Harsher in Hindsight does not even begin to describe how bad can the crew of the starship Enterprise can possibly get, as there are an endless amount of moments in the Star Terk movies that have a chance to die a slow and painful death.
Keep in mind:
- Sign your entries.
- One moment per movie to a troper, if multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
- Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "The entire movie," entries.
- No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
- No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
- Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
- No Real Life examples, including Executive Meddling. That is just asking for trouble.
- No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.
- Ellytoad: In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Sybok's coolness level drops 50% when he lectures Kirk on how humans overcame their misconceptions: "The people of your planet once believed their world was flat... Columbus proved it was round." The world was known to be round by ancient civilizations, who even estimated its circumference. Also, Magellan (not Columbus) was the one who set out to circumnavigate the Earth. And Magellan didn't do it out of a desire to prove the flat-earth theory wrong. For further details, consult your local library, which should have been the first stop for the scriptwriter.
- MysticEclectic: There was always something off about Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country for me: at first a so-so, edgy sendoff for the TOS cast. Then I read Keith R.A. DeCandido's scathing review on Tor.com
, and it opened my eyes on how turgid and hateful this movie really is, summed up in the crew's racism toward the Klingons and Valeris's "interrogation". The Jim Kirk of this movie is a cold-hearted sluggard who belies the goodwill we've seen of him in "Errand of Mercy" and "Day of the Dove", even if he had David Marcus's death clouding his judgment. So what excuse does Chekov have when he dejectedly comments "Guess who's coming to dinner?" before the dinner with Gorkon? Or the bridge crew's hostility to the Klingons' different table manners? Petty crap like this makes Gorkon's assassination so much easier to pin wholesale on the Enterprise. And when Valeris is found out, Spock unnecessarily mind-melds to her without her consent, violating her person and rights as a prisoner. It's a challenge to believe that the draconian war-hawks of the Klingon/Federation conspiracy could be done in by the Kirk and co., who've proven to be just as corrupt. I'm just thankful Sulu gets spared this treatment, by dint of captaining the Excelsior and being free of the Enterprise-status-quo. With that perspective, this film becomes deader than its Cold War analogies. - Ecojosh1: I thought Star Trek: Generations was okay until the very end, when Picard buries Kirk under some rocks on an uninhabited planet. This is Captain Kirk, a man who should be buried at Starfleet headquarters. Plus, I'm sure plenty of people, like his friends and relatives, as well as people who started their careers under him, would want to attend his burial. It's such a bad way to say goodbye to a beloved character.
- RickHavoc: Star Trek: Insurrection is almost entirely made of suck, but the moment that stands out for me is when Riker flies the Enterprise through some gaseous Phlebotinum... with a
manual steering columnjoystick that magically emerges from the deck of the bridge and does nothing that the helm console itself isn't designed to do. - romanatorX: Star Trek: Nemesis is not my favorite Trek Film, because it felt too similar to Wrath of Khan, but without the development and class that made WOK so good. The most triumphant example of this would have to be with Shinzon's character, who the writers intended to be like Khan, sympathy from audience and all. However, all attempts at sympathy for Shinzon were thrown out the window in the movie's worst moment..... Shinzon mind-rapes Troi, and it's played like a literal rape. I'm not saying that Khan did not do horrible things himself (he put mind-control parasites in Chekov's and Terrell's ears), but he did so as a means to an end: to get off of Ceti Alpha V. Shinzon, earlier in the film, was aroused by Troi. So, the rape scene does not move the plot in any major manor: it's just there to try and make Trek dark, and does so without class. That one scene basically put the franchise in a coma for 6 years.
- Triassicranger: Data's death in Star Trek: Nemesis, which could have been avoided. How? Three words: Shuttles have transporters! Three more words: Emergency transporter armbands! (why that miniature transponder thingy was introduced at all is beyond me). Data could've just got Geordi to beam him over, send Picard back to the Enterprise, set a phaser to overload, chuck it at the Thalaron Emitter, hit the transporter armband, beam back to the ship and he would've avoided death. What makes it worse for this editor is that Data's actor of all people wrote the death scene. Urgh.
- Korval: Star Trek (2009):
- The entire Kobayashi Maru scene. No one part can be singled out for idiocy, because the whole thing is a black hole of stupid. Kirk is a monumental jackass throughout the entire thing. Nobody in the simulation takes it seriously. Kirk's cheating is blatantly obvious, yet when asked, Spock is unable to explain why Kirk could win. It's just complete monumental fail on pretty much every level.
- Pumbelo: I second that. What made it worse was that they even fucked up the entire point of that test: it's to experience a situation where you can't possibly win. In the movie, they say it's to experience fear - despite the fact that no one in the situation is acting accordingly. No one takes it seriously even in universe!
- Anarquistador: One thing that really needled me was the identification of the enemy as "Klingon Warbirds." Dammit, man! Klingons don't use Warbirds! Romulans use Warbirds! Am I being a needlessly pedantic nerd? Well, maybe. But it would have been just as easy to get that detail right, and not doing so seems like another indicator that the whole scene was just a Mythology Gag.
- sephiroth144 That the test overseers wouldn't be doing some serious checking with the jerkassing is a question, but I could let that roll. For me, it was the promotion of Kirk at the end. Even allowing all the Plot Induced Stupidity to get to that point, (especially that there was apparently one non-cadet on the entire frakking ship), jumping someone at least 7 grades in authority because he did (exceptionally) well in one crisis is utter insanity. Kirk not only earned the animosity of everyone else in Starfleet, (especially career military who are now his subordinates, some of whom were literally in the service while he was in diapers), he has no idea how to do anything except, maybe, handle a crisis. How is he going to file officer evaluation reports for his lieutenants, deal with transfer requests, supply issues, etc- the day to day minutiae of being a (naval) captain? I seriously hope the next movie opens with the Enterprise being the biggest joke in the fleet with Kirk's utter incompetence blazing through.
- Snarf: the whole promotion scenario is a slap in the face not only to the veteran Starfleet officers, but also to the people to whom Kirk owes his life—Chekov (with the transporter), Sulu (by having that sword handy), and especially Scotty (without whom Kirk would likely have remained marooned on Delta Vega, as the Federation didn't know about Spock Prime and with Nero's ongoing rampage they weren't likely to go checking on a minor outpost anytime soon.) All they get is all Kirk should have gotten: their commissions (or, in Scotty's case, off the shitlist) and the heartfelt thanks of the Federation. In fact, Scotty should be most resentful of all. Spock has dumped an unruly cadet in his lap without warning or explanation, and did not have the courtesy to at least send along extra supplies, forcing Scotty to share his already limited food supply with someone whom he basically has to place under arrest. To top it off, this same insubordinate cadet is then promoted past Scotty, who already was a commissioned officer and who was grounded for doing his job. Keep in mind Kirk was earlier caught spying on Uhura in her dorm room, an offense that in the 21st century military would have seen him court-martialed, sent to the brig, and dishonorably discharged no matter what else he might have done.
- Kendo_Bunny: Keep in mind that I'm a swordfighter trained in Kendo, but I really didn't like this part: Sulu explained he had been trained in fencing, and then swung his sword around like he was trying to hit a pinata. The basics of Western-style fencing are easily learned. Granted, western fencing, combat fencing, and kendo are quite different from one another. His style could have borrowed from either one. However, nothing he did on that platform suggested he had ever held a sword in his life, let alone been highly trained.
- C105: For me it was Spock deciding to punish Kirk reckless behaviour by... dropping him on a hostile planet, miles from the nearest (and apparently only) Federation outpost. This is something I would expect a pirate Captain to do, not a logical Vulcan serving aboard a Federation starship that probably has a brig or some door that can be locked. Then, it appears that this planet harboured not only Spock Prime, but also Scotty as well. This is a really contrived way of reuniting characters, only one step above having them bump into each other while floating aimlessly in space.
- spiritcc: For me, the way this movie handled the beginning of Spock and Kirk's "friendship" is something that completely spoiled their interactions in the long run. The movie was really good in pointing out why they would never work out, and escalated their confrontation to the point that they couldn't even tolerate each other's faces, but then fixed it up by...bringing the original Spock to blatantly spell out that basically, Kirk and Spock have to be friends because they were friends in the original series? And without any further explanation or clarification, they suddenly become a good team, and then a year later Spock even loses his marbles watching Kirk die, a follow-up to the non-existent expansion of their friendship beforehand. Even for as bad of a start as their initial interaction was, there would be still a chance to make it work, if the movie didn't suddenly decide to rush them into becoming BF Fs in five minutes and left it as that. Even as the third movie left the theaters and their dynamic is much better, the base at which it allegedly became better makes no sense, and I still have hard time believing they apparently "make a good team". The infamous bromance is one of the things that is not destined to happen in this universe, to Spock Prime's horror.
- Crazyrabbits: Star Trek Into Darkness:
- The concentrated idiocy of Kirk's "death" and subsequent resurrection. It's one thing to make homages to The Wrath of Khan (the '09 film has many similarities with the former, and is still very enjoyable). It's quite another to rip it off wholesale without any of the drama or character development while bastardizing the canon, for several reasons: (1) In WoK, Spock sacrifices himself to repair the warp engines, and is seen manually replacing parts in the warp reactor. In Darkness, Kirk accomplishes the same thing by... kicking a piece of shrapnel into place. (2) McCoy realizes that Kirk can be saved with Khan's blood... because the Tribble he was experimenting on came back to life. Hinging your Deus Ex Machina on the creature that acts as comic relief? (3) The Enterprise lets Spock beat up Khan, instead of pulling the blood from any of the other super-soldiers still on board the Enterprise and injecting it into Kirk that way. The real capper, though, is that it makes Kirk's character arc in the film (where he's finally faced with the weight of his command decisions, and sacrifices himself to save everyone) is completely pointless - he wakes up and they go on their merry way, proving he hasn't learned a thing from Pike's peptalks.
- GrumpyOldMan: All of the film's attempts to demonize Section 31 were bad, but the worst part for me was the ending, where Kirk went on about not breaking from ideals. This made the ending an Inferred Holocaust, because Section 31, and the Federation's willingness to break from ideals is exactly what allowed the allies to prevail in the Dominion War in the first place.
- ModelOmega: The Khan reveal in Into Darkness, it's almost as if Abrams is incapable of any creative decisions, so he always needs to rip them off of the previous films.
- Retloclive: The final battle between Spock vs. Khan I found to be incredibly mediocre. The first major problem I have with it was the setting. I don't know what you're supposed to call those floating things, but the red ships they were fighting on I thought was a terrible location for a one-on-one duel that I actually couldn't believe that was the best they could come up with for a final fight to take place. Second, there's a moment that really ticks me off where Spock is hanging off the edge, and Khan does the incredibly stupid tactic by picking him up, and throwing back onto the platform. Good job Khan. You just helped the man you're fighting defeat ya.
