10 Smartest Characters In Star Trek

9. The Gamesters Of Triskellion

Who doesn't love a good story about a superior alien race kidnapping aliens against their will to take part in great games for their own entertainment? It's happened a lot in comic books and by now it feels so familiar in sci-fi that it might as well be its own trope.

Star Trek: The Original Series was one of the true fore-runners on that front thanks to The Gamesters Of Triskellion, a now-infamous episode that sees Kirk, Uhura, and Chekov captured and forced to become slaves to the mysterious Providers, who have enslaved an entire people (the thralls) with the sole purpose of running deadly games for sport - and to feed their gambling addictions.

They have their weakness, of course (their gambling), but they're a race who have transcended mere humanoid form and managed to achieve their empirical gains and their ability to hijack the Enterprise's technology, while also just being disembodied brains. That is some going.