The 5 Smartest Star Trek Villains (& The 5 Dumbest)
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There are some Star Trek Villains whose intelligence exponentially dwarfs even the most gifted Starfleet officer and some who aren’t so smart.
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To be a Starfleet officer on Star Trek is no easy task, as it requires an individual to be in peak physical condition as well as a master of multiple disciplines like engineering, medicine, or astrobiology. After all, traipsing across the galaxy in search of new life and new civilizations would definitely require an officer to be highly intelligent and proficient in multiple disciplines.
For many in the galaxy, matching wits with a Starfleet officer wasn’t an easy task, owing to their own deficiencies in the intelligence department. However, there are some entities in the galaxy whose intelligence exponentially dwarfs even the most gifted Starfleet officer.
10 Smartest: Khan
Without a doubt, Khan Noonien Singh is one of the smartest and deadliest villains any Starfleet crew ever had to face. Owing to his genetically enhanced brain, Khan was able to learn the schematics of the original Enterprise quickly enough to take it over in a few days.
Following his exile on Ceti Alpha V, Khan was able to figure out ways for him and his people to survive, even after a cataclysm destroyed the planet’s atmosphere. He managed to outsmart a veteran command crew and almost destroyed the refitted Enterprise while simultaneously stealing the Genesis torpedo–if that’s not intelligent, nothing is!
9 Dumbest: DaiMon Tog
The Ferengi were originally introduced to be the main antagonists of Star Trek: The Next Generation but quickly devolved into the mild annoyance/comic relief of the series. The list of stunningly dense Ferengi characters appearing on that show was considerable, but DaiMon Tog was a notable standout.
In “Ménage a Troi,” Tog becomes romantically infatuated with perennial nuisance Lwaxana Troi, going as far as to kidnap her, her daughter Deanna, and Commander Riker. Having worked hard to become a DaiMon of his own ship as well as maintain an uneasy peace with the Federation, it seems incredibly stupid to throw that all away by kidnapping such notable Federation dignitaries.
8 Smartest: The Founders
The Federation is one of the principal powers of the Alpha Quadrant, having stood for centuries as a beacon of peaceful coexistence in the Milky Way galaxy. It’s faced challenges to its autonomy before but has managed to defeat them every time.
Arguably its biggest threat came from The Founders, leaders of a hostile force of invaders from the Gamma Quadrant. These shapeshifting masterminds managed to infiltrate the highest levels of not only the Federation but the Klingon Empire as well. Their machinations brought the entire galaxy to a long and protracted war that The Founders and their Dominion army very nearly won.
7 Dumbest: Taurus II Creatures
Not all the species encountered by the Federation are interstellar conquerors with enough guile to bring them to their knees, as The Founders were. Some don’t even have the same level of technology the Federation possesses, and some are even in a prehistoric state of development.
When Enterprise shuttlecraft, the Galileo, crash lands on an unknown planet in proximity to a quasar, Spock’s seven-person away team encounters just such prehistoric creatures. Gargantuan and cunningly predatory, these creatures weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but what they lacked in smarts they made up for in raw power.
6 Smartest: The Borg
If you’re a race of hive-minded cybernetic beings with the ability to instantly download the sum of an entire planet’s culture and technology, then your intelligence increases exponentially with every new race you assimilate. Having spent centuries to millennia doing just that, it’s safe to say that the Borg is one of the smartest races to populate the Star Trek universe.
Represented by the Borg Queen, the Borg were smart enough to do everything from opening a passage into fluidic space to traveling back in time in an attempt to stop first contact and destroy the Federation.
5 Dumbest: The Grifters – Cyrano Jones & Burlinghoff Rasmussen
Despite the utopian society that Earth has constructed for itself in the Star Trek universe, grifters and con men abound. Two of the dumbest had to be Cyrano Jones and Burlinghoff Rasmussen, if only for their names.
In actuality, Jones was dumb for believing that he could get away with unleashing an ecological pestilence aboard a Federation starbase without serious repercussions. Rasmussen, a 22nd-century inventor with dismal success in his field, chanced upon a 26th-century time traveler, killed him, and set his sights on the 24th century. Stealing some equipment from the Enterprise-D, his last bonehead play was to try to incapacitate Data, an android who would no doubt have overpowered or outsmarted him the first chance he got and did!
4 Smartest: Conspiracy Aliens
Not many alien races can claim to have almost defeated the Federation, but the “Conspiracy” parasites are definitely one of them. Small, almost foot-long creatures resembling a Ceti eel, these parasites managed to infest key Starfleet personnel in a clandestine attempt to take over the Federation.
Doctors, captains, and admirals were not immune to infection, as the aliens methodically and patiently put their plan into action. Intelligent and articulate, only a timely intervention by the crew of the Enterprise-D kept the Federation from being conquered, but these alien menaces are still out there, somewhere…
3 Dumbest: The Pakleds
At first glance, the Pakleds may not seem like the smartest of Star Trek’s villains. However, any race that has managed to master intergalactic travel (even if the technology was stolen) can’t be all that dumb. In fact, they were cunning enough to capture the Enterprise-D’s Chief Engineer.
But despite this, the Pakled’s inability to see through the Enterprise’s completely obvious ploy to get LaForge back aboard the Enterprise ultimately rates them less than genius.
2 Smartest: Q
By far the most intelligent life form ever introduced in Star Trek has been Q, a being of omniscient and omnipotent power who can do whatever he wishes at the snap of a finger. Granted, he is irascible, meddlesome, and altogether annoying, but he does possess an IQ of 2005.
His knowledge of the cosmos and beyond is unparalleled. On multiple occasions he’s demonstrated knowledge of the history, biology, and culture of countless alien species across the universe, to say nothing of his knowledge of stellar phenomenon and the natural laws of the universe.
1 Dumbest: Trelane
The Star Trek universe seems to love omnipotent beings like Q, who can instantaneously affect any desire their heart imagines almost as if by magic. One of the first such beings viewers encountered was Trelane, who captured the Enterprise crew in an attempt to “study” them.
Despite his seeming omnipotence, Trelane proved himself spectacularly dumb on several occasions. Firstly, there’s the matter of not taking into account the effect of relativity when observing humanity and mistaking the era as Napoleanic. Second, there’s the matter of keeping your power source behind a mirror that is easily shattered by an 18th-century handgun. Granted, Trelane was a child, so he had some time to grow and learn.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-trek-villains-smartest-dumbest/