7. Chekov
I had no problem with the way Anton Yelchin played Chekov, it was always going to be a difficult role to do with the risk that the comedy Russian accent could quickly turn all your hard work into a farce. But overall, Yelchin did the best job he could and after Karl Urban's McCoy, he was one of the best decisions made by the casting director. However, no matter how much hard work he put into playing Chekov, Yelchin could not escape the destructive power of Abrams, Orci & Kurtzman. In this rebooted Abrams universe, for some reason Chekov the navigator is also the ship's transporter expert. So much so that when Kirk and Sulu are hugging and falling to their death, it is only Chekov who can save them. Even gravity slows down its effects so that Chekov has enough time to run from the Bridge to the Transporter room. When Chekov gets to the transporter room, rather than tell the transporter to automatically lock on to any falling humans it can find and beam them on board, he decides to manually lock on to Kirk and Sulu. Why cant he automatically lock on like we have seen been done a million times before on Star Trek? Later, Chekov the transporter expert has to beam Spock, his mother and father and some other Vulcans on board the Enterprise before Vulcan is destroyed. However, mid-transport Spock's mother Amanda is killed when the ground beneath her collapses and she falls to her death. I'm sure you will agree that this is very sad, especially for Spock but if I was Spock, I would have immediately demanded to know how was it possible for Amanda to die if she was in the process of being beamed. We know from 46 years of Star Trek that when a person is caught in a transporter beam, their molecules are broken down to be reconstructed in the transporter room and as soon as you get a lock and begin transporting, that person is safely stored in the transporter buffer. So how exactly did Amanda die by falling to her death? She had already begun being beamed so she should have materialized in the transporter room with everyone else.
Also, how did Chekov know that it was Amanda who had died? He shouts ''I'm losing her!'' but how would he know who he was losing? The transporter doesn't individually label each person it's locked on to. Besides, Chekov has already demonstrated that he is ace at beaming people who are falling so why doesn't he do his thing and beam her up? It may sound like I'm nitpicking but things like the transporter have been explained to death how they work and people know its limitations. The Transporter in this rebooted timeline has been tweaked for no reason and it just sucks. One other Chekov moment that seemed really forced is when he has to make the ship wide announcement, just before the Enterprise reaches Vulcan. Firstly, why would Chekov be making the announcement? Ship wide messages that explain the mission are normally relayed by the commanding officer, so why is it suddenly Chekov's job? This scene was written just to shoehorn in the joke about Chekov mispronouncing his "V's", he cant say ''Victor Victor' to log into the computer because he says ''Wictor Wictor'' instead. Why is he logging into the ships computer to make an announcement in the first place? No one has ever had to log in to make an announcement! If the computer cant understand him, what hope is there for the rest of the crew?