Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Ok, I reread the old discussion on McLeach. He's been voted on after being mentioned in passing twice with no detailed look at him, and it seems 32 Footsteps was the only one to even bring up not counting the animals or how this affects the rest of his heinousness. Pretty much everyone else voted to keep him solely on account of trying to kill Cody-no mention of psychologically tormenting him as a reason to keep (when we're now wondering if even that is technically enough because of the Moral Event Horizon / Complete Monster issue), how he meets minimum heinousness when other villains have been cut over 1 victim, or how he's so much worse than Medusa.

edited 25th Feb '15 11:24:38 AM by Morgenthaler

Morganthaler: My main argument against Pinhead - lets say the "present day" segments of Bloodlines take place shortly after Hell On Earth, and the present day and future segments are what made Pinhead CM material, then take the midquels into account, which naturally would be set in between the two segments. In those midquels Pinhead more or less is the same as he was in the first two movies. Also in Bloodlines Pinhead states he wishes to continue his plan to conquer the world from Hell On Earth - and that plan only existed because Elliot Spencer became separated from his demon half (Xipe Topec if I remember correctly) - my interpretation was that while Pinhead has Elliot's humanity, he was still heavily influenced by Xipe.

Having now watched the finale of Agent Carter, I agree on not listing the good Doctor for now. His excuse seems genuine.

I think the issue there is that we really get no idea when the midquels (Inferno, Hellseeker, Deader, Hellworld) are supposed to be set set, or if we're even in the same continuity. Bloodline takes such a Broad Strokes approach to the chronology that it's difficult to tell.

Xipe Totec...? Oh, it's from the comics. He's named Pinhead Unbound in Part III, and in Part IV just Pinhead.

edited 25th Feb '15 11:23:21 AM by Morgenthaler

I must admit, I'm a bit unclear just how many kids one has to torture and try to feed to hungry reptiles beforehand. This is getting a wee bit ridiculous. Cody isn't 'the hero,' (that'd be The Rescuers themselves), he's an innocent kid who was in the wrong place that Mcleach kidnaps, torments and tries to murder in the worst way possible.

Mcleach is a poacher, which is a black mark for him. He's also a sadistic psychopath who crosses the line hard, and who we've decided was a keep in the past. I don't quite think the lack of a major 'in depth' look altogether overrules that.

Being cut over one victim doesn't fly here because those victims usually aren't little kids, and factor in the torture as well (and dunking a child into croc infested water, throwing knives at him, etc) and we have a go

edited 25th Feb '15 11:28:01 AM by Lightysnake

Lighty: 'Kay, so I guess McLeach is a keep. Too me though, dunking him in the water with the crocs isn't his MEH though, it was tricking everyone into thinking he was dead. Still not sure of Sykes though.

edited 25th Feb '15 11:52:43 AM by Beast

@ Morgenthaer: I did not ask if the cauldron born canabalised the Horned King's human henchmen, I asked if it was ever mentioned that they turn their victims into cauldron born themselves (as the writeup claims), because I don't remember that ever being mentioned in the movie. I also don't remember it being stated that he planned to use them to slaughter the world. I only remember him planning to use them to Take Over the World. There is a difference between "take over the world" and "kill all life on Earth".

edited 25th Feb '15 1:53:52 PM by bobg

Sorry about yesterday, I was miserable, frustrated, and not thinking straight.

I'm going to be like that for about a week, so I apologize in advance if I'm acting up.

ACW, check back and just record my to-do list. It's a pain to do it with this computer, so I'll do it when I can force myself or when my main comp is back

I will say no to Alixus from DS 9, first its really hard to have any one shot villain match the main villains of that series in terms of heinousness. Second Alixus had a speech at the end of the episode where she talks about how much better everyone's life when they are free of technology, now she is likely wrong, but I don't think she thinks is wrong in that regard, I don't think that speech was just BS or spin on her part, I think she actually believes she has done these people a favor. Also I'm not sure she is actively evil enough, sure stranding people on a planet and torturing them if she breaks any of rules is bad, but other Star Trek tyrants seems far worse, the Cardassians and the Domionion would commit genocide if it suited their purposes, people died on that planet due to curable illnesses and not having access to technology, which is bad, but I'm not sure it compares to villains who actively commit mass murder. Alixus' son seemed to try to kill people who tried to turn off her anti tech field, but I don't know how she did that, if she has murdered other people, that is off screen.

Alixus seems like a failed attempted at a WIE, nothing about her is particularly sympathetic, but I don't she is quite evil enough to count.

edited 25th Feb '15 5:25:40 PM by Overlord

^ No, her speech wasn't that. Alexus was trying to keep her control over the community even after she was exposed as a torturous, murderous hypocrite. Hell she purposely attacked their chosen professions outside her little Pol-Pot esque prison in her ending speech, even claiming someone would be in prison without her. Again, her people are so brow beaten and broken they can't stand up to her. Again, if she doesn't want technology, good for her. If she truly wanted she would have founded a colony with like minded individuals. That'd have been perfectly fine (we see that type of colony in Star Trek: The Next Generation). Instead, she purposely stranded an entire ship's worth of people for ten years, and purposely cut off all communications and made herself the leader.

Not to mention she made her own child her own attack dog and expressed no actual concern for him or any of the 'colonists'. As shown with having her son hunt down O'Brien, she's killed several other colonists who tried to do the same thing. All she cared about is herself and espousing her philosophy at the expense of human life. Her reaction when O'brien offered to try to find out what was jamming the planet and get to the runabout to find a med kit to save one of her colonists says it all: she doesn't care.

Again, what sets Alexus apart from other villains? She. Is. Human. All of the other villains are of an alien race. And she, in her small scale, showed she's just as heinous as the larger scale villains.

edited 25th Feb '15 5:49:33 PM by SuperSaiyaMan

I don't think Alixus being human makes her instantly more heinous then any of the sentient humanoid aliens we have seen over the years. These aliens have often shown human like traits and are not instantly more evil then humans and there have been enough bad humans in Star Trek to say that a bad human is something unique. As a leader I think she could have been worse, the people there seemed happy on some level, having her directly murder some of the colonists, instead of trying to kill anyone who found out about her anti tech generator would have made her worse. I don't think she measures up with the main villains of that show at all or other C Ms found in Trek. I don't remember seeing her son killing any other colonists, so that is just off screen villainy.

She seems comparable to Boss Biggis from Batman the Animated Series, who was a huge Jerkass who kidnapped homeless people, forced them to work in a mine and would lock them in a hotbox if they ticked him off and we decided he wasn't heinous compared to the likes of the Joker. I feel the same about Alixus, bad person certainly, not all sympathetic, but is not as heinous as other Trek villains.

And frankly I think Alixus is a badly written character, I think the writers were trying to make into a WIE and did a bad job of it, so the script doesn't know what to do with the character.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:02:03 PM by Overlord

Alexus being human is a big thing given how Star Trek in general goes on about how special Human's are, and how they are supposed to have outgrown the atrocities that Alexus has done. And we have the Collector from ''The Most Toys' on the Complete Monster list, and he only killed one person on screen. Alexus has tortured and murdered an bunch of people and is entirely unapologetic and unsympathetic. She's like Pol Pot who did the exact same thing.

And lets look at the other human villains. Each of them were genuine well intentioned extremists. Eddington was trying to help people get their homes back from the Cardassians. He chemically bombed their worlds, but did it on a timer to allow them to evacuate. The Crazy Admirals we kept seeing were driven to protect the Federation. None of the human villains approach Alexus' level of heinousness, nor her disregard for human life.

This is her ending speech by the way, does it truly sound like a Well Intentioned Extremist or a dictator trying to cling to power?

—>"But perhaps a lie can lead to a more important truth. Would any of you have learned who you truly are, at the core, if you hadn't come here? Joseph, you would have been a repairman all of your life. Cassandra, you would have been a technical clerk in some closed-in room. And Stephen. My friend, you probably would have been in prison by now. Look at yourselves! Look at what you've become! What you've achieved here has redefined your potential — the potential of man. Just as I knew it would. You are the living proof."

edited 25th Feb '15 6:09:13 PM by SuperSaiyaMan

Fajo also poisoned a planet's water supply to get what he wants, you put those two things together and that is why Fajo is a monster. Plus TNG didn't have series long villains who overshadowed almost everyone else, TNG was more episodic, while DS 9 was built on arcs, so its harder for a one shot villain to be as henious as a villain who had the stretch of the entire series to do bad things.

Plus with all the Insane Admiral types we see in Star trek, a human acting badly does not surprise me at this point. Harry Mudd was a human and not very sympathetic either, really being human doesn't gain you instant heinous points in the star Trek universe. The humanoid aliens generally have human like qualities, moral agency and really are not that different from humans aside from some cultural differences. Humans are not natrually more moral then anyone else, they just have different culture on the aliens civilizations that we would beleive is more moral, but there are still bad humans in the ST universe. John Federick Paxton was a human villain too and I didn't find him sympathetic, but he still failed the heinous test compared to Dolim, an alien psychopath.

I like S Fdebris, but I think you are letting his opinions color your argument, S Fdebris really dislikes the whole "technology is bad" idea that often appeared in Star Trek in the 90s and he dislikes zealots who imposes their will on others. That is fine but don't think that makes Alixus measure up with the worse Star Trek has to offer. I think she fails the heinous test compared to other Star Trek villains.

You responded while I was responding to your additions to your orginal post, so I don't want to start another post to deal with this point. Again people like Harry Mudd show that that selfish and unsympathetic humans still exist in the star Trek Universe, humans are not naturally morally superior to anyone else, there are bad humans, like Harry Mudd and John Frederick Paxton, one is a con man and the other is a bigot.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:21:27 PM by Overlord

I did bring up the Insane Admirals, and I did say they were either brainwashed (like in Conspiracy) or driven to protect the Federation at all cost, or had been replaced.

With Alixus, this is the first time in the series where a human is driven by not others or the 'greater good' but by their own philosophy and is willing to kill people and torture them to break them so they're completely dependent on her. She literally is nothing more than a dictator, having imposed and forced her will on everyone.

And true there are bad humans, its just Alixus seems to be the worst of the bunch. Mudd was just a petty thief and a smuggler at the end of the day. Paxton was a bigot who thought humanity should stand on its own. Alixus...purposely put people in a dangerous situation, lied to them, systematically broke or murdered them, made them dependent on her, used technology to force them there, and continued to torture them or watch them die from easily treated diseases.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:27:16 PM by SuperSaiyaMan

Okay, it seems that we have enough votes to qualify Redjac. Here are my posts about it.

Votes: 11 Yea: Myself, ACW, Scraggle, Lightysnake, Shaoken, holders, Klavice, VeryMelon, Overlord, TommyFresh, Morganthaler,

2 Nay: Irrose, AmberSonofDeshar

Here’s a repost of my write-up.

• The Original Series' season 2 episode Wolf In The Fold introduced Redjac, 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 they’re 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 later on. In the DC comics 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 Wild Storm 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 Star Trek has to offer.

Here’s the thing, though. The comics don’t seem to be considered canon, so I’m wondering where we should put it. Non-canon works can still appear on the page, as is the case with Star Wars, but should this be listed under The Original Series, where Redjac first appeared, Comics, or something else, like Multimedia?

edited 26th Feb '15 10:18:12 AM by Camberf

I'll agree with Shaoken on the Governor, btw. He makes a conscious rejection of all that was good about him

Morgen: Herzog is...well, some of the kills can be seen as being very darkly funny...pitch black comedy. But others are played deadly serious. He's the only zombie shown to have any agency except for maybe the Soviet zombie boss.

Btw, can we affirm anything for Gaerity and Gilles de Rais? I'm pretty sure both count.

Not that it matters, but on second thought, I support including the comic version of Redjac (something I'd never thought I'd say considering that the character was played by the original voice actor for Piglett). I would just list him under Comics, as that's where the crimes that boost him to CM status occur.

Alixus has actually been discussed before. She was added to the CM page without discussion years ago. We removed her for failing the heinous standard. I still don't believe that she belongs. Her crimes don't really stand out compared to other Trek villains of the week.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:42:32 PM by lrrose

I still think she counts from her methods and actions. Her smaller scale just allowed her to go unnoticed by the Federation until Sisko and O'Brien found them.

I'd be fine with that, there are only two lines that are specifically about it's actions in the show anyway.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:47:20 PM by Camberf

@ Camberf, put Redjac in the Other section if most of his crimes are in the comics.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:51:21 PM by Overlord

Alixus tortures people for defying her. But Gul Madred (the "how many lights?" Cardassian) does the same thing and a lot more often than Alixus given that torturing people is his job.

There are a lot of dictators on Star Trek. DS9 alone has Mirror!Kira and Dukat (who also briefly led a cult where he attempted to murder the people he was leading), both of whom cause a lot more pain than Alixus ever could.

Redjac also has some quotes that could possibly make for a good page quote. For example.

The "You will all die in pain and terror at my merest whim," is pretty good. Until you remember that he sounds like Piglett.

on Alixus or Alexis or however you spell it. It sounds like a case of Alternative Character Interpretation, especially since I believe there's a direct authorial statement that she was a failed case of Villain Has a Point (and yeah, I get that this trope isn't determined purely by author intention... but it's suggestive).