Star Trek: The 15 Strongest Characters In The Franchise, Ranked

The various crews of the USS Enterprise have faced countless enemies, allies, and entities throughout their adventures across the "Star Trek" Universe. But let's be honest: Some of them are significantly stronger and more threatening than others.

There is no shortage of characters who are physically capable. Every crew has their go-to tough guy when they need something extra-heavy lifted or an extra-durable bad guy escorted off the bridge. The original series crew had Spock, "The Next Generation" had Worf, "Deep Space Nine" also had Worf, "Voyager" had Seven of Nine, and so on. But, in a universe with characters that have literal godlike powers, sadly, some of these tough-as-nails crew members don't even scratch the surface of the strongest beings the Enterprise has ever encountered.

To help curious explorers understand the true strength teeming throughout the "Star Trek" Universe, here are the 15 strongest characters.

Born a Klingon but raised by humans, Worf (Michael Dorn) is the best of both races. He constantly proves his mettle in both competitive combat and actual warfare. He's gotten the better of several others of his kind and has hardly ever hesitated to go toe to toe with beings much stronger than he is. While Worf doesn't always win his fights, he always survives.

However, what makes Worf strong enough for this list is his ability to evolve. Unlike other Klingons who are all about fighting and dying in combat, Worf continues to better himself through meditation, interactions with humanity, and brief attempts at command. In a world where the heroes are on a mission of discovery, Worf makes self-discovery and improvement his side mission and it often pays off.

Losing one's sense of self can be a scary thing, and the Organians use that fear to their advantage. Collectively, they're a group that is capable of inhabiting the bodies of others, including Klingons, Humans, Cardassians, and others.

As a species, they're basically immortal since they're made of pure thought and energy. However, when inhabiting another body, if that person dies, an Organian can just escape. While inhabiting another body, they can force that person to do anything. When they're done, they simply wipe their victim's memories. Perhaps their most impressive power is their ability to resurrect the dead, including Enterprise crew members Trip Tucker and Hoshi Sato. While Organians mostly use these powers to observe other species, their ability to essentially possess people makes them quite formidable, but still only as strong as the being they inhabit.

Although Guinan's (Whoopi Goldberg) powers are never quite laid out to the viewer, the bartender aboard the Enterprise D has a lot more to her than meets the eye. In the episode "Q Who," she confronts the omniscient and powerful being Q (John de Lancie), who describes her as a "dangerous being" and warns Data (Brent Spiner) that he shouldn't trust her. The two square up like they're going to fight and one has to wonder what someone who isn't afraid of Q is capable of.

What we know is that she comes from the El-Aurian race, a group of listeners who possess a lot of knowledge about the universe and the way it ought to be in balance. This knowledge has given Guinan the ability to help the Enterprise crew and, powers aside, she has the ear of some of the most influential people in the "Star Trek" universe.

When one thinks about the strongest "The Next Generation" character, Worf likely jumps to mind. However, the truth is that no one on the Enterprise D and few people throughout the galaxy possess more physical strength than the android Data.

Created by Dr. Noonien Soong in his own image, Data is a remarkably unique individual who, in addition to an incomparably capable and curious mind, is super agile, super strong, and can accomplish feats no other character can. In the episode "Thine Own Self," he casually lifts up an anvil with ease like a normal human would move an empty cup. He's bent industrial beams and even demonstrated himself to be stronger than all Klingons and even Borg. Luckily, he's on our side because if he didn't possess a desire to become human, there's a chance he could conquer humans. In the episode "Power Play," his synthetic mind is taken over by a malicious force, and his physical strength nearly brings the entire ship to heel.

In Spock's own words, "Khan Noonien Singh is the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced."

Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) was essentially a super-soldier created during a period of warfare on Earth. Khan's superiority complex gave him permission, in his mind, to take what he wants throughout the galaxy, and coldly kill any beings who got in his way or he deemed inferior. Khan believes he should rule as a superior being and his strength in that belief put him at odds several times with Captain Kirk (William Shatner), who famously looked at Khan as his greatest nemesis. In their time together, Khan demonstrated super strength, agility, and an incredibly dangerous and toxic way of thinking — making him a powerful tyrant who cannot be stopped with your average fist fight.

Do The Borg count as a single character? It's a tricky question because, although The Borg are many and have assimilated various species including humans and Klingons, their whole claim to fame and the thing that makes them scary is that they are a singular collective. With a few exceptions such as Hugh, The Borg operate as one. So, no matter what form they take, when you're speaking to one Borg sentry, you're speaking to all Borg.

This collective hivemind gives them a brutal efficiency that's allowed them to sweep across the galaxy, terminating or assimilating countless planets and races. Given their singular, accumulated knowledge, they've exhibited above average strength, technological prowess and combat capabilities both offensive and defensive. Even if one of the Starfleet crew members manages to kill one, there are literally countless more ready to take their place and continue their one, simplistic goal — make everyone Borg.

Kes (Jennifer Lien) was one of the Ocampas who was reliant on The Caretaker — more on him later –for a time. However, when she left the planet and joined the crew of the USS Voyager, she began to drastically develop her mental powers, which included telekinesis and some more unstable abilities like pyrokinesis.

While her mental abilities make her stronger than the average Voyager crew member, her occasional inability to understand or control them puts her further down this list than others who have more mastery over their powers. Still, despite her shortcomings, she continues to learn and develop herself as "Star Trek: Voyager" goes on.

This humanoid being encountered the crew of the Enterprise-D on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" several times and helped them with his impressive ability to travel between space, time, and reality. It's that third one that merits his inclusion on this list.

While some characters pack a punch, very few can just up and leave reality when things get too hot. In addition to his innate abilities, The Traveler uses them to study different beings and technologies and is more than willing to share that knowledge with people he deems worthy. As a result, his strength extends to his ability to be a powerful ally to whoever he wants.

He eventually used this allyship to create The Watchers, a group that includes Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) that ensures the survival of certain races throughout the galaxy, thus making The Traveler one of the most consequential figures in the "Star Trek" Universe.

Few powerful beings in the "Star Trek" Universe left such a lasting impact with their demonstrations of strength as much as Armus (Mart McChesney). In the "Next Generation" episode "Skin of Evil," this creature introduced itself as the collective "evil" and negativity of a race of people who underwent a procedure to purge it from themselves. They then abandoned the entity on a barren planet where it learned to coalesce into something truly vile, which ultimately ended up killing Lieutenant Natasha Yar (Denise Crosby) with an energy beam.

Her crime? Trying to rescue injured officers after Armus crashed their shuttle just so he would have new beings to torture. Once Armus had a ship in his grasp, it made it very difficult to escape its clutches, only succumbing to some trickery from Captain Jean Luc Picard. However, even the Enterprise-D crew could do no more than simply abandoning the entity on a planet all its own.

The Caretaker was the human form and name a member of the Nacene race took while looking after members of the Ocampa race. The Caretaker felt bad because his people accidentally ruined Ocampa planet's ecosystem. While the rest of the Nacene, a highly technologically advanced race, continued their journey across the galaxy, The Caretaker stayed behind to fix the mistakes they'd caused.

By the time he encountered the USS Voyager, the Caretaker demonstrated an ability to create energy and single-handedly sustain the entire Ocampa society on his own. However, that turned out not to be a good thing as it made them entirely reliant on him. Regardless, it was quite the showing of his prowess and strength within the universe. Despite his advanced technology and powers, The Caretaker is mortal, which puts him below some of the other characters on this list. 

The "Star Trek" Universe is full of characters who temporarily gain superpowers. Commander William Riker possessed the powers of the Q Continuum for a brief time, for example. What makes Gary Mitchell different, other than him being the first in the series, is the tragic nature of his brush with omnipotence. 

After encountering a cosmic force, Mitchell began to develop incredible abilities like telepathy, hyper-cognition and even the ability to manipulate matter — all things that make a being particularly strong, even if they're new to the powers. Sadly, he seemingly perished at the hands of Captain James Kirk with some help from a being similar to Mitchell. For a captain that doesn't believe in a no-win scenario, he failed to rescue Mitchell from the corruption his new abilities caused on his mind. But during his brief time with his powers, Mitchell was one of the most formidable beings in the galaxy.

In "The Original Series" episode "Return to Tomorrow," the crew of the USS Enterprise was beckoned to a planet by a small group of aliens who had evolved their mental capabilities to near-godlike prowess. However, a cataclysmic war among the race destroyed their planet and most of their species. Sargon and two others from rival factions existed in spheres waiting for someone to come along and help them regain physical form.

In the ensuing adventure, Sargon and his cohorts immediately returned to their warring ways the second they gained physical form again. Although there are others of his kind, Sargon's decision to resign himself to oblivion rather than continue his people's galaxy-destroying war makes him the wisest. Sure, he's got the powers of a god, but true strength is found in restraint.

Furthering the canon of godlike beings in the "Star Trek" Universe, Kevin Uxbridge (John Anderson) is the human name adopted by a member of the Douwd race. Kevin came to Earth in his youth and fell in love with a human woman. Just before meeting the crew of the Enterprise-D, he lost the love of his life when his colony was attacked by a hostile force. Although he'd rejected his own powers, when his wife was killed in said attack, Kevin got upset and dusted off his old abilities in a rage.

With just a thought, he destroyed the entire race responsible for the attack. This makes him and the entire Douwd race on par with the powers of the Q Continuum, further demonstrated by Kevin's ability to deceive the crew of the Enterprise-D with a fake, albeit functioning, warship in the "Next Generation" episode "The Survivors."

When Captain Kirk encountered this godlike being masquerading as an 18th-century English noble in "The Original Series," he quickly found himself outmatched its powers. Luckily for him, he would come to find out that Trelane is merely a child who, despite his seemingly endless abilities, could still be put in his place by his parents. When "Strange New Worlds" brought back the character, we learned that Trelane has his powers because he is a member of the ultra-powerful Q Continuum.

So, Trelane shares some of the powers of Q (who may or may not be his father according to comments from "Strange New Worlds" showrunner Akiva Goldsman to TV Guide). However, he's not as disciplined as an adult member of the Q Continuum. Still, if the "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life" or the movie "Brightburn" taught us anything, it's that a child with powers can be a dangerous thing.

It's hard not to rank a being that has limitless, omniscient powers as the strongest character in the vast "Star Trek" Universe. His ability to do literally anything he wants, like change the gravitational constant of the universe, would alone make him the strongest being in not only "Star Trek" but perhaps all of fiction. However, he is merely part of a Continuum of beings with similar powers — so what makes this Q the most powerful?

One would have to chalk that up to his mischievous nature. From his first appearance alone in the pilot episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" ("Encounter at Farpoint"), Q reveals that he's decided to put humanity on trial for its many faults and agrees to weigh them against humanity's potential. From the get-go, this being that could wipe out all of existence with a flick of his wrist decides to make humanity his personal plaything. Q's instability mixed with his near-limitless powers makes him potentially the most dangerous character in the universe.