10. Chekov (Again) - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Paramount PicturesWhen it comes to competence at his job, Pavel Chekov as Head of Security ranks right up there with such greats as Michael Garibaldi. After letting Chekov have his moment in the big chair in Star Trek V, the producers of Star Trek VI decided to negate it with almost every scene he has in this movie. After getting a hangover on Romulan ale, which he apparently drank just before a duty shift on the Bridge, our Security Chief later displays his ignorance of how the ship works by not knowing that unauthorized phaser fire sets off every alarm on the ship, a fact that is demonstrated to him by a fresh-out-of-the-academy helm officer who later turns out to be the traitor. We'll forgive him for not knowing about the alarms (though not the traitor), since that function of the ship had
never appeared before and has
never appeared since. Does this fall into the "not a flaw but a feature" category? But then it comes time to track down the killer of the Klingon Chancellor, and the entire crew for some inexplicable reason turns out for the confrontation (don't they have anything better to do?). Chekov embarrasses himself in front of everyone by trotting out some ridiculousness about the Russian fairy tale of Cinderella without noticing that the shoe
cannot fit. It's...too stupid to go into here. Suffice it to say that the image above captures Uhura's entirely appropriate reaction to the whole debacle. Not that she does much better, as it turns out...