10 Worst Sci-Fi TV Characters Of All Time
Where’s a death scene when you need one?
There’s nothing worse on TV than a just plain potty character dragging down the whole show you once loved.
Despite a general audience obsession with anti-heroes and love-to-hate characters these days, certain figures become odious in a manner no sensible writer could possibly intend.
What makes a character bad (bad as in just plain bad, not villainous bad or bad in the Michael Jackson sense of the word)?
There’s a cocktail of obvious factors: abysmal writing, questionable acting, zero character definition. All these and more can create a cast stinker that leaves you looking for the remote. Often times, TV’s most despised characters (sci-fi or otherwise) will arrive to push the plot in a direction viewers grow to hate, thus putting the character’s face on the arc they loathed.
What these characters have in common is the litany of hateful message boards across the internet they inspired. The fandom rage that’ll live on long past the end of whatever show they belonged to. It’s rather impressive to inspire such an emotional reaction in viewers. At least until one looks at the sagging ratings these silver screen pariahs often cause.
10. Riley Finn - Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Buffy Season 4 seriously struggled to fill a certain giant David Boreanaz-shaped hole in its cast. After three seasons of romancing the brooding, occasionally super evil Angel, the writers decided it was high time for a change in Buffy’s love life. Enter Riley Finn, a sensible, wholesome, age appropriate military man from Iowa. Riley’s a great bloke from the get go; he’s polite, he’s caring and above all brave. The problem is, he’s a wee bit too great.
Devoid of any real flaws, pushed ahead of long term favourites such as Xander, Willow and Spike for screen time and played rather vacuously by Marc Blucas, the guy’s just plain boring. An attempt in Season 5 to add some darkness and nuance to Mr Finn winds up coming off as straight character assassination.
Codependent and woe-is-me in his approach to Buffy and her struggles to balance slaying with taking care of her mum and sister, Riley becomes an inconsiderate jerk. Worse still, he gets a sudden hankering for vampires feeding on him, swiftly ending his dynamic with Buffy and adding to the increasing depression she suffers from during seasons five and six.
Blucas returned one more time in Season 6 with his Mr. Perfect image restored for one of the weakest, plot hole-laden episodes in the show’s history. A poor send off for a poorly done character.