The Paradox of Appeal Pt 2: Villains

Make the villain completely unappealing and he is completely uninteresting. Worse, he makes the hero look bad for being up against a rookie-league challenge. Oh, so you have an ugly, stupid, weak, impatient, raging opponent? What a challenge. Make the villain too appealing, however, and the hero is overshadowed. Hey, this baddie is strong, intelligent, good-looking, patient, and having a great time.

The villain is the counter-point to the hero. Make that point too well, however, and you sell the opposite message. "You know, Thanos kinda has a point. Maybe we should kill a few billion people to save the Earth..."

Two interesting cases are that of Jellico on Star Trek: TNG and Tritter on House M.D. These villains are not appealing in the sense of being likeable, but rather offer a rational critique of the heroes. In the case of Jellico, the comparatively laid-back style of Picard (e.g., talk, listen, discuss) is replaced by a new captain who has to get the Enterprise ready for combat with the Cardassians in short order, disrupting the command officers. Riker, in particular, balks at having a captain who acts like he's the boss or even giving orders in a military structure. The episode is meant to be one of those "higher ranking visiting officers are idiots" episodes of Star Trek, but in this case the command crew is revealed to be complacent, entitled, and even bratty when it's their turn to follow orders. In the case of Tritter, Dr. House meets a fellow jerk in the form of a detective who arrests House for possession of Vicodin. We're presumably supposed to see Tritter as excessive and unfair, but Tritter turns out to be right. House does take big risks and becomes increasingly unhinged as the series goes on, having a psychotic break during which he attempts to kill an employee, breaks countless laws and the code of medical ethics, and eventual goes to prison when he drives a car into a house in a rage. Tritter's predictions about House turn out to be right. House is a dangerous addict surrounded by enablers. And Jellico is also right. He understands the Cardassians and generates a strategy which pushes them back without starting a war. And yet fans of both shows tend to violently dislike these villains, in my opinion, because their critiques upset the comfortable assumptions and indulgences of both shows. And this is the Paradox of the Paradox of Appeal. Have an emotionally unlikable villain offer an objectively rational case against our heroes and fans will be triggered. What results is not an entertaining villain we kind of like (or love to hate), but something more like a turd in the punchbowl. And yet, I see Tritter and Jellico as two of the best antagonists I've seen, precisely because they offer a valid counterpoint, if not repudiation, of their respective worlds. At a certain point, writers probably get tired of being trapped the rules of a story, and villains like these offer wonderful acts of rebellion. They poke us in our lazy enjoyment of the ego satisfaction of imagining ourselves being the smart snarky doctor, or first officer lording over the lower decks.


A more promising way to do it is to put the critique into the mouth of a character we like, even if s/he is morally deficient. See below for the great bit where Quark criticizes the Federation as being like root beer.

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As a kid, I had the same sort of response to Taps (1981)



as it seemed unfair to me that the people exhibiting virtue were being rudely and that this military academy which was a home for boys and young men hoping to defend the nation would be so arbitrarily closed after decades of tradition. Of course, this was a not "slobs vs. snobs" comedy in which the academy would be saved by the lead cadet beating a city council member in a ski race or by Bill Murray blundering his unit into glory in an RV equipped with missiles. In my child's mind, the academy seemed to have the right of it, although the outcome was obviously tragic and senseless. It didn't quite register with me at the time that the kids were being stupid and staging a miniature coup.

I think a key element in an appealing villain is that they take something true, or at least partially or occasionally true, and turn it into an absolute. It doesn't work if they're wrong, it only works if they're right, but become wrong by elevating their rightness into the only rightness.

So, a military commander or a superhero with a strong sense of justice, but perhaps lacking a complimentary sense of mercy. Or a ruthless businessman. Or an anarchist who's right about the ills of society but wrong in how far they'll go to combat them.

And that leads me to the second key element: the villain has to be obsessed not just with one aspect of an issue, but specifically the one (relatively) out of favor compared to its opposite. So if a society is bigger on mercy and kindness than justice, the villain has to be obsessed, to a fault, with justice exclusively.

I think that's the combo that resonates: taking a virtue that most people agree IS a virtue, but which is considered a little less important than at some other time, and making it everything. Because rooting for them allows us to express that lack or fight that deemphasis, even indirectly.

I had a similar thing, but kind of in reverse, when I saw The Fountainhead as a teenager.

For those who don't know, it's based on an Ayn Rand novel. It's about an architect who isn't allowed to make what he wants and is thwarted for being uncontrollable and amazing and individualistic and all that. Standard Rand stuff. So in the end (spoilers!) he blows up his own building, because his vision for it was compromised, or something like that.

So I watch this movie, and I basically tell my dad "that's stupid. You can't blow up a freaking building just because people made you compromise your vision. Grow up." And my dad, who's a pretty smart guy, does not argue (and he obviously doesn't even disagree), but does ask me a series of leading questions about the building and the man, and why it exists at all. It leads me to confront the actual point of the story, which is: this thing would not exist without him, so he has the authority to take it away.

Now, I don't think this is literally true. But that's not the point. The point is that things which are unreasonable in reality can be reasonable in art, that art can be uncompromising to make a point, even if what it depicts to make that point should not be acted on.

I'm not sure what I think of the movie now, or even the point it's making, but this realization about art in general made me a much better appreciator of art, and a much better watcher of movies. It helped me understand that movies should not always be judged on the standard of "what would I think if this literally happened?" And obviously it bears some resemblance to your anecdote, albeit inversely, where I had a totally pragmatic response to a film and eventually circled around to consider it romantically/symbolically.

Interesting post, as one of the examples that you gave 'Jellico' on Star Trek: TNG is a character & episode I've pondered and talked about before. I've not seen your other example 'Tritter on House M.D'.Star Trek: The Next Generation" Chain of Command, Part 1 & II, always fascinated me as I assumed the writers intended Captain Jellico, who temporarily took over command of the Enterprise, as an example of a 'villain' or a 'flawed commander'...But I thought the actor and the character worked exceptional well. One of the more interesting STTNG episodes for me. Now I've always liked Picard and Riker, so my fondness for Jellico isn't about anti-Riker-ness. The episode was clever as the writers had a bit of fun with Riker being a spoiled brat, as you said. Seemingly the writers demoted his character to whiner status, which gave Riker another dimension (which I also liked, as it made him more humanly flawed). Whilst Data is made first officer and literally kicks butt in that position of authority and it was nice to see that Jellico had no problem with a sentient android being his 'number one'. Now I just asked my wife about that episode and she thought Jellico was suppose to be the bad guy villain. But I see him in the vain of Gregory Peck's tough as nails, crack the whip commander in Twelve O'Clock High. I've never bothered to see if the STTNG writers/producers have ever commented on their inspiration for Chain of Command but it wouldn't surprise me if Twelve O'Clock High had indeed inspired them...and I swear Patrick Stewart patterned his Captain Picard after Peck in Captain Horatio Hornblower.

I think the most direct evidence we have that Jellico is intended to be the antagonist is when Riker says,


I think Picard is supposed to be our exemplar of leadership (the patient consensus-seeking captain who trusts his staff to figure things out) as opposed to a top-down manager who enforces hierarchy (I would note that it is only after Jellico orders Troi to wear her uniform on duty that she starts dressing like everyone else and not a business casual observer just hanging out). Jellico is the old way of doing things, the old human. Picard is progressive--humans as we hope they will be in a better world. However, I think that there is also a bit of critique (conscious or unconscious) in that character. Ronald D. Moore, for example, found the template of Star Trek unrealistic to the point of being uninteresting (how you do right drama about perfect people who don't need an arc?) and would complicate Star Trek in DS9 and make an anti-Trek in his Battlestar Galactica.



Riker, in particular, was always a problem that they had to eventually explain in later seasons. If this guy is so talented and ambitious, why is he just the first officer? Why is he refusing commands? Being offered a command creates drama. Will Riker leave the Enterprise? (See what I did there?). However, it also establishes the virtue of his character (See, he is really really good, he could have his own ship! We know that the Enterprise has the best crew!). However, as the series extends and it appears that he's had a failure to launch, what was once a moment of drama and virtue signaling becomes a question of seeming vice.Is he a little too complacent, too comfortable, too familiar? What's the deal with Will? And so we explore Riker's issues with his dad, with Troi, and even another version of himself in "Tom" Riker. Riker is shifted from an ambitious climber to a content and mature adult who has found his place. The problem they created creates his arc, allowing him to "grow the beard." This is how writing should work. You inevitably create problems with various choices and this results in a creative puzzle. We either have to promote him off the show or explain how him sticking around isn't really like being a 6th year senior in high school.



I think you're right about Riker as a flawed character. I seem to recall an episode with Barclay in which all the crew were basically doing the "mean girls" thing and avoiding the awkward dork, and Picard let's Riker have it in the ready room for failing to live up to Star Fleet's ideals, which include true fellowship and deep professionalism. Picard is our most evolved human, our most progressed progressive, and this is why Q takes such an interest in him. Picard is our paragon, so this does require a few faults in his counterparts (otherwise we would ask "Why isn't she the captain then?"). Picard's existence demands some foibles in the first officer, otherwise our fantasy hierarchy is not justified.