For characters who debuted in Star Trek: The Original Series, see Characters.Star Trek The Original Series
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Starfleet Personnel
Admiral Lance Cartwright
Admiral Lance Cartwright
"I don't know whether to congratulate you or not, Jim."
Played by: Brock Peters
Dubbed in French by: Gerard Rinaldi
Appearances: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home | Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
"The opportunity here is to bring [the Klingons] to their knees. Then, we'll be in a far better condition to negotiate terms."
A fairly pragmatic Starfleet admiral.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: In The Voyage Home, he's a Reasonable Authority Figure. Come The Undiscovered Country, he turns out to be another Insane Admiral.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: In the novel Cast No Shadow, Cartwright is revealed to have died in prison of a respiratory infection.
- Face–Heel Turn: Becomes a villain in a couple movies.
- Fantastic Racism: Against Klingons, whom he says will become "the alien trash of the Universe". For Peters, who was a civil rights crusader, it was painful for him to utter those lines, and he had to be convinced to do it.
- Hypocrite: He is pretty open about his racist attitude toward Klingons. He has no problem working with Klingons to sabotage peace talks and assassinate his own president.
- Named by the Adaptation: The novelization gives him the first name Lance.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: His role in the film is pretty small, but he seems fairly calm and level-headed in the face of a planetary catastrophe. Unfortunately, that disappears as soon as Klingons get involved...
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the conspiracy is exposed, he attempts to make a break for it, only to be cornered by Sulu.
- Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, without any clear explanation, he becomes downright villainous in contrast to his past appearance to a point Peters is playing a completely different character in the latter Star Trek film and makes some Trekkies wonder if Cartwright in his debut was a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing all along who fooled us all with his Reasonable Authority Figure act.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For Admiral Morrow. In fact, nearly all versions of the scripts did feature Morrow instead of Cartwright, who apparently was a last-minute replacement after Morrow's actor, Robert Hooks was unavailable. A common fan theory, backed up by the novelization, is that Morrow resigned due to the scandal that erupted with Kirk stealing the Enterprise.
- Villain of Another Story: In The Voyage Home, even though he does not show any villainy at all, though he could be good at concealing it, until The Undiscovered Country.
- Walking Spoiler: As might be noticed, Cartwright plays a major role in the reveal at the climax of The Undiscovered Country.
The Enterprise-A
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A)
The successor to the Enterprise after the latter was destroyed in the previous movie.- The Alleged Car: In The Final Frontier, she is in the middle of extensive repairs, and for some reason, Starfleet Command assigns Kirk and crew to an important mission. Kirk himself is nonplussed by his squeaky chair, dodgy transporters, and the defective Log transcriber (which keeps popping open with ridiculous SPRONNG! noises).
- Cool Starship: As expected of a ship called Enterprise. At least, once all the bugs get worked out.
- Legacy Vessel Naming: The second Federation ship to be called Enterprise, and not the last. Roddenberry claimed she used to be the Yorktown (the original name for Enterprise during production on TOS).
- Rushed Into Service: Sent into an important rescue mission in The Final Frontier even when the crew (at least, what little crew there is) hasn't finished some crucial modifications.
- Saved by Canon: While a lot of Star Trek expanded universe material had treated what happened to her in William Shatner's novel Ashes of Eden — where she was destroyed while foiling the plan of an Insane Admiral — as her official fate, the third season of Star Trek: Picard showed her preserved in the Starfleet museum.
- Superior Successor: Designed to outperform the original Enterprise, at least when she is fully operational. The irony is that, while she only serves less time in this identity than her predecessor, she actually survives, and is consigned to the Fleet Museum for posterity following the signing of the Khitomer Accords.
20th Century Individuals
Dr. Gillian Taylor
Dr. Gillian Taylor
"Don't tell me: You're from outer space."
Played by: Catherine Hicks
Dubbed in French by: Emmanuèle Bondeville
"Look, I don't have a clue who you are, really. You wouldn't want to show me around your spaceship, would you?"
A marine biologist specializing in the study of whales.
- Conveniently an Orphan: She has no living relatives or friends tying her to the 20th century that would miss her should she disappear.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: She ends up accompanying Kirk and crew to the 23rd Century, and stays there. Though she could easily have been beamed back down to Earth before returning to their own era, Kirk decides to let her come along on the grounds that no-one in his century would have the first idea how to care for humpback whales.
- Replacement Goldfish: Very similar to Edith Keeler, and while she and Kirk don’t get together (or anywhere beyond a few cheek kisses), he’s just happy in All There in the Manual that he “got to take the angel back with him this time”.
- Temporary Love Interest: To Kirk. In fact, aside from his former partner Carol Marcus in the second film (whose relationship in that film isn't really romantic as such), she's the only love interest that he gets in any of the six original cast films.
- Your Universe or Mine?: Downplayed. There's no way Kirk can stay in the 20th Century due to the importance of getting the humpback whales to the future and saving Earth, and any desire that Gillian might have had to stay in her own time disappears when her boss releases the whales without informing her.
Bob Briggs
Bob Briggs
"And besides, we're not talking about human beings here."
Played by: Scott DeVenney
Gillian's boss at the whale institute.
- Jaded Professional: While he recognises the between a rock and a hard place decision to send the whales into an unsafe environment and hope for the best, he is rather detached about it, doubting the whales' intelligence.
- Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: His dispassionate attitude towards the whales is used as a contrast to Gillian's compassion.
- Romantic False Lead: He seems to play this role to Gillian.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: He sees himself as the Dogged Nice Guy who will teach Gillian to appreciate people as well as whales, when in fact he's the Obstructive Bureaucrat making things harder for the real protagonists.
Bus Punk
Bus Punk
Played by: Kirk Thatcher
Appearances: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home | Star Trek: Picard
Some random punk on a bus who refuses to turn off his radio — and gets a neck pinch for his trouble.
- The Bus Came Back: Pun fully intended, he returns in Star Trek: Picard, where he's doing the exact same thing he was 30 years ago. This time, when asked to turn off his music, he sheepishly complies.
- The Cameo: In Star Trek: Picard.
- Flipping the Bird: Unwisely does this to Kirk and Spock when the former asks him to turn off his music. Fittingly, this occurs just as the song on the boom box exclaims "Screw you!"
Other Characters
Ambassador Kamarag
Ambassador Kamarag
"There shall be no peace as long as Kirk lives!"
Played by: John Schuck
Dubbed in French by: Yves Brainville (Star Trek IV), Pierre Baton (Star Trek VI)
"We expect the Federation to abide by the Articles of Interstellar Law, which you claim to cherish."
The Klingon ambassador to the Federation.- "Ass" in Ambassador: "YOU POMPOUS ASS!"
- Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": In both this film and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, he's only credited as "Klingon Ambassador." His actual name is never revealed in either film. However, he is identified as Kamarag in their novelizations.
- Jerkass:
- Demands that Kirk be extradited to the Klingon Empire with a thinly-veiled insinuation that he'll be executed as soon as they get their hands on him. For the "crime" of killing a bunch of Klingons who were illegally in Federation space, and had likely killed far more people (specifically, the crew of the USS Grissom and David Marcus) than Kirk. Not surprisingly, the Federation council brush off his demands.
- Averted when he reappears in the sixth film, and is able to put his points across far more reasonably when the facts are (apparently) on his side.
- Large Ham: There's a reason why fans often call him the Klingon Hambassador.
- Named by the Adaptation: His name originates in the novelizations.
- Pet the Dog: Despite his previous jerkass attitude toward Kirk, he applauds Kirk when he exposes the conspiracy and saves the peace talks, albeit somewhat begrudgingly.
- The Rival: He apparently sees himself as this to Sarek. Not that Sarek himself seems to consider him worthy of that honor.
President Hiram Roth
President Hiram Roth
"Save your energy. Save yourself. Avoid the planet Earth at all cost. Farewell..."
Played by: Robert Ellenstein
Dubbed in French by: Michel Gudin
"I'm sure the Admiral will recognize the necessity of keeping discipline in any chain of command."
The President of The Federation.- All There in the Manual: His name is never spoken on-screen; it instead comes from supplementary materials.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He's responsible for Kirk's Unishment—which is, of course, Kirk's reward for saving the day yet again.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: By the sixth film, he's been replaced as President by Ra-ghoratreii. The expanded universe says he died in office.
Whale probe
A mysterious automated probe from outside our galaxy.
- Starfish Language: Its constant screeching translates into whale singing.
- Villainy-Free Villain: Its only goal is to communicate with humpback whales and it's apparently unaware of all the damage it has caused.
- Weather-Control Machine: Does this as a side effect; its transmissions are so powerful they destabilize Earth's atmosphere and cause superstorms all over the planet.
