10 Deadliest Accidents In Star Trek

10. Dyson Sphere Disaster

In 2294, the USS Jenolan, a Sydney-class passenger transport ship, went missing on its way to the Norpin colony on Norpin V. It took 75 years to find out what had happened. Given the traumatic nature of events, we can forgive Scotty a few Aldebaran whiskies, too.

The Jenolan had, in fact, crashed into a Dyson Sphere — a truly gigantic structure built around a star to harness its energy. This particular Dyson Sphere was 200 million kilometres in diameter, with an interior surface area of over 250 million M-class planets. It had been abandoned by its creators.

The direct cause of the crash wasn't the Sphere's rather large gravitational field, but an incompatibility between the resonance frequency of its tractor beams and Starfleet power systems. When the Sphere tried to lock on to the Jenolan, it overloaded the ship's aft power coils. Badly damaged, the Jenolan could no longer resist gravity's pull. Only Scotty and Ensign Matt Franklin survived the collision. Only Scotty made it out of transporter suspension.

Though no such numbers are mentioned on screen, the novelisation of Relics gives the Jenolan's crew complement at 36, plus its captain, James Armstrong. The number of passengers, in addition to Captain Montgomery Scott (retired), isn't specified, though it is implied there were quite a few. The novel does state how the passengers died — from asphyxiation due to a hull breach caused by the crash.