest Politicians? Or Pro-Life Murderers?
No, I say "you keep saying that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means." Also, thank you for the laugh at Pro-life Murderers.
