Six Pointless Star Trek Movie Moments

It's been awhile since I did a Star Trek article. Let's rectify that, especially since Into Darkness is premiering this weekend.

I love the Star Trek movies, even the ones that suck (well,not the last one but let’s not get into that)  but I have noticed many scenes that are not necessarily bad but serve no real purpose to the story aside from making the movie longer.  It’s true that every scene in a movie has a point to it, of course it does or it wouldn't be there. But some scenes just seem to exist to, well, exist. Nothing happens in them that isever followed up on, and the scene is just forgotten a few minutes later. These are the moments I am talking about today, scenes that if they were deleted would not have hurt the story at all. This is just opinion so if I am incorrect or you disagree as always all comments are welcome.

#6.Scotty and Uhura’s sick-bay romance from The FinalFrontier

Man this movie was terrible. I mean, what went wrong here? I remember after Star Trek IV I was so excited at the prospect of a fifth movie.The worst thing isn’t the lame comedy or weak script; it’s what William Shatner did to the supporting characters. Sulu and Chekov become idiots, and Uhura and Scotty….well, let’s get to the scene which is totally pointless. It happens after Scotty bangs his head into the bulkhead. He awakens in sick-bay to find Uhura pawing at him, professing all these feelings that came from nowhere. Yes there was a scene in the beginning of the movie which kind of built up to that,but it is real flimsy and of course when the scene is over it is never spoken of again in this or any other movie. It was a lousy way of trying to add somecharacter development by suggesting a romance between the two, but when has there ever been a thing between Scotty and Uhura? They respected each other asprofessionals and friends, that’s all. 

#5.Dr.McCoy tries to book passage to Genesis from The Searchfor Spock

Ok, seriously would someone explain to me the point of this scene? It's right after we see Kirk try and fail to get the Enterprise back. So he declares he is going to Genesis anyway, and Sulu and Chekov offer any and all assistance. Great, but rather than cut to that plan we take a detour with Dr.McCoy trying to charter a ship from a weird alien guy. What's the point? We know what's wrong with McCoy, we know where they have to go and what they have to do, and we know Kirk is going to do it no matter the cost. I can’t even call this fan service since the alien is a total unknown. All this does is get McCoy into a security hold which he will need to be broken out of. I guess just having Kirk ring his doorbell and tell McCoy to get in his car or whateverwouldn't be as interesting. But still, it seems like a line of dialogue could have accomplished what this three minute scene did. Not a bad scene, but ultimately a pointless one.

#4.The transporter accident from The Motion Picture

Don't you love it when a heavy emotional scene has no real bearing on anything in the movie? I get the backstory, when the movie was going to be aTV show they created a new character to replace Spock. However, when the series became the movie Leonard Nimoy came back. So this new character was useless. So what to do rather than just write the guy out? They kill him in a very dramatic moment which is almost completely forgotten ten minutes later! It's a powerful scene but in the end it has no point aside from killing a useless character and giving Janice Rand a fan service cameo. I might buy that it’s meant toillustrate the technical problems on the new ship but five minutes later the transporters are fine and it's never brought up again. And yes you could also argue it opens the door for Spock's return, but I say they didn't have to do that to the science officer since Spock would have taken over regardless. There is just no need for that moment except possible for shock value.

#3. Riker and his joystick from Insurrection

The scene is Riker trying to get the Enterprise out of the Briar Patch so they can get in touch with Starfleet. Unfortunately they are also under heavy fire. So what does he do? He activates the joystick, so that he can manually steer the ship out of harms way! WTF??? I am usually an easy going movie fan; I can take silly plot holes and stuff. But even I thought this was ridiculous! I mean really, the ship can be steered manually? And it looks idiotic to, who thought this idiot idea up? Did someone really think it would look cool? Yeah, maybe in 1982! Originally I thought that this was cheating since there is a point to the joystick. But then I thought about the whole"action scene" and wondered, what was the point? Does Riker's reaching Starfleet affect anything? The climax certainly isn't affected since all we are told is that Starfleet is going to "reconsider" the colony removal. Besides it doesn’t even matter because the Sona and Baku have decided to forgive each other! So if you want to disagree that's cool but that whole sequence is just a lame excuse for a pointless action scene in an otherwise really boring movie, culminating with that stupid, stupid joystick!

#2.The Saratoga from The Voyage Home

An even numbered film! I was starting to think only the odd numbered movies had the pointless moments. I love this movie, always have, and there are many moments in the movie which could be considered pointless because it's just supposed to be a gag. But what is up with the opening scene on the Saratoga? I get that we are establishing the probe's destructive powers but here is what makes this pointless-we never see these people again! Why go to the trouble of establishing characters and then leaving us to wonder what happened to them? Now of course on would assume they are fine in the end just like everyone else. It would have been nice to establish that. How hard would a five second shot of the crew happy to be alive been to stick in there, even over one of the monitors at Starfleet HQ? Even in Wrath of Khan we are told The Enterprise is on its way to Ceti Alpha to pick up the deserted crew members! If it were me I would have cut that opening or just briefly established the probe and then opened right at the hearing with the Klingon ambassador. Then we could have learned about the probe the same time as everyone else. Cut that opening scene and you lose NOTHING except having the first female captain which was awesome.

#1.Kirk and Picard make eggs together from Generations

I hate to be a cliché, but how could I not mention it? Yes I know, everyone has pointed it out and everyone has made jokes about it...but really? You get Kirk and Picard together and what do you have them do? Picard helps Kirk make breakfast! To be fair the moment where Picard yells at Kirk only to have Kirk snap right back at Picard was a great moment. But it's marred by the silliness of that scene just before that and after when we get Kirk and Picard riding horses for no good reason. I don't have to say what a disappointment Generations was, although a part of me does enjoy it for some ungodly reason,and while it has lots of problems this scene in particular was really not well thought out. And the worst thing is that it's pointless, this whole thing lasts five minutes or so and then it's forgotten and we move on to the stupid last fight. Seriously, if they had Picard walk up to Kirk at the top of the scene and then cut to them on horseback, nothing would be lost! It’s amazing, someone watched the footage of this and didn't say "yeah, guys, is that all we're going tohave these two legends do?" The search for more dill! By the way, some may argue that Kirk's death scene later was an even more pointless moment. Why couldn't they have just made Kirk decide to stay in the nexus at the end? Not only would that make him stay alive, but it would tie back to that idiotic breakfast scene and maybe have it make sense! Argh! This movie!!!!

So there you go, six pointless Star Trek movie moments. Did I miss one?

By the way, not going to give anything away but I do know who the villain is in the new Star Trek movie and let’s just say it makes me want to see it even less. But there will be time to talk about that later.