20 Most Messed Up Deaths From The Star Trek Movies

Let's start on something more positive, if only to slowly shatter your illusions. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ranks highly in fan estimations in good part because of its apparent lack of death. Director Leonard Nimoy had decided early on that The Voyage Home would be a different kind of movie. Quoted in The Art of Star Trek, he said,

[There would be] no dying, no fist-fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical 'bad guy.' I wanted people to really have a great time watching this film […] [to] lose themselves, and enjoy it.

Vijay Amritraj, the actor and tennis star who played Captain Joel Randolph of the Yorktown in The Voyage Home, wasn't quite on the same page, however. Speaking to The Indian Express in 2013, Amritraj noted, "I did Star Trek IV, they killed me in that one".

Things were certainly looking bleak for the Yorktown after contact with the whale probe. In a brief message to Starfleet Headquarters, Captain Randolph reported that his ship had been without power for three hours, that "non-essential crew" had been given "hiber-sedatives" to reduce "consumption of life support reserves". The chief engineer was then attempting to rig a "makeshift solar sail" as a last-ditch effort for survival.

The truth is we don't know the ultimate fate of the Yorktown. According to The Star Trek Encyclopedia, Gene Roddenberry suggested that a ship called Yorktown had gone on to become the Enterprise-A. Either way, that says nothing about Randolph and crew.

Already in the shooting script for Star Trek IV, dated 11 March 1986, was something much, much worse. Reporting in from the USS Shepard was communications officer Trillya, also seen, but not heard, on screen:

All attempts to reinstate main power have failed. Captain Clampett has quarantined all but minimal support crew due to failure of Bio-Sterilization capsules containing Vegan D virus, which has already killed fifteen crew members.

Not just 'the one with the whales'!

"God is dead"… literally. Nietzsche would have had a field day beyond the Great Barrier! Don't blame us for any blasphemy. Send your complaints to 1989, or go do some mountaineering or something. In the meantime, let's all head on down to 'Sha Ka Ree'… Sean Connery… Shangri-La.

Asking the big questions is never the issue. Finding the answers is. Sybok was most definitely not the 'Messiah,' though quite the disappointment by comparison. His visions of 'God' and the 'Garden of Eden' turned out to be the 'devil' and a desolate rock, probably not far from a supermassive black hole. Realising his error, the half-brother stepped in, only to be finished off by a photon torpedo. Or was he?

When it came to the 'death' of the dodgy deity at the galactic core, it was, of course, the Klingons who delivered the final blow. They had slain their (otherwise 'real') gods millennia ago. "More trouble than they were worth," as Worf put it in Homefront. We're also assuming Sha Ka 'last place in the unholy lookalike contest' died at all.

In place of faster-than-light transportation, 'God' might equally have asked for (much) better box office receipts. No one needs a starship if you kill off the franchise. With a more than poor performance in theatres, Star Trek V very nearly did just that. The most messed-up thing would have been missing out on The Undiscovered Country. Divine intervention? No. Merely the Paramount higher-ups giving it another life.

Hold on to that teacup, there's a storm brewing — the subspace shockwave felt around the galaxy, and especially on the Excelsior. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was an allegory of the end of the Cold War. The destruction of the Klingon moon was the Chernobyl disaster that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

'Praxis,' as name, is then, by definition, practice over theory, and a term key to the philosophy of Marx. "I cannot confirm the existence of…" meant the end of a certain way of doing things, and marked the beginning of another. In the analogy, Gorkon was also Gorbachev, whose Soviet reforms of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) produced a seismic shift in real-world international relations in the mid-1980s onwards. There was one major difference between the pair — a successful assassination. We'll get to that later.

In the film, the Klingons had little choice but to sit down at the dinner, and eventually, the negotiating, table. No doubt the most messed-up thing is that the end of Star Trek's cold war had to be so boiling hot. Perhaps it is our fault as moviegoers, nay as humans, that we need explosions, and plenty of death, to precede diplomacy.

According to an unused line in the script, Praxis was "barren of indigenous lifeforms". Nonetheless, the moon's "decimation" still meant the "deadly pollution of [Qo'noS'] ozone," and who knows what else! The number of victims was never given, and may never be known.

To find its main antagonist, the third Kelvin film dipped into the 22nd century, when history was one and the same. Balthazar Edison was MACO then Captain of the USS Franklin, Earth's first warp four vessel. Vanished along with ship and crew in 2164, Edison reappeared about a century later, unrecognisable as Krall. Death and destruction preceded the 'paperwork' of "case closed" in Star Trek: Beyond.

Three was equally unlucky for a certain starship, whatever the universe. Above planet Altamid, an army of Krall's 'swarm drones' sliced through the Enterprise like it was molecularly synthesised butter. Countless crewmembers were blown into space or mown down by fancy energy weapons. That fate was almost a blessing compared to that of their kidnapped colleagues. In Doctor McCoy's words, "My God. What the hell?"

Edison and co. had survived the years in fighting form by using an ancient "energy transference" technology. In other words, they had sucked the life out of others to extend their own. On the surface of Altamid, we got a harrowing look at the technology in action. Strung upside down, writhing in fear and agony, two Enterprise officers were fed upon by Edison/Krall in front of the horrified Sulu and Uhura.

The fourteenth Star Trek film did things differently. A first for direct to streaming, its title might nearly have counted as false advertising. 'Star Trek: Philippa Georgiou' would have been more accurate. 'Section 31,' the organisation, was an addendum. In Section 31, the movie, the deaths still added up.

Most of the worst were in the opening scenes. What's a little parricide contest between "friends"? What San lacked in follow-through, the young Philippa made up for in needing a clean pair of boots. As the pot bubbled, her brother and parents began to retch. "I'm sorry," said Philippa. Little late for that, POST-poison! They all died in agony as Georgiou — sister, daughter — watched immune. Hail the Emperor! Bring a bucket for the blood!

Mass murder is forgiven, of course, so long as you're badass at it. That would be the most messed-up thing if the rest weren't chaos goblins. Speaking of, there was the nanokin somewhere in the room, and up in Zeph's mech tech. The latter didn't stand a chance with Fuzz the Feckless in control of his suit. Forced to drill a hole in your own skull is one way to go. Blissful relief from having to hear the names of all those hatchlings!

Only by absence of the USS Kelvin is it called the 'Kelvin Timeline'. In Star Trek (2009), Captain Richard Robau was brutally murdered by the vengeful Nero. First Officer George Kirk (father of) then sacrificed himself on a collision course. Absence on a much larger scale would also come to distinguish Kelvin from Prime. Absence of one was just as painful for Spock.

After a bit of a break — on Rura Penthe, if you watch the deleted scenes — Nero made his way to Vulcan to do a spot of mining, right down to the planet's core. Red was the matter of the black hole McGuffin, but not before Chief Engineer Olson was red-shirted off the side of the drilling platform.

Spurious science aside, a singularity at its centre meant Vulcan was singularly screwed. In fact, the entire planet and its six billion inhabitants had only a matter of minutes. Spock's bid to save the Vulcan High Council, and his parents, in the interim, was not entirely in vain, but for a few falling rocks. A couple of council members were crushed beneath once tall statues. Amanda Grayson then plummeted to her death mid-beam-out as her son watched helplessly on.

With only around 10,000 left of the six billion, Kelvin Spock was, in his words, "now a member of an endangered species".

Blood runs thicker than water. So do brains. That is if Alexander Marcus had any to begin with. 'Badmiral,' and a bad dad, he was more than a headache for daughter Doctor Carol Marcus over in Kelvin. No Genesis in Star Trek: Into Darkness, but still a lot of skull-crushing "Khaaaaan!"

Well, you know what they say, if you want peace, unfreeze one of history's most notorious villains and force him to work for you on the militarisation of Starfleet, including the creation of the mahoosive Dreadnought-class ship called — what else — the 'USS Vengeance,' because war with the Klingons is inevitable anyway. That's a loose translation from the Latin, of course!

Naturally, that plan didn't last long. Even under an alias, and looking a lot like Doctor Strange without the goatee, Kelvin Khan was every bit as devious as his Prime counterpart. He absconded, blew up a small chunk of London, killed Admiral Pike, and long story short, eventually caught up with Admiral Marcus for a bout of comeuppance.

Though the camera cut away for the most stomach-churning moment of her dad's quasi-decapitation, Carol's blood-curdling scream was all we needed to comprehend the horror. Carol had been quite rightly "ashamed," before being probably very, very sick!

Star Trek: Nemesis was Star Trek's nemesis, or so the legend goes. 'Franchise fatigue' had kicked in, though it would take more than two years for almost forty years — and Star Trek: Enterprise — to be put to bed. 'Sounding the death knell' was a burden Nemesis hardly deserved. The real villain of the piece was Shinzon. His downfall was down a spike.

Technically already dead before his actual demise, Shinzon had failed to get the blood he needed from his doppelgänger. He went all out for blood against the Federation instead. His ship, the Scimitar, was, by definition and design, the weapon — the blade — stopped in its tracks by the blunt force of the incoming Enterprise-E. Taking a run-up at his older alternate, Shinzon met the end, his end, of that rather pointy bit of metal.

For all-intents-and-purposes, Picard then had to witness his own youth edge its way up to die, though not before trying to strangle him. In Shinzon, Jean-Luc had killed that part of himself which no longer stared back in the mirror, but in photos from the Academy. It's little wonder the captain stood motionless in the aftermath. Freud wouldn't have touched that one with a bargepole, let alone the spike!

Of course, Data then died to prove he was the most alive.

Well, that intro was all very dramatic, wasn't it? Shall we calm down and vote on those trade negotiations with Celes II? Senator Tal'aura can't stay, however. She has a "meeting with the Tholian ambassador". Perfectly normal quick exit, never to be mentioned again. Exit also the galaxy's worst Penn & Teller tribute act.

If only politics were that simple! The Romulan version makes the Federation look like a high school debating society. Tal'aura had also left a little trinket behind. The revenge of Remus, of Shinzon, or the echo over the voice, began by military putsch in the gruesome assassination of the Senate. A little thalaron radiation goes a long, long way.

That's Roman mythology, but it's all Greek to me. The mechanics of consumption of organic material at the subatomic level were about as comprehensible as they needed to be. The result of staring at the technological Gorgon on the table was still being turned to stone. Petrification was truly petrifying, as the Romulan senators took their last gasps in a shower of eerily beautiful green. Shinzon, the floor is yours, though you might want a dustpan and brush.

It's one more badmiral for the bingo card. The only prize is more free stuff from the replicator. Ranking ninth on our list of 'The 10 Worst Admirals in Star Trek,' Insurrection's Admiral Dougherty was hardly the baddest of the bad. Whatever his relatively redeeming features, however, Dougherty had made his bed with the Son'a for a metaphasic miracle cure. He'd have to lie in it. Forever.

'Dougherty's out' was one hell of a way to go. The Admiral didn't mind a bit of forced displacement, but he drew the line at mass murder of the Ba'ku. Ru'afo begged to differ with a punch to the face, and a throw over the balustrade. Things got quickly more messed up from there. Ru'afo rammed Dougherty head-first into a glass-fronted cabinet, hoisted him into the air, and thrust him down onto one of the ghoulish cosmetic surgery chairs.

The squeamish amongst us — this writer included for the longest while — could close our eyes at what happened next. Dougherty definitely couldn't, nor ever again. Trapped between the pincers, the admiral had more than just 20 years taken off. His whole face was stretched to breaking point. And to think, those latter-day hippies could have just shared in the first place! But then, who wants to live forever if it's just hacky sack and birdwatching.

"This was Ensign Lynch," pronounced Captain Picard, coldly, in Star Trek: First Contact. Emphasis on the 'was,' twice over, Lynch was the undead of the Borg before he was dead in Dixon Hill. Though understandable, depersonalisation was the easy option for Picard. He'd returned from the depths of assimilation with the help of his crew. The lower decks weren't worthy of the same efforts, now? "Tough luck, huh?"

Picard had noted earlier in the armoury that firing on assimilated Enterprise crewmembers would be "doing them a favour". He took his own advice to the holographic nth degree, creating a Tommy gun trap for Lynch and another Borg drone, safeties off, of course. He all but emptied the magazine on his former ensign.

Captain Ahab would have piled it on further with the butt of the gun, were it not for Lily in Satin's "I think you got him". Picard still went hunting in guts for that neuroprocessor. In his own trauma, the captain had become all too comfortable with mercy, and merciless, killings. That famous 'line' needed to be drawn much closer.

Oh, the perennial toilet question! ("Don't you people from the twenty-fourth century ever pee?") In Star Trek: First Contact, Zefram Cochrane's pressing need was practically prescient. Later, 'taking a leak,' of the plasma coolant kind, would mean death by dissolution for the Borg Queen (and Data's sexy-time skin).

"Resistance is futile" had never been said with such vehemence. Tank ruptured, coolant began to flood engineering. Talk about a toxic work environment! No danger money in the different economics of the 24th century for the officers who usually worked there was at least a good way to take out the mini-Collective that had set up shop behind the red door.

The Borg Queen could only hang on to Locutus in a last-ditch bid for survival. The android she'd picked, and picked apart, as a replacement soon rose up, de-skinned, like the ultra-modern Prometheus, to grab her. In the yellow-green soup below, the Queen's flesh melted away — visceral without the viscera. Her down-through-the-bone-chilling screams were matched by her drones in the throes of a second death on the upper level.

All that remained of those directly exposed to the coolant was a smouldering cybernetic husk. Snap of the chrome spinal cord, her majesty was no more, until the next time… and the next time… and the next time.

Two of the most messed up deaths in Star Trek: Generations occurred off-screen and light-years away. Captain Picard's news on the holodeck was that brother Robert and nephew René had burned to death in a fire at the family home. Marie Picard survived, presumably off using the neighbour's replicator.

In early drafts of the movie, writers had planned for Robert, and only Robert, to die of a heart attack out in the vineyard. According to The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, it was, in fact, Patrick Stewart who suggested the fiery exit, and that little René should go up in flames too. You know, for more "emotional impact". Well, he certainly had a good cry!

In Ten Forward, somehow Soran's piece of poetry was just rubbing it in. His own plan to get back to paradise involved fire in the form of the Nexus, and death in the guise of the shockwave from an imploding star or several. Heaven's not a halfpipe, it's a half-baked idea!

Everyone — except Captain Picard and Soran — died on Veridian III, as did 230 million on the pre-warp Veridian IV. Then again, no one died, except Soran and Captain Kirk. Temporal mechanics be damned in the blaze below!

"What a piece of work is a man!" said Shakespeare's Danish prince (and Jean-Luc Picard). In this case, it was two men, in gravity boots, and a cabal of co-conspirators. With Hamlet in the title, death was to be expected in The Undiscovered Country. "taH pagh taHbe'" was the original Klingon question, already answered for Gorkon.

Zero-g is fun until someone gets phasered. Post-prandial target practice was on the menu as the double assassins — Burke and Samno — beamed aboard the now weightless Kronos One. Having made rather a mess of the transporter room, they proceeded to paint the corridor purple like a pair of 23rd century Jackson Pollocks.

Forget Shakespeare, the hitmen then came not so gently tapping, zapping at Gorkon's chamber door. For the guard outside, the special effects cost just the arm in what was one of the most gruesome scenes of the entire movie. Credited as 'General Stex,' he at least survived to be cross-examined by granddad Worf.

The same evidently could not be said about the Chancellor. Backflips are also fun, but not with a hole in the chest. Gravity restored, what went up had to come down — bodies and a lot of blood.

Peter Preston might have merely been a young midshipman (first class) — still an Academy student on a training cruise — but his heroism was a match for all the officers above him. Like another a little later, he gave his life in engineering saving others. "He stayed at his post."

Unlike Spock, however, Preston didn't get a do-over down on the Genesis Planet. Unlike Spock, Preston — badly burned and approaching death — was first carried up to the bridge by his uncle. The horrifying sight in the turbolift gave pause for more than one to gasp in horror.

With no mention of the family connection in the theatrical release of The Wrath of Khan, the turbolift scene was also undeniably bizarre. We could certainly understand Scotty's heartfelt dedication to anyone in engineering, but why so heartbroken over Preston in particular?

In the director's cut, Scotty's "my sister's youngest, Admiral," during Kirk's engine room tour, answered that question. Preston's final moments in sickbay were also slightly altered. With added poignancy, the director's cut switches back to a shot of the midshipman's face as he gives his last word — "Aye".

"wa' yIHoH! jISaHbe'" or "kill one of them. I don't care which" was the order from orbit. As with his gunner, as with that big worm, Commander Kruge was comfortably casual in his brutality. On the Genesis planet, "one of them" was odds of one in three. Well, this wasn't The Search for David or The Search for Saavik, so let's call it 50/50!

As it was, the blade was meant for Saavik, but David bravely leapt at the Klingon goliath, in this case with little to no chance of winning. "You Klingon bastard, you've killed my son" becomes, then, the unwritten subtitle of this entry, and almost that of Star Trek III itself. Like Kirk, we, the viewer, had barely come to know Doctor David Marcus before his death at the end of the d'tahg. A father's anguish at a future without was palpable through the screen.

Later, in The Undiscovered Country, Kirk has a photo of David in his quarters. That was as much a touching tribute to a son as it was to the actor, Merritt Butrick. Butrick had sadly passed away in 1989, just 29 years old, from toxoplasmosis, complicated by AIDS. Butrick has two panels dedicated to him in the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

It is the strangest thing to lament the loss of an inanimate object, especially an imaginary one. But then, whenever has 'strange' been a hindrance to humans and other aliens? To steal a phrase from another property, the Enterprise "won't bring much cash [maybe latinum], but its sentimental value is through the roof!"

Whether it was alive or not to die in the first place, THE starship's end in Star Trek III left no one indifferent, even if it was in the trailer. The "final voyage" of the Enterprise was by fireball across the skies of Genesis. Kirk had "turn[ed] death into a fighting chance to live". After all, there weren't just plenty more letters, there was the entire alphabet. Don't cry because they blew it up. Smile because they could always build a new one.

Few, if any, tears were shed for the Klingon boarding party with a one-way ticket to Gre'thor. Caught in the final countdown of the self-destruct, at least they got some sage advice from their commander?! Five seconds was more than enough to "Get out! Get out of there! Get out!" Oh, Kruge, you messed-up bastard. I hope you like lava!

Earworms are annoying, though rarely anything to worry about. Ear eels, on the other hand, tend to stick around longer than any overly catchy tune. Marching to the beat of his own very loud drum was the titular wrathful of Star Trek II, determined to insert things, and himself, back into the galaxy.

This wasn't Ceti Alpha VI. It was a messed up ENT clinic, liable for more than malpractice. High up on the list of 'worse things than death' is having one of Khan's collection of little buggers crawl down your auditory canal. That fate was reserved for both Chekov and Terrell, though only one of them died from it. At the time, the Commander surely wished he had.

Tormented and tortured, trapped in a cupboard, then ordered to kill Kirk, Captain Terrell turned his phaser on himself instead, though not before vaporising one of the Genesis scientists. We'll get to him and his colleagues in the next entry. Terrell self-dispatched, the Ceti eel inside Chekov made a quick exit in more ways than one.

In the beginning, mankind created genetically engineered uber-criminals, and saw that it was bad. Genesis was creation, even if it didn't quite work. Khan was destruction and the Fall. In the lab, the bodies came tumbling down.

All creatures great and small, there was an actual rat wandering the corridors of space station Regula I when Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik beamed over. It was the lucky one. After the rodent, the real jump scare. McCoy turned round to come face-to-dangling-bloodied-hands with one of the Regula I personnel, strung up to the ceiling, throat slit. That was the galley chief/cook, according to the script.

Four of his colleagues were then laid out in a row next to him, each having suffered the same diabolical death at the hands of Khan who "went wild" on a murderous rampage for information. Of the named victims in the macabre line were scientists Madison and March (given as such in the end credits). Already cast out of Eden, just outside the Genesis cave below, Jedda was the name of the scientist, now a cloud, mentioned and murdered in the previous entry.

Scotty's "wee problem" wouldn't have been such an understatement had it remained a plot convenience for an over-long travel pod ride. Instead, the engineer, usually more adept at hyperbole, wins 'euphemism of the century' for what came next with the Enterprise transporters in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. They say you can still hear the screams as you cycle through the pattern buffer!

The newest Vulcan — Commander Sonak — had only been in it a minute, his colleague — 'unnamed female officer' — even less before the whole horrific spectacle:

Rand: "Oh, no, they're forming."

[scream, moan]

[…]

Starfleet: "Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long, fortunately."

Dif-tor heh smusma? Yeah, right! To add insult to injury to death, no sooner had Admiral Kirk exited the transporter room than he was already talking replacements: "I'd still like a Vulcan there, if possible." Sonak was no substitute for Spock.

If you thought the terrifying vision in the beam as depicted was bad enough, the novelisation of The Motion Picture added the following NAUSEATING description:

Shapes were materializing on the platform again—but frighteningly misshapen, writhing masses of chaotic flesh with skeletal shapes and pumping organs on the outsides of the 'bodies'. A twisted, claw-like hand tore at the air, a scream came from a bleeding mouth… and then they were gone.

We'd say, 'don't have nightmares,' but in this case, probably do!