What one-time-only villains on TV shows have you found to be the best–or worst, depending on your point of view? What performances stand out in your mind as truly creepy, evil, malevolent, really-need-to-be-killed? What about them makes them stand out in your mind even though they only appeared once?
My own nominations:
Jubal Early from Firefly.
Really chilling, this guy. Not just because of his competence (though it’s always nice to see a villain who’s good at his job)–but because of his attitude about it. What I’m specifically thinking of is…
The detached way he asked Kaylee if she’d ever been raped, followed by a threat to do just that to her if she interfered with him in his mission. It was the utter lack of desire for her that was so creepy; he was threatening her with that because he could tell she was so terrified of it, and that fear would incapacitate her better than mere death would.
The Gentlemen from the Buffy episode aping silent movies.
Utterly, utterly terrifying. Their whole shtick of depriving the entire city of their voices just to get to a handful of victims seems vicious for the sake of being vicious. Their appearance. Their palpable glee at their work. Wonderfully creepy.
Damn, my two were taken by the OP. I swear, when The Gentleman appears in Giles’ window in front of Olivia’s face, I scream, every time. And it’s MORE scary that he doesn’t kill her!
If you’re talking about The Operative, they’re only alike in the most superficial of ways (“black bounty hunter”). Jubal delighted in causing fear and pain, The Operative was sorry he had to. I understood The Operative, so I didn’t find him as terrifying. I wouldn’t date him, you know, but I understood where he was coming from.
On the same Whedonverse kick, I’d like to nominate Sweet, from the episode “Once More, With Feeling.” He wasn’t really creepy in any sense of the word, but he was one of the best villains the Buffyverse ever had. Tons of style, including a fantastic entrance and exit, and WHAT a voice!
Also from* Buffy*, the Kinderkiller who preyed on children exclusively. Not only does that make him loathsome, but also Buffy had to infect herself and bring herself to the grey area between life and death just to see the guy in order to fight him.
I also thought the cyborg/demon/human hybrid Adam was very chilling He projected a sense of absolute certainty about who he was and what he was doing. It was much more scary than the usual ugly villain who rants about how powerful he/she/it is. The First earned big scary points because of its ability to be anyone or anything (provided they’d died) but the constant “You can’t stop me. nhah, nyah” attitude got tiresome. Also, it’s hard to be afraid of a being that’s intangible.
Indeed I was talking about The Operative. I believe that he and Jubal are closer than you think: they both delighted in causing fear and pain but for very different reasons. Jubal because he’s a sadist, The Operative because he’s a fanatic. The Operative did show sorrow but for what he is–someone working toward an ideal that he will never get to see–not for causing fear and pain. Jubal was likely the same way before he went nuts.
I’ll add my votes to Jubal Buffalo Bill The Gentlemen
**Adam ** and **the First ** were nice evils, but they were recurring characters, do they count? B- for effort to *Charmed * - every once in a while they came very close to producing a very spooky evil, but they always fell short.
I’ve been wracking my brains trying to think of a ST evil - **Lore ** is the closest I could come to truly creepy. Q was far too amusing to be really evil, and in fact he wasn’t - he was merely mischievious
Of course, Weird Al was referring to DeFoe being one creepy looking dude (any doubts? watch **Auto Focus ** some time), but when Harry Sr (was that his name?) was getting instructions from the mirror - that really got to me.
