For characters who debuted in Star Trek: The Original Series, see Characters.Star Trek The Original Series
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Sybok
Sybok
Played by: Laurence Luckinbill
Dubbed in French by: Jean-Pierre Delage
Spock's half-brother, an emotional Vulcan on a quest to find God.
- Affably Evil: He's unfailingly well-mannered and compassionate, even when he's not at his most ethical.
- All for Nothing: Succeeds in reaching Sha Ka Ree only to find he was the Unwitting Pawn of the Sealed Evil in a Can fake God trapped there.
- Anti-Villain: Of the "Noble" and "Well-Intentioned" variety. He's not really a bad guy at all, just misguided and taking things too far.
- Break the Believer: Oh, he's broken all right when he learns the truth about "God".
- Friendly Enemy: He genuinely seems to like Kirk, wanting him to share the adventure. Also, when "God" zaps Kirk for questioning him, Sybok says, "Why have you done this to my friend?" with no hint of sarcasm.
- Have You Seen My God?: He is convinced that God lives in the centre of the galaxy. The expanded universe says that the evil entity that actually does live there somehow contacted and tricked him into believing this in order to escape, making Sybok an Unwitting Pawn.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Sacrifices himself to fight the entity and buy the crew time to escape.
- I Control My Minions Through... Epiphany Therapy.
- The Kindnapper: Kidnaps the Romulan, Klingon and Federation Ambassadors to Nimbus III and converts them to his cause in order to get his hands on a spaceship, so he can take all of his followers to meet God.
- Long-Lost Relative: He is Spock's half-brother.
- Messianic Archetype: In the beginning of the film, Sybok appears as a hooded, bearded man who disarms and converts a bandit through kindness, and appears to heal him of all his pain via touch (using his Vulcan mind-reading, of course.) He even rides on a horse and wears a white cloak. Quickly Subverted once more of his character and violent tactics become apparent.
- Nominal Villain: Sybok is on an emotional quest to find God and is willing to kidnap diplomats and hijack a ship to accomplish. Despite this, he is unfailingly well-mannered and compassionate, and doesn't even kill anyone, which is quite rare for a Star Trek movie villain. In the end he sacrifices himself to buy the crew time to escape the entity.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Sybok is basically the only full-blooded Vulcan depicted with facial hair until Voyager.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Once he realizes he isn't dealing with God and has put everyone in danger, he immediately helps out.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: He rejected the Emotion Suppression of Vulcan society, choosing instead to embrace his emotions.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Sybok was considered a genius, en route to becoming one of the great scholars of Vulcan, before deciding to embrace emotion rather than logic.
- Psychic Powers: He is able to telepathically force people to confront their own deep-rooted traumas.
- Redemption Equals Death: Dies buying time for the others to escape after he realizes he's been duped.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: It's stated that his mother was a Vulcan princess—a statement which has been recontextualized and/or considered apocryphal in numerous subsequent works.
- Single-Issue Psychology: He helps people by using his psychic powers to make them confront their "one pain", leaving them feeling much better and usually converting them to his side. Subverted with the evil entity, which is clearly hurt and frustrated when he pulls this trick on him, but recovers and still remains evil.
- Sin Eater: Sybok gathers his army by using a mind meld to cleanse people of their traumatic memories. Scotty even calls him a sin eater in the Novelization.
- Technical Pacifist: He dislikes killing and violence- and it must be said, in the end he doesn't kill anyone- but is ready to resort to hijacking, kidnapping and maybe-or-not-quite brainwashing (probably closer to More than Mind Control) in order to fulfil his objective, and even then only because he thinks he is on a Mission from God.
- Vision Quest: Sybok states that he was given knowledge of Heaven from a vision by God himself, leading to Kirk's You're Insane! below.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: While his actions are questionable to say the least, he honestly didn't want anyone to get hurt or killed during the mission. The second his "God" started harming his brother and friends, he decided to turn against him.
- You're Insane!:Kirk: (matter-of-factly) You are mad.Sybok: (pensively) Am I? (smiles confidently) We'll see!
Captain Klaa
Captain Klaa
Played by: Todd Bryant
A brash young Klingon captain who is bored of his usual hobby of blowing up bits of space debris, and so decides that the best way to become famous quickly is to engage Kirk in battle and defeat him.
- Demoted to Extra: A more literal example than most; he pops up again in the next film, apparently having been busted down to a court translator. That film doesn't confirm either way whether it's meant to be Klaanote , but novels and other materials confirmed that it was.
- Didn't Think This Through: In his zeal to attack Kirk, he either didn't realize or just flat-out ignored the fact that his orders were only to rescue Koord, not pick fights with the Federation. Eventually, Koord himself removes him from command over this.
- Expy: He's effectively a younger, more impetuous version of Kruge from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
- Glory Seeker: The entire reason why he goes after Kirk.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country shows Klaa has been demoted to a court translator.
- Sleeves Are for Wimps: His uniform
◊ is cut down to a vest.
General Korrd
General Korrd
"I'm a foolish old man."
Played by: Charles Cooper
The Klingon ambassador on Nimbus III.
- Big Damn Heroes: He commandeers Klaa's ship to come to Kirk's rescue at the climax.
- Drowning His Sorrows: What he seems to be spending most of his time on Nimbus III doing. He drinks some of Scotty's whiskey at the end but seems in better spirits.
- Noodle Incident: Spock's briefing on Korrd reveals the General's fallen out of favor with Klingon High Command. What exactly Kordd did or didn't do to end up on their shit list isn't revealed (though a careful look at the briefing graphic indicates it may have been an Orion Pirates-related event dubbed the Feira Incident).
- Ordered Apology: He elicits one of these from Klaa over his attack on Kirk.
- Outliving One's Offspring: In the novelization, Talbot explains to Dar that Korrd became fed up with the Empire's militarism after both his children, a son and a daughter, were killed in relatively minor skirmishes.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: His posting on Nimbus III seems to be this due to the aforementioned strained relations between him and Klingon High Command.
- Retired Badass: Kirk notes his military strategies were required learning at Starfleet Academy.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Per the novelization, he happens to be the brother-in-law of the entire Klingon military's Number Two, or else he would certainly have been executed after his fall from grace.
- Stockholm Syndrome: He becomes a convert to Sybok's cause after being taken hostage by him.
- Worthy Opponent: Kirk believes he would have been one of these in his heyday, noting he hopes he's treated better than Korrd when put out to pasture.
God
God
"Brave souls, welcome."
Played by: George Murdock
An entity sealed in the center of the galaxy claiming to be God.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Subverted. Initially appearing as a pillar of blue light, claiming to be "one voice, many faces"; he appears to play this trope straight, assuming the form of a wizened old man (after cycling through the likenesses of other mythical deities). However, being the sociopathic asshole that he is, he ultimately uses this ability to troll Sybok by turning into his Evil Doppelgänger."God": What's the matter? Don't you like this face? I have so many, but this one suits you best.
- Evil Sounds Deep: Starts out with the grandfatherly baritone one would expect a wizened deity to have, but it becomes more icy and malevolent as he reveals his sociopathic true colors.
- God Guise: Plays along with Sybok's delusions that he is in fact God.
- God Is Evil: Though most likely a subversion since it's probably not actually God but just another Sufficiently Advanced Alien.Spock: This is NOT the god of Sha-Ka-Ree... or any other god.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: If he hadn't claimed to be God / been a Jerkass to Kirk / given away his Evil Plan to merge with the ship, he might well have managed to escape.
- Kick the Dog: Blasting Kirk with lightning for "doubting him". Prior to this point, the rest of the away team were not only willing to hear him out but were warning Kirk not to annoy himnote . By lashing out in such a petty manner, he revealed himself for the sociopathic monster he truly was.Sybok: Why have you done this to my friend?"God": He doubts me.Spock: You have not answered his question: What does God need with a starship?["God" blasts Spock with lightning, then menacingly turns toward McCoy.]"God": Do you doubt me?
- One-Winged Angel: Downplayed. After the Enterprise hits him with a photon torpedo, he assumes a more ominous spectral form and goes after Kirk. Originally, he was supposed to turn into a rock monster that Kirk would fight, but this scene was cut due to poor cinematography.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: He claimed to have been imprisoned on the planet in the center of the galaxy and wanted to "join" with the Enterprise so he could escape."God": Sha-Ka-Ree, a vision YOU created. For an eternity I have been imprisoned in this place. The ship. I must have the ship! Now... give me what I want, or watch these puny things die... horribly.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Implied in the movie and canon in the expanded universe, where it's said that the whole God Guise thing was its modus operandi even before it was imprisoned.
St John Talbot
St John Talbot
"We're already prisoners here on this worthless lump of rock."
Played by: David Warner
The Federation ambassador to Nimbus III.
- Advertised Extra: He's the only character other than the seven regulars and Sybok whose actor is listed on the opening titles. Aside from
being played by David Warner, it's hard to see what he's done to deserve this: He has eight lines and contributes virtually nothing to the plot aside from making a surprise allegiance change. - "Ass" in Ambassador: He was probably a decent man once but the years in the hellhole of Nimbus III have left him cynical and jaded.
- Hooked Up Afterwards: It's implied he does this with Romulan ambassador Caithlin Dar: At the climax of the movie, they're sharing a drink and he comments on how far they've come in a short time.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: What his posting on Nimbus III seems to be.
- Smart People Speak the Queen's English: Especially when played by David Warner.
- Stockholm Syndrome: When the Enterprise crew arrive to rescue him, they find he's now a convert to Sybok's cause.
Admiral Robert Bennett
Admiral Robert Bennett
Played by: Harve Bennett
The officer who assigns the Enterprise-A to rescue Sybok's hostages on Nimbus III.
- Creator Cameo: Played by Harve Bennett, who produced and co-wrote the second through fifth films.
- First-Name Basis: He's only referred to as "Bob" on-screen, with his full name coming from supplementary materials.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: In the sense that his poorly thought-out orders end up making the entire plot of the film possible, instead of the hostage situation being immediately resolved by a ship with working transporters. Surprisingly enough, it's inverted in the few novel appearances that he's made, where he's actually shown to be a Reasonable Authority Figure.
- Skewed Priorities: He insists on sending the Enterprise-A to rescue the ambassadors despite suffering major systems malfunctions and being under-crewed, on the grounds that Kirk is the best captain to handle the job. Even accepting the fanon theory that Kirk couldn't take the Excelsior because its transwarp drive didn't work, any other ship would have been able to just fly over to Nimbus III and beam the hostages out of danger. It's possible that Bennett needed the name Enterprise as well to impress the hostage-takers, but even then, he could logically have sent a fully-working ship and the Enterprise.
David McCoy
David McCoy
"Let me go."
Played by: Bill Quinn
Dr. McCoy's ailing and, by the time of the film's events, deceased father.
- All for Nothing: The whole debate about whether or not to euthanize him was rendered irrelevant by a cure for his degenerative condition being discovered. Unfortunately, this didn't happen until shortly after Bones put an end to his suffering.
- All There in the Manual: His first name isn't actually mentioned in the film or its credits, but had previously been given in a throwaway line in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock when Bones used I Am X, Son of Y after the Vulcans did so.
- Mercy Kill: At his own request, Bones gives him one to prevent a slow, agonizing death.
- My Greatest Failure: Bones views his failure to refuse his father's request for euthanasia as this, allowing Sybok to exploit it in an effort to win him over to his cause.
- Posthumous Character: He's deceased by the time of the film.
