Now, we know that this list is going to upset more than a few of you (Especially if you disliked the three Star Wars prequels), but we're not ranking these killer robots in order of awesome - Because then you would have seen IG-88 and KARR, amongst others - nor even in order of evil, but literally in terms of estimated kill-rate. Which robot has killed the most living things? That's all we're interested in.

So, get started with the countdown, and feel free to dispute our choices in the comments. Just don't send a robot after us, to change our minds.

Who else have we missed? Tell all here.

Next: See who didn't make the list.

Next: Science Fiction's Most Killhappy Robots!

Next: Planet-Eating Robots!

Next: Genocidal Robots With A Plan!

Next: Ineffectual-But-Deadly Droids!

Next: Time-Traveling Murder Machines!

Next: Eco-Friendly Killbots!

Next: Mutant-Hunting Robots!

Next: The Self-repairing Murderbot!

Next: Robot Warriors!

This concept art comes from Nostalgic G's look back at the making of First Contact, which is pretty fascinating in general. (Including a glimpse of the young Ron Moore.) Did you know that First Contact was originally called Star Trek: Resurrection, and at one point the Borg were going to travel back in time to Renaissance Italy, and try to assimilate a whole bunch of tights-wearing perspective-discovering painters? I didn't, anyway. Check it out, including more behind-the-scenes pics. [Nostalgic G]

Darth Vader

Godzilla

The Daleks

Skeletor

Megatron

The Borg

Thanks to Lauren Davis for life-saving research help.

We already covered the 7 kinds of highly effective leadership as demonstrated by space captains. But captains can also model some pretty awful management, and noplace is this more apparent than in dear old Trek.

The bully. He alternates between jolly and grouchy — but even his jolly side is a little scary sometimes. He enjoys "teasing" his subordinates, especially anyone who's different in some way, like having funny-shaped ears. "Notices" his female underlings a little too closely. He does give an inspiring speech about risk-taking, but that's usually just to drag you into some weird body-switching scheme that will leave you with a weird rash for a month. He's also the original "I want it done yesterday" boss, who's "sick of hearing the word 'can't.'"
How to handle him: If he yells, yell back. Say "Dammit" a lot. If he asks how long something will take, exaggerate by at least 200 percent. If he starts cracking jokes at you, just ignore it, and he'll probably go away. But never, ever make fun of him back. (I've totally had this boss, like twice, and thinking of him as Captain Kirk really helped.)

The father figure. He's your best pal, playing poker with you and listening to you whine about your holographic love life — until you piss him off, and then suddenly he's all shouty and mean. He's like your nice uncle who suddenly turns vicious. It actually startled me the first time Picard showed his bitchslapping side — and yet it shouldn't have. I've had bosses just like this. They're all about "nurturing," until you don't get their drycleaning to them on time, and then suddenly it's the screamy echochamber for you. He's also incredibly long-suffering, constantly annoyed by every little thing that goes wrong. Likes to bust out with a speech explaining the "moral" of everything that happens.
How to handle him: Don't ever mistake his "daddy" act for real friendship, or let your guard down around him. If he starts quoting Shakespeare or moralizing at you, just smile and nod until he stops. Don't confide in him about your personal shit, or he'll just bring it up when he's mad at you. He likes to nurture creativity, so go ahead and share your artsy projects with him, not to mention your bizarre schemes for getting out of whatever mess you've all gotten into this week.

The politician. On the surface, he's a big swaggering warlord... but it only takes a glance to realize he's really just a conniving weasel. He'll say anything to get ahead, and always manages to wind up in charge because he maneuvers all the smarter people into destroying each other while he remains unscathed. If you start doing too well or — worse yet — become too popular around the office, he orders you to do an impossible task and then blames you when you fail. Or he tries to maneuver you into self-destructing somehow, by giving you contradictory or unrealistic orders.
How to handle him: As always, Worf shows us the way. Challenge him to a duel, and then kill him. Or if you're not in a state where it's legal to kill your boss, then challenge him head-on, and destroy him. Whatever you do, don't try to be sneaky with him — that's playing his game.

The cold fish. He's always brooding and staring into his raktagino. When he does smile, it's usually a bitter smile at some irony he's spotted. Seldom praises your work, and when he does, there's often a bit of an edge to it. His main other mode besides glowering is screaming rage. But he does at least know how to laugh at himself... in a gloomy way.
How to handle him: Keep your distance. Learn how to read his little signals — like if he leaves his "special" baseball on his desk, that means he's planning on coming back after lunch. Or if he nods slightly, that means "Great job, keep it up!" Or maybe: "I'm firing you after lunch."

The blamer. She's always right — even when she changes her mind three times. She'll take a tough stand, but then change her tune if her cronies disagree. She lectures you about her principles, but they're all totally disposable. She's all like, "No, we are not going to make an alliance with the Denim," "There is no way we are possibly going to trade technology with the Gherkins," etc. etc. But when it comes down to it, she's all about expediency. And then after one of her little ethical shortcuts blows up in her face, it's always your fault, not hers. If you ever go around her, she puts on her hurty face and talks about how betrayed she feels. I've totally had this boss, too.
How to handle her: Don't ever crawl out on a limb to support her principled stances, or she'll leave you out there by yourself. She likes it when people challenge her — so go ahead and tell her she's wrong. She may end up agreeing with you. But don't ever count on her to stick to her big principles.

The queen bee. She claims it's all about the group, and what's best for the "collective." It's not about her at all — in fact, just pretend she's not there. She's just there to speak for the group. And then she insists on being all showy — ooh, look at me lowering my head and spine into my slinky new body! She has to be the center of attention, even while she's pretending that she's one small part of a huge collective. She enjoys seducing you into her group, but once you join, you'll just be one of her bees. And if you ever get away, she'll keep bugging you and showing up when you're trying to chill in your regeneration alcove.
How to handle her: Take her at her word. Pretend you really do think she's just one small piece of a huge organization. That way, it shouldn't matter if you talk to one of her "drones" instead of her. It's all the same, right? It'll drive her crazy, and maybe she'll expose some weakness.

The hot-tub boss. Captain Archer is never mean — but then he expects you to strip down to your undies and get "decontaminated" with him every other Friday. He winks really big when he says it too: "Hey, you haven't been 'decontaminated' in a couple of weeks. I bet your rads are off the scale. Let's make a night of it. I'll bring the dog." Plus he's always inviting you for dinner in his quarters and talking about "Chef," which is probably like a pet name for a part of his body since you've never seen an actual chef around.
How to handle him: Get transferred as fast as possible.

1. Double mouth, or double-wide mouth. (See: Alien)

As the Alien series taught us, there's nothing scarier than a really long, giant toothy mouth — especially if there's a second long, toothy mouth inside it. But the long, toothy mouth rule shows up in a lot of alien movies. In Slither, for example, a guy is taken over by an alien and one of the first things it does is elongate his mouth so that it practically stretches to his ears on one side. (Lopsided elongated mouths are a bonus — lopsided is always scary.)

Corollary: Drool

A scary alien must drool. Again, we know this from the Alien series where the drool flows like water. But since Ridley Scott first gave us full frontal drool in the first Alien flick, drool has been the sign of scary for all aliens. It says "out of control." Now, of course, we cannot imagine any monster without drool. See, for instance, Beowulf, where the monster's drool is one of the first 3D effects. And there's 3D drool coming up in Journey to the Center of the Earth, too. Dinosaur drool!

2. Collective Consciousness (See: Borg from Star Trek)

One of the scariest and most alien things we can imagine is a species that has collective consciousness, or group think. All their minds are connected together like a bunch of little networked Linux boxes, rapidly churning through all that knowledge to figure out exactly how to kill you. Plus, collectively conscious creatures can more easily coordinate an attack, because they are all in mental communication with each other all the time. And they might absorb you — think how scary it was the first time you saw the Borg chanting: "You will be assimilated."

3. Looks Exactly Like a Human (See: Invasion of the Body Snatchers)

Somehow it's scarier when an alien looks exactly like a human, or is camouflaged as one. Even though Men in Black wasn't exactly scary, there was something uncanny when the alien took off its human skin and revealed its true face. And of course one of the reasons Hollywood has remade Invasion of the Body Snatchers four times in the past 50 years (Invasion was the most recent one) is that it's so freakin creepy that the aliens look perfectly human — except for the fact that they have no emotion. We will not, however, speak of the human-camo farting aliens from Doctor Who.

4. Treats Humans the Way Humans Treat Animals (See: Predator)

The infamous Twilight Zone tale "To Serve Man" packs all its punch into one single idea: the aliens have a cookbook ALL ABOUT EATING HUMANS! They look at us the way we look at chickens! The same idea lurks at the heart of popular franchise Predator, where the whole conceit is that the alien has just come to Earth on a safari to hunt human game. Where's the respect? 5. Polymorphous (See: The Thing)

If there's anything scarier than an alien that looks just like a human, it's an alien that can look like whatever it wants. Although the shiny, pretty aliens in Abyss wind up being our friends, they are super scary at first because they can morph into any shape they want. And of course what makes the thing in John Carpenter's version of The Thing so scary is that it can turn any body part into chunks of alien — human heads sprout legs, blood jumps up and runs around the room, people grow dog heads. Whoa. Same goes for the aliens in my personal favorite alien movie, Society, where a bunch of rich Beverly Hills types turn out to be polymorphous creatures who love to have giant orgies where they merge into a big room full of goo and eat humans.

6. Wants to Mate With Humans to Produce Scary Hybrid Offspring (See: Species)

The fear of an alien being who wants to mate with you probably goes back thousands of years, but in terms of current pop culture we can probably trace it back to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories of the 1920s. Remember, one of the scariest things about Cthulhu's spawn is that they are mating with humans, producing strange, fishy-looking humans who eventually go back to the sea. Combining this rule with rule 3 (looks human) is the Species franchise, where a super-hot alien lady goes around humping unsuspecting men for their seed and then killing them in flagrante delicto.

7. Buglike (See: Independence Day, Starship Troopers)

Buglike aliens are a staple of the genre. Even the aliens of Alien are buglike, with their hard carapaces. Bugs are so scary-looking already, and we suspect they may also participate in rule 2, having collective consciousness. In fact, "buglike" has become shorthand (sometimes lazy shorthand) for "scary alien," which is why you see so many depictions of aliens with feelers or antennae on their heads. Bug aliens show up in some of the most generic scifi flicks like Independence Day and Starship Troopers. But there are buggy aliens in more highbrow places too, like the Ender's Game series, where Earth is battling (and ultimately genociding) a buglike race.

• First of all, let's turn to the historical similarities. Back in 1986, Francis Ford Coppolla directed (and George Lucas executive produced) Disney's Captain EO, which was turned into an attraction at Disneyland, Disneyworld's Epcot Center, and later at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris. Michael Jackson starred as EO, and Anjelica Huston played the evil Supreme Leader who was a horrific cybernetic queen who lived in a giant rat's nest of tentacles and cables. EO sang her a song and turned her pretty multiple times every day before fading away in 1998.
• In 1989, Masamune Shirow's famous Ghost in the Shell manga started appearing in Japan. As Major Motoko begins following the trail of the mysterious "Puppeteer," they eventually capture one of the cybernetic bodies that he/she has "ghost hacked" into. Just before falling into government hands, the body had thrown itself in front of a bus, which didn't leave her body fully intact. No arms, no lower torso, and a dangling spinal column. Oh, and no clothes, either.
• Mamoru Oshii directed the animated version of Ghost in the Shell in 1995, giving us a better look at the now-named "Puppet Master," who looks much like he/she did in the manga, except without that scowling countenance. Maybe getting some color and a little animation did wonders for his/her complexion. Plus they still haven't managed to find a halter top or anything.
• When Star Trek's Data met the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact in 1996, she looked a lot like a combination of both the Ghost in the Shell puppet-body, and the evil queen from Captain EO. Although she had a much splotchier complexion and didn't look so good once all of the skin got burned off her face, but she was cybernetically sexy as she got lowered into her sleek body. Plus, Data got a little Borg action from her, so she couldn't have been all bad.
• Of course, it's hard to look at any of these ladies without comparing them to the Venus de Milo. While she may have her lower torso intact and her spinal column tucked away nicely, she's still armless and mysterious. Plus she's locked away in the Louvre behind that giant glass pyramid and the Da Vinci code, so who knows what secrets the 2000 year old statue is keeping. She might be the mother of all Terminators, for all we know.