Summary
A selfish character in any story isn’t necessarily a villain. It can be a character that has yet to go through their whole story arc, for example, or perhaps someone who is making an honest mistake about their priorities. The world ofStar Trekis full of nuanced characters who can be described as self-absorbed, egotistical, or selfish, and some of them have sympathetic motives while others do not.
Star Trek: The Next Generationhad a selection of regular, recurring, and one-off characters with selfish motives. Whether it’s a superiority complex or teenage angst,TNGhas its share of inconsiderate people in every story.
1Lore
The Opposite Of Data
Data was selfless and modest,and Lore was the exactopposite in almost every way. He knew he was superior to humans when it came to strength and intelligence, and instead of using his power for good, he was driven by his superiority complex to do evil instead.
Soong was compelled by the colonists in the Omicron Theta colony to deactivate Lore when he started to turn against them, but not before the android had contacted the Crystalline Entity to make a deal for his eventual reactivation and release. This led to a sibling rivalry between Lore and Data that formeda multi-episodeTNGstorylinestarting in Season 1 with “Datalore.”
Lore appeared in severalTNGepisodes as a villain, with very few positive qualities other than his superior abilities. He was the fourth android built by Dr. Noonien Soong but the first one with a fully functional positronic brain, which unfortunately wasn’t enough to give him a more sophisticated personality.
2Wesley Crusher
Too Much Naval Gazing, Even For A Teenager
Granted, Wesley was a teenager and going through some things during his time on the Enterprise. It can’t be easy to lose a father at such a young age and endure constant smothering from the well-meaning but overbearing surviving parent. It’s also apparent the character was created to satisfy a certain age demographic, and the YA market is too lucrative to ignore.
Wesley was an incredibly gifted and intelligent child, and the viewer knows that because other characters are constantly talking about it. His interactions with other crewmembers on the ship were always colored by his emotional outbursts or frustrated pouting, which might pass for a realistic teenager as far as some writers are concerned.
After a few years of crying about not getting into Starfleet, or getting in and then leaving, at least he finally ended up where he belonged. In modernTrek, Wesley is all grown up, graduated as a Traveler, and is considerably less self-obsessed.
3William Riker
And Not Just In His Personal Life
The writers were trying to make him the macho man of the ship, but too many times they leaned in too hard into the stereotypes and he just seemed really selfish. In the episode “The Child,” for example, when he discovers Counselor Troi has been impregnated by an alien life force, jealousy drives him to be more concerned about who the father is instead of her health or well-being.
Riker could also be fairly petty when he wanted to be, growing his beard just to spite his bald captain after a period of forced shore-leave, because oh-the-humanity of a vacation. As far as his messy personal life, Riker decided he loved Troi onlywhen she accepted Worf’smarriage proposal, making it seem like he was driven more by selfishness than love.
4Lwaxana Troi
It’s Not About Deanna, It’s About Her
If Deanna’s not dealing with her wishy-washy boyfriend, then it’s her headstrong mother Lwaxana that’s on her case instead. Played by Majel Barrett, who also appears inThe Original Seriesas Christine Chapel and in the pilot as Number One, Lwaxana only seems to care about her flamboyant public appearances and whether or not her daughter is getting married.
Any episode of Lwaxana Troi is going to have a lot of drama, and embarrassing her daughter at every opportunity is just the start. She has the worst qualities of a helicopter parent who’s somehow also neglecting her child’s emotional needs, which is the worst kind of selfishness.
5Q
An Omnipotent Jerk
How can anyone with godlike powers not be a total jerk? That might be the question thatStar Trekwriters were asking when they created the Q Continuum, a race of all-powerful but sarcastic and snide beings. Qappears early inTNGand forms an attachment to Picard immediately, mostly because the captain of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D is less likely to just punch him in the face.
Q’s real problem is that he’s bored, and to entertain himself, he seeks out the Enterprise and its crew as either an existential threat or a mild annoyance. Initially, he’s deeply selfish, tampering with the lives of the ship for little more than entertainment, but his character does have an interesting arc spanning a few seasons.
6The Borg Queen
A Collective That Doesn’t Like Sharing
Picardintroduced the compelling idea that the Borg could be friendly, even benevolent, depending onthe goals and dispositionof the Queen. The ruler of the collective in theTNGtimeline, however, is a selfish one, which seems contradictory to the ruler of the Collective, which is why it leads to her downfall.
The Borg Queen has taken on several incarnations through the years, and although she was introduced inTNG, she’s appeared in several other shows and a movie,Star Trek: First Contact. Each time she claims to be acting on behalf of the Collective, but her actions indicate otherwise. Her obsession with Picard is personal, and she seems to be capable of risking a lot to possess him in one way or another.
