The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

9. Cadet Deadmeat To The Bridge

Kirk Wrath of Khan
Paramount

With the Enterprise bridge at the very tippy-top of the ship’s saucer, and engineering down in the cigar-shaped engineering/secondary hull, there’s no way that the bridge is en route to sickbay, so why does the turbolift bring Scotty carrying the mortally wounded cadet Peter Preston to the bridge?

Ever since the movie opened fans have been either crying in outrage over this silliness or offering rationalizations and justifications for it. "The damage caused the turbolifts to malfunction." “Scotty was so grief-stricken he…” blah blah blah...

Logically, they could have had Kirk step out of the turbolift on his way to sickbay and find Scotty with Preston in a line of wounded trying to get into sickbay, but then the audience might've been anticipating such a sight en route to McCoy, whereas the doors opening to this horror was a shock.

So that's the reality: it's only there for punch-in-the-gut dramatic effect even though it makes zero sense.

Shocking? Yes.

Dumb? Definitely.

 
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Contributor
Contributor

Maurice is one of the founders of FACT TREK (www.facttrek.com), a project dedicated to untangling 50+ years of mythology about the original Star Trek and its place in TV history. He's also a screenwriter, writer, and videogame industry vet with scars to show for it. In that latter capacity he game designer/writer on the Sega Genesis/SNES "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Crossroads of Time" game, as well as Dreamcast "Ecco the Dolphin, Defender of the Future" where Tom Baker performed words he wrote.