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15 Greatest Star Trek Villains Of All Time, Ranked

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The Star Trek universe has grown by leaps and bounds since the first episode aired on September 8, 1966. The fan-favorite series is famous for depicting a future where mankind has come to find peace. Humanity now traveled the stars seeking new life and new civilizations. Star Trek has given the world of pop culture quite a few different heroes. Star Trek is nearly 60 years old, and the science fiction saga created by Gene Roddenberry only lasted this long because of its heroes.

With Star Trek , its villains are often mere ideas, misunderstood alien creatures, or entire races created as a metaphorical allegory. Still, Captain Kirk, Spock, Jean-Luc Picard, or Seven of Nine transcend even their own heroic status when they come face-to-face with a real villain. From Khan Noonien Singh to the nameless Borg, Star Trek 's villains may not be as iconic as that other space franchise, but they nonetheless stand apart from the typical threat to the United Federation of Planets . While not every villain has stood out over time, some have become as well-known as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. These are the villains that have left an impression not only in the Star Trek universe but in pop culture as a whole. They are presented in chronological order based on their first appearance in the franchise.

Updated on December 30, 2023, by Robert Vaux: The article has been updated to include details on each character and when they appeared in the franchise. The entries have also been reorganized to better rank each villain accordingly.

15 Gary Mitchell Tried To Turn The Captain Kirk Against His Crew

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Gary Mitchell appeared in one of the most memorable episodes of Star Trek: TOS . He started as a close friend of Captain Kirk and the ship's navigator for the USS Enterprise . However, the Galactic Barrier irradiated Mitchell, and he gained supernatural powers. Gary's powers continued to intensify, and as he grew more powerful, he became less human.

Gary Mitchell lost all connection to his humanity, and he put the crew of the Enterprise at risk. He tried to force Captain Kirk to do the one thing no good leader ever wants to do; kill his own crewmate. Gary Mitchell set the standard for what made a good Star Trek villain. He was a character fans rooted against even as they felt for him. This episode was the second pilot for Star Trek: The Original Series . While Captain James T. Kirk proved to be the hero NBC wanted, he needed Gary Mitchell to show them why.

14 The Romulan Star Empire Attacked From The Shadows

While the Romulans have never been given the same standing in pop culture as the Klingons, they are arguably even more villainous. The Earth-Romulan War led to the creation of the United Federation of Planets. The secretive Romulans were so elusive that no one saw their faces for over a hundred years. While there have been many dangerous individual Romulans, like Nero, perhaps the most sinister was Picard 's Narek. A member of the Zhat Vash, hidden within the Tal Shiar "secret police," he used kindness and empathy as his weapon against Soji Asha, the "daughter" of Star Trek: TNG 's Data.

When Romulans first showed up in The Original Series , it shocked everyone to learn that they looked just like Vulcans. The Romulans were an offshoot of the Vulcan race from millennia before the series. They refused to bury their feelings and become purely logical beings, which led them to establish their own society. By the time of the 32nd Century, however, the Vulcans and Romulans reunited thanks to Spock's efforts.

13 Khan Noonien Singh Left Destruction In His Wake

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A former ruler of Earth, Khan Noonien Singh was a genetically engineered superhuman who rose to power during the Eugenics Wars. He became Star Trek 's greatest villain after he was overthrown and exiled into space. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , he and his surviving fellow "augments" nearly killed everyone on the Enterprise . To save the ship, beloved character Spock died .

Khan stands out as not only the greatest villain in Star Trek but one of the greatest villains in sci-fi. The Wrath of Khan reinvigorated the Star Trek franchise, leading to a series of sequels and new shows that continue to this day. Khan was such a compelling villain that he was even brought back for the second movie in the reboot trilogy, Star Trek Into Darkness . His descendant, La'an Noonien Singh, serves as the Chief of Security on the Enterprise in Strange New Worlds .

12 The Klingon Empire Was Ruthless And Formidable

One of the best-known alien races from the Star Trek franchise is the Klingons. They started as an allegorical representation of the Soviet Union to Starfleet's America in The Original Series . By the time of Star Trek: TNG , it was revealed that the Klingons made a tenuous peace with the United Federation of Planets. This was set in motion in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , paralleling the fall of the Soviet Union.

However, Kruge, played by Christopher Lloyd in The Search for Spock , was perhaps the most formidable of all, because he killed Captain Kirk's son, David Marcus. The Federation-Klingon War seen in the first season of Star Trek: Discovery featured the Klingons as one of the greatest foes in Star Trek . Despite the heroic actions of Lt. Cmdr Worf in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine , Klingons like Kruge and General Chang prove that one can never turn their backs on the Klingons.

11 Q and the Q Continuum Were Over-Powered

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Introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation , Q is an extradimensional being of unknown origin who appears to have nearly full control over all time and space. He is a member of a continuum of other beings, who also identify as "Q," meant to keep the cosmic balance of the universe. Q takes a specific interest in Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of his Enterprise. He put them on "trial" to see if humanity had overcome their "savage" nature. If Picard failed to convince Q, he would erase humanity from the galaxy.

While many of Q's exploits were fun to watch, it was his actions that first brought the Federation to the attention of the Borg. Q tried to play his games with another of Star Trek 's best captains, Benjamin Sisko. He quickly discovered that not every human was as willing to play along with his whims when Sisko punched the omnipotent being. He also frequently visited Captain Janeway on the USS Voyager, including involving her in the Q Continuum civil war that only ended when the fan-favorite Q mated with another of his species.

10 Lore Was A Master Manipulator

One of the things some fans forget about Data is that he has a brother. Dr. Noonien Soong created Lore, who is a prototype android and the older brother of Lt. Cmdr. Data. He had emotions, but his inability to handle his feelings properly led to Lore becoming a dangerous villain. He believed he was better than humans and other organic lifeforms.

Throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation , Lore believed he was not only superior to living beings but to his brother Data as well. His association with powerful forces like the Crystalline Entity allowed him to manipulate it and turn it towards destruction. Lore would later lead a group of Borg against the crew of the Enterprise. However, his ego would eventually lead to his destruction.

9 Armus Killed Lt. Tasha Yar

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While there were several "redshirts" who died in service to the Enterprise , no member of the main bridge crew was permanently killed off without being resurrected somehow. That all changed in Star Trek: The Next Generation 's "Skin of Evil" from the first season. A few of the best members of Star Trek: TNG 's away team encountered a powerful being known as Armus.

Armus was a being composed of the discarded evil from an ancient race of alien celestials. He had incredible psionic abilities that he used to strike down Lt. Tasha Yar. She died instantly, and Armus threatened other members of the crew by trapping them inside his inky liquid body. Picard outsmarted Armus and free his crew members, but the damage was done. Denise Crosby, the actor who played Yar, wanted to leave the series during its tumultuous first season. However, she would return in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Unification I & II."

8 The Borg Queen Led A Conquering Army

One of the most dangerous enemies from Star Trek: TNG was the Borg . They were a hivemind of cyborgs that hoped to wipe out all living things in the universe and replace them. The Borg go from planet to planet, assimilating the alien races they come across and turning them into Borg. They also used up the resources of the planets to fuel their evolution and power their ships.

The Borg Queen led the Collective when they threatened the Enterprise in Star Trek: First Contact . The only true threat to the Borg was the Federation, and they even attempted to assimilate Earth in the past to erase its place in history. The Borg were ultimately defeated by a one-two punch (separated by 25 years) from Captains Picard and Janeway. In the Voyager series finale, a time-traveling Admiral Janeway poisoned the collective while also using them to get the lost ship back to the Alpha Quadrant. In Picard Season 3, the Borg made a last-ditch attempt to assimilate Starfleet but were defeated by the crew of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D.

7 The Cardassian Empire Had A Violent History Of War And Oppression

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Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced a few new alien species who would become lasting threats to the Federation. The Cardassians were a xenophobic race of aliens involved in quite a few violent skirmishes over territory. They also occupied the planet of Bajor and committed several atrocities before the enslavement ended. Ensign Ro Laren was the first recurring Bajoran character, until Major Kira Nerys became Benamin Sisko's first officer on the Deep Space Nine station, originally built by the Cardassians to further oppress Bajor.

There were a few memorable Cardassian soldiers who left a lasting impression on fans. Gul Madred captured and psychologically tormented Captain Picard in "Chain of Command." The former head of Deep Space Nine was Gul Dukat, who was responsible for war crimes against the Bajoran people. If Deep Space Nine had a central villain, it was Gul Dukat, who ultimately met his end along with Captain Sisko in the series finale.

6 The Changelings and the Dominion Sought Power

While Captain Picard's biggest problems were Q and the Borg, Captain Sisko and the crew of Deep Space Nine had to deal with the Dominion. Hailing from the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion was essentially an evil version of the United Federation of Planets. Made up of hundreds of races, the Dominion looked to expand past the Gamma Quadrant using the Bajoran Wormhole. Called "the Founders" by other Dominion races, a character known only as "the female changeling" led their war effort.

The Dominion War lasted two years and became one of the deadliest wars in Federation history. It only ended when a secretive faction of Starfleet, known as Section 31, created a deadly plague. It threatened to wipe out the shape-shifting alien race known as the Founders, who led the Dominion. Od o, the constable of Deep Space Nine, was a changeling who didn't know his history. In their liquid state, changelings can "join." He administered the cure first to the female changeling and then, in the series finale, returned to their home, the Great Link, to cure the rest of his species. Little is known about what happened to other Dominion races.

5 The Hirogen Were Blood-Thirsty Hunters

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A species of hunters, The Hirogen harried the USS Voyager as they attempted to return to Federation space. Wanting the Voyager and her crew as trophies, various groups of the Hirogen attacked the lost ship numerous times throughout the series. With their insatiable need for the hunt, the Hirogen proved one of Voyager's toughest challenges.

The encounters varied from one or two of the crew coming across the Hirogen to a two-part episode where some Hirogen, including Alpha Karr and his second Turanj, capture the ship. They force the brainwashed crew into performing various scenarios on the Holodeck, including a version of German-occupied France. When Captain Janeway successfully negotiated a cease-fire with Karr, Turanj killed him and tried to continue hunting the crew.

4 'Boothby' and Species 8472 Could Impersonate Others To Get Their Way

Despite only appearing in a few episodes, Species 8472 was one of the most dangerous enemies the Voyager ever faced. Hailing from another dimension known as "fluidic space," Species 8472 used a form of biotechnology for the ships and weapons. After their first entry into the dimension Star Trek heroes occupy, they set up a holographic Starfleet headquarters as a reconnaissance operation, including duplicating legendary Academy groundskeeper Boothby, played by the late Ray Walston.

Initially, they posed such a threat that it took an uneasy alliance between the Voyager and the Borg to defeat them, bringing Seven of Nine into the crew. Yet, Captain Janeway learned Species 8472 wasn't as aggressive as the Borg claimed. Rather, the Borg tried to assimilate them, and they assumed all creatures in the galaxy were like the Borg. The member of Species 8472 who impersonated Boothby was a threat but not unreasonable. He later told Janeway he would try to convince his fellows to not invade the Milky Way.

3 The Xindi Murdered Millions Of Humans During Their Attack On Earth

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The Xindi were a species made up of a collective of six alien races located in the Delphic Expanse. There were the humanoid primates, the ape-like aboreals, an insectoid race, an aquatic race, and the militant, villainous reptilians. The main villains in the third season of the controversial Star Trek: Enterprise , the Xindi sent a superweapon to Earth after hearing that Starfleet planned to destroy them, designed by primate scientist Degra.

The Xindi superweapon killed seven million people and left a scar stretching from Florida to Venezuela. The Xindi stand out as the only enemies in all of Star Trek — besides humans, of course — who have caused serious damage to Earth. After being captured and deceived by the NX-01 Enterprise crew, Degra realized the Xindi had been duped by another alien race from another dimension. They built spheres throughout the Delphic Expanse meant to "terraform" the galaxy so their people could live in it. Only after the Xindi and humanity united were the Sphere-Builders defeated.

2 Nero Destroyed The Planet Vulcan

Introduced in the 2009 Star Trek reboot, Nero was a Romulan, one of the greatest adversaries of Star Trek 's Federation. Nero blamed Spock for the destruction of the Romulan homeworld. Nero traveled 129 years into the past, which allowed him to use his superior technology to attack the USS Kelvin, a Federation ship on which James T. Kirk's parents were stationed. He and his mother lived, while his father died with the ship.

This created the "Kelvin Timeline" an alternate reality like the Mirror Universe, but one where different versions of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest lived "new" lives. One of Nero's most villainous acts was using implosive "red matter" to destroy the planet Vulcan. Nero's actions set the course for the new Star Trek films, while the current TV shows continued in the original timeline. Later, Star Trek: Picard revealed the destruction of Romulus had lasting consequences there as well.

1 Captain Gabriel Lorca Used His Position To Manipulate His Crew

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Star Trek: Discovery introduced the titular new ship and its captain, Gabriel Lorca . He recruited Michael Burnham to his crew and manipulated his mission orders to take the Discovery to another reality. Lorca was secretly from the Mirror Universe, a dark alternate reality that first appeared in The Original Series , and was revisited in both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise . He's become something of a standard-bearer for the concept, which the franchise periodically returns to in order to explore its protagonists' dark sides.

Lorca was a traitor who turned on the Terran Emperor in the Mirror Universe. He escaped punishment by accidentally traveling to another reality. Lorca took the place of his counterpart, using his rank in Starfleet to get assigned to the one ship that could take him home. Lorca was conniving and determined, but still a captain who could inspire his crew. He was a dangerous enemy, emblematic of the third wave of Star Trek .

The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series' voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there's a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

'Star Trek': The 10 Best Villains, Ranked

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With well over twenty television series and movies focusing on the exploits and adventures of numerous Starfleet commanders, the Star Trek saga has become one of the most iconic sci-fi stories in entertainment history. With its incredible line-up of heroic leads, though, there also needs to be an array of antagonists capable of striking fear into the hearts of fans.

From the original Star Trek series to revival shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation to 2009’s cinematic re-imaging of the franchise, the saga at large has a cohort of worthy villains. Ranging from misunderstood antagonists to outright evil and tyrannical beings, Star Trek ’s 10 best bad guys are just a small collection of the regular threats to the galaxy Starfleet faces.

10 Captain Gabriel Lorca – 'Star Trek: Discovery' (2017-)

From Harry Potter to Star Wars: Rebels , Jason Isaacs has made a career out of playing villains with outstanding and underrated impact. As such, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Gabriel Lorca was revealed to be a bad guy in Star Trek: Discovery .

As the commanding officer of the USS Discovery, Lorca presented as a hard-edged captain, but not one without a sense of fairness and accountability. However, it was then revealed that he was an imposter from the mirror universe who had murdered and schemed to get to his position. To date, Discovery is yet to produce a villain as compelling as Lorca.

9 Nero — 'Star Trek' (2009)

A credit to the brilliance of 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , many of the series’ villains have boasted epic tales of revenge against crew members of Starfleet. While most of those homages have fallen well short, one that did get close was Eric Bana ’s portrayal of Nero, a spiteful Romulan who blames Spock ( Zachary Quinto ) for not preventing the supernova which killed his family.

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Traveling back in time to exact his vengeance, Nero creates an alternate timeline the new Star Trek movies take part in. While the character is a little one-dimensional, Bana makes his seething hatred burst off the screen with a magnetic vigor, and the fact that he realizes part of his plan by destroying Vulcan made him all the more impactful.

8 Kai Winn Adami — 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' (1993-1999)

Religious zealots often make for fantastic villains. In addition to having immense power and influence in their story worlds, they also usually excel as complex characters who are difficult for protagonists to outmaneuver. That was exactly what fans got in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with Winn Adami ( Louise Fletcher ).

As a ruthless opportunist, Adami often used her prominent standing in her faith as a means to gain more power and often came at odds with Captain Benjamin Sisko ( Avery Brooks ), despite being named the Emissary of the Prophets. Delivering every snide line with her spiteful, condescending smirk, Adami may not have been the most terrifying villain in Star Trek , but she was certainly capable of stoking the ire of fans like few others.

7 General Chang — 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country' (1991)

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country served as the film farewell to the cast of the original series. It also saw the belligerent race of the Klingons restored to the brand of villainy that made them so popular in the original series, with General Chang ( Christopher Plummer ) an over-the-top antagonist for the ages.

With peace talks between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets nearing a conclusion, Chang uses his unique Birds of Prey warship to frame Captain Kirk for a political assassination, thus shattering relations between the Klingons and humanity. Resentful of the prospect of a peaceful future, the wily old Klingon was also made memorable for his love of Shakespearean quotes.

6 Weyoun — 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' (1993-1999)

A gifted villainous actor, Jeffrey Combs has appeared as a wide range of characters throughout Star Trek , but the greatest one he portrayed was Deep Space Nine ’s Weyoun. A Vorta who serves as the mouth of the Dominion, the conniving diplomat always presented a wide smile but was never one to be trusted.

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As a clone (which all Vorta are), he was also quite difficult to get rid of. Despite being killed several times throughout the series, he kept coming back for more and usually delighted fans every time he returned with his wonderfully slimy personality still firmly intact.

5 Q – 'Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)

As a being of unlimited power, it is quite funny that Q ( John de Lancie ) became almost a comedic figure in the series, but that is not how he was introduced. First appearing in the pilot episode of The Next Generation , the omnipotent villain charged Picard for the crimes of humanity before becoming a recurring character, not only in The Next Generation but in the wider Star Trek series.

Arguably his most villainous action came when he challenged Picard’s mettle as a leader by transporting the Enterprise to a distant system. His display of immense power introduced the Borg to the Federation, which kick-started a conflict that resulted in the deaths of millions.

4 Kruge — 'Star Trek III: The Search for Spock' (1984)

Feudal, ruthless, and incredibly brutal, the Klingons were a military power to be feared ever since their introduction in Star Trek: The Original Series . That couldn’t have been emphasized better when Christopher Lloyd portrayed Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock .

A commander of a Klingon Bird of Prey warship, Kruge was a relentless fighter with a stern desire to acquire secrets of Genesis to further his career and strengthen the Klingon Empire. He killed his own lover for looking at classified information and sanctioned the murder of Captain Kirk’s ( William Shatner ) son, something which haunted Kirk throughout the rest of the Star Trek saga.

3 Gul Dukat — 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' (1993-1999)

Star Trek has had many unforgettable villains across its numerous television series, but few are as truly evil as Gul Dukat ( Marc Alaimo ). A Cardassian war criminal who appeared throughout Deep Space Nine , he ruled over Bajor with an iron fist, assembling labor camps that saw millions of Bajorans die.

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Interestingly, Alaimo didn’t only excel at making Dukat a force of evil, but he was also able to give him layers and complexity as well, which made him all the more compelling. Not only the best of Deep Space Nine ’s antagonists, Gul Dukat is arguably greatest villain in Star Trek ’s television history.

2 The Borg Queen — 'Star Trek: First Contact' (1996)

After making their first appearance in the second season of The Next Generation , the Borg fast became one of Star Trek ’s most notable antagonistic clans. As a cybernetic force operating as a hive mind to assimilate all other lifeforms to their state of being, the Borg were a terrifying threat that fans feared would be undermined with the introduction of their queen in Star Trek: First Contact .

With Alice Krige portraying her, however, the character became one of the saga’s most striking villains with her horrific goals and her unnerving sensuality. The character became a recurring role in the franchise, appearing in Star Trek: Voyager and recently returning in Star Trek: Picard .

1 Khan Noonien Singh — 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' (1982)

If its cinematic predecessor left some fans a little underwhelmed, then The Wrath of Khan more than made up for it. The first of many sequels, it features all the fan-favorite main characters of the series but became such an adored film within Star Trek ’s filmography thanks to Ricardo Maltabán ’s turn as Khan.

A past enemy of Starfleet, Khan was a genetically engineered superhuman on a warpath to exact revenge against Captain Kirk and his crew. With his raw and resonant motivation, some great dialogue, and a magnetic performance from Maltabán, Khan elevated The Wrath of Khan to be the best Star Trek movie produced to date and stands unmatched as the greatest villain the saga has ever produced.

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The best Star Trek villains of all time: from the Borg to the Klingons

The most memorable bad guys from the final frontier.

Like the even older Doctor Who, Star Trek has created more than its fair share of memorable adversaries since it debuted in 1966.

As captains James T Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko, Kathryn Janeway and the rest have boldly gone across the final frontier, they’ve met countless alien antagonists, human foes and even the occasional malevolent machine.

Many were instantly forgettable – few fans are still singing the praises of the Kazon, the Son’a or the Xindi – but others are nearly as famous as the franchise itself.

Here are 10 of the best Star Trek villains from the last five decades, taking in baddies from everywhere from the original series to The Next Generation, the movies and Discovery.

Don’t forget that you can set phasers to upvote or downvote these classic Star Trek villains.

All of the existing Star Trek TV shows are available to stream on Netflix, while Star Trek: Picard is on Amazon Prime Video.

Every one of the Star Trek movies is available to watch now on Paramount+. In fact two Star Trek shows feature in our best Paramount+ Shows guide.

• Get another sci-fi fix with our shortlist of the best Star Wars movies , ranked

10 great Star Trek villains

1 . Khan Noonien Singh

During Earth’s Eugenics wars of the 1990s (yep, they passed us by too) Khan was a genetically engineered tyrant who escaped into space with his most loyal followers. Revived by James T Kirk in original series episode “Space Seed”, he tried to take over the Enterprise before being exiled on a barren world for his troubles.

Superhumans don’t give up, however, and when he was unexpectedly picked up by a recon mission 15 years later, Khan vowed vengeance – and became one of Star Trek’s greatest villains in franchise highpoint The Wrath Of Khan. Khaaaaaaaan!

2 . The Borg

The comically inept Ferengi were originally set to be the Big Bads of Star Trek: The Next Generation, hard as that is to believe three decades later. That didn’t quite work out, but in season two episode “Q Who?” one of sci-fi’s all-time great antagonists appeared on Jean-Luc Picard’s viewscreen for the first time – the Borg.

Cybernetically enhanced and acting as a single, ruthless hive mind, they’ve spent centuries assimilating other species into their collective, while reminding the universe that “resistance is futile”.

3 . The Klingons

A product of 1960s Cold War paranoia, the Klingons were a thinly veiled analogy for the Soviet Union in the original Star Trek. As synonymous with the franchise as Daleks are to Doctor Who, the Enterprise’s most famous foes returned as villains in the movies with a radical new look – those famous lumpy foreheads – before making an uneasy peace with the Federation in the Next Generation era. Their warrior-based society went on to form the backbone of many a TV story.

4 . The Romulans

Although closely related to the Vulcans, the Romulans have always favoured military superiority over logic. First introduced in the original series, this secretive race went AWOL for decades before Jean-Luc Picard reopened hailing frequencies in The Next Generation.

Since then, they’ve been regular Star Trek antagonists on TV and on the big screen – including JJ Abrams’s first reboot movie, where their world was destroyed by a supernova. The survivors of that apocalypse are set to play a key role in upcoming Amazon Prime Video series Star Trek: Picard.

While Kirk and Spock met a being who claimed to be god in the laughable Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, The Next Generation had its own omnipotent being to contend with. Originally introduced in the pilot episode, putting the Enterprise crew on trial for the crimes of humanity, Q gradually evolved from full-on antagonist to a fun (if all-powerful) thorn in the side – and even developed a grudging respect for Jean-Luc Picard and co.

Episodes were generally better if they boasted a visit from Q – he even played matchmaker between the Federation and the Borg.

6 . The Dominion

Deep Space Nine started off as a pedestrian hybrid of The Next Generation and Babylon 5. Then its second season revealed the threat that lived on the other side of the wormhole: the Gamma Quadrant’s evil Dominion.

They were comprised of the militaristic Jem Hadar, genetically engineered to do their masters’ bidding; the Vorta, obsequious clones bred to relish admin; and finally the shapeshifting Founders running the show, acting like gods and providing a worthy enemy for Star Trek’s first proper story arc.

The old storytelling staple of the evil twin gets an android reboot, in the form of Data’s older brother, Lore. Unfortunately, this prototype model had some major programming glitches – like megalomania, an innate sense of superiority, and a penchant for mass genocide.

He’s also fond of impersonating his little bro. Lore eventually led a rogue faction of Borg who were struggling to deal with their new-found individuality, before he was ultimately captured and permanently boxed.

8 . Captain Gabriel Lorca

Starfleet captains are usually model Federation citizens, but there was always something a bit different about Gabriel Lorca. Being on a war footing against the Klingons was always going to shift the rules of engagement, but even so, the USS Discovery’s commanding officer had remarkably scant regard for regulations and the sanctity of human life.

It all made sense when the captain was revealed to be the other Lorca from the authoritarian Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe, a place where it’s good to be bad.

Sometimes the worst enemies are the ones you build yourselves… In 2001: A Space Odyssey wannabe Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the mysterious V’Ger wiped out all in its path as it attempts to hook up with “the creator”. Ultimately it turned out to be Nasa probe Voyager 6 with some serious upgrades.

It had learned some stuff through the course of its lengthy travels, so was looking to attain the next level of existence – with little concern about the collateral damage.

This malevolent oil slick only appeared once, in The Next Generation episode “Skin Of Evil”, but warrants a place in this list of great Star Trek villains because it’s one of the few entities to kill off a principal crew member. The distillation of an entire planet’s bad vibes, it delighted in tormenting humans and murdered security chief Tasha Yar for its own amusement. One of Trek’s most shocking moments makes you rather glad he can’t leave his home planet.

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The Best Star Trek Villains Ranked

Space — the final frontier. In that vast expanse, there waits mystery, challenge, and according to  Star Trek , a bunch of gods, cyborg collectives, and countless species waiting to kill us, assimilate us, or test the boundaries of our civility. 

Since  Star Trek: The Original Series  ( TOS ) premiered in 1966, the Trek universe has been feeding our imaginations with villains — from bizarre to embarrassing to utterly ruthless — for over half a century. Since many of the earliest  Trek series were episodic, we didn't often get the chance to see the same bad guys return to hound the heroes. But as Trek experimented with serialized storytelling — particularly with  Deep Space Nine   ( DS9 ) — the more promising space-faring antagonists got multiple chances to show how bad they could be or, in some memorable cases, to prove they weren't quite as bad as you thought.

Among Trek 's villains are some of the most fun and memorable in popular media, and we thought we'd give you our own choices of who among them shines the brightest. Best lists are always subjective, but we're fairly confident there won't be too many disagreements for our picks of the best Star Trek  villains, ranked from worst to best. 

Badgey makes fun of both Star Trek and Microsoft

As one of the youngest  Star Trek  series with a much stronger focus on comedy, the animated  Star Trek: Lower Decks doesn't boast a wealth of recurring villains. Regardless, one of the few reappearing bad guys from the series is one of the funniest and cleverest conceptions in the entire  Trek  franchise. Voiced by Jack McBrayer (best known as  30 Rock 's Kenneth the Page), the holographic villain Badgey is a hilarious and brutal send-up of not only one of  Star Trek 's most tired tropes but of one of the most famously annoying aspects of Microsoft's software. 

We first meet Badgey in season 1's "Terminal Provocations," when Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) introduces Ensign D'Vana Tendi (Noel Wells) to his holodeck training program. Acting like the animated paper clip "Clippy" from Microsoft Office and shaped like a Starfleet badge, Badgey at first seems eager to help Rutherford and Tendi with whatever they need. But when an attack by alien scavengers causes the holodeck to malfunction and disengage the safety protocols, Badgey takes the opportunity to get vengeance on the person he sees as his abusive creator — Rutherford. Sharing such Clippy-like homicidal gems as, "Fun fact: I'm gonna rip your eyes out!" and, "Here's a tip: I'm going to burn your hearts in a fire!" Badgey pursues Rutherford and Tendi across holographic landscapes until Rutherford figures out a way to defeat him. 

Badgey makes a second appearance in the season 1 finale, and we hope we'll be seeing plenty more of him in the future. 

Annorax is one of Star Trek's most sympathetic villains

Kurtwood Smith has made a number of TV and film appearances in the  Star Trek  franchise, but none of his characters are both as chilling and sympathetic as the brilliant scientist Annorax from season 4 of Star Trek: Voyager . He places a low on our list because he never reappears after the two-parter "Year of Hell," but he makes enough of an impression to earn a spot regardless.

Part of a race known as the Krenim, Annorax begins his cursed quest by seeking to restore his people's once expansive empire to power. To this end, he develops a temporal weapon called simply the "Weapon Ship," which he uses to wipe out other species — not simply killing them but making it as if they never existed in the first place. While his attempts do restore more and more of the Krenim Imperium, the restoration of a single colony eludes him every time — the colony of Kyana Prime, where Annorax's wife, children, and grandchildren lived until his actions unintentionally erased them. So he and his restless crew, protected from the time-space continuum within their ship, have continued like this for two centuries, committing genocide again and again to feed the obsession of a captain who's convinced time itself is claiming vengeance upon him.  

While his time is brief, Annorax is one of the most quietly horrifying and tragic villains in the entire Trek  franchise.

General Chang was a perfect rival for Captain Kirk

Few Star Trek  villains simultaneously embody the sophistication, Shakespearean nobility, and ruthlessness of the late Christopher Plummer's General Chang. Plummer was a fitting choice not only because of his acting chops but because he was an important part of William Shatner's career. A decade before Shatner assumed the role of Captain Kirk, he was Plummer's understudy in a 1956 production of  Henry V .  

Chang appears exclusively in the final film to feature the complete  Original Series  crew, 1991's  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . Chang is one of the architects of an alliance between rogue elements of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Empire who are unwilling to see a lasting peace between Earth and Qo'noS. Chang plays a large part in the framing of Captain Kirk (Shatner) and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) for Klingon chancellor Gorkon's (David Warner) assassination, he prosecutes them in the unforgiving Klingon court, and he captains the prototype Bird-of-Prey that comes close to destroying both the  Enterprise  and the  Excelsior  toward the end of the film. 

While Chang is ultimately unsuccessful, from start to finish he exudes a singular presence among  Trek 's rogues' gallery. Plummer is particularly impressive when he and the rest of Gorkon's entourage are leaving the  Enterprise  after a diplomatic dinner. In spite of not saying a single overtly threatening word or making any hostile gesture, his body language and facial expressions tell you everything you need to know in the scene — that Chang is eager to be the man who defeats Kirk in battle. 

Data's evil brother was a fun and formidable foe

The android Data is unquestionably one of the fan-favorite characters from  Star Trek: The Next Generation . But one of the downsides of portraying the android is that — except in instances when something causes Data's programming to go haywire (which, admittedly, is often) — the emotional spectrum that actor Brent Spiner gets to play with is fairly limited. That changes just a little bit with the season 1 introduction of Data's evil brother, Lore, in "Datalore." 

Unlike Data, Lore is "gifted" with human emotions, but unfortunately, he receives them long before Dr. Noonian Soong has truly learned to properly program them. As a result, Lore is unstable and treacherous. It's eventually discovered that it's Lore who summoned the powerful Crystalline Entity that destroys all human life on Omicron Theta — the planet upon which both androids are discovered. After Lore is reassembled, he deactivates his brother and assumes Data's identity in an attempt to feed the crew of the  Enterprise  to the Crystalline Entity. And in his final appearance — the two-part "Descent" bridging the sixth and seventh seasons — he becomes something of a cult leader to a group of Borg who've liberated themselves from the Collective.

As humorous as he is evil, Lore is one of the most fun villains to show up on  The Next Generation  ( TNG ). At the same time, his appearances often pack an emotional punch, since the evil android remains one of the few creatures Data can call family. 

Gowron isn't always a villain, but when he is, he threatens the entire Federation and more

First appearing in the season 4  TNG  episode "Reunion," Gowron isn't always a villain. He's introduced as one of two contenders for the Klingon chancellorship, a title he eventually achieves. For the most part in his TNG  appearances, Gowron is more of a neutral character pursuing his own agenda. This changes once  TNG  ends and Gowron becomes a recurring character on  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . 

While his first DS9 appearance is season 3's "The House of Quark," Gowron doesn't become an important part of the show's serial drama until Michael Dorn's Worf joins the series in the season 4 premiere "The Way of the Warrior." While still perfectly expressing the trademark Klingon passion for battle, on  DS9,  Gowron is portrayed more as an opportunistic politician. He uses the threat of the Dominion to reignite his people's warlike tendencies with an invasion of Cardassia and, later, a new war with the Federation. During the epic war storyline in the show's final season, Gowron purposely wastes the lives of his warriors by sending the forces of General Martok (JG Hertzler) — who he sees as a political rival — to fight battles they can't win in order to humiliate Martok. 

Played expertly by Robert O'Reilly in all of his appearances, Gowron is an unforgettable Klingon villain with some of the craziest eyes you'll ever see.

Gabriel Lorca fooled us all

For most of  Star Trek: Discovery 's inaugural season, Jason Isaacs' Captain Gabriel Lorca commands the eponymous vessel. While he has a mysterious air early in the series, you're convinced he's the real deal because of his leadership skills and what appears to be an unwavering dedication to his crew. 

That changes after the  Discovery  winds up in the Mirror Universe in the final moments of "Into the Forest I Go." For most of the time  Discovery  is in this strange, much more brutal reality, no one seems to know exactly how they got there. It isn't until the third-to-last episode of the season, "Vaulting Ambition," that we learn Gabriel Lorca is a Mirror Universe native. Having switched places with his Prime counterpart before the events of the series, Lorca sees the potential of Discovery 's spore drive to bring him back home so he can continue his rebellion against Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh).

Arguably, just the fact that Lorca is able to pull the wool over so many viewers' eyes is enough reason to earn him a spot on this list. But Isaacs' superb acting and the layered conception of the character earn the accolades all on their own. Lorca is able to fool us precisely because he isn't simply a mustache-twirling bad guy. While he's using the  Discovery  crew for his own ends, he bears no ill will toward them, and in some ways, the respect and care he shows for them is genuine ... until it isn't.

Shran walks the line between friend and foe

A lot of fans would balk at the idea of the blue-skinned Commander Shran being labeled a villain. Portrayed by Jeffrey Combs — who's played more roles on  Star Trek  shows than most — Shran is an Andorian fiercely loyal to his people who's introduced in  Star Trek: Enterprise 's ( ENT ) first season. We meet Shran in "The Andorian Incident" when he leads a squad of his blue-skinned brethren in the violent takeover of a Vulcan monastery. Shran and the other Andorians come off as paranoid and xenophobic bullies. But in spite of their thuggish behavior, Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) discovers they're right about the monastery being a cover for a Vulcan facility monitoring the Andorians. When Archer exposes the truth, he earns an uneasy ally in Shran.

Shran comes to the aid of Archer and the Enterprise  on more than one occasion. In particular, in season 3, Shran bails the heroes out twice, including in the final battle to save Earth from the Xindi's doomsday weapon. But there's always a volatility working under Shran's surface, threatening to once more put him at odds with Archer and his crew. It happens, for example, in season 4's "United" when Shran's stubborn refusal to give the Tellarites the benefit of the doubt leads to Archer challenging him to a death duel.

Commander Kruge is one scary Klingon

For the most part,  Christopher Lloyd 's most famous characters – like Doc Brown in the  Back to the Future  series — aren't particularly intimidating. So it's a testament to the actor's range that he performed so well as the Klingon Commander Kruge in 1984's  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock . When Kruge learns of Starfleet's secret Genesis project — meant to instantly turn lifeless celestial bodies into habitable planets — he means to seize it as a doomsday weapon for the Klingon Empire. In the process, he orders the murder of Captain Kirk's son — a death that scars Kirk for years. 

In many ways, Kruge is the first example of the kind of Klingon we'd see in the subsequent Trek movies, as well as the  Star Trek: The Next Generation  era of TV series. While the Klingons' new look is seen briefly in 1979's  Star Trek: The Motion Picture , it isn't until Kruge that we get to see a fully fleshed-out performance. While the Klingons were always warlike, Kruge and his crew are more brutish than their predecessors in  TOS.  Locking himself in a death grip with an alien beast just for fun and going mano a mano with Kirk as Genesis is in its explosive death throes, Kruge gives us a portrayal of what remains one of the most potent examples of the Klingon passion for combat.

Benjamin Sisko is no fan of Michael Eddington

You don't find a lot of Trek villains wearing Starfleet uniforms. After all, the desire to join Starfleet is usually accompanied by a drive to uphold the values of the United Federation of Planets . But one notable exception is Lieutenant Commander Michael Eddington (Kenneth Marshall). Introduced in  DS9 's season 3 premiere, Eddington starts out as an officer who appears to be overly concerned with promotion and more than willing to turn in the heroes of  DS9  if they dare disobey their Starfleet superiors. 

Toward the end of season 4, we learn Eddington's seemingly tireless devotion to Starfleet is a ruse. In "For the Cause," Eddington tricks most of DS9's command crew away from the station, and in their absence, he steals a shipment of industrial replicators, revealing himself as a member of the Maquis — a group of violent rebels who oppose the Federation's treaty with Cardassia and wage relentless guerrilla war against the aliens.

The very fact that Eddington is able to pull the wool over his eyes makes Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) obsessed with capturing the traitor. He's one of the few villains capable of getting so thoroughly under a series captain's skin, to the point where Sisko actually humors some rather questionable tactics in apprehending him.

Harry Mudd is a truly conniving Star Trek villain

The flamboyant and deceptive Harry Mudd is one of the few named antagonists from  TOS to enjoy a second appearance. He first shows up played by Roger C. Carmel in season 1's "Mudd's Women," trying to sell women like cattle and using an illegal drug to render them physically irresistible. Later in season 2's "I, Mudd," the con man gives up the  Enterprise  crew to a group of androids with dreams of galactic conquest. 

Carmel returned to voice his famous crook in "Mudd's Passion," an episode of  Star Trek: The Animated Series . He runs afoul of the  Enterprise  once more after attempting to con the inhabitants of an alien planet into believing he could sell them Starfleet Academy. 

That wouldn't be the end of Mudd. Rainn Wilson (best known as  Dwight Schrute on  The Office ) plays a more vicious version of Harry Mudd in  Star Trek: Discovery 's ( DISCO ) first season. Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) meets Mudd in "Choose Your Pain," when they're both prisoners of the Klingons, and Mudd is more than happy to give up his fellow humans to avoid a beating or two. After Lorca and Lieutenant Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) leave Mudd behind when they escape the Klingons, the con man gets revenge with a plot involving a time manipulation device in "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad."

Luther Sloan is a complicated character

One of the most popular pieces of Trek mythology introduced by  DS9 is the clandestine organization Section 31. And William Sadler's brilliant performance as Luther Sloan — the director of Section 31 during the events of  DS9  – is one of the main reasons for the group's popularity. 

Suspecting Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) of being an unwitting spy for the Dominion, Sloan first shows up on DS9  using a holodeck to find out the truth. He subjects Bashir to an elaborate illusion, in which all of his friends on DS9 turn their backs on him. Once Bashir discovers the truth, Sloan is convinced of Bashir's innocence and offers him a position with Section 31. In spite of Bashir's clear refusal, Sloan soon returns to use the doctor in a covert operation involving infiltration of the Romulan Empire. Toward the end of the series, we learn Sloan is behind poisoning Odo (Rene Auberjonois) and all of his people with a deadly plague.

Sloan is a singular Trek villain. He's ruthless, cunning, and mysterious, but he's surprisingly sympathetic. He's aware of the hypocrisy of betraying the Federation's core values in order to protect it, yet he still believes in what he's doing and has no ill will towards Bashir for despising him. He sees Bashir as exactly the kind of man he was born to protect, even if in safeguarding him, he earns nothing but Bashir's disgust.

Intendant Kira is one of Star Trek's most sadistic bad guys

Introduced in  TOS ' "Mirror, Mirror," the Mirror Universe is an alternate dimension where the Federation is replaced by the tyrannical Terran Empire. Rather than living by values like tolerance, diplomacy, and discovery, the Terrans are a brutal people believing in conquest and cruelty. But in  DS9 's "Crossover," Dr. Bashir and Major Kira (Nana Visitor) find themselves in the alternate universe, where they learn that since the events of  TOS , the Terran Empire has been conquered by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. Terrans have become a slave race, and DS9 — retaining its original Cardassian name Terok Nor — is led by Intendant Kira.

Intendant Kira is the cold-blooded counterpart to Major Kira, and the character gives Visitor a chance to show us her acting range. Other than the Kiras of both universes sharing the quality of natural leadership, Intendant Kira is a wild departure from Major Kira. She's seductive, with an unapologetically endless appetite for pleasure, using Sisko — a pirate in the Mirror Universe — as her personal plaything. She's as vicious as any of the Cardassians or Klingons under her command and deceptively sadistic, sometimes acting as if she's about to absolve her victims before ordering their executions. 

Intendant Kira was far too much fun for just a single  DS9  episode. She's a recurring villain, including showing up for all of  DS9 's Mirror Universe stories.  

Kai Winn's tale is a tragic one

You hear a lot about villains you "love to hate." But then there are villains you just straight-up hate. Kai Winn is definitely one of the latter. 

Louise Fletcher — Nurse Ratched in 1975's  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — plays Winn on DS9 , beginning as an ambitious vedek of a rigid religious order on Bajor. Winn is a slippery and manipulative vedek, working behind the scenes in coup and assassination attempts. Her actions, she claims, are always at the service of the Prophets — the aliens living inside the wormhole who the Bajorans worship as gods — yet it seems she's always working towards her own ascension in the ranks of Bajor's clergy. She succeeds in becoming Bajor's spiritual leader, the Kai, but by the end of the series, her jealousy towards Ben Sisko, her seduction by Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), and her anger toward the Prophets leads her to finally abandon her religion and follow the devilish Pah-wraiths.

Winn is one of the most interesting and complex villains in all of Trek . Her downfall is tragic in the most classic sense of the word. Once she wins the title of Kai, rather than simply basking in her power as we expect, she seems to genuinely want to help her people. The problem is, of course, she also seems to fully believe that the ends justify any and all means. 

Weyoun steals the spotlight with his manipulative charm

What if you could genetically engineer a race to be equally cunning leaders and diplomats in the most hostile of situations? What you come up with might look a lot like the Vorta, the Dominion's lieutenant race, leading the hordes of brutal Jem'Hadar while being completely subservient to the Founders. And of the Vorta we meet on  DS9 , none is more memorable than Jeffrey Combs' Weyoun. While Weyoun dies at the end of his first appearance in season 4's "To the Death," the villain was just too good to keep dead. So, it was decided that the Founders keep clones of the Vorta always at the ready, complete with the memories of their predecessors. 

As the head of the Dominion's military in the Alpha Quadrant, Weyoun shows up often in the last two seasons of  DS9 , and he steals every scene he's in. He's dishonest and manipulative without shame, ready to shift from intimidating to conciliatory at a moment's notice. In scenes with politically influential  DS9  characters like Ben Sisko and Gul Dukat, Weyoun uses conversation like a deadly, evasive weapon — always adapting to his counterpart's mood with everything from wrath to abject apology. He lies so easily that you wonder whether or not Weyoun knows, or even cares, what's true or false.  

The Prime Universe's Khan Noonien Singh is obsessed with revenge

Any list of best Star Trek villains that doesn't include Ricardo Montalban's Khan needs to delete everything and start over. First appearing in  TOS 's "Space Seed," Khan is a genetically enhanced despot who ruled over a quarter of the Earth before escaping the Eugenic Wars with 84 of his followers. The  Enterprise  crew soon regrets waking Khan and his people from suspended animation once they take over the ship.

While Khan is a fun villain in his first appearance, his appeal doesn't reach full bloom until 1982's  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , arguably the best Star Trek movie ever . Blaming Kirk for the tragedies that have befallen him since they crossed paths years earlier, Khan and his followers take over the U.S.S.  Reliant  and wage war on the  Enterprise . While Khan's followers believe they're using the stolen Federation property for power and prosperity, it's soon clear their leader is willing to sacrifice everything — including his own life and theirs — to get revenge on Kirk. 

Through Montalban, Khan becomes the absolute embodiment of all-consuming vengeance. The villain regularly either paraphrases or directly quotes lines from Herman Melville's novel  Moby Dick . And just as Captain Ahab is obsessed with destroying the titular whale, Khan ultimately has no purpose left but vengeance against Kirk.

The Borg Queen is equal parts sexy and scary

In  TNG 's "Q Who," the Borg — one of the Federation's deadliest enemies — are introduced. The cybernetic, zombie-like, hive-minded bad guys kill with impunity. However, their goal is not to kill but to assimilate the technology and biology of other intelligent species into their collective to bring them closer to perfection. There are no individuals within the Borg Collective, but in 1996's  Star Trek: First Contact ,   we're introduced to the Borg Queen, the living embodiment of the Collective's will.

The Borg Queen does something you wouldn't think possible with the Borg — she makes them sexy. In fact, she spends most of her scenes in  First Contact  seducing Data (Brent Spiner) with promises of pleasures he's never been capable of fully experiencing. But she's far from just a temptress. Particularly in her subsequent appearances in  Star Trek: Voyager  ( VOY ), the Borg Queen — played by both Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson at different points — conveys the singular horror of being confronted by a being who is, in her own words, "one who is many."

Speaking to  Looper in early 2020 , Krige shared interesting insights about playing the cybernetic villain, including just how old she thinks the Borg Queen is. "I think she was an entity that happened at the moment of creation," Krige explained. "And she's always been that and she always will be, and it is entirely abnormal."

Q is a delightfully devious trickster

Perhaps no other single villain has appeared in as many  Star Trek series as John de Lancie's all-powerful Q. Showing up for the premiere of  TNG , its finale, and a bunch of fun episodes in between, Q is a mischievous, godlike being who defies definition. He would eventually come to harass  VOY 's Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) almost as much as he does Picard (Patrick Stewart), along with making brief but memorable appearances on  DS9  and  Star Trek: Lower Decks . 

Hilarious and carefree, Q is so popular that it might be a problem for some fans to even call him a villain. But while he isn't wholly evil, he's certainly a villain in the sense that when he shows up, he's almost always an antagonist. While he usually reverses any direct harm he inflicts upon humans, he couldn't care less about those lost indirectly, such as the  Enterprise  crew members killed by the Borg in "Q Who."

Whether you see him as a good guy or a bad guy, de Lancie's portrayal of the trickster is one of the most delightful parts of TNG  and  VOY . Without him, after all, we'd never see a mariachi band on the  Enterprise  bridge, we'd never see Guinan plunge a fork into a dude's hand, and most importantly, we'd never see the  Enterprise  crew in Sherwood Forest.

Dukat is Star Trek's greatest villain

One of the places where  DS9  excels over other Trek series is that its serialized storytelling allows for characters to evolve. And you can see this evolution clearly in the Cardassian tyrant Gul Dukat. Formerly the prefect of Bajor during its occupation, Dukat is none too happy to find a human sitting in his old office in  DS9 's premiere, and his fixation on Sisko and his crushing sense of inadequacy grow over the course of the series, to the point where it suffocates him. 

The Dukat we meet in  DS9 's premiere isn't the Dukat we see in its finale. A characteristic Cardassian, Dukat spends the first few seasons of  DS9  working towards the goal of once again finding himself ruling over the people of Bajor. He's not only unwilling to face the atrocities he committed, but he's so delusional that he harbors resentment for the Bajorans refusing to honor him with statues and plaques. For a time, he's something of an ally to the DS9 crew, but when the Dominion gives him an opportunity to seize control over all of Cardassia, he becomes the Alpha Quadrant's most feared warlord. Before the end of the series, he goes from conqueror to madman, madman to cult leader, and from cult leader to the powerful vessel of the Pah-wraiths — the Prophets' destructive adversaries.

Wonderfully portrayed by Marc Alaimo, Dukat is ultimately the most complex, believable, and twisted villain in all of Star Trek .

Every Villain From ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’: A Visual Ranking

This week, Star Trek celebrates the 50th anniversary of its first episode to broadcast, “The Man Trap,” which premiered on September 8, 1966. In honor of this historic landmark, we went back through all 79 episodes of The Original Series and ranked each villain. Now, not every episode of Star Trek had a true villain, so we took some liberties with just what qualified as a villain: which basically came down to “anything that game the crew of the Enterprise angst.” (Some villains – hello, Harry Mudd – appear in more than one episode, so that’s why the list doesn’t count down from 79.)

What I noticed while doing this list is just how weak the third season is when it comes to antagonists. From the goofy storyline of “Spock’s Brain,” to the ridiculousness of the singing hippies in “The Way to Eden,” to the sexism of “Turnabout Intruder” (what a terrible way for the series to end). People often wonder how Star Trek wound up getting canceled: A big reason is they ran out of compelling villains. (They really should have had more recurring villains outside of Harry Mudd.)

But when the show worked, it was magic. Edith Keeler in “City on the Edge of Forever” wasn’t a villain, but she gave Kirk, Spock and McCoy their greatest test. The Khan in “Space Seed” puts the Khan we saw in Star Trek Into Darkness to shame. And who knew we’d get such an emotional return out of a lump of silicon in “The Devil in the Dark”? (We all have feelings.)

Also, keep in mind, the quality of the villain doesn’t necessarily represent the quality of the episode, though this does correlate quite often. So, ahead, from worst to best, and without any further commentary, here are your Star Trek: The Original Series villains, ranked in a visual gallery from least to most compelling. 77. Sevrin, “The Way to Eden”

76. Vaal, “The Apple”

75. Janice Lester, “Turnabout Intruder”

74. Apollo, “Who Mourns for Adonais?”

73. Sylvia, “Catspaw”

72. Kara, “Spock’s Brain”

71. Landru, “The Return of the Archons”

70. Parmen, “Plato’s Stepchildren”

69. Flint, “Requiem for Methuselah”

68. Plasus, “The Cloud Minders”

67. Taurean, ”The Galileo Seven”

66. Gorgan, “And the Children Shall Lead”

65. Captain Merik, “Bread and Circuses”

64. Jack the Ripper, “Wolf in the Fold”

63. Capellans, “Friday’s Child”

62. Garth of Izar, “Whom Gods Destroy”

61. Bele and Lokai, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”

60. Atoz, “All Our Yesterdays”

59. Rapid Aging, “The Deadly Years”

58. Roger Korby, “What Are Little Girls Made Of”

57. Marianne’s Fate, “The Paradise Syndrome”

56. The Caretaker, “Shore Leave”

55. Tristan Adams, “Dagger of the Mind”

54. Melkotians, “Spectre of the Gun”

53. Kodos, “The Conscience of the King”

52. Thelev, “Journey to Babel”

51. Yarnek, “The Savage Curtain”

50. Nona, “A Private Little War”

49. The Gideons, “The Mark of Gideon”

48. Vians, “The Empath”

47. Benjamin Finney, “Court Martial”

46. Ron Tracey, “The Omega Glory”

45. Deela, “Wink of an Eye”

44. Melakon, “Patterns of Force”

43. Elaan, “Elaan of Troyius”

42. John Christopher, “Tomorrow is Yesterday”

41. Natira, “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”

40. Lazarus, “The Alternative Factor”

39. Zefram Cochrane’s Dilemma, “Metamorphosis”

38. Kollos, “Is There In Truth No Beauty”

37. Mira, “The Lights of Zetar”

36. Balok, “The Corbomite Maneuver”

35. Anan 7, “A Taste of Armageddon”

34. Amoeba, “The Immunity Syndrome”

33. Losira, “That Which Survives”

32. Gary Seven, “Assignment: Earth”

31. The Doomsday Machine, “The Doomsday Machine”

30. The Cloud, “Obsession”

29. Tholians, “The Tholian Web”

28, Talosians, “The Menagerie Parts One and Two”

27. Nancy Crater, “The Man Trap”

26. Charlie X, “Charlie X”

25. M-5, “The Ultimate Computer”

24. Nomad, “The Changeling”

23. Evil James Kirk, “The Enemy Within”

22. Kor, “Errand of Mercy”

21. Sargon, “Return to Tomorrow”

20. Poisoned Sulu, “The Naked Time”

19. Spores, “This Side of Paradise”

18. Parasites, “Operation: Annihilate!”

17. Krako, “A Piece of the Action”

16. Gary Mitchell, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”

15. Rojan, “By Any Other Name”

14. The Providers, “The Gamesters of Triskelion”

13. Kang, “Day of the Dove”

12. Miri, “Miri”

11. Romulan Commander, “The Enterprise Incident”

10. Trelane, “The Squire of Gothos”

9. Tribbles, “The Trouble with Tribbles”

8. Mirror Universe Kirk and Spock, “Mirror, Mirror”

7. Harry Mudd, “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd”

6. Gorn, “Arena”

5. The Koon-ut-kal-if-fee ritual, “Amok Time”

4. Romulans, “Balance of Terror”

3. Khan Noonien Singh, “Space Seed”

2. Horta, “The Devil in the Dark”

1. Edith Keeler’s Fate, “The City on the Edge of Forever”

Mike Ryan lives in New York City and has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York magazine. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.

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• From Q to Khan: The 10 Best <em>Star Trek</em> Villains Ever

From Q to Khan: The 10 Best Star Trek Villains Ever

A t its best, Star Trek is a science fiction series about humanity’s ability to expand its horizons and overcome differences . But all that would be pretty boring without some great villains to overcome. Trek’s bad guys have been a mixed bag, ranging from the laughable — looking at you, Harry Mudd — to the legitimately terrifying — The Borg.

Who’s the baddest of the bad? Here’s TIME’s ranking of the 10 best Star Trek villains ever.

The omnipresent, omnipotent, omni-jerkwad Q is up here in tenth place only because he’s not really a villain — he just loves messing with the crew of Picard’s Enterprise. Sure, he can be a real pain sometimes, like when he tried to tempt Commander Riker with godlike powers. But he also helped the Enterprise, and the Federation at large, by flinging the Enterprise into a confrontation with another big bad on this list — the Borg. This move gave humanity a sense of what they were up against while they were out there, boldly going.

2. Duras Sisters

There are few Klingons less honorable than sisters Lursa and B’Etor of the House of Duras, whose actions plunged the Empire into civil war. They also had a history of working with Romulans to take control of Klingon politics, which is the sort of thing that would get you stabbed with a Bat’leth. The Duras Sisters came close to killing Picard’s crew, but some quick work by Commander Data helped the Enterprise-D turn the tables on their Bird of Prey — though the Federation flagship suffered irreparable damage in the process.

The robotic probe Nomad was launched from Earth with a noble goal: Seeking out new life and new civilizations, which is something of a theme in Star Trek. Unfortunately, a collision and melding with an alien probe turned it into a super-intelligent death machine, capable of genocide on a massive scale. But Captain James T. Kirk managed to use Nomad’s grim logic against the spacecraft, leading it to self-destruct, thus saving the Enterprise, humanity and probably lots of other species. (Good job, Kirk!)

4. Dr. Soran

What would happen to you if you found your way to heaven, only to get torn back out? That’s what happened to Dr. Tolian Soran, and it messed him up good. Soran had an encounter with “the Nexus,” essentially a rift in space-time that visitors experienced as a dreamlike world they could shape to their liking. After he was pulled from the Nexus against his will, Dr. Soran became obsessed with getting back — even if it meant destroying entire worlds in the process. Not cool, dude.

5. Professor James Moriarty

Okay, fine, Professor James Moriarty is a pretty great villain no matter where he shows up. But he’s particularly good in Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he appears as a holographic simulation that gains a degree of self-awareness and turns to evil. Eventually, Picard and crew found a clever and humane way of outsmarting him: They trapped him in a computer simulation with “enough experiences to last a lifetime.” It’s all very meta. Either way, Moriarty episodes are some of that series’ best “Holodeck gone wrong” stories. Won’t somebody fix that Holodeck?

Whereas the android Data is basically the chillest dude who ever stepped foot on the Enterprise-D, his “brother” turns out to be seriously evil. On their first encounter, Lore deactivates Data and impersonates him in an unsuccessful effort to steal the ship. Later, he attacks Federation outposts and tries to manipulate Data to get him to turn against the Enterprise crew. That almost happens, but Geordi and Captain Picard step in to remind Data his brother kinda sucks, and Data dismantles his evil twin.

7. Gul Dukat

The Cardassians are basically a whole species of evil jerks, with Gul Dukat among the most twisted. He oversaw the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, subjugating the planet’s population as a ruthless dictator. He later aligned his people with the Dominion, an advanced government hell-bent on galactic takeover and a major Federation enemy. He ultimately ended up imprisoned in the Bajoran fire caves, which is fine, because he was not a nice person.

8. The Borg

The Borg are Star Trek’s most viscerally terrifying villain. Part organic lifeform, part machine, the Borg destroy all life they see as inferior, and assimilate any species in which they find value. They’re also bound together in “the Collective,” a hivemind that allows essentially zero independent thoughts or actions. And they have very powerful weapons. Picard, who was once assimilated, summed it up best in this speech :

9. General Chang

Now here’s a Klingon villain who really ranks in the top echelon of Trek baddies. After a nearby disaster put the Klingon homeworld at risk, the Federation and the Klingons moved towards peace talks — the thinking being that, if the Klingons didn’t have to spend so much money on its military prowess, it could fix the planet. But General Chang, among other Klingons and Federation officials, hated to the idea of peace. Instead, they conspired to ruin the talks — only to be foiled by Captain Kirk and crew. Chang also had an annoying habit of quoting Shakespeare, so nobody really missed him.

10. Khan Noonien Singh

Could anybody else really take the number one spot? A genetically engineered super-human from the past, Khan was a dictator who controlled large swaths of Earth until he was nearly deposed. Instead of being captured or killed, he fled the planet on a ship in biological stasis, only to be found centuries later by Kirk and company. After Khan unsuccessfully tried to take over the Enterprise, Kirk left him to settle a nearly barren world. He was later re-discovered by another Federation ship years later, harboring intense hatred for Kirk after the planet became nearly inhospitable to life. Khan then went on a vengeance tour, nearly destroying the Enterprise with a ship-turned-suicide bomb. Thankfully, Spock saved the day — at the cost of his own life. Sorta. The takeaway is this: Khan’s a seriously evil dude.

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Ranking All The Star Trek Movie Villains

UPDATED: From main Big Bads to secondary evildoers, I've ranked all 24 villains from every Trek movie (including Star Trek Into Darkness ). Obviously, MAJOR SPOILERS abound.

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24. Shinzon ( Star Trek : Nemesis, 2002)

I could spend all the words detailing every reason why Nemesis is an affront to all that is good in the world, but you really don't need to look any further than its main villain, the worst in the history of Star Trek . Shinzon ( Tom Hardy , way before he was a big deal) is a secretly cloned version of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, the crux of a discarded Romulan plot who was subsequently cast into the mines on Remus, where he became the leader of the Remans — and already the character has gone off the rails. Remus? Remans? Wuzzah? And why clone Picard for a nefarious plot only to keep that plot from actually happening?

In any event, it's pretty clear that Shinzon was supposed to be a provocative exploration of the differences between nature and nurture. Instead, he's a sniveling spoiled brat in a costume straight out of an '80s metal band music video who bears zero resemblance to Picard save for his bald head and regal nose, and that they both like their tea Earl Grey, and hot. Hardy seems completely lost in the role. It's a total waste.

23. Klaa ( Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , 1989)

This is a Klingon warrior? With the mega-heavage and ridiculous perm and...is that... eye-liner ?! I'd forgotten he was even in this film until I started this post.

22. Adm. Dougherty ( Star Trek: Insurrection , 1998)

For such a seemingly benevolent institution, Starfleet has sure had its share of bad-egg admirals. This one's not even bothering to hide that he's up to no good, what with that eeeevvvvvvilllll glower of his. But I can barely recall why he was evil. Was it the beard?

21. Ayel ( Star Trek , 2009)

When I heard that the great Clifton Collins Jr. had been case as the main henchman in J.J. Abrams' Trek reboot, I had high hopes for the character. But it turns out he was only meant to glower and fight Kirk at one point and then die. Wah wah.

Good facial tattoos , though.

20. The "God" of Sha Ka Ree ( Star Trek V: The Final Frontier )

View this video on YouTube

For the entire runtime of what is largely regarded as the worst Trek movie ever*, we kept hearing that we'd find God beyond the Great Barrier (so great, we'd never heard of it before). When Kirk and Co. got there, they found a one-dimensional evil alien masquerading as God...because...um...it's evil?

Also, that set looks cheap, even by '80s standards.

Did I mention William Shatner directed this one?

(*I still think Nemesis is the worst, since it just about killed the Trek movie franchise completely, but that's an argument for another time.)

19. Ru'afo ( Star Trek: Insurrection )

I hadn't seen this movie since it was in theaters, so I had to look up why Ru'afo looks like this — turns out he and his kind were cast out of an Eden-like planet where you live forever because he loves the tech-naw-lo-gee, and now he wants to get back in because he's dying and addicted to plastic surgery.

At least he's memorably, creatively ugly. But I can't help but think of poor F. Murray Abraham, sitting every morning in the make-up chair, sighing aloud to no one in particular, "I won an Oscar once."

18. Sybok ( Star Trek V: The Final Frontier )

Spock's half-brother! Who we had never heard of before! Who had embraced emotion instead of logic, and loves to talk about pain , and wants to find "God" beyond the Great Barrier because why not?

I've got to give some credit at least to actor Laurence Luckinbill, who really committed to the part and managed to make Sybok's hippie mullet not seem completely insane.

17. Viceroy ( Star Trek: Nemesis )

He's Shinzon's henchman, so he's already handicapped right there. But he's also the one who actually, like, does evil things, namely mentally rape Counselor Troi, which is pretty awful — and awfulness is what you want from your villain, instead of wandering around an enormous super-ship whining about how life is so unfair. Also, this dude just looks terrifying, thanks to the foundation of actor Ron Perlman's unforgettable mug and the make-up artists' decision to rip-off wholesale F.W. Murnau's seminal horror film Nosferatu .

16. Maltz ( Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , 1984)

I have no good reason for including Maltz other than the fact that he's the only Klingon left at the end of the movie, and he's played by John Larroquette. (I know!)

Also, he has this choice exchange with Kirk:

Kirk: ( To Maltz ) You! Help us or die!

Maltz: I do not deserve to live!

Kirk: Fine. I'll kill you later!

Kirk: Take care of the prisoner.

Maltz: Wait! You said you would kill me!

Kirk: I lied!

So he's already more interesting and entertaining than everyone ranked below him on this list.

15. Evil whalers ( Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , 1986)

In the film proper, the whalers don't show up until the very end, when they threaten to harpoon the lovable humpback whales George and Gracie before Kirk and Co. can kidnap them and bring them back to the 23rd century to save the world.

But when you think about it, the entire reason the world needs saving in the 23rd century is because these jerks and their buddies had hunted humpback whales into extinction in the first place.

Also, they provide an excuse for the above sight gag.

And! No weird make-up or facial tattoos or '80s metal hair!

14. Nero ( Star Trek )

On the one hand, Nero is not only responsible for killing James Kirk's father, but also destroying the entire Vulcan homeworld, which is arguably the worst thing anyone on this list actually pulls off in a Trek movie. On the other hand, as a character, he's not exactly Mr. Personality — he's all grimace and revenge and nothing else.

13. Lursa & B'Etor ( Star Trek: Generations , 1994)

The only real individual villains from the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series to carry over into the TNG movies, these buxom Klingon sisters not only collaborated with Soran ( see below ), but were directly responsible for the ultimate destruction of the Enterprise-D. But since they had spent so much of the TV show making Worf's life a living hell, you'd think our beloved Klingon warrior would be the one responsible for the Duras sisters' ultimate end. Nope. Their ship goes boom thanks to a technical brainstorm from Riker. Worf, and Lursa & B'Etor, deserved better. Stupid Riker.

12. Admiral Marcus ( Star Trek Into Darkness , 2013)

Yeesh, yet another bad egg Admiral. (Uh, Starfleet? Maybe screen these guys more closely?) And his post-9/11-y motivations — oh crap, Vulcan was destroyed, and now we gotta get dark and dirty to protect ourselves! — feel a little too 2005.

But Admiral Marcus does have a couple things going for him. One: He's connected more fully to the story than many of these other villains, since his daughter — Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) — is a good egg, on the Enterprise, and slaps him but good when they meet. And two: He's played by Peter Weller, a.k.a. RoboCop, and when he starts screaming at Kirk and calling him "son," you kinda start sinking in your chair.

11. The whale probe ( Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home )

We never learn where this probe came from, or who sent it — and that mystery adds to its ominousness. All we know is that its eerily musical message is so powerful, it incapacitates every ship it comes across, and almost destroys Earth in the process. The stakes are high with this thing, even if it does look like a giant black log. But here's my thing. I'm not saying I hate whales — I love whales — but if a civilization is so advanced that they can hear humpback whale sounds from thousands upon thousands of light years away, you'd think they'd also be interested in dolphins, possibly manatees. Oh, and also, that they wouldn't have to send a giant probe to figure out that all the whales are dead .

10. Soran ( Star Trek: Generations )

I love the idea that someone from the same race of adept listeners as the peaceable and wise Guinan (that'd be Whoopi Goldberg 's Enterprise barkeep) would be such a ruthless bastard. He is happy to destroy a planet that's home to hundreds of millions — but it's so he can get back to a wonderful never-never land where time has no meaning and life is lollipops and joy. Meh. But he also causes the death of James Kirk, so he makes the top 10.

9. Martia ( Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , 1991)

It's Iman. As a shapeshifter. Who smokes stogies. And makes out with Kirk — only to ultimately sell him out. This is not something one comes across everyday in a Trek villain.

8. Kruge ( Star Trek III: The Search For Spock )

He destroys a Federation science vessel — and kills Kirk's son! — all in dogged pursuit of the Genesis torpedo, which he believes is a powerful weapon*. I've got nothing really bad to say about him, only that Christopher Lloyd gives a performance that is less theatrical and more grounded than the best Trek villains — but he still definitely holds his own.

*Here's the thing: Kruge is actually right. As we learn in the movie, Genesis is way too unstable to create a brand new planet, but if all you want to do is destroy said planet, it's perfect. That is the geekiest sentence I've written...today.

7. V'ger ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture , 1979)

It may be controversial to have this so high, but hear me out: The movie itself has a deserved rep for being too ponderous and slow, but its central antagonist is quite well thought out*, and pretty terrifying. I mean, if you ignore everyone's space pajamas in the above clip, it really does still hold up as a chilling existential threat.

*SPOILER ALERT (since even serious Trek fans may have avoided seeing this snoozer): V'ger is actually Voyager 6, a simple probe sent from Earth in the 20th century and transformed into a sentient being by a race of intelligent machines. It's been collecting knowledge ever since, and now it needs to share what it's learned with its creator — and nothing will stand in the way of that mission. Very sci-fi, very Trek (and more compelling and complex than Star Trek IV 's whale probe), but it would've been waaaay cooler if the movie didn't spend so much time just staring at special effects for minutes on end.

6. Ceti Alpha eels ( Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , 1982)

No no no no no no no no no no no no no.

[ Hiding under desk, clutching ears. ]

Worst. Pet. EVER.

5. John Harrison/Khan ( Star Trek Into Darkness )

Benedict Cumberbatch's version of Khan doesn't quite have the same fizzy ostentation that Ricardo Montalban brought to the role. And I guess we're supposed to assume that while he was operating as John Harrison in London, this Khan just picked up the foreboding British accent. Is that what happens when you're a genetically engineered übermensch?

But he's still Khan, and Benny Batch brought such gargantuan intelligence and menace and physicality to the role that he managed to make it his own. This Khan is able to take out an entire squadron of Klingons and rocket through space in a suit and help design a bad-ass warship and crush a man's skull with his bare hands. I wouldn't want to mess with him — would you?

4. Lt. Valeris ( Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , 1991)

It took six movies to get there, but Spock finally got himself a quasi-love interest who idolizes him and clearly turns him on (in spite of himself). And what does she do to repay him for his support and knowing glances? Hide in plain sight as the mole on the Enterprise responsible for nearly starting a war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and sending Kirk and Bones to a Klingon gulag.

Put it this way: To a true Trekkie, this is Kim Cattrall's defining role.

3. Gen. Chang ( Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country )

In comparison to the plots of the other villains on this list, Chang is ultimately not all that wicked — just brutally set in his ways, really. But only Christopher Plummer could pull off an erudite general who can quote Shakespeare (in the "original Klingon") while pulverizing the Enterprise with photon torpedoes, and make it all so damn fun .

2. The Borg Queen ( Star Trek: First Contact , 1996)

It was a risk placing a single leader at the center of the Borg, whose entire allure as an enemy on Star Trek: The Next Generation had been the fact that they were a relentless — and faceless — horde. But Alice Krige brought such a delicious kinkiness, and slithery intelligence, to the character, that she instantly became one of the premiere Trek baddies of all time. And what an entrance!

1. Khan Noonien Singh ( Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan )

This is a no-brainer. The rrrrrrolling accent; the simmering malevolence; the self-assured cunning; the enormous barrel chest. Played to the hilt by Ricardo Montalban, Khan is the most formidable enemy Kirk and Co. ever faced, a man so driven by revenge that he caused the death of Spock. More to the point, it is impossible to take your eyes off of him when he's on screen. He remains the alpha and omega of Trek villains, and no one has been able to surpass him. It's no wonder the movie was named after him.

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Star Trek: Voyager's Greatest Villains, Ranked

Here's the worst of the worst.

Star Trek: Voyager encountered many villainous obstacles on its long journey back to Earth, but which among these would fans consider the best? Better yet, where do they rank compared to each other? 

I’ve been binging Star Trek: Voyager with my Paramount+ subscription , and feel like I have a solid lock on some of the show's best villains fans might remember. Ranked from great to greatest, here is a rundown of the worst Captain Janeway and her crew faced as they made their way through the Delta Quadrant. Given all the chatter as of late about Kate Mulgrew potentially reprising her role in live-action , it feels like as good of a time as any to remember why so many folks are still clammoring for new Voyager projects these days.

10. Angry Tuvok

Star Trek fans received a taste of an unhinged Tuvok in Season 2's “Meld,” where the crew worked to solve the mystery of a murder on the Voyager . The Vulcan, disturbed by the fact the Betazoid responsible for the crime didn’t have a motive, attempted a mind meld in order to try and understand what occurred. As a result ,he found himself with a murderous rage, and it took a good deal to get him back to his normal self. 

Angry Tuvok is toward the bottom of the list because, let’s be honest, he’s not actually a villain. With that said, seeing him unhinged and out of control of his emotions shows just how dangerous Vulcans were before they committed to logic and suppressing feelings. He could easily bring Voyager down if he wanted to, so I have to commend his restraint in not doing that, or strangling Neelix to death. 

9. The Nazi Hirogen

The Hirogen species had a few encounters with Voyager during the show’s run, but one particular misdeed of theirs really sticks out. The Season 4 two-parter “The Killing Game” sent the crew back to Nazi-occupied France as Janeway and the crew attempted to combat the soldiers. In reality, the Hirogen had captured them, and forced them into a holosimulation without their knowledge in an effort to enjoy the thrill of ongoing hunts. 

The Nazi Hirogen, while not truly Nazis outside of the simulation, were still pretty dastardly. They used technology to brainwash the crew, and disabled safety protocols on injuries, which required the Doctor to perform operations on the crew to keep them alive between hunts. Thankfully, Harry Kim was able to free the crew by working with the Doctor, which was one of the few times Voyager made him look competent and capable .

Devore inspector Kashyk from Season 5's "Counterpoint" was about as charming as he was conniving, and Janeway and crew were forced to deceive him to protect its telepathic passengers. While their initial efforts were effective, Kashyk duped Janeway by claiming he'd defected from his species, only to expose the whereabouts of the telepathic crew and capture them. 

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Kashyk wasn’t the worst of the worst of Star Trek: Voyager , but he was quite a snake. He also toyed with the heart of our beloved captain at a vulnerable time in her life. Luckily, she was a bit more clever, and managed to turn the tables on him yet again. Still, the guy was just a rat bastard, and I’m glad we didn’t see him again for the rest of the series. 

Some might say Seska is the primary villain tied to the Kazon, but even she suffered at the hands of Culluh. The Kazon gave the crew hell during Seasons 1 through 3, and honestly, nearly ended this mission well before it really made any progress. 

What makes Culluh especially evil, however, is using Seska and his own child in a ploy to stop Voyager , under the guise that the child was Chakotay’s. Culluh’s actions ultimately resulted in Seska’s death, which was the only thing that really led Culluh to leave Voyager be. 

6. The Clown

Some folks will argue Season 2's “The Thaw” is one of Star Trek: Voyager ’s most frightening episodes. I wouldn’t go that far, but I will agree that one of the show’s worst villains appeared in the episode, and I’d certainly hate to come across The Clown after what he put his captives through here. 

The Clown was merely a manifestation created inside of a neural network but was able to hold a group of individuals hostage in stasis for fifteen years before Voyager came along. The psychological torture is just unfathomable, and while he ultimately was defeated, there’s no doubt that the impact of his influence was felt by those affected for years to come. 

5. Icheb’s Parents

Star Trek: Voyager introduced the young refugee Borg Icheb’s parents in Season 6's “Child’s Play,” and in hindsight, we should’ve guessed they weren’t great people. After the Voyager crew convinced Icheb to reconnect with his family, it seemed like we were headed toward a happy ending. Unfortunately, we later learned that he was intentionally assimilated by the Borg, as his Brunali parents infected him with a pathogen that damaged the Borg cube and protected their people from attack. 

Icheb’s parents are here on the list because they never intended to make a meaningful reconnection with their son, but rather wanted to send him out again in an effort to infect more Borg with their virus. Pretty heartless, and upsetting for viewers.

Kes was always a complicated character for Star Trek: Voyager to tackle, and it seemed the series never knew what to do with her before writing her out of the main cast. Though Lien left the series as a main cast member, she did get a return episode in Season 6's “Fury” in which Kes went on a misguided quest for revenge against Voyager . 

Kes was much older due to her species’ shortened lifespan, but her psychic abilities made her effectively unstoppable. She would've succeeded, but her past self managed to talk some sense into her. 

3. The Wormhole Creature

Season 5's “Bliss” offers the crew hope when they seemingly find a wormhole that will transport them instantly back to Earth. Understandably so, the entire crew was thrilled and eager to go to any lengths to make it happen, but Seven of Nine had her doubts. It soon became a battle between Seven and the rest of the crew, as she attempted to save her friends from themselves. 

The wormhole creature from “Bliss” might be a wildcard choice for Star Trek: Voyager villains, but I can’t think of a more perfect creature for this list. If it wasn’t for a last-minute push from the EMH Doctor and Seven, the Voyager crew would’ve perished under the illusion they were on a fast track back to Earth. On one hand, it’s probably not the worst fate they could’ve succumbed to, but man, what a cruel fate considering all they’d been through to that point.  

2. Annorax 

The Star Trek: Voyager crew was brought to its knees during Season 4's “Year Of Hell,” after encountering a temporal scientist named Annorax hellbent on restoring the status of his homeworld. Janeway and the crew tried to fight back, but his weapon systems were engaged with a device capable of wiping an entire species from existence. This led the crew to be cautious, and engage in a long conflict that nearly wiped them out entirely. 

The “Year Of Hell” arc is an all-time great Star Trek storyline, and part of that is due to Kurtwood Smith’s incredible performance as Annorax. One man’s quest to restore his planet’s status and bring back his wife becomes obsessive and results in the deaths of countless individuals. Thankfully, the time element managed to reset things to normal, though his impact on the crew makes him an easy choice for one of the greatest enemies Voyager ever faced. 

1. Borg Queen

As if there were any choice for number one, the Borg Queen stands as the definitive villain for Star Trek: Voyager . Hell, the Borg Queen is an all-time villain for the Trek franchise. There’s definitely something special about Voyager ’s connection to the Borg, and that’s largely because of the queen's encounters with Jeri Ryan ’s Seven of Nine in Seasons 5 through 7. 

The Borg Queen is a master manipulator and always seemed capable of pulling just about anyone into her grasp if given the opportunity. This dynamic was so strong that it became a major part of the latest season of Star Trek: Picard , so it’s no surprise the Borg Queen reigns supreme in terms of the series' greatest villains. 

Stream Star Trek: Voyager right now on Paramount+ . After that, be sure to check out Kate Mulgrew’s Janeway on Prodigy , and keep that subscription for the number of other upcoming Trek shows slated for the coming months. 

Mick Joest is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend with his hand in an eclectic mix of television goodness. Star Trek is his main jam, but he also regularly reports on happenings in the world of Star Trek, WWE, Doctor Who, 90 Day Fiancé, Quantum Leap, and Big Brother. He graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Radio and Television. He's great at hosting panels and appearing on podcasts if given the chance as well.

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Who Are STAR TREK: PICARD Season 3’s Main Villains?

As of Picard season three, episode three, we finally know who the true villains of the season are. And they are perhaps the biggest threat the Federation ever faced. No, not the Borg. Not even the Klingons. We’re talking about the Dominion, a despotic intergalactic empire that waged war against the Alpha Quadrant for a solid three seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . In fact, they were such a threat that the Federation allied with both the Klingons and their longtime enemies the Romulan Star Empire to save themselves.

But just who, or what, is the Dominion? And who are their mysterious shape-shifting Founders, now causing so much trouble for Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his friends? The answer goes back to the very first episode of S tar Trek: Deep Space Nine, over 30 years ago. And one of the Star Trek franchise’s most beloved characters.

Odo, Deep Space Nine ‘s Friendly Changeling

The very first member of the Founder’s species we met was Odo, the shapeshifting chief of security aboard starbase Deep Space Nine. He was portrayed by René Auberjonois, and appeared in “Emissary,” Deep Space Nine’s first episode in 1993. Odo’s natural state was liquid, but he could hold a humanoid form for several hours a day. They found him as an infant blob near the Bajoran wormhole . This implied his species came from the distant Gamma Quadrant, where the wormhole connected to.

A Bajoran scientist named Dr. Mora gave the infant the name Odo, and he mimicked his humanoid shape as a tribute to him. Odo did not know where he came from. Or even what species he was. But he knew he liked order, and chose a life in policing. He became Chief of Security on Deep Space Nine. First, under the Cardassians , and later, under the Bajorans. However, he never stopped wondering about his origins. This longing for a people he never knew factored heavily into Odo’s character in the first few seasons of DS9 .

The Dominion, the Anti-Federation

At the end of season two of DS9 , we learned of a major power in the Gamma Quadrant–the Dominion. This empire enslaved many planets. Their hierarchy consisted of a group of genetically engineered lizard-like clone soldiers, known as the Jem’Hadar. Their administrators, a humanoid race called the Vorta, gave the reptilian Jem’Hadar their orders. As well as the drugs they needed to survive. The Vorta maintained their orders came from the Dominion’s mysterious “Founders,” who they worshipped as gods. But no one had ever seen these Founders, and most species in the Gamma Quadrant considered them a myth.

The Dominion Founders Revealed

By the time of the end of DS9 season three, Odo made a shocking discovery in the Gamma Quadrant. On a rogue planet in the Omarian Nebula, Odo discovered his people at long last. They were a group of Changelings just like himself. They existed together in what they called “The Great Link,” a large liquid mass where they all joined as one consciousness. Unlike the hive mind of the Borg , they could retain their individuality and leave the Great Link if they wished. Odo was an infant the Changelings let loose into the cosmos with 99 others. Upon maturation, it was meant for them to explore the galaxy and come back to the Link with what they had learned.

At first, Odo was overjoyed to discover his people. But then he learned the terrible truth. The Changelings were themselves the mysterious Founders of the Dominion. After persecution by what they called “solid” species, they exerted control over the galaxy so no solid beings could harm them ever again. They genetically enhanced the Vorta, one of the few humanoid species to show them kindness, and created the Jem’Hadar as their foot soldiers. For 2,000 years they inflicted terror in the Gamma Quadrant, forcing worlds into their Dominion. Odo, disgusted with what he learned, left the Great Link and returned to Federation space.

The Dominion War Unites Former Enemies Against a Common Foe

But that was just the start. The Dominion decided to conquer the Alpha Quadrant, and had their Changeling agents infiltrate the ranks of Starfleet , the Klingon Empire, and others. They infiltrated Federation starships and sabotaged them, and manipulated the powers of the Alpha Quadrant against each other, causing a brief war between the Klingons and the Federation after decades of peace. Eventually, the Dominion waged a full-scale war against the Federation. Starfleet had to unite with their enemies the Klingons and even the Romulans to save the galaxy. Meanwhile, the Dominion and the Cardassians, longtime Federation enemies, forged an alliance. This prolonged conflict they named The Dominion War, and covered seasons five to seven of DS9.

An Attempted Genocide Averted

The Dominion War ended due to the shady actions of the secret off-the-books Starfleet Intelligence agency called Section 31. Against Federation principals, they engineered a genetic virus they implanted into Odo, one meant to cause the genocide of the Founders when he bonded physically with any other Changeling from the Great Link. This action disgusted many in Starfleet, who were against the genocide of a race, even a hostile one.

Starfleet doctors engineered a cure for Odo, one he could administer to the rest of the Great Link should he choose to rejoin them permanently. He chose to return, on the condition the Dominion end the war on the Federation and its allies, and leave the Alpha Quadrant in peace. With this action, the Dominion War ended, after the loss of millions of lives. They signed the Treaty of Bajor on station Deep Space Nine, in the year 2375.

Revenge of the Changelings

When Picard season one began, it was close to 25 years since the end of the Dominion War. We’ve had little knowledge of the fallout of this great galactic conflict. But in Picard season three, Worf reveals that certain parts of the Great Link did not agree to the treaty with the Federation, and have broken off into a terrorist faction. Worf learned of this information from his contact within the link, someone he considered “a man of honor.” This was no doubt a reference to Odo himself.

So is Captain Vadic (Amanda Plummer) a Founder herself, or does she merely work for them? And what is her obsession with Jack Crusher? As we learned in Star Trek: Insurrection , the Enterprise-E under Picard’s command spent much of the Dominion War conducting peace negotiation s and were not part of the fighting much. So a vendetta against Picard himself would be curious. But then, we really don’t know everything the Enterprise was up to during the Dominion War. While there is much still left to be revealed, one thing is certain — the Federation’s most lethal enemy is back, and they have not forgotten their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Federation.

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20 Star Trek Villains Who Are Ridiculously Overpowered

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The Star Trek franchise is PACKED with villains who are definitely overpowered. This can come in several different categories. That includes super soldiers who have incredible levels of strategic brilliance, rogue AI's that nearly obliterate the Federation, enemy aliens that are basically evil doppelgängers of the Federation, or incredible alien entities that are essentially gods in the Star Trek universe.

Every singls Star Trek fan has their own list of their favorite villains, but not every villain could be listed. Here we have a specially curated list of ten different Trek antagonists across Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Prodigy, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the various films who all demonstrate different ways in which they overpower the main characters with ease.

20 Roga Danar

In Star Trek: Lower Decks, Boimler confesses that his favorite villain from Picard's Enterprise was none other than Roga Danar. That's not surprising considering how formidable an opponent he was. Danar was an imprisoned supersoldier who was kept separated from the rest of his people due to his violent potential. This easily could be seen as an overreaction...aside from the fact that he managed to outsmart Captain Picard, fool Counselor Troi, and beat up Worf .

Danar basically made the Enterprise the setting of his own Die Hard film as he escaped confinement and then ran circles around one of the best crews in Star Trek history. Of all the spin-offs that Star Trek could've made, the Roga Danar action movie franchise would've been truly epic.

19 The Gorn

Star Trek: The Original Series famously depicted The Gorn as a terrifying monster that Captain Kirk was forced to contend with in a hand-to-hand battle that would end the conflict between the two races. While it was an iconic design at the time, the years have not been kind to the rubber suit and lumbering arm swings of the once scary lizard monster.

Enter Star Trek: Strange New Worlds which has redesigned the Gorn into one of the scariest alien races the franchise has ever seen. Not only are they technologically superior to the Enterprise, but they use humans as incubators for their spawn, like the Xenomorphs from Alien. Even baby Gorn are now seen as a threat that must be eradicated on sight before they wipe out the universe.

18 Harry Mudd

In the Original Series, Harcourt Fenton Mudd was mostly a joke. He was a lecherous pirate who always seemed to get himself in over his head. He would never be considered one of Kirk's greatest foes. That changed when Rainn Wilson embodied him in the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. After a brief, uncomfortable, meeting with Captain Lorca in a Klingon prison, he vowed his revenge. He certainly got it as well. Mudd came on board the Discovery with a time displacement device. Using this manipulation of time, he put the entire crew into a time loop that allowed him to slay Lorca as many times as he wanted.

Mudd may ultimately be a silly character, but he was one of the Discovery's first major threats. Even if managing to weaponize Groundhog's Day is still a pretty funny concept. His montage of repeated carnage against Lorca is certainly horrific...even if it's proved later that Lorca definitely deserved it...

Star Trek is a family friendly series. Most of its villains, despite often being sadistic monsters, are only as evil as a PG-13 level rating will allow. Adult animation in the streaming age has a lot less restrictions. That's how Star Trek: Lower Decks was able to introduce one of the franchise's most terrifying villains, Badgey. The cartoon helper designed by Rutherford, and clearly based on Microsoft's Clippy, went insane and became a sadistic monster.

This would be only slightly terrifying if he were just confined to the Holodeck. In the finale of the third season, it was revealed that the secret, automated Texas -class vessels used Badgey's code. They immediately went on a violent rampage. Now that Badgey has been confirmed to still be out there, it's clear that he will come for his father once again.

Related: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds x Lower Decks Crossover Foreshadowed by IDW Comic

Khan Noonien Singh is considered by many to be the single greatest Star Trek villain of all time. His genetically enhanced condition allowed him to quickly figure out how the Enterprise worked, and then he nearly conquered it. Truly, the only thing that ever holds Khan back is his passion. His love for his people, Marla McGivers, and his own legacy coupled with his obsession with revenge kept him from creating a new empire in the future. Perhaps one day we'll see him at his peak in the Eugenics Wars.

In Star Trek: Into Darkness we were shown new sides to Khan. Aside from the fact that he was inexplicably played by Benedict Cumberbatch. His physical prowess was on full display as he took down an entire squad of Klingon warriors and then managed to hold his own against a fully enraged Spock. Khan has always been right at the cusp of victory before the crew pulls a victory out of nowhere.

15 The Vau N'Akat

The Diviner was introduced as one of the most despicable villains in the history of Star Trek. Star Trek: Prodigy's main villain was presented as a slaver who cared little for his own daughter, other species, or anyone but himself. Later, we discover that his entire mission is to save his own race, the Vau N'Akat who were destroyed largely due to their first contact with the Federation. All of his evil acts were on behalf of his people and his daughter's potential legacy.

The pinnacle of their plot against the Federation came when the Protostar was used to take control of several Starfleet vessels. The virus very nearly spread throughout the Federation, causing them to be destroyed by their own fleet. This is one of the closest any villain has come to obliterate the Federation.

14 Gary Mitchell

The first foe that Captain Kirk ever went up against in the original Star Trek was his closest friend Gary Mitchell. While Mitchell was shown to be a valuable member of the crew at first, eventually he attained godlike powers by becoming a psychic Esper. This drove Mitchell insane and turned him against the crew of the Enterprise. Eventually, Kirk was driven into his first over-the-top William Shatner fight scene in order to take Mitchell out. It was a victory, like many of Kirk's, that only came by the skin of his teeth.

It's sad that the concept of the Espers has fallen away in Star Trek lore, though it's probably a good thing. It's unlikely that our heroes could contend with many of these glowing eyed monsters.

13 Parasitic Beings

Many aliens have attempted to conquer the Federation over the years. The species that came the closest were the mysterious, unnamed Parasitic Beings from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Conspiracy". The horrifying aliens managed to take over the bodies of several of the highest ranking officers in Starfleet. In fact, Captain Picard and his crew were barely able to discover the conspiracy at the heart of the Federation and destroy it. The Parasitic Beings were not only masters of taking over bodies, but they then gave those bodies increased strength and speed while taking all of their memories.

Few have ever forgotten the most terrifying ending to a TNG episode ever. Picard and Riker managed to destroy the chest cavity of one of the beings and then the alien inside. The final moments include an ominous threat that the beings called out to their own kind in deep space and that they would return one day to finish what they started.

12 The Talosians

The Talosians were the first ever villains created for Star Trek and are still some of the most formidable. They put the original Captain Pike through a series of trials, attempting to put him in their own Menagerie. Their psychic abilities are so advanced that the illusions they create are impossible to distinguish from reality.

There have been few villains so horrifying on Star Trek that there is a permanent warning for no other starship to ever visit their world again. The other major villain to be put on the infamous Starfleet quarantine list is the creature Armus who took out Tasha Yar early in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is not a list you want to be on.

11 The Dominion

There have been many species that have been presented as dark alternatives to the friendly Federation who just want to make peaceful relations with other cultures. There are the Klingons who conquer other races, the Xindi who attack them out of fear, and the Hirogen who hunt them for sport. None of those are as terrifying as the Dominion, the anti-Federation that creates genetically-modified servants who view the Founders as gods. They are one threat that has put the entire Alpha and Beta quadrants on edge.

In fact, the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans had to ally just to hold them off. Even that wouldn't have been enough to take the entirety of their military might. The only reason that there isn't a Dominion flag raised over Earth is because the Prophets managed to take most of their fleet off the table right at their moment of victory.

10 The Borg

When Q thought that Jean Luc Picard had gotten a little too fond of his own abilities, he decided to humble him by throwing the Enterprise deep into the Delta Quadrant. The crew found themselves utterly outmatched when they came across the Borg. These cybernetic beings assimilate entire cultures, wreaking havoc across the universe.

They have no qualms about using any weapon at their disposal. The includes even using time travel to destroy the Federation before it even began. While the threat of the Borg seems to be diminished by Picard season two's end, there's no denying that they are the scariest threat a starship could ever happen upon in the deep recesses of space.

9 The Suliban Cabal

The primary antagonist throughout Star Trek: Enterprise was the mysterious Suliban Cabal and the mysterious hidden leader that commanded them. They were fighting through time in what was known as the Temporal Cold War. They, along with the Federation of the future and the Sphere Builders were all battling throughout the timeline. Mostly, we see them through their agent Silik who plagues the first Enterprise time and time again.

It's tragic that Star Trek: Enterprise was cancelled before fans discovered the secrets behind the Cabal. Most notably, we will never discover whether the mysterious leader was actually a future version of Captain Archer like fans were convinced of. Add this to the list of Star Trek questions we will likely never get an answer to.

Many consider the two-part episode "Year of Hell" to be Star Trek: Voyager's unofficial movie. It's not hard to see why. The episodes see the crew go up against the horrific Annorax who can manipulate time by erasing things in space from existence. Not only that but his vessel is located outside of space-time, making it essentially invulnerable. At the end of part one, the Voyager was so crippled that most of the crew was forced to evacuate. Janeway was only able to defeat Annorax by ramming Voyager into his vessel, costing her life and her ship. Though it did reset the timeline.

The Voyager writers famously wanted this to be an entire season of the series, but the idea was rejected. Looking at this episode, it's clear that this storyline easily could've been a season of television or one of the best Star Trek films ever made. Either way, Kurtwood Smith delivers one of the best performances of his career, even including Red Foreman in That '70s Show and That '90s Show .

The artificial intelligence that emerged as the main villain of Star Trek: Discovery season 2 was one of the scariest in the history of the franchise. While there have certainly been more interesting villains that made more of an impression overall, the fact that Discovery had to journey far into the future and then erase all trace that the ship ever existed just to erase any possibility that Control would cause the galactic apocalypse is harrowing to be sure.

There were plenty of theories that Control could have been the origin story for the Borg or that the way they caused the apocalypse was by contacting the synthetic gods from Picard season two, but it seems like Control will never be mentioned in the franchise again, making those theories irrelevant...

6 Gul Dukat and the Pah Wraiths

There are quite a few god-like aliens in Star Trek. Most are either tricksters or they are unknowable beings of vast intelligence that just so happen to present a massive threat to the Federation. Few are outright evil in the classic fire and brimstone sort of way. The Pah Wraiths really embrace the idea that they are the personifications of fiery evil in Bajoran lore. They were an occasional terror throughout Star Trek: Deep Space Nine until they found their own dark emissary, Gul Dukat.

Once the former leader of the Cardassian Empire, Dukat fully embraced his role as the true enemy of the Bajoran people and decided to destroy their gods who ruined his ultimate victory over the Federation. He very nearly accomplished his goal of freeing the Pah Wraiths to lay waste to the galaxy before his nemesis Benjamin Sisko took him down in the kind of epic display you usually only see in works like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Related: Deep Space Nine's Commander Sisko Returns to Star Trek in New Comic Series

5 V'Ger

Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought the franchise to the big screen. While the film made a ton of missteps, the movie's villain was definitely iconic. The strange entity that moved slowly towards Earth, erasing everything in its path was a harrowing threat worthy of a big screen. Then came the twist where V'Ger was actually the NASA probe "Voyager 6". The probe was merely trying to complete its mission to come home. Along the way, it had gained sentience and a great degree of power. In the end, it abandoned its pursuit of Earth and disappeared.

Fans have long been waiting to find out more about what happened to V'Ger after The Motion Picture. It seems inevitable that one day this question will be answered.

4 The Crystaline Entity

There are plenty of unknowable, enormous space monsters in the Star Trek universe. The Doomsday Machine and The One from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier are a few examples of these incredibly overpowered alien antagonists, but neither are the most frightening. That would be the Crystaline Entity from Star Trek: The Next Generation. What truly makes the Crystaline Entity so frightening is that, because of Data, we fully understand what it's like to undergo such a traumatic attack as when this being destroys a planet. There are several episodes that explore the ramifications of the Entity's attack on Omicron Theta. It is basically the Godzilla of the Star Trek universe, rampaging through the galaxy like a wild animal eager to take down the next planet in its path.

That and it has a stunning design that still holds up decades later.

3 The Higher Synthetics

Jean Luc Picard has dealt with many terrifying threats over his many years cruising the galaxy, but only one would he admit is truly beyond his skill to defeat. The mysterious Higher Synthetics presented in the first season of Picard are shown to be a true apocalyptic menace that no one in the Alpha Quadrant could stand against. They are so horrifying that the revelation of their existence drove both Romulans and the Borg utterly mad. They have destroyed biological life in the galaxy multiple times over and very nearly did so one more time if not for Picard's incredible act of sacrifice at the season's end.

They were menacing, but the show immediately pivoted away from their threat, leaving them to be something of a mystery. They may not have wanted us to realize that they were essentially the Reapers from Mass Effect...

Related: Star Trek: Picard Lands Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score for Final Season

2 Species Ten-C

It seems as though every season of Star Trek: Discovery shows the valiant Michael Burnham going up against an apocalyptic threat that will obliterate all life in the Federation. Discovery's fourth season saw a greater threat than Control, the Klingon Empire, the Terran Empire, The Emerald Chain, or the mystery behind the Burn. A Dark Matter Anomaly, also known as a DMA, obliterated planets in the Alpha Quadrant using a technology so advanced it was beyond the Federation's understanding. So began a hunt to either destroy or make contact with the mysterious beings who devised the DMA, known as Species Ten-C.

While they were mysterious beings who operated outside the Galactic Barrier, it turns out that they weren't truly villainous. They may have threatened to obliterate the Federation, but it was only because they didn't understand that the beings living there were truly sentient. They were whales who didn't realize the krill they destroyed were actually intelligent. In some ways, this is even more terrifying in an existential sort of way.

When it comes to overpowered antagonists in Star Trek, few can compete with the notorious Q. He is essentially a god in the Trek universe, capable of bending all of time and reality to his will at the snap of a finger. He can manipulate reality itself as easily as the crew of the Enterprise can replicate lunch. Depending on the episode, he is either a hilarious trickster, a menacing threat, the existential judge of humanity, or a punching bag for Captain Sisko.

The character and the Q continium are so iconic that many other Trek villains with similar powers have been theorized to be secret Qs all along. That list includes the likes of The Travelers, The Caretakers, Charlie X, Apollo, and most notably Trelane from Star Trek: The Original Series who had the same trickster vibe to him. At the very least, it would be interesting to see all of them in a room together.

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Star Trek: 10 Terrible Scenes That Ruined Episodes

9. spock jokes about assault - the enemy within.

Richard Matheson penned the script for this first season episode of The Original Series . You know the story - Captain Kirk, after experiencing a transporter malfunction, is split into two halves - one good, and one evil. Oh, and there's a cute little dog in an alien costume. What's not to love?

This episode contains the scene wherein Yeoman Janice Rand is assaulted by this evil version of Kirk. The scene itself is handled well, though the final scene of the episode upends any good will.

The… impostor had some… interesting qualities, wouldn't you say, Yeoman?

Spock's final lines, to an already traumatised Rand, stink of cruelty. Who on earth decided that this was an appropriate sign-off for the episode, or for anyone to say to someone who had just been assaulted? Grace Lee Whitney recounted in her autobiography that she wasn't sure who had actually written that line, but that it ensured that the episode ended on a sour note.

Writer. Reader. Host. I'm Seán, I live in Ireland and I'm the poster child for dangerous obsessions with Star Trek. Check me out on Twitter @seanferrick

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Star Trek Day 2024 | Take the Chair and Make an Impact

On September 8, 1966, Gene Roddenberry introduced audiences to a world that championed diversity, inclusion, acceptance, and hope. This Star Trek Day , fans joined us around the world in support of our global mission to "take the chair and make an impact" in our communities.

This year, Star Trek United Gives is proud to support three organizations that do the real-world work of building a bolder, brighter tomorrow. Visit the Mission Generator for your personalized mission.

Stay tuned to StarTrek.com for more details! And be sure to follow @StarTrek on TikTok , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , and Twitter .

Screen Rant

Star wars reveals the empire's last stand & luke skywalker's first new enemy after beating palpatine.

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Marvel’s Original Comic Book Adaptation of Star Wars Made the Death Star’s Destruction Legitimately Beautiful

Star wars confirms the canon reason the original trilogy era is so unique (the force was in flux), this terrifying sith lord cosplay would be a true force to be reckoned with.

The next era of Marvel's Star Wars comics has arrived, as the galaxy quickly turns from dealing with the fallout from the Battle of Endor to the equally pivotal Battle of Jakku, the definitive final conflict in the war between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, and the beginning of a stretch of wide-open, unexplored years in the franchise's timeline.

Marvel's solicitation for Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku: Republic Under Siege #2 – the second issue in the second of three miniseries centered around the battle – promises action and adventure for series protagonist Luke Skywalker. It also teases drama and intrigue among the remnant Imperial forces seeking to rally in the wake of the second Death Start's destruction.

Perhaps most notably, the synopsis makes it clear to readers that Marvel plans to continue building on the storylines that have made its Disney-era Star Wars comics essential reading for fans.

The Imperial Remnant Struggles To Survive & Luke Skywalker Faces New Threats

Star wars: the battle of jakku – republic under siege ; four issue miniseries from marvel comics.

Taking center stage will be the struggle by the Empire's remaining forces to hold onto power post-Endor, alongside Luke Skywalker's first official mission as a Jedi Knight. The solicitation for Republic Under Siege #2 hints at both these arcs.

With its trilogy of Battle of Jakku miniseries, Marvel will chart the birth of the New Republic – while sowing the first seeds for the eventual revival of the Empire , and Palpatine himself, as witnessed in the Sequel Trilogy. Republic Under Siege follows the events of Insurgency Rising ; both series, and the currently untitled conclusion to the trilogy, will give Star Wars fans a long-awaited, immersive look at the Battle of Jakku and the events surrounding it , making it an invaluable addition to the franchise's canon.

As readers would expect, taking center stage will be the struggle by the Empire's remaining forces to hold onto power post-Endor, alongside Luke Skywalker's first official mission as a Jedi Knight. The solicitation for Republic Under Siege #2 hints at both these arcs, as Luke " must battle his way through a gang of Force-focused zealots ," while " a faction of Imperial survivors plot to return the Empire to its past glory. " Understandably, fan anticipation for both of these storylines is incredibly high.

Marvel's adaptation of the original 1977 Star Wars concludes with a legitimately stunning artist rendition of the Death Star's destruction.

Marvel's "Jakku" Miniseries Will Explore The Empire's Fall & Republic's Return In Great Detail

Star wars: the battle of jakku – insurgency rising #1 – available october 2 from marvel comics.

Marvel's The Battle of Jakku will be the most extensive look at the final fight of the Galactic Civil War, and will bridge the gap between the publisher's Original Trilogy-era stories and its next generation of stories.

Readers familiar with Star Wars ' old "Legends" canon will know that the post- Return of the Jedi era is one of the most fertile grounds for ambitious storytelling in the franchise's long timeline; though "Legends" eventually expanded to include the Prequel era, the deep past, and the distant future of the Star Wars galaxy, it was primarily a project concerned with continuing the story of the saga after the Original Trilogy. For most fans, it has been a matter of patience waiting for the Disney era to begin to populate this stretch of timeline with stories.

Marvel's The Battle of Jakku will be the most extensive look at the final fight of the Galactic Civil War, and will bridge the gap between the publisher's Original Trilogy-era stories and its next generation of stories. The fact that Marvel has committed a trio of miniseries to allowing the battle to play out in detail is a sign that it is paying tribute to the importance of this point in the chronology of Star Wars . The Battle of Jakku was among the first pieces of lore established in the Disney canon, looming large in fans' minds ever since.

Luke Skywalker explains that during the Age of Rebellion, the fabric of the galaxy was in flux, influencing the Force and even individual people.

The Power Dynamics Of The Original Trilogy Are Inverted In "The Battle Of Jakku'

Star wars: the battle of jakku – insurgency rising ; four issue miniseries – written by alex segura, art by leonard kirk & stefano rafaelle.

In a way, Marvel has a responsibility to tell the story of The Battle of Jakku – but beyond that, it has the opportunity to tell the defining stories of the Disney canon.

One of the most exciting thing about the post- Return of the Jedi era of Star Wars is the way that the dynamics established in the Original Trilogy are abruptly –​​​​​​​ and often messily – flipped . The Rebels become the ones in power, and the Imperials become the outlaw anti-establishment threat, lurking on the outskirts of civilization. The downfall of the Empire and the rise of the New Republic brings with it liberation for many worlds, but also galaxy-wide destablizaiton, and in some places, chaos.

That is what makes it incredibly potent soil for Star Wars stories to grow out of. In a way, Marvel has a responsibility to tell the story of The Battle of Jakku – but beyond that, it has the opportunity to tell the defining stories of the Disney canon, even as it lays the tracks that will eventually lead to The Force Awakens . This makes it perhaps the most exciting time in the history of the franchise to be reading Star Wars comics, a ride that every fan should want to be a part of.

Star Wars is a multimedia franchise that started in 1977 by creator George Lucas. After the release of Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope (originally just titled Star Wars), the franchise quickly exploded, spawning multiple sequels, prequels, TV shows, video games, comics, and much more. After Disney acquired the rights to the franchise, they quickly expanded the universe on Disney+, starting with The Mandalorian.