10,159
edits
Villain Decay: Difference between revisions
→Live-Action TV
Line 182:
== Live-Action TV ==
* Multiple instances show up in the various ''[[Star Trek]]'' series:
** The Borg are probably the most infamous example: they went from once-a-season super menace to routine issue over the course of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]''. The truly interesting thing about the Borg, to begin with, was not so much their threat level (though that was high) as the existential challenge they presented to the mindset and worldview of the complacent characters. In their first appearance, Picard and the other Federation personnel seem to have trouble even ''comprehending'' the idea that this foe cannot be reasoned with, that there's literally ''nothing'' they can say or do that will move them, or that an enemy would ever be an enemy if he really understood them. The Borg '''did not care'''. Later they watered this down with the infamous 'Hugh' episode that reduced the Borg to just another alien race that can be persuaded by good will and proper effort. The Borg were supposed to be ''inexorable'', absent that they're boring. Several of the episodes focused on Seven of Nine in ''Voyager'', however, ''help'' this issue. Yes, Borg can get cute and cuddly again when separated from The Collective...but there are ''billions upon billions'' of Borg. And you'd have to free them ''all'' to beat The Collective. And at first a lot of them might not '''want''' to stop being Borg...so it isn't just as easy as "Hugh"ing them all. The Villain Decay of the Borg really began in earnest with ''[[Star Trek: First Contact]]'', with the introduction of the Borg Queen. The reason they were so tough to beat was because they were absolutely decentralized - there was no central locus. The Borg Queen served mainly as a way to personalize the borg threat (the producers recognized that it wasn't very thematic to have the ''Enterprise'' crew interact with an abstract [[Hive Mind]] voice as the villain), but also as a quick fix to the movie's Borg problem. Oddly enough, before they started to decay, they actually got more dangerous, once they start desiring to assimilate everything and not just civilizations. Before a single ship had very little to fear from a passing cube. But of course, Voyager being only a single ship (and without a civilization to defend), this had to change, otherwise they could just fly through Borg space just fine, as long as they didn't settle any planets or develop superior technology. And with this desire only for large scale assaults out the window, Voyager had to deal with them constantly. Thus, they had to get easier. That's why TNG only had 6 episodes that dealt with the Borg - it was just too tough to keep the Borg a terrifying enemy and yet still come up with ways to defeat them. And since 4 of those episodes were in pairs of 2-parters, 1 of them didn't even require defeating any Borg, and in 1 of them they were introduced to the Borg by Q and thus only saved from destruction/assimilation by Q's intervention as well (a ''literal'' [[Deus Ex Machina]]), only twice in 7 seasons did the ''Enterprise'' actually defeat the Borg.<ref>In fact, of the two listed 2-parters, only one of them featured the actual Borg collective (the Borg in the other were part of a wussy, de-powered break-away group that had become infected with an Individuality Meme), so in all seven seasons of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', the Borg at full power were defeated precisely once, and then only barely, and on a technicality, to boot!</ref> Voyager had to beat them in about 15 different episodes and they quickly became paper tigers.
The decay is later turned on its head in the later ''The Next Generation'' and ''Voyager'' relaunch novels, when the Borg effectively reestablish their handle as one of the greatest threats to the galaxy since...well, ''ever.'' In the span of approximately six months, they {{spoiler|kill Captain Janeway, destroy the planet Pluto, and launch a massive invasion in an attempt to completely annihilate every spacefaring civilization of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, the end result of which was over [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|63,000,000,000 casualties]]. That's 63 billion for those of you who have trouble with zeros.}}
Line 197 ⟶ 189:
** The non-canon TNG novels have [[retcon]]ned this in a rather interesting way by having the Ferengi intentionally disseminate rumors of the Ferengi's bloodthirsty nature as a calculated response to a perceived threat from the United Federation of Planets. Essentially, the Ferengi were so worried about first-contact with moneyless society that they hoped give themselves a fearsome image before the first meeting took place. In universe, when first-contact actually occurred, each side underwent almost total Villain Decay from the perspective of the other.
** Q turned from a frivolous yet dangerous omniscient being who nevertheless delivered some important [[Aesop]]s to Captain Picard, to a lovesick puppy who goes to Captain Janeway for advice on parental relationships and conflict resolution in the Q Continuum. Q really was one of those characters who were a case of [[Depending on the Writer]], especially in TNG. He's creepy and borderline sadistic in "Encounter at Farpoint", then campy and unwittingly annoying in "QPid", then he's back to being sinister in "True Q". It's debatable whether or not he was even actually a villain, considering how many times he (sometimes indirectly) helped Picard and the crew.
*** The novels came up with a solution for this apparent schizophrenia of motives by having Q be unpredictable on purpose, sometimes just because he wanted to (which provides a nice "out" for any Q stories that had no connection to the others), and the others were all veiled attempts at turning Picard into a [[Chekhov's Gunman]] via an unorthodox version of [[Stealth Mentor]]ing.
** The Dominion in ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' suffer heavily from this trope as well. In Starfleet's first military encounter with them, three of the weakest Dominion fighters {{spoiler|destroy the ''Galaxy''-class USS ''Odyssey'', ostensibly one of Starfleet's most powerful ships, with relative ease}}. However, by the end of the show we can see ''Galaxy''-class starships destroy the Dominion fighters ''in one shot''. By the time of the Dominion War, Starfleet ''had'' developed defenses to the phased polaron beams that the Dominion Ships use, and [[Took a Level In Badass|upgraded their weapons]]. Hell they turned the ''[[Glass Cannon|Galaxy]]''[[Glass Cannon|-class Explorer]] into the ''[[Mighty Glacier|Galaxy]]''[[Mighty Glacier|-class Battleship]]. Precisely why the Dominion belong on the Villain Decay page, and not on [[Fridge Logic]]. The Dominion continued to be a serious threat right up until the final battle of the Dominion War. Often, however, one side in an all-out conflict undergoes villain decay as the natural result of a long, drawn-out struggle. Vichy France, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany all underwent their own separate decay at different points in the war.
* After seeing how much respect the Borg lost during his writing stint on ''Voyager'', Ronald D. Moore rather neatly avoided the trope in his remake of ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]''. The villainous Cylons are only sparingly used as a direct threat to the heroes, and typically when the heroes do beat them there's some kind of price. However, one particular Cylon, Caprica-Six has [[Badass Decay|decayed rather badly]]. Given she was only in one episode (the miniseries), where she performed one [[Mercy Kill|mercy killing]] and lectured Baltar and that was it, and then wasn't seen again until the late second season where she followed through on being sad at taking a baby's life by regretting the holocaust in its entirety and missed a man she from the beginning cared about, or why else bother to save him, she didn't have much badass to decay anyway.
Line 242 ⟶ 235:
* Omen on ''[[Dark Oracle]]''. In Season 1 he managed to be [[The Big Bad]], even with his powers sealed. In Season 2 he returns with his powers unlocked...and is demoted to being a flunky of Blaze and Violet. He's still dangerous, but Lance and Cally have bigger fish to fry, and simply aren't scared of him anymore. In the end, he's reduced to a rather pitiful figure who {{spoiler|pulls a [[Heel Face Turn]] to help Cally and then dies}}.
* A brilliant example of [[Tropes Are Not Bad]] from ''[[The Wire]]''. In the first season the Barksdale crew ruled the West Side of Baltimore. By the third season, they were in a tit-for-tat and being matched by independent drug lord who had no backing and was young and inexperienced. Marlo's ruthlessness surprised even Avon but it went beyond that, particularly with the collapse of Avon and Stringer's friendship where the cracks could be seen as early as the beginning of the second season.
== Professional Wrestling ==
| |||