Bad Guys, Bad Guys, What You Gonna Do?

Got my Farscape t-shirt on today, so I've been thinking about the show a bit (not that I need the stimulus of a t-shirt to prompt me in that direction!). And, given current events on the show (no, don't worry, I'm not planning on giving away any major spoilers), I find myself in particular thinking a lot about Scorpius, and about the fact that pretty much every time he appears on the screen, it only reinforces my belief that he is one of the all-time coolest SF TV bad guys, if not, indeed, a serious contender for #1. Which leads me to think about things like just what makes a good TV villain, and why Scorpius has it, and exactly who his competition for the Number One slot actually is. Thus, the subject of tonight's ramble.

First, the competition. All-time best SF TV bad guys, besides Scorpius? Let's see... I'd say, the Master and Davros from Doctor Who. Star Trek's Khan. Perhaps the Borg (in their earlier stages, at least, though in a very different way than the rest of these guys). Maybe Gul Dukat of Deep Space 9. Maybe the Master (no relation!) from Buffy. LaCroix of Forever Knight. And, come to think of it, Lexx's Prince, at least during the third season, before his characterization started to suffer. I'll admit to a certain strange fondness for Data's evil twin, Lore, too, but I suspect that may be just me. And I'm sure there are others that I'm either blanking on or that are from shows I just haven't watched enough of to say.

So, what do these guys have? What does Scorpius have? Actually, that latter question is really easy to answer. Scorpy's got three obvious things: charisma, intelligence, and three-dimensionality. And I think those three things are highly relevant to the question of what makes a good bad guy in general. Let's consider them in turn.

1) Charisma. Scorpy's definitely got it: the cultured, erudite way of speaking; the sly, ironic sense of humor; the sheer force of personality that sends underlings scrambling to do his bidding. Most of the others on that list have it, too. The Master (especially when played by Roger Delgado), often displays a certain kind of arrogant charm. Khan is, well, Khan, and 'nuff said. Buffy's Master possesses a truly wicked sense of humor. Both of Nigel Bennet's characters simply ooze with evil magnetism. Even Dukat has a certain smarmy charisma. And, while Davros may be utterly grotesque, mentally and physically, he, too, is at least capable of the occasional inspired bit of speech-making.

And charisma is definitely important in a bad guy. To begin with, it helps to make the character interesting (which is particularly important if they lack depth in other ways (see point #3)). It can also make them scarier. After all, which are you going to be more afraid of: the witty, urbane, forceful, supremely self-confident guy with the proven ability to win friends and influence people, or the nervous, stammering social misfit nobody ever listens to? OK, in real life, maybe they might both be equally dangerous, but if you're a TV hero, you need an epic, larger-than-life sort of villain. J. Random Psycho opening up with an uzi in the post office because nobody ever gave him any respect might make a reasonable villain-of-the-week, but as a serious nemesis, he's a dud.

I'm sure there's also a psychological element to it, too. You know, the usual stuff about the seductiveness of evil, the secret place in each of us that envies and admires people who can get away with being bad. If we like our villains charismatic and cool, maybe there's a tiny element of wish-fufillment in there somewhere. Or maybe it's just that the "cool factor" makes the difference between the character you love to hate and the character you simply hate.

2) Intelligence. The old Scorpster is definitely in the Evil Genius category of bad guy, and maybe it's just me, but I've always found those to be far and away the most fun and interesting kind. I mean, come on, what kind of satisfaction can you get out of watching your heroes outwit someone who's dumb? Actually, I think this is the category where Scorpius really shines, because (so far, at least), Farscape has done a primo job of avoiding the single most common pitfall with recurring bad guy characters: the Dumb Villain Syndrome.

Consider one of the most classic victims of Dumb Villain Syndrome: Davros. When he first appeared on Doctor Who, Davros was an Evil Genius of the highest order. Not only was he a brilliant mad scientist, but he was also a brilliant schemer and manipulator, an intellect who was, for once, more than a fair match for the Doctor. And yet, in every subsequent story in which he appeared, he got stupider and stupider, falling into obvious traps, making the same mistakes over and over, and coming up with increasingly ridiculous and complicated plans. (OK, you could instead say that he was becoming more and more insane, rather than stupider. Either way, the result is the same: he did a lot of irrational and counterproductive stuff.)

It's easy to see why Dumb Villain Syndrome happens. If the bad guy were really that smart, how would the good guys be able to defeat him episode after episode? Even if he starts out smart, even if he's generally portrayed as intelligent, eventually he has to do something dumb, otherwise he's probably going to win! And we simply can't have the bad guy win, can we? (Well, OK, sometimes you can, but, needless to say, it doesn't happen often.)

It's interesting to consider how Scorpius manages to avoid this fate. One factor that helps is that, even when he is defeated, he always seems to have a brilliant contigency plan ready to deal with the possibility. (Which immediately gives him a huge advantage over all those bad guys who simply refuse to believe they can ever possibly fail!) Another is that even when he does things that ultimately backfire on him, it's easy to see that he had good reasons to do them, that there was a genuine necessity for him to take a calculated risk. And, of course, there's also the fact that, in the continuing chess match between the good guys and the bad guys, he does, indeed, win his share of the games.

Of course, it's a lot easier to just write the kind of bad guy who throws his enemies in the death trap and walks away, or who is prone to saying things like "No, stay away from that button! It controls my life support/the self-destruct/the only means of launching my doomsday weapon." (Yes, in other words, a bad guy who hasn't read the Evil Overlord List.)

(Star Trek's Borg, by the way, suffered from an interesting variation of the Dumb Villain Syndrome, which was the Wimpy Villain Syndrome. They were set up, initially, as all but unstoppable... but, of course, every time they came back, they had to end up being stopped. Eventually, they were rendered almost completely devoid of the menace that made them such wonderful bad guys in the first place. Sad, really.)

3) Three-Dimensionality. Complex, multi-layered characters with believable motivations and well-developed backstories are always more interesting than flat, cardboard characters, and this is no less true of villains than of anybody else. Unfortunately, bad guys are often more accurately viewed as plot devices than as characters. They're there to present an obstacle to the good guys, and their own motivation is often nonsensical or even nonexistent. They're evil simply for the sake of being evil.

Let's look at Davros again. Yes, he's a brillaint scientist and politician, and, yes, he has that wonderful speech in "Genesis of the Daleks" (about whether he'd crush the hypothetical germ-filled vial) that can send chills up your spine with the realization of just how ohmigod crazy he is. But once you've gotten to that point, you pretty much know everything there is to know about him. Yeah, he's a crazed, power-hungry megalomaniac who'd be happy to destroy the entire universe just because he can... but that's all he ever is or is ever going to be. The Master isn't much better, either. Apparently, he wants to rule the universe, but you never get much of a sense of just what it is he'd do with it if he got it. (Note, however, that I'm not actually criticising Doctor Who for its cardboard villains. Doctor Who, as I've mentioned before, has a grand tradition of taking comic booky/melodramatic/pulp-fiction cliches, embracing them joyfully, and doing wonderful, fun stuff with them. The show may have cardboard villains, but they're the best damned cardboard villains the human imagination can come up with, and they're utterly unashamed in their two-dimensionality. Which is why they still make my All-Time Best Bad Guys List, with no hesitation whatsoever.)

Once again, contrast this with Scorpius. In my view, one of the most fascinating things about Scorpius is that, if you tilt your head the right way, it's entirely possible to see him as the good guy. Certainly, that's how he sees himself. Here's a character with perfectly good reasons for everything he believes and thinks and does. Even if you disagree with his methods (utterly amoral as they are), it's possible to agree that his overall goal may be correct, and his motivations for pursuing it noble ones. And even if you don't agree with that, it's still possible to feel sympathy for him, based on what we know of his background. It almost goes without saying that not only is this far more believable than "evil for evil's sake," but it also makes for a much wider range of possibilites in how the character chooses to act and how he responds to the "good guys." As I think we're probably going to be seeing this season.

There are other good examples of three-dimensional characters from the above list, too. Dukat, for instance. It may be possible to argue (with some justification) that his characterization was inconsistent, but there's no way one could possibly regard it as flat. Then there's LaCroix, who manages to be both complex and three-dimensional, and "evil for the sake of being evil." (The vampires on Buffy often seem to manage this, too.)

I wish I had some conclusions to draw from all this, beyond "Scorpius rocks!" or "if you're going to write SF bad guys, here's some stuff that's worth thinking about." But mainly, it was all just me rambling again, so, um, I don't.

It was a decent way to kill an hour or so, though. (Well, OK, actually, I didn't kill it. I put it in the death trap, and it escaped while I had my back turned!)