Beware Redjac the Ripper.
While Star Trek usually gives its villains a few redeeming qualities, there are some who lack any at all, and seem to revel in just how far past the Moral Event Horizon they're willing to go.
The Original Series[]
- "Patterns of Force" had Melakon, who was a devotee of Nazism introduced to his people in an attempt to soften it by a former Starfleet officer named John Gil. Shunning the attempt to water down Adolf Hitler's philosophy, Melakon decided to embrace Hitler's path. He overthrew his mentor and formed a fascist regime on his homeworld Ekos while trying to organize a new holocaust on a neighboring planet called Zeon. Before murdering his mentor, Melakon was denounced by him as nothing more as a self-seeking adventurer, a traitor to his people and all they stood for.
- Gorgan from the episode "And the Children Shall Lead" is an evil Energy Being and the last surviving member of a race of marauders who were destroyed by those whom they had victimized. Gorgan sealed himself into a cave and waited for an opportunity to strike. That opportunity came when a small team of Federation scientists arrive on Gorgan's planet to set up a colony. Gorgan took the form of a "friendly angel", manipulating the children into becoming his minions and using his Mind Control powers to drive all the adults to suicide. After the Enterprise comes upon the colony, they take the children aboard the ship. Gorgan convinces the children to use the mind control abilities he has granted them to take over the ship and send it to Marcos 12, a heavily populated Federation colony. When they arrive, Gorgan plans to make all the children of Marcos 12 his minions and kill all the adults. Gorgan forces the crew of the Enterprise to comply with his plan, by exposing them to their worst fears if they don't. After several failed attempts to regain control of the ship, Kirk manages to break Gorgon's hold on the children. Enraged, Gorgan threatens to kill the children if they don't obey him.
The Next Generation[]
- Data's brother Lore is a thoroughly unsympathetic android who kills his creator, reprograms his brother to follow his every command, and threatens to set Wesley on fire. And no, Trying to immolate Wesley does not make up for all that other stuff he did. He also summoned the Crystalline Entity to his creator's colony when the other colonists petitioned Noong to deactivate him out of fear that he would turn on them. It could be argued that he acted in self-defense, but given everything else we saw of his true nature, it's obvious that he mostly did it for his own sick amusement. He tried to do the same thing to the Enterprise too. And he tried to make the Borg (or at least a certain segment thereof) an even greater threat than they already were.
- Kivas Fajo from "The Most Toys". At first, he seems to be just another guy who thinks Screw The Rules, I Have...well, something anyway. Then he talks very matter-of-factly about how he'd like to try out a particularly cruel Death Ray called a Varon-T Disruptor -- illegal in The Federation because of how it slowly and painfully destroys the body from the inside out -- and later does use it on his girlfriend. When your actions drive the emotionless android good guy to attempted murder, you're a Complete Monster. He's damn lucky Data got rescued at that exact moment.
- Oh, and his aforementioned "girlfriend" was really more of a broken, codependent slave whom he treated like property.
- His "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Data afterwards is particularly devastating. Data's response is to override his own ethical programming, because he knows he cannot desire justice and so must enact it for those who do.
- Oh, and his aforementioned "girlfriend" was really more of a broken, codependent slave whom he treated like property.
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Fajo: "Murder me - go ahead, it's all you have to do. Fire! If only you could...feel...RAGE over Varria's death - if only you could feel the NEED for revenge, maybe you could fire...But you're...just an android - you can't feel anything, can you? It's just another interesting...intellectual puzzle for you, another of life's...curiosities." |
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- Jev from season 5’s "Violations" was a serial mind rapist. Jev was part of a Ullian delegation, led by his father Tarmin, that specialized in telepathic memory retrieval, a process that restores lost memories. Jev first assaulted Counselor Troi by using his telepathic powers to rewrite her memories of a romantic moment between her and Riker into a rape and then replacing Riker in the memory. She fell into a coma after a mental attack. Later he assaulted Commander Riker and Dr. Crusher, making them experience their worst nightmares to keep them from exposing him. When Troi regained consciousness and can't remember her attacker, Jev "helps" by using the memory retrieval process and uses it to frame his father Tamrin, who is arrested. Then he goes to Troi's quarters, ostensibly to apologize for his father, but really to rape her again. This time she's able to hold him off long enough for Worf and his security team to arrive and he's finally brought to justice. What makes Jev even worse is that it's established the crew of the Enterprise are simply the latest in a very long line of his victims, with Geordie and Data's research turning up multiple cases of people who he left in comas, dating years back and spanning several different planets.
- Star Trek: Picard: Dr. Adam Soong is a billionaire geneticist living in the year 2024. Introduced as a seemingly kind father who wants to save his daughter Kore from an illness, it is revealed that Kore is not his biological daughter, but a clone. When Kore finds out and gets a cure from Q for her condition, she decides to leave Soong and Soong states that she is nothing without him, seeing her as a science project rather than a daughter. Soong is later informed by Q and the Borg Queen that if he stops Picard's ancestor, an astronaut Renée Picard from completing a space mission, his legacy will be ensured and Earth will become a fascist empire that enslaves alien species and commits genocide against them if they resist. Soong tries to run over Picard with his car, tries to kill Renée with poison, tries to blow up Renée's shuttle with drones, and allows the Borg Queen to turn some mercenaries Soong hired to kill Picard into proto Borg drones. Picard tries to warn Soong about the nightmarish future Soong will create, but Soong ignores him, caring about his legacy more than the lives that will be lost in this nightmarish future.
Deep Space Nine[]
- Gul Dukat had some amount of Sympathy for the Devil when he went rogue to fight Klingon occupation and in his interactions with his half-bajoran daughter, but it doesn't stop him from selling out his people and the rest of the Alpha Quadrant to ally with the Dominion. At first even that is presented as somewhat morally grey: he claims it was to save Cardassia from dissolving into complete chaos after the Maquis and Klingon attacks and to restore them to their rightful glory. But after his daughter is killed in front of him by his protege for betraying them to the Federation, he goes off the deep end. He manages to pull his mind back together in some (loose) semblance of sanity again and has it out verbally with Sisko about why everyone hates him (finally getting called on all his hypocrisy and evil to his face). He ends the conversation by beating an already battered Sisko to a bloody pulp and deciding to just embrace his role as an all out villain. By the finale, it is made very clear why the Pah-Wraiths chose him over Kai Winn as their Emissary. Originally, Dukat starts as almost a Noble Demon, but his development? By the final season, he is this trope. An Omnicidal Maniac who gloats about how his evil gods will soon be setting the universe on fire, with no affection for anything but his own desires and cruelties, Dukat ended up among the most heinous and vicious antagonists to grace the Star Trek franchise.
- The series also gave us a brilliant subversion. Gul Darhe'el, after being caught, openly bragged about working his labourers to death and sending his men to commit atrocities. Turns out, the man they caught was his file clerk, and he was trying to make up for his lack of action during the Occupation by impersonating his boss and forcing Cardassia to admit its atrocities during the Occupation. Still, the original man he was impersonating did plenty of things to warrant being put here, like routine executions, having women raped in front of their children, husbands beaten beyond recognition, elderly buried alive...you can see why the guy wanted to expose Cardassia's dirty laundry.
Voyager[]
- The Borg Queen, first introduced in Star Trek: First Contact, is the personification of the Borg Collective, the cybernetic pseudo-race in the process of conquering the galaxy through "assimilation". This consists of absorbing all of a civilization's technology and raw materials and then injecting the people with nanoprobes that submerge their individual identities into the mass Hive Mind so that they become Borg themselves. Their cyborg transformation is completed through surgery without anesthesia. And why does the Queen do this, you ask? She wishes to bring them to "perfection", of which she sees herself as the embodiment. It's been implied that she's been at this for thousands of years.
- Despite a significant amount of Villain Decay on Voyager, her appearance in "Dark Frontier" is probably one of Trek's most chilling. She forces Seven of Nine to watch the assimilation of a helpless planet. We hear the screams of the victims brought to the Borg ship and see a half-assimilated man on a surgical table. And the Borg Queen actually seems aroused by this, breathing in deeply and rhapsodizing about how she can feel the new Borg "becoming one" with her.
- Commander Jefferson Briggs from the Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch novels Acts of Contrition and Atonement. An officer with Starfleet Medical assigned to find a cure for the mysterious catom virus. He quickly realises that he accidentally started the virus when he killed a Borg just as the Caeliar were [[Ascend To a Higher Plane of Existence|Ascending Them To a Higher Level of Existence, causing the catoms transforming it to bond with an airborne virus and mutate it. However, since Briggs sees the Caeliar as a threat to the Federation, he decides to try and control catoms under cover of supposedly searching for a cure. In fact, instead of quarantining the plague and allowing it to burn out, he deliberately spreads it to other Federation worlds, killing thousands. He has already used illegal genetic engineering to create a member of an extinct species whose genome he has been studying and creates 1,961 copies of her, most of which he kills by experimenting on them with catoms. He uses dubious means to co-opt a number of former Borg drones, including children of former drones, as a new source of catoms and, when he learns they feel the pain of the experiment subjects killed by their catoms, is quick to use it as a means of ensuring their co-operation. In the end, he's so far over the Moral Event Horizon that the only solution the Federation can come up with is to imprison him somewhere where he'll never be heard of again.
Enterprise[]
- Star Trek: Enterprise Season 3's Xindi Arc is already dark, but Commander Dolim stands out as one of the darkest villains on the show. Dolim was the leader of the Reptilian faction of the Xindi civilization. When interdimensional aliens known as the Sphere Builders want to conquer the future by making sure The Federation never exists, they lie to Xindi, telling them that humans will destroy their civilization in the future. The Xindi launch an attack on Earth, which causes the deaths of 7 million humans. While most of the Xindi leaders express regret over what they have done, but see it as a Necessary Evil to save their civilization, Dolim revels in the fact that he helped to kill so many humans, gloating to Archer that he personally selected the pilot of the probe that attacked Earth. When Archer presents evidence that the Sphere Builders are lying, many of the reasonable Xindi leaders are convinced, but Dolim will not even consider the evidence. Dolim kills Degra, the Xindi primate scientist who designed the sphere probe, for helping Archer and promises to hunt down Degra's family after he has destroyed the Earth. Dolim also uses torture to get cooperation from Archer and Hoshi. Dolim loses any pretense of noble intentions when the Sphere Builders convince Dolim to continue with the mission to destroy Earth, promising him they will make the Reptilians rulers of a new Xindi Empire if he succeeds. The Reptilians and Insectoids hijack the Sphere probe, with the intention of using it to wipe out all life on Earth. When his Insectoid allies begin to question this mission, Dolim has their ship destroyed without a second thought, believing they were no longer necessary.
Kelvin Universe[]
- Featuring in the "The Q Gambit" arc of the IDW comics, the Kelvin Universe version of Gul Dukat is just as dangerous as his Prime counterpart, never once displaying any redeeming qualities. Q travels to the Kelvin Universe and sends Kirk and the Enterprise crew into the future. The Dominion has conquered most of the galaxy and as usual Dukat is a major commander in the Dominion, ruling over the planet Bajor from his space station, Terok Nor. When the Enterprise arrives in the future, Dukat's forces capture it and Dukat imprisons the crew. Sisko frees Kirk, but Spock and Bones are sent to a labor camp on Bajor. Kira, another resistance leader, frees Spock and Bones from the camp, and shows them an artifact that can change the course of the war. The artifact contains a Pah Wraith and the last Prophet, both powerful interdimensional beings, one good, one evil. The resistance is betrayed by Quark, a merchant that works with them, and Dukat captures the artifact, along with Bones, Spock and Kira. Dukat smashes the artifact, allowing the Pah-Wraith to possess him; the Prophet tries to possess Kira, but Dukat murders her. Believing the Prophet was destroyed, Dukat takes control of the Enterprise and takes it to the wormhole. Dukat murders a Vorta commander who demands to know what is going on and cows the rest of the crew into helping him. Dukat meets with the other Pah Wraiths in the worm hole and says that with the Prophet gone, nothing can stop them. Wanting to become a god, Dukat is willing to help the Pah Wraiths destroy the galaxy in exchange. Dukat's mad ambitions are so dangerous, even godlike entities such as Q fear them.
Other[]
- Redjac, introduced in "Wolf in the Fold" from season 2 of Star Trek: The Original Series, is a non-corporeal being that fed on fear and terror, but enjoyed causing fear just as much as the actual consumption of it. Redjac had the ability to take a humanoid host, and used these hosts for centuries to commit mass murders, most notably as Jack the Ripper. It targeted women because their deaths tended to generate more fear, and was responsible for dozens of deaths across multiple planets, and almost certainly countless more, as it claims to have existed since the dawn of time. In the episode, Redjac murders three women and frames Scotty for all of them. When it’s discovered, it takes control of the Enterprise’s computers and attempts to kill everyone on-board, cackling all the while. While it appears to have been defeated, it reappeared in both the DC and WildStorm comics. In the DC two-parter, “Wolf on the Prowl” and “Wolf at the Door”, it commits several more murders in the body of an Enterprise crewperson, had established itself as the “God of Evil” on a primitive planet, and killed thousands of said planet’s inhabitants to give itself power in a last-ditch effort to get revenge on Kirk by destroying the Enterprise. In the Wildstorm comic “Embrace the Wolf”, it provoked an all-out nuclear war on a peaceful Federation planet, and challenged Data in his Sherlock Holmes persona to save his fellow crew members while Redjac took up its mantle once again as Jack the Ripper. Acting less as a senseless predator and more as a psychotic Serial Killer on a galactic level, Redjac is one of the worst that the Star Trek universe has to offer.
- In the Star Trek comics, Pitkemeni is the Minister of Justice for Pilkor III, a small isolationist world on the border between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. Pitkemeni is a major player in a Government Conspiracy to take Pilkor III from a small xenophobic planet to a major player in galactic affairs. Pitkemeni and other government officials kidnap 100 random citizens of Pilkor III, put implants in their brains to give them False Memories and place them on a colony on another world. Pitkemeni's forces disguise themselves as Romulans and attack the colony, killing almost everyone there. Pitkemeni then kidnaps Tred Kegin, the husband of Victoria Leigh, a human living on Pilkor III, who is an old friend of Captain Kirk. Pitkemeni threatens to kill Tred, unless Leigh lures Kirk and the Enterprise to the site of the destroyed colony. Pitkemeni is hoping to frame the Romulans for this crime, so that the Federation will declare war on the Romulans to head off a new Romulan offensive. Pitkemeni hopes this war will destroy every Romulan and Federation colony in the sector, so that Pilkor III can colonize the sector.
- Enab, from the "War and Madness" arc, is a former Borg drone freed from the Collective by Hugh's sense of individuality. Wanting to return to the old ways, Enab learns that Tholian once had a Hive Mind and wants to recreate it to create a new Borg Collective. Enab and his Borg followers steal a Klingon ship and attack a Tholian colony. Enab experiments on some Tholians from the colony, trying to create his new Hive Mind. When the experiment fails and the Tholian subjects die, Enab simply attacks another Tholian colony and repeats the process. The Tholians blame the Klingons for these attacks and launch an attack to wipe out all Klingon and Federation colonies on the Tholian border, with Enab's actions almost causing a galactic war.
- In the miniseries "Manifest Destiny", the main villain, a Klingon named Sho'Tokh, is less of a noble warrior and more of a bloodthirsty brute. Rejected by his family for being an albino, Sho'Tokh grew up as a vicious street brawler. This viciousness gained him the attention of the Klingon military, which allowed him to join. Sho'Tokh rose through the ranks and was eventually given his own command, as the leader of a military unit filled with other such outcasts, and was sent out to conquer planets for the Klingon Empire. Sho'Tokh's forces invade a planet of bronze age aliens, violently killing anyone who resists them. After conquering the planet, Sho'Tokh orders every able-bodied male and fertile female to made into slaves and everyone else will be killed, including the children. When one of his lieutenants says such actions are dishonorable war crimes, Sho'Tokh kills him for defying his orders. Wanting a new prize, Sho'Tokh lures the Enterprise into a trap with a fake distress signal. He sends several of his troops in space suits to attack the Enterprise’s hull, but later orders his ships to fire on the hull, not caring how many of his troops died in the process. After taking control of the bridge, Sho'Tokh orders his men to kill the Enterprise crew, not caring how many of them die while attempting this task. Sho'Tokh is so vile, even several of his own troops turn against him.
- In the novels A Time to Kill & A Time to Heal by David Mack, Prime Minister Kinchawn is the leader of Tezwa, a minor planet on the border of the Federation and the Klingon Empire. During the Dominion War, the President of the Federation provided Kinchawn with a secret array of nadion-pulse cannons, to be used against Dominion forces if they ever invaded. Years later, Kinchawn plans to turn Tezwa into a military dictatorship and an empire. Kinchawn declares plans to annex a nearby Klingon planet. The Klingons are enraged, but the Federation convinces them to seek a diplomatic solution. Kinchawn invites the Klingons and the Federation to Tezwa to discuss the matter. The Enterprise and 10 Klingon ships are in orbit of Tezwa, with Picard, Troi and a Klingon representation meeting with Kinchawn on the planet. Kinchawn refuses to apologize and tries to have the 3 of them arrested, killing the Klingon representative in the process. Kinchawn then uses the cannons to attack the ships in orbit, killing 6,000 Klingon warriors. The Klingons counterattack, killing millions on Tezwa. Kinchawn's outrages prompt the Klingons to send an invasion force to conquer Tezwa, that would result in more deaths. After Enterprise manages to disable both the Klingon and Tezwa military fleets and take control of the cannons, the Federation take control of Tezwa and begin a rebuilding and peacekeeping mission. Kinchawn goes into exile and becomes a terrorist, having his supporters engage in terrorist acts against Federation personal on the planet. Worse still, Kinchawn is attacking population centers belonging to the trinae, a racial minority on Tezwa, attempting to commit genocide against them. Eventually, Kinchawn is defeated, but his terrorist campaign ends up killing thousands of Federation personal and Tezwan civilians.
- Star Trek Online: Colonel Hakeev of the Tal Shiar was already a solid candidate before the release of Legacy of Romulus, and that expansion only confirmed that he's the single most evil character in the game. He abducted entire colonies of innocent Romulans for horrific experiments into Borg technology, attempted to massacre most of the "inferior" Remans and drive the rest back into slavery, arranged sadistic gladiatorial events to determine the combat potential of various species sentient or otherwise, and was the person truly responsible for triggering the Hobus supernova, with all its apocalyptic consequences. To add icing to the cake of concentrated cruelty, he's the only Iconian agent in the story who is Not Brainwashed and not tricked either. He just thought that enslaving and exterminating the "lesser races" at the behest of his "Dark Masters" sounded awesome.
- Star Trek: Bridge Commander: Legate Matan is the leader of House Arterius, a powerful military faction in post Dominion War Cardassia. Matan manages to make contact with the Kessok, a powerful but xenophobic species in the Maelstrom sector. Matan convinces the Kessok that the Federation is planning to invade their territory and gets their help to build a new high tech Cardassian military fleet. Matan says he is just using this fleet to protect the Kessok's borders, but has more sinister purposes in mind. Matan experiments with a Kessok Solarformer, a device that can regulate the energy of a sun, to make a planet more hospitable for colonization. Matan accidentally destroys a Federation colony and causes heavy damage to two other colonies, causing a sun to go super nova, while he tried to weaponize the Solarformer. However Matan felt no guilt about this, having his ships attack anyone who investigated this event, to hide his involvement. Matan also begins to have is fleet attack any non Cardassian ships in the sector, even having his ships launch an unprovoked attack on a Federation star base. Matan eventually declares war on the Federation, stepping his attacks on non Cardassian ships in the sector, killing countless people in the process. After most his forces are defeated, your ship and your allies confront Matan near a Kessok colony. Matan declares the colony Cardassian territory and orders his remaining forces to attack your ship and your allies. With his remaining forces defeated and his dreams of conquest thwarted, Matan decides to use another Solarformer to cause the sun to go super nova, killing his enemies, his supposed Kessok allies and his own forces, all at once, rather then admit defeat.
- Star Trek: Federation: Colonel Adrik Thorsen of the Optimum Movement starts as a Himmler clone and only gets worse. His Establishing Character Moment is a one-sided massacre of civilians and New United Nations peacekeepers aboard a space station in order to steal a ship for a trip to the outer solar system; he then kills his own foot soldiers so he can take all the credit. After a Time Skip, he's the public face of the Optimum in Britain and is orchestrating mass executions of civilian demonstrators and anyone who doesn't match up to the Optimum's idea of what humans should look like. He captures and tortures Zefram Cochrane and a pair of Resistance operatives in pursuit of a warp bomb, that according to a lengthy lecture by Cochrane on warp physics is actually impossible. After Cochrane and the Resistance nearly kill him in their escape, Thorsen is rebuilt with nanotech and becomes obsessed with payback. After another Time Skip, he has Cochrane's wife and students murdered. After Time Skip #3 manipulates the Klingons and the Orion Syndicate into kidnapping Cochrane and taking a starliner full of civilians hostage (Kirk's crew rescues them, but not before they space one of the hostages), and orders a cruiser to fly into a black hole after Cochrane's shuttle. Time Skip #4, and he hijacks the Enterprise-D and sends her into the same black hole to get Cochrane.
- Star Trek: Klingon Academy: Melkor, son of G'Iogh, is a member of the House of G'Iogh, a powerful family within in the Klingon Empire. Though most Klingons have a a sense of honor, Melkor is defined by his cowardice and willingness to use treachery to get ahead. After his brother is killed trying to start a coup against the Klingon High Council, Melkor devises a far more ambitious plan to seize control of the Empire. When the elderly Chancellor of the Empire dies, Melkor claims the title of Emperor and starts a Civil War to seize power. Melkor is opposed by Gorkon, the rightful successor to the Chancellor's office and General Chang, a hardliner anti Federation officer, who realizes Melkor's rule would be a disaster for the Empire. Melkor manages to conquer a Klingon star base, which Chang liberates. However Melkor has rigged the star base to explode, forcing Chang to evacuates as many base personal as he can. The destruction o the star base still results in the deaths of thousands of Klingon officers. Melkor then conquers the Tal'Ihnor Gates, a star system that is the Empire's chief source of energy. Though Chang's and Gorkon's forces defeat Melkor's forces at Tal'Ihnor, Melkor has one of his officers activate a doomsday weapon, destroying the entire star system. Melkor would rather see the Tal'Ihnor system destroyed then fall into Chang's hands, an act of spite that kills many Klingons, including several of his own troops. Melkor loses all support within the Klingon Empire, but convinces the Romulans to back his claim, leading a Romulan invasion of the Klingon home world. Though Melkor is ultimately defeated and killed, his failed scheme left many dead and servery crippled the Empire.
- Star Trek: Legacy: T’Uerell seems like just a typical Vulcan scientist at first, but she quickly becomes something far more sinister. In the 22nd century, Captain Archer is ordered by the Vulcans to retrieve T'Uerell. Archer saves T'Uerell from some Romulan ships and T'Uerell asks Archer to see her research space station. T'Uerell goes to the station, collects her work and then blows up the station, killing everyone on board. T'Uerell then escapes. Archer then deals with a plot by the Rolumans to attack Earth with biological weapons, they test these weapons on near by planets, killing several billion people. Archer suspects T'Uerell helped develop these biological weapons for the Romulans. T'Uerell reappears in the 23rd century, working with the Klingon Empire to create a particle beam weapon to destroy the Federation, Kirk and a task force work to destroy the weapon. Kirk catches up with T'Uerell later, discovering T'Uerell's real allies are Borg (it is heavily implied she had an hand in creating them) and she is allowing the Borg to assimilate some of the Klingon Ships. T'Uerell has created a prototype of Borg Sphere and plans to use it to attack the Federation. Kirk manages to destroy the Sphere, but again T'Uerell escapes. T'Uerell resurfaces in the 24th century, being chased by Romulan ships after attacking one of their worlds. To get the Romulans off her back, T'Uerell destroys an nearby uninhabited world. However debris from the destroyed planet is heading towards inhabited worlds, threatening the lives of millions. Years later T'Uerell has returned again and puts her master plan into action. T'Uerell has taken over the Borg Collective and wants to assimilate the entire galaxy, believing free will to be chaotic and illogical, wanting to enforce her version of logic and perfection on the galaxy.
- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
- Though most Klingons have a code of honor that makes them sympathetic, Admiral Vlict Kenka takes his to a terrifying extreme. Vlict was the governor of Hrakkour, a Klingon colony. A powerful being known as Quetzalcoatl comes to Hrakkour to spread a pacifistic philosophy to the population there. Feeling that the Klingons on Hrakkour have been corrupted by outside ideas, Vlict orders everyone on Hrakkour to be killed, including his own family. Realizing he has gone far beyond his orders to deal with the situation and wanting to avoid punishment from the Klingon High Council for his genocidal crimes, Vlict blames Quetzalcoatl for the destruction of Hrakkou and puts him on trial. Kirk demands Quetzalcoatl be treated fairly by the trial and personally offers to go through some tests to prove his own worthiness as a warrior, in an effort to defend Quetzalcoatl. But Kirk discovers that these tests are designed to kill Kirk and his crewmen, so Vlict will no longer have to deal with Kirk's inference.
- Dr. Ies Breddell was once part of the science council of Vardaine, a Federation colony. A young Kirk foils Breddell's plan to take over Vardaine and he has held a grudge against him ever since. A decade later Breddell has joined an xenophobic anti Federation movement on Vardaine and begins an operation to secretly construct star ships modeled after the Federation star ships. Breddell creates his own version of the Enterprise and uses it launch sneak attacks on Federation ships. The fake Enterprise attacks the USS Republic and kills everyone on board. After the real Enterprise defeats the fake Enterprise, Breddell is seemingly killed. However Breddell survived, having been transported by a cloaked ship at the last moment and returns in Judgment Rites. Even more obsessed with revenge after another defeat at Kirk's hands, Breddell secretly takes over a Federation space station studying a powerful anomaly. Breddell creates a powerful weapon that uses the power of the anomaly and plans to use it to destroy Earth. Breddell succeeds, but the explosion cause a Federation ship to travel back in time and they warn Kirk about this weapon right before the ship explodes. After traveling to the space station and confronting Breddell, Breddell uses Fantastic Racism to justify his actions. When Kirk tries to use moral arguments against Breddell, Breddell states morality is concept invented by the weak to prevent the strong dominating them and thus sees morality as a worthless concept.