Big Bad / Star Trek

Films

• V'Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a vast and powerful entity headed toward Earth with mysterious purpose, in actuality the Voyager VI satellite having gained sentience from all the knowledge it absorbed and intending to return that knowledge to its creators with ruthless results, despite NASA being long gone.
• Khan Noonien Singh, the title character of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a tyrant with superior intellect who, following the events that left him stranded on a planet peacefully, became angry at Kirk again and hoping to get revenge when said planet went to ruin and some of his fellow crewmates (such as his wife) died. He intended to murder him, but in his revenge, seeks to utilize the Genesis technology to subject Kirk to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, commanding officer of a Klingon Bird-of-Prey who is determined to steal the secret of Genesis, which drives him to the planet Spock is reborn on, making things personal when Kruge's machinations get Kirk's son David killed.
• The Cetacean Probe in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, in a Blue-and-Orange Morality way at the least, as it is sent to Earth to communicate with extinct whales and is unaware that it is threatening to wipe out all life on Earth.
• The nameless Energy Being claiming to be God in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, who Spock's half-brother Sybok had been determined to free, stealing the Enterprise and manipulating the crew to achieve this. In addition, Klaa, a glory-hungry Klingon captain, pursues the Enterprise all the way to "God"'s world with the intention of having a battle with Kirk.
• General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a Klingon officer who is opposed to peace with the Federation, orchestrating the assasination of Chancellor Gorkon to frame Kirk for it, and is determined to work with fellow Federation officers such as Admiral Cartwright who are similarly opposed to peace between the Federation and the Klingons.
• Dr. Tolian Soran in Star Trek: Generations, a scientist hell bent on returning to Nexus even if it means destroying entire planets and their inhabitants in process.
• The Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact, the Queen of a Galactic Assimilator race, the Borg. She is in charge of the Borg that have time travelled to conquer Earth in the past prior to Earth's first contact with the Vulcans. Also the only female Star Trek Big Bad.
• Ru'afo in Star Trek: Insurrection, a Son'a who plans to wipe out the Baku and live forever, in actuality both races are the same, thus he also plans to avenge their exile.
• Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis, a clone of Picard created by an earlier Romulan government to act as a mole in Starfleet, but with the plan abandoned, becomes the leader of the Remans, a suppressed species on Romulus. Shinzon is determined to see to it that the Remans get their place in the galaxy at any cost.
• Star Trek (2009) has Nero, possibly the most pissed off Romulan ever, who is determined to destroy Vulcan and then the rest of the Federation because neither managed to save Romulus from being obliterated by a supernova. He's got a decent reason for being so angry, but good grief, he's got to be the new king of disproportionate response.
• Star Trek Into Darkness has John Harrison/ Khan Noonien Singh, an infamous war criminal working for Starfleet under an assumed identity, and Admiral Marcus, who plans to sacrifice the Enterprise so he can start a war with the Klingons. Uniquely, once the Enterprise crew learn this, Kirk forms an Enemy Mine with Khan to defeat Marcus. Towards the climax, however, Khan kills Marcus, establishing himself as the sole Big Bad and acting vengefully when he believes his crew was killed.
• Star Trek Beyond has the alien warlord Krall aka Balthazar Edison, a former Starfleet officer, who intends to unleash a bioweapon on the Federation because its peaceful nature spits on his Social Darwinist beliefs.

TV series

• Star Trek: The Original Series has the Klingons, who are introduced near the end of the first season and soon established as the Federation's main rivals in a cold war situation, making multiple appearances across the three seasons. Attempts were made to establish an individual Klingon as a personal rival for Kirk, with both Kor and Koloth planned to make return appearances, but a combination of actor availability and the show's cancellation meant they both made only a single appearance.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation has Q, a Reality Warper who encounters the main characters in the series premiere and becomes a recurring threat ever since, although he becomes less and less bad as the series goes on and ends up as more of a Trickster figure, though him being the one who introduces the Enterprise crew to the Borg in the first place does set the ground for future stories involving them. The show in general is more episodic than arc-driven, but has a couple of big season-finale arcs; Commander Sela, the daughter of an alternate timeline Tasha Yar, seems to be behind everything the Romulans are doing in late Season 4/early Season 5, and Lore, evil brother of Data, has a go by setting himself up as the leader of a group of Borg in season 7.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has a couple, unusual for Star Trek with it's episodic rather than arc-driven format, but this makes sense for a series set on a space station rather than a starship:
  • Gul Dukat is Deep Space Nine's premier Big Bad. A ruthless Cardassian warlord and the former owner of the titular space station, he starts out as a fairly bog-standard antagonist, becomes a sympathetic character (an Anti-Villain if not Anti-Hero), before crossing the Moral Event Horizon and becoming, effectively, the antichrist as the Champion of the Pah'Wraiths, also serving as the Final Boss due to being dealt with only after the Dominion's war ends due to him corrupting Kai Winn and attempting to unleash the Pah'Wraiths. He's also the only recurring villain in Star Trek history to kill off a main character when he murders Jadzia Dax.
  • The Female Changeling serves as the face of the Founders (the leaders of The Dominion), the faction from the Gamma Quadrant who seek to take over the galaxy, although Weyoun has a fair amount of face time representing The Dominion as well. Cardassia's alliance with the Dominion late in the series allows for a Big Bad Duumvirate between Gul Dukat (later Legate Damar when Dukat stops directly leading Cardassia) and the Female Changeling, but their paths split while Dukat disguises himself as a Bajoran for his goal of becoming the antichrist, while Cardassia under Damar turns on the Dominion. The Breen, lead by Thot Gor, become the Dominion's new partner in the final season.
  • Chancellor Gowron appears to be the Big Bad of Season 4, as he leads the Klingons into becoming more aggressive, invading Cardassia and declaring war on the Federation. However, it eventually turns out he is being manipulated by the Dominion, with the Changeling disguised as General Martok serving as The Man Behind the Man. After he is exposed and the real Martok is rescued, Gowron returns to being an ally, albeit disappearing for a long time only to be killed by Worf to give Martok a Klingon Promotion after he endangers the success of the war against the Dominion in order to eliminate political enemies.
• Star Trek: Voyager is laid out as a linear journey through space, and so the 'Big Bads' naturally progress as the titular ship moves through different territories. There are a couple of stand-outs over the course of the series:
  • For the first two seasons, the ship is hounded by a sect of the Kazon, although the exact Big Bad is debatable: their leader is First Maje Jal Culluh, but The Mole, Seska, has center stage much more often, even going on to menace the heroes a couple more times post-mortem.
  • For a period in the middle seasons, Species 8472 seem to be the Big Bad, being treated as such a threat that Voyager ends up in an Enemy Mine situation with the Borg.
  • A few seasons later, when the Borg take over as Voyager's main adversaries, the role of Big Bad goes to the one controlling them (or the one personifying them, or whatever is going on there), the Borg Queen.
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • Silik is almost the Big Bad of the first two seasons, but since he's being controlled by Future Guy, he fell short. The whole story is never really concluded because the Temporal Cold War doesn't really go anywhere and wasn't very popular.
  • The Xindi story of season 3 spent most of the time trying to figure out who among the Xindi Council was reasonable and who wanted to blow up Earth no matter what, or the Big Bad. Eventually every Xindi species but the Reptilians started to side with the Enterprise instead of the Sphere-Builders.
  • The Romulans begin to take on this role in season 4, working to undermine the alliances that would lead to the formation of the Federation. If the series had continued, the storyline would eventually have led to the Romulan War mentioned in the original series.
• Star Trek: Discovery seems to be closer to the seasonal Big Bad format since the seasons are made up of largely self-contained ongoing storylines:
  • In the first season, the main thrust is the war between the Federation and the Klingons, with the Klingon war effort being led in turn by T'Kuvma, Voq (who also makes things personal for Michael by the surgical operation that allows him to become her love interest, Ash Tyler), General Kol and finally a Big Bad Ensemble of the twenty-four Klingon Houses. For the third quarter of the season, Gabriel Lorca, the Discovery's captain who was originally native to the Mirror Universe, is the Big Bad of the Mirror Universe arc, in an Evil Versus Evil situation with Emperor Philippa Georgiou, with Discovery taking Philippa's side and her siding with them in return leaving Gabriel as the main threat.
  • In the second season, the Big Bad is Control, a Section 31 threat assessment program that becomes sentient through contact with an AI from the future (actually the future incarnation of Control which completely annihilated all life in the future) and attempts to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy, and whom Michael's mother, the time travelling Red Angel, has been trying to stop.
  • The third season has Osyraa, leader of the Emerald Chain, who seeks to make her group the dominant power in the galaxy. At first her actions are directed at Book, enslaving his homeworld, but once Discovery opposes her and she learns of its spore drive, she is willing to steal the ship in order to achieve this power, capturing the crew to do so to force Starfleet to legitimize her regime.
  • The fourth season at first glance has Species 10-C, the extra-galactic race responsible for the Dark Matter Anomaly that is rampaging across the galaxy. However, it eventually turns out that they're just trying to harvest a rare mineral needed to power their Dyson Sphere habitat, and simply have such a different viewpoint that they don't view other species as sentient; when they realize their mistake, they agree to shut the DMA down. It's at this point that the season's true antagonist emerges in the form of Ruon Tarka, a Federation scientist obsessed with using the DMA's power source as a means of reuniting with his soulmate in another dimension, regardless of potentially either provoking the 10-C into war or triggering a galaxy-wide ecological disaster as a side effect, which also makes things personal for Michael when Book, whose planet was seemingly destroyed by the DMA, allies with Ruon for most of the season (though eventually returning to the side of good).
• Star Trek: Picard:
  • Season one has Commodore Oh, leader of the Zhat Vash group, who wants to prevent the Destroyer from killing all organic life, no matter how many people need to be killed to accomplish this. This includes the installation of Narek as a Honey Trap for Soji, the identity of the Destroyer.
  • Season two has a Big Bad Shuffle that begins with Q, Jean-Luc Picard's old adversary, now driven by him slowly dying, changing the timeline and morphing the Federation into a fascist regime as part of another trial for him, forcing Jean-Luc to time travel to the past and Set Right What Once Went Wrong. However, Q plays no further role after trying to gaslight Jean-Luc's ancestor Renee into abandoning an important mission and coercing Adam Soong (the ancestor of Data's creator Noonien Soong and the mastermind behind the genetic engineering that created Khan Noonien Singh) into attempting to murder her in exchange for help curing his daughter. A Borg Queen rescued by Jean-Luc's crew then moves up into being the central villain, moving against them and goading Agnes into killing her so she becomes her host, and also enlists Adam's help with promises of a great future. After the Borg Queen departs peacefully in La Sirena with Agnes in the penultimate episode, Adam Soong is left as the Final Boss as he makes one more attempt to murder Renee.
  • Season three has bounty hunter Vadic, whose attacks on Beverly Crusher and her son Jack, the long lost son of Jean-Luc Picard, force Jean-Luc and William Riker to commandeer the Titan to defend them. She is later revealed to be part of a rogue faction of Changelings whom were previously experimented on by Starfleet to create a new breed of spies. Then it's revealed the Borg, commanded by the original Borg Queen, are the true Big Bad that Vadic is working for, and the rogue Changelings' theft of Jean-Luc's original human body, still infused with Borg DNA, was part of a plan to assimilate all the younger Starfleet personnel into the Borg.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • Seasons one and two sees the Pakleds, an Insufficiently Advanced Alien race from The Next Generation, gain greater weaponry and wage war across the galaxy, becoming the main obstacle faced by the Cerritos. Their conflict also continues into the season three premiere when they attempt to frame Captain Freeman for bombing them.
  • Season three has Admiral Les Buenamigo, who spends the whole season setting the Cerritos up for failure so his AI-powered Texas-class ships can replace the California-class. He is also responsible for the accident that led to Rutherford requiring his implant, personally giving the orders to alter Rutherford's memories.
  • Season 4 has Nicholas Locarno behind a series of attacks on Alpha Quadrant ships, ultimately revealed as part of a plot to build a fleet of mutineers and steal a Genesis Device to become the dominant power in the quadrant and overthrow Starfleet after his expulsion.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds:
  • Season one has the Gorn, who were responsible for the deaths of La'an's family in the backstory and twice attack the Enterprise crew, planning to kill them and use them as incubators for their young.
  • Season 2 further solidifies the Gorn's position as the Big Bad, further encroaching on Federation territory with building threats of all-out war, culminating in an armed standoff with Enterprise in the season finale.