Marty Michaels

Been a while since I posted a new top ten, so after much handwringing and hair pullage here, for your consideration, are my top ten Science Fiction villains. Onward!

10. Roy Batty from Blade Runner

I gotta admit, Blade Runner is not one of my favorite films. It’s awfully involved and it’s not a film you can watch passivley, which is perhaps the reason it’s not as well liked as it might be. I’ve watched it four or five times, and every time I leave feeling like I’ve somehow missed something; like I’m not “getting” it somehow. Regardless, Roy Batty is a fascinating villain and the “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t beleive” speech alone earns him a place on this list. “Time to die…”

9. T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day

A “mimetic poly-alloy,” ten times as advanced as the T-800 and therefore ten times as awesome, the T-1000 is played by the always cool Robert Patrick in Terminator 2. I’ve always maintained that T2 isn’t as good as the first one, but it’s still undeniably brilliant. CGI was still in its infancy when T2 was made, so when you see a truck drive over a bridge or a motorcyle drive through a window onto a helicopter, that’s exactly what you’re seeing – no cop out pixelated bullshit. Except when it comes to the T-1000, of course, who sometimes appears as CGI and, like Jurrassic Park, it’s CGI that looks a million times better than 99% of shit that’s out there now.

8. The Alien from Alien

I don’t understand people who claim that Aliens is better than Alien. It’s bigger, louder, dumber, more things blow up, there’s more smart mouthed John McLaine dialouge and the alien is bigger. If that adds up to a better film, then I must know nothing about film. But anyway, the Alien (or Xenomorph, if you’re a big Alien geek) is a great villain: utterly terrifying and damn near unstoppable. In classic monster or slasher movie style, the Alien keeps mostly in the shadows, picking off crewmembers one by one and ratching up the tension to damn near unbearable levels. Brilliantly designed and realised, the Alien is as instantly recognisable and iconic as any of the classic movie monsters.

7. Count Baltar from Battlestar Galactica

No not the guy with the long hair and the suit, we’re talking original Battlestar Galactica here, bitches. In the slimy and despicable tradition of villainous actors such as James Mason, former Klingon John Colicos made Baltar the perfect boo-hiss badguy. After selling out the human race to the Cylons causing the destruction of Caprica and the deaths of untold millions (and being an utterly remorseless bastard about it), Baltar makes it his mission to kill Adama and destroy the Galactica. Fans of nuBSG will undoubtedly point out that Baltar and the rest of the the original run characters are more one dimensinal and less interesting than their reboot counterparts, but you know what? If I want realism and hard hitting emotional drama, I wont watch a show involving spaceships and robots.

6. Doctor Zaius from Planet of the Apes

Given the wonderfully contradictory title of Minister of Science in Charge of Advancing Ape Knowledge and Chief Defender of the Faith, Zaius is, like his job title, one of the biggest bastards in sci fi and yet his motives are entirley understandable and almost commendable. Carrying the knowledge of the true history of ape civilisation around with him whilst trying to maintain the status quo is hard enough, but when Charlton Heston shows up and uncomfortable questions start being asked, it seems fair enough that he would want to supress the true facts. It’s when he starts resorting to lobotomies and vasectomies for Taylor’s crewmates that he stops being a little over zealous and starts being a bit of a bastard. Plus, he’s an orangutan, undoubtedly the shittest of the great apes. That said, he did get his own TV special, so what do I know?

5. The Thing from The Thing From Another World! and The Thing


Released in 1951, the original Thing movie – The Thing From Another World! – is a masterpeice of Cold War paranoia, second only to Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Likeable characters, snappy dialouge and a great, if cheesy alien, this brilliant film was remade (though, it could be a sequel, depending on how you look at things) and perfected by John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing. The original, though great, fails on one point – the alien does not shapeshift as it does in the original short story. Carpenter remied that and gave us not only one of the best sci fi villains, but one of the best aliens and monsters in cinema history. The air of mistrust and paranoia and the tension that Carpenter creates is every bit as nail bitingly awesome as anything Hitchcock created.

4. Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon

“Foolish Earthlings! Who will save you now?” The oldest villain on the list, the Emperor of Mongo made his first apperance in 1934. His first major non-comics apperance was in the Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers serial in the late 30s, but the incarnation of the character we’re concerning ourselves with is Max Von Sydow in the 1980 Flash Gordon. Von Sydow is one of those actors not afraid to risk making himself look silly and so he threw himself with reckless abandon into the part of Ming and made a stock villain into the most leering, most over the top villain this side of Skelator. The film goes every bit as over the top as Von Sydow’s performance and everybody plays their parts to the hilt – well, everybody except Timothy Dalton, who apparently never noticed it was supposed to be satire. In any case, Von Sydow’s performance alone puts him on the list. And just look at those eyebrows!

3. Darth Vader from the Star Wars Saga

Want a reason why the Star Wars prequels suck? If not for them, Vader would probably have made the number on spot on his list, but after seeing him as an annoying kid and a whiney emo teenager, he just doesn’t seem so awesome. But sticking with the Original Trilogy for the time being, Vader is pure concentrated badass, remoselessly choking his own officers and trying to kill his own son with equal abandon. Not the kind of villain who’s scared to get his hands dirty, Vader is just as happy orchestrating attaks or taking part in them in his oh-so-aweome custom TIE fighter. Taking the Prequel Trilogy into account though, we see that Vader isn’t the be all and end all of galactic evil, but merley a puppet; his strings being pulled by Emperor Palpatine, the real power behind the dark side of the Force. But that aside, Vader as he is presented in the OT is fucking killer. The black mask, the cape, the red lightsaber, the oh-so-ominious heavy breathing and the sonorous tones of James Earl Jones all add up to a great sci fi villain. Plus, his offical title is Dark Lord of the Sith, and that just sounds fucking cool.

2. Khan Noonien Singh from The Wrath of Khan

“KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” The only villain on the list to have his origin in a TV show (Baltar was in a movie first, albeit one only released in Canada), Ricardo Montalban’s Khan made such an impression on Nicholas Meyer that he decided to bring him back as the villain in the movie The Wrath of Khan. Khan is an Ahab-esque obsessive who has spent the last 15 years of his life plotting revenge against Captain Kirk for imagined wrongs against him, stopping at nothing to avenge himself upon him. He hijacks a starship and steals the Genesis device, planning on using it to destroy Kirk and the Enterprise. Operatic and grand without becoming parody, Montalban’s perfomance is a masterclass of villanous acting. So sad that when he died last year it caused barely a blip on the British media radar. “Do you know that old Klingon proverb, Kirk, that says revenge is a dish best served cold? It is very cold… in space!” Brilliance.

1. Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars saga

If Darth Vader was the puppet, then Emperor Palpatine is the puppet master. And when Darth goddamned Vader is your puppet, you’re one powerful fucking puppetmaster. The man behind Order 66, the Great Jedi Purge that saw all but two Jedi killed and the man who turned the conflicted Anakin Skywalker into the brutal cyborg Darth Vader, Palpatine is an almost soley behind-the-scenes villain, conspring to take over first the Senate, and then the universe, all the while amassing an army the likes of which the universe has never seen. This is, after all, the man who decided to build a space station with the ability to destory a planet for no other reason than he thought it would put the shits up people, a man who decided to encase his apprentice in an imposing black metal suit rather than something less terrifying for no other reason than he thought, once again, it would put the shits up people. Evil, cunning, conniving, treacherous, vindictive, feindish, conspiratorial and bowling shoe ugly, Palpatine is the perfect bad guy. Plus, he can shoot lightning out of his fucking fingers. If you don’t think Palpatine is the best sci fi villain, well then “my young Jedi, you will find that it is you who are mistaken… about a great… many… things.”

So there you have it. Comments below if you feel the need. End transmission.

Tags: assholes, sci fi, top ten, villains