10 Most Pointless Deaths In Star Trek

Lt. Carey does not have a good time in the Delta Quadrant. After the titular Voyager is hurled across the galaxy by The Caretaker, the Starfleet and Maquis crews are forced to work together in this unfamiliar corner of space despite wildly differing perspectives and practices. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than with the conflict between Carey and Maquis engineer B’Elanna Torres.

After being promoted to Acting Chief of Engineering, Carey is unceremoniously ousted from his position by the same Torres who antagonised him so constantly, including a decidedly un-Starfleet nose-breaking incident. Although the two would eventually reconcile, this was not the end of Carey’s Delta Quadrant nightmare. Once communication is re-established with Starfleet, Voyager is tasked with finding the Friendship One probe launched centuries earlier, which they track to a desolate wasteland in the grip of a nuclear winter.

As part of the away team, Carey is captured by the planet’s inhabitants, who blame the devastation of their world on the technology they reverse-engineered from Friendship One. Although Captain Janeway manages to negotiate Carey’s return, he is deliberately shot with a disruptor whilst energising, killing him instantly as an example to Janeway. To die in so callous a fashion is a recurring theme on this list, but for it to happen whilst undergoing a spot of interstellar tidying up is downright embarrassing.

Although peace and the environment are both restored in the end, for Carey at least, the titular ‘Friendship One’ is a probe with a colossal degree of irony.