10 Most Overrated Star Trek Villains 

I never saw Q as a villain, he wasn't trying to kill or take over anything. He was only testing them, to see how they would react to different things.

With Voyager you would expect it to be difficult to develop a good villain because of the nature of their journey - making a mostly straight line for home and not just circling around a few sectors visiting every planet that can support life. It just really wouldn't make sense to have something like "Captain, remember that race of aliens from a couple of years past who we apparently left their space some thousand light years ago... they're back! Apparently they've been following us for no reason, but here they are again..."

Should have included the Rebel Changlings in Picard; for the majority of the season they’re an existential threat which has penetrated every bit of Starfleet; then the Borg appear for an episode and a half and the Changlings threat is written off in a log entry which boils down to: ‘we fiddled with the sensors to find them and sorted them out’.

Number 1 for me is the Romulans. They had cool ships and acted all mysterious and threatening, but the writers never did much with them across multiple series.

The Borg Overrated? Hardly. Overused, absolutely. Them being used very regularly in VOY is a topic I often bring up about criticisms about Voyager. They went from "almost impossible to stop" in TNG and FC, to "Yay, we stopped them again, and again, and again....and again" in VOY. Also, the Borg appearing in Prodigy, and S1-S3 of Picard, it's safe to say that I hope we go 10 years without seeing the Borg again. Great villains, but heavily overused. In this case, less is definitely more.

I remember when they first introduced The Borg, it was pretty big because they had no interest in negotiating a peace deal and not only could they give The Federation a bloody nose but actually kick their butts all around the quadrant... But then they just seemed to become a ratings tool and went from being a galactic super power to more being on par with The Federation militarily.

The Kazon region had a lot more potential than the writers used, as evidenced by the episode Alliances. Seriously, Voyager was dropped (at the edge?) of a collapsed empire with a major power vacuum and barely touched in it. How fascinating could that have been the shadow of the Trabe had been all across the first 1-2 seasons and tied into more than just the Kazon?

Ferengi as villains, that was quickly abandoned as laughable. Sela, ST5 God thing, and the slugs from Conspiracy...all overrated

Great video! I absolutely agree about the Kazon. Personally l couldn't stand them, and was so happy when Voyager finally crossed that Nekret Expanse and away from them forever.

I would say Voyager had it easy with the Borg because they just weren't interested in one lonely ship of misfits. (Of course, if the Borg lived up to their reputation, Voyager would be toast, and that's the end of the show.)

The Kazon were mostly forgotten, but showed up again briefly in Prodigy

Let's be honest, the Duras sisters had two reasons each for their continuous habit of showing up. The actresses could chew a scene in a lovely way and I love that in my villains. For a warrior race that prides itself in wearing battle armor as clothing (with hidden weapons that they could assemble a disruptor from outfit greebles) the one thing the camera angles always catch seems to be a tactical disadvantage.

To be honest...i could watch a whole series about the Borg being the main villian! I could never get enough of them 😄

Not all villains are antagonists just as not all protagonist are hero’s. Q isn’t a villain.

I don't really see Q as a villain as such. Yes, he did some nasty things in his early episodes, but from the moment he recognised humanity's potential for development, he became more of a shepherd character, trying to teach Picard in particular about the possible future that lies ahead of him. This is most notable in the episodes Q Who, Tapestry and All Good Things.

Spot comments about the Borg in Voyager. It made sense Voyager meeting the Borg being the Delta quadrant, but we got 3 episodes and then Kes magicked them away from Borg space. Then whenever the production team wanted a 'hit' they'd bring back the Borg and the Borg queen, a recurring baddie of the week, which damaged (but not ruined?) them. I wished when they hit Borg space they'd spent more time there and had to figure out a way to get through it, met other species doing the same, that could have been a really interest season or half season.

Q turns out to be that character you know you are supposed to hate (the bad guy), but you realize you love him and you can't wait to see him again. Q became that friend you only see now and then, but after a few catch up hello/exchanges, you are so glad to see him.

Star Trek is a series that has antagonists more than villains

Always love your guys' videos - Especially now that I am wrangling a newborn! Hard to make time for 2hr deep dives at the moment. This feels like just having real daily life star trek friends, which I don't :/

I’ve never thought of Q as a villain, rather a being who calls us out on our some of our failings. My favorite quote of all of Trek comes from him in “Q who?“: If you can’t stand a little bloody nose, maybe you oughta go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here! It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires, both subtle and grow. But it’s not for the timid.

Q is just Mister Mxyzptlk in another dimension

Sela turned out to be a big nothing...

I always felt the Kazon were boring and wished that Voyager had left their territory way sooner.

I always thought of Lursa and B'etor Duras as the Patty and Selma Bouvier of the Star Trek universe.

The kazon make me think of unhygienic klingons

Other than Encounter at Farpoint, I never saw Q as an outright villain. He was more of a trickster, curious about the Human species, and testing Humans regularly. Over time, he appears to develop an affection Humans, and especially Picard. The Duras sisters were mostly a waste of film. They were ambitious, but not very smart.

I know you need subjects for a list like this, particularly interesting ones, but these are some VERY hot takes. I disagree with a number of these. The Kazon cannot be overrated since they were never rated at all. The Borg were always menacing, but the more you feature any big bad, the more familiar they become. Your argument for Lore is that he mostly succeeded because of the ineptitude of the people around him, but that only means that he was a great villain who knew how to exploit others weakness for his own advantage. As for the Klingons, I feel like they're only on this list to spice up controversy. They have always been fearsome foes. Just watch The Way Of The Warrior pts. 1 and 2. The Federation is lucky that they are generally on their side. Lastly, Q is heavily debatable as a villain at all. He's more of a stern parent. Most of the time his actions, while sometimes harsh, were in the best interest of the humans he was focused on. Particularly in the case of Picard and the Enterprise crew.

How about Harrry Mudd? In the early days of Discovery they seemed to have been pushing him as some sort of reoccuring antagonist, until they went forwards in time and then... nothing?

I feel deeply offended! When mentioning evil twins, you did not mention the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" ...And Q is not a villain! Heck, Harry Mudd was a bigger villain than Q.

Does anyone consider Q a villain? 🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

The Borg, by far. 16 episodes in 4 seasons of Voyager, and 3 seasons in Picard. NO MORE Borg!

Ye as much as i love the borg they lost their scare factor through voyager. Although i do think they clawed some of it back in picard season 3.

With what we know now about klingons shaving their heads from Disco, that is probably a reason that makes picard so intimidating to them

You know it always bothered me that logic problem developed to destroy the Borg in I, Borg, never cropped up again. Starfleet ordered Picard to use that if they ever had the opportunity again in future. Janeway probably could have used that without her future self coming back with some crazy future virus.

The Klingons were originally based on a stereotypical depiction of the Mongols, so it kind of makes sense that their biggest threat was always their own in-fighting instead of exterior enemies. The Mongols were nigh on unstoppable. It was generally their own internal politics that slowed them down or divided their attention away from further conquests. As for the armor, well they exist in a world where you can vaporize people with beams and they wield weapons that disrupt the atomic bonds of whatever they hit. In a universe without the kind of Beskar macguffin armor of the Mandalorians in Star Wars, it makes sense that the Klingons armor would be suggestive of militarism without being all that effective as battle armor.

Maybe Star Trek forgot about the Khazon because they are in the Delta Quadrant hundreds of years travel distant from the closest Federation outposts and they have a relatively primitive level of technology? It would take quite a happening to integrate them back into later Star Trek episodes. Possible, but it would be quite difficult to explain.

The Kazon wasn't completely forgotten after season 2 of Voyager. I remember one episode of Voyager that took place hundreds of years after in the future. A race Voyager made contact with thought that there was Kazon crew on Voyager.

Q always felt like a strange nuisance more than anything else. With what seemed like weirdly limitless power it always seemed a bit strange to me that reality continued to exist, but John Delancey could still make him a fun character to have around.

The Vidiians that harvest organs from other races to replace their own in an attempt to outpace the degeneration caused by the Phage. I think where the best creepiest villains in ST Voyager.

The Kazon were more interesting villains on Voyager than the Borg were. Come at me, nerds.

I reckon enthusiastically that during the first 24th Century encounters with the Borg, the Federation Council (at least publically) considered but never conceded that the whole reason the Borg went back in time to interfere with Cochrane's prototype warp-flight in Trek VIII: First Contact was not the flight interference itself, but the medium of their trip thru time as camouflage to 'plant' physical elements of 24th Century Borg and tech on Earth, the artifacts/survivors of the crashed Sphere who regenerated after being exhumed from the Arctic, assimilated the Polar-station research crew, then the two ships they took over and got their signal off to Borg space before the NX-01 destroyed the second craft. Mind closely that this was the only time a Borg ship never cheerfully announced their identity ('We are the Borg') to an unaligned vessel, which suggests they wanted as little historical evidence left over in the 22nd Century that by the time the initial Borg incursion occurred- six years after Q tossed the Enterprise-D into (presumably) the Delta Quadrant or local to Borg space- the only unedited report was ironically Cochrane's, by his own admission a habitual drunkard and considered to have fostered everything as a tall tale a century later in 'Regeneration'. T'Pol therein dismisses Dr. Cochrane's report, found by Captain Archer after pulling up Terran Starfleet records from 2063. This would confirm two hundred years later what the Delta Quadrant Borg suspected after the Enterprise-D's incidental 'visit' and escape, but because of physical distance could not by limits of physics confirm for the same reason it would have taken decades for the U.S.S. Voyager to get home to the Alpha Quadrant without a shortcut akin to the one employed in 'Endgame', the series finale. And nanoprobes remained inside Dr. Phlox's body, inactive but likely only dormant, and samples of them were likely preserved before or after his death for future medical analysis. The nanoprobes themselves were likely preprogrammed to be evasive, of course, and give up false readings expected of their disguise or to mislead expert analysis. So the Borg were not and never remotely stopped from succeeding in their confirmatory mission back through time during the events of Star Trek VIII: First Contact; rather, I feel quite sure they pulled it off flawlessly. That's the scariest part, that for the Borg it was _wonderfully, childishly easy_. I can understand why even 'Q' warned his son what not to do by the Cyberpersons from the Delta Quadrant.

I loved "First Contact." It’s definitely in the top three best Trek movies. However, the Borg's villain decay began with the introduction of the Queen. Before the Queen, what made the Borg truly terrifying was that they had no leader, they were a true hive mind just acting out the collective will of all the individual members. Individual members who were probably very much the same as you and me. What was scary about the Borg was that we could see ourselves in them. They were what we could become if we allowed true mob mentality to take over. But then the character of the Queen was introduced, and the Borg became just another space empire whose members were only falling in line with the will a tyrannical despot, no different from the Klingons or the Romulans. They went from being something truly unique to being something very typical. Such a shame...

My biggest problem with the Borg was, that they tried to assimilate Earth twice… With one cube!!! We saw in another Voyager episode that if they go for the whole species then they go with a lot of cubes. So I thought, that if they would send just two cubes against Earth, Federation would be screwed! (Also, although First Contact is one of my most favorite Star Trek movie, it truly doesn’t make sense since two cubes would have done the job without the need for time traveling)

The AI villains that Kirk was able to talk to death--Like Landru.

Q was not a villain, he was disrupting the status quo of the Federation to prepare them for the challenges to come. Q forewarns the Federation of the Borg, who seem more interested in farming the Federation for new technology than actually assimilating them. Then when the Federation arms to the teeth for the Borg, the Dominion happens along and the Federation is prepared for them.

Q is less of a villain and more of a combination of the Uncle that takes you to amusement parks and the teacher that's often confused and disappointed with his students.

Half of this list isn’t overrated villains but just villains the writers forgot how to use properly. The Borg got given too much individualism and lost their most terrifying elements. The Klingons just work way better as the Federation’s reluctant allies. I fully disagree with yours and a lot of these comments take on Q. He always worked best for me as a villain who messed with the crew because he had nothing better to do. His later appearances just don’t work as well because he seems too invested in what’s going on.

I agree that the Borg really became less of a threat over the voyager series.. I do think after scorpion is when it went downhill.

Q will always have a place in my heart for no other reason than the Mariachi band. The single best scene in all of Star Trek.

It's been said, but I do agree that Star Trek has always been more about antagonism than outright villainy. In fact, I remember many discussions back in the day about how almost all the races, but especially the antagonistic ones are designed to be unbalanced exaggerations of traits of humanity. The Borg - collectivism. The Ferengi - capitalism. The Cardassians - Imperialism. The Klingons - honor, power, duty. The Romulans - deceit and manipulation. The Q Continuum more than anything is meant to be a reflection upon the very qualities that make humanity a worthwhile investment/venture.

I see Q as more a Loki analog. He enjoys "stirring the pot" or causing drama, but all of his antics are normally to hide an important lesson he is trying to teach

I thought Kelpians would age and metamorphose into Armus aliens, but the writers went with something worse

Considering that the Kazon were notoriously unpopular at the time Voyager’s 1st season first aired (even their creators talked openly of their dissatisfaction with them and couldn’t wait to get Voyager “out of Kazon space”), that being the case… could they really be considered “overrated” if everyone hated them? Otherwise, interesting list.

What I didn't get about the Kazon they had warp ships and there were enough planets with water. The Ocampa Home World was an exeption. So why were they so keen to get water. Why didn't they just leave this planet. They tried to get to the water inside instead of looking elsewere.

I feel like 8472 should have been on this list. They got added as the thing worse than the borg and then got downgraded super fast and then forgotten about

I have always argued that Q was more of a teacher trickster than a malevolent one. Like if you Tuvix'd the Doctor and the Master (or Missy as the situation requires) that you would get something closer to Q. Every time Q showed up, there was some sort of important lesson (let's say the deep Space nine episode which was fluff. I will concede that.) and in ways was more of a harsh teacher but ultimately did a net good for the federation. If Q had never introduced Starfleet and the Borg, Starfleet would have never made the necessary technological advances and shift in focus to defense and militarization, Starfleet would have been unable to stand up to the Dominion.

Pretty much any enemy of the federation is kneecapped by plot devices. DS9 was the only series to contain real threats because of the main cast being in one place and the antagonists being able to show up much more often. It would get redundant if a ship that travels vast parts of the galaxy had the same threat often enough for them to really develop. Voyager really could've been written to have constant encounters with the borg and flesh it out much more than it did, but instead they wanted to explore a wider range of inept enemies. Maybe one day we'll get a Klingon based series that shows how much more of a threat they were on a wider scale than just what the enterprise encountered.

Q is more of an antagonist than a villain. His species is so far beyond us that he's basically a bratty kid messing with an ant farm. He doesn't become a villain, though, because he seems to actually care about his ants... in his own twisted way.

The Kazon would have to be rated in the first place for them to be over-rated. Not sure that was ever the case. The Klingons is an interesting one and makes me think of Ezri's critique of the Empire at the end of S7. She - accurately imo - calls out a society in deep denial about what it really is. We haven't seen the Klingons in 32nd century Discovery and that's intriguing. Hopefully it's a plot point Academy will pick up

I thought the Borg would've been number 1.

Totally agree on the Borg. I actually think First Contact and the Queen ruined them. They were far scarier as a genuine hive mind than slime zombies from planet X.

So, to sum it up: The Hero-ship and its crew basically has plot amour and is OP. Thus all villains eventually succumb to the dark... eh federated side...

I never considered Q a villain not in the traditional sense. In the end Picard actually called him friend

Q is best used as a framing device than an antagonist. I’d have put the Ferengi in that list. Made to be a new threat, but they just never managed to much beyond kind of shady.

The Borg are never overrated. They aren't easily stopped at all by the federation. It takes complex, season spanning plot threads to take them out. Even after they were "defeated", they still reactivate...sometimes even hundreds of years later. The Borg are the most formidable foe in Trek.

Doesn't this pretty much include all Federation rivals? The show pumped up rivals, but when the time came, the showrunners were just too infatuated with their leads to challenge them.

I know this one might catch people off guard, but I never much cared for the Dominion. Not so much that they were ineffective. They did nearly conquer the Alpha Quadrant. I just didn't like their motivations. It seemed to boil down to, "because we can." I felt they were more appropriate for those old Saturday Morning cartoon show villains.

The Duras sisters... B'Etor was HOT! 🔥

If all these are overrated, which ones are better / correctly rated? The Paklids? They look for things. Say what you will about the Duras sisters, at least they had closure.

You reminded me that s1 of Picard exists. Pox on you, pox on your livestock.

The Dominion kind of had arcs of being overrated, the Jem’Hadar went from being unbeatable to just another adversary (unless you were on Red Squad), but then the writers uppped the ante with the Breen joining the Dominion and their energy draining weapon basically forcing everyone but the Klingons to pull back for a while.

I think Voyager did a good job with their villains seeing how they were not going to be in the same area for a long period. It couldn't have been easy on the creative side. I wouldn't say Klingons and Borg are overrated. Over used, yes.

Lore: if I had an evil twin I would have given myself a hidden tattoo or gold molar haha

Star Trek has the same problem with all of it's truly terrifying villains. They introduce him/them and fans go "Whoa!!!!" Huge ratings. So, the studio says "Make another episode featuring them!" And so they do and then another and another and another and eventually they aren't very terrifying anymore. Worse, they become clowns like Imperial Stormtroopers and B1 Battle Droids in Star Wars. Happened to the Borg.

IMO the Ferrengi should be no 1. They don't really make sense as they swing from semiferral hissing and growling to smart and cunning financial transaction while fighting with enery whips that don't seem to be that effective against star fleet crews using facers. But more importantly their society is pretty much doomed to fall apart at any second as it is based on destroying your competition and making profit no matter what which pretty much rules out that they would be working together as a race without stabbing each other in the back. Even when Ferrengi had limited success that was pretty much always undone by some other Ferrengi taking advantage of the situation and undoing the success of his fellow Ferrengi in the process which could be seen every time Quark was getting somewhat close to being the great Nagus.

I think an entire video could be made on the stupidity of Discovery season 3 turbolift battle. In what universe would it make sense for a starship to have an enormous stadium sized void inside?

do you know anything about Star Trek the reason why the federation could resist the Borg in Voyager is because they learnt much before then. you can't expect a villain to be a god

Yeah, the Zhat Vash was a big continuity problem for me, especially since rudimentary AI (let alone the Soong Sons) had been roaming around with zero problems- and somehow, I'm guessing Tomalok's reports included information about the pale one. Heck, if they started post-TNG- maybe as a RESPONSE to the Mars Incident (which could have an 'organic' cause, or even Federation-based sabotage...) it would work- but having to figure out how the RSE has a massive, secretive group that could call on massive military efforts, the substantial spy network, and so on- but just let's Data walk around on Romulus makes less than zero sense.

The Kazon were barely better than the Pakleds. The former could at least figure out how to use technology but it was clear they were not creating it. Hell they didn't even know how to synthize water yet were using energy weapons and FTL ships. Q was always a boring character. Often the low point for TNG along with any episodes with Luxana Troi. However to give some credit, Q's departure in Picard did give us a good closing, which they later ruined, for the character and could now make some of his previous episodes more tolerable. The Borg started to lose their edge with the Hugh episode onward.

i dont think Q ever was a villain. yeah in the first tng he was gonna wipe humanity from existance but i think he was trying to guide humans after that. sent the enterprise to see a huge threat that was looming so the federation could prepare themselves etc. i think after the first episode of tng he become a sort of mentor to help guide the way a bit

The Duras Sisters villainy may be overrated, but their hotness could never be! 😻😻😻

I was glad when the Kazon were finally left behind in Voyager, they were like diet Klingons, granted they needed some foe for Voyager to be antagonised by, but they really were dreadfully weak as a plotline, so much more could have been done with them, but they were just weird guys with silly hairdos...

I'd argue that Q isn't a villian, but an anti-hero, trying to do good in his own way, even if he breaks the rules and annoys people like Picard along the way, in order to teach Picard etc a lesson on being human and navigating the wild west of space.

That's defensible, especially if you're taking a property-wide view.

tapestry is still one of my top favorite episodes of TNG (though unlike everyone else i know who was/is a trekkie im the only one who liked Q from the start and so enjoyed every tng episode he was in)

Some of what you call overrated is simply underused, especially given some of their buildup (ie. the swarm)

Kazon was unknown threat but when you look its a wonder you fear them

Man, that vehicle driving off in the background...

Q is not a villain, in actual fact he was more of a threat to the Borg. When he flung The Enterprise D all the way to meet them, he was actually showing the Borg the very ship that would end them for good.

I think in some ways the Kazon were to similar to the Klingons but didn't have any honour.

True, We should see more from the emerald chain cause that was a true adversary.

Q is definitely not an out and out villain. I'd call him... an antagonistic ruthless ally. All of his actions in TNG helped humanity, and especially Picard.

Not all villans were created equal or used equal so this is a bit unfair tbh alot didint get enough screen time ,the borg were over used like they were pulled out every time viewing figures need raising

The Kazon was the reason I almost stopped watching Voyager

I thought the Borg were terrifying at first, when they were more like an insect hive. However, the writers must have realized that unless they nerfed the Borg hard, the show would be over in about a season.

Voyager, where good Star Trek premises go to die or be overused.

How the Sam Hill are the Kazon overrated when they're consistently portrayed as utterly pathetic, a threat only because Voyager is alone a long way from home?

How were the Changelings not on here? Especially in Picard

Villains just end up being foils for the main contracted players. They never win, and often end up as bland shells of themselves.

The carnivorous Tribbles would have been an interesting villian.