18. "Good Morning, Captain" - Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Paramount PicturesIn much the same vein as the previous entry, the scene in which the results of Scotty's sabotage of
Excelsior is revealed is played completely for laughs, and to some degree those laughs are earned - but only if you accept that Starfleet, an organization prided for training some of the best and brightest officers, occasionally promotes a complete jackass who deserves everything bad that happens to him all the way up to command. (Come to think of it, Starfleet does this with alarming regularity, and it does explain Kirk's career...) Captain Styles of the U.S.S.
Excelsior, played by James Sikking (who was at the time playing a similar starched-shirt type of role on Hill Street Blues), is just such a captain. He has only three scenes, and you come to hate him in all of them. One is with Scotty in which it's made clear that Scotty can't stand him (leading to the almost-cringeworthy "Up your shaft" line). One is in his quarters in which he states his disbelief that there can be a Red Alert in Spacedock (as if this sort of thing doesn't happen in Starfleet all the time). And in the final one, he attempts to give chase to the escaping
Enterprise, only to have the whole ship seize up and stop working, culminating in the computer rebooting and greeting him with "Good Morning, Captain." Granted, Styles has all this coming - the man carries a swagger stick, for cryin' out loud, and nothing says "dick" like a swagger stick. But what makes the whole thing difficult to watch, particularly for American fans of a particular age, is the phrase "Good Morning, Captain" is associated with the children's show Captain Kangaroo, which was still on the air at the time. Can you say
zeitgeist, boys and girls? Had the computer displayed the phrase "Where's The Beef?" it couldn't have been more "hip" to the times.