10 Most Pointless Deaths In Star Trek

Encompassing 11 series, 13 films, hundreds of novels, and 55 years of history, Star Trek is a sci-fi institution that has inspired countless other facets of the sci fi-land- scape. Its concepts, quotes, and characters have become institutions of popular culture and, with its renewed popularity on streaming services, it looks like the much-beloved franchise is in no rush to call it a day.

The same cannot be said for all of its characters, however, as Trek is no stranger to using death as an indicator of peril or motivation for those left behind. Whilst many of the fatalities over the years have ticked these boxes, any franchise boasting this kind of history has to drop the ball from time to time.

The deaths in question form this list, and are just some of the times when the send off can’t have been what the unfortunate victim of plot device had in mind.

Of all the meme-able elements of The Original Series’ devices, the doomed ‘red shirt’ is one of the more enduring. Originally worn by members of the Operations Division, the red shirts were fatally donned by the myriad security officers of the Enterprise-A, and these were the exact crew members who would bite the bullet first when the latest alien foe boarded the ship.

This list could be made up entirely of these walking corpses but, for the sheer idiocy of circumstance, the title has to go to the four from ‘The Changeling’, who found themselves in the crosshairs of the psychotic Nomad computer. The result of an Earth probe whose programming was corrupted, Nomad believed that all life should be compared to itself as a yardstick of ‘perfection’, and unsurprisingly came to the conclusion that not a single organic life form fit this criteria.

Realising that the device’s primary objective was to indiscriminately eradicate organic life, and that it was only halted in this due to the mistaken belief that Captain Kirk was its creator, Kirk takes the completely logical decision to have it guarded by some very organic security officers. In a twist that even a Pakled could see coming, this hyper-advanced intelligence realised that it had misheard the suave commanding officer and went about murdering its security detail. In amongst the sea of bodies that the Enterprise had to jettison over the years, these ones must have been a particular embarrassment for this famously act first, think later Captain.