Hello everyone, my name is Captain Jack, and welcome to Trek Central!
Star Trek has never shied away from killing off characters,
especially characters we’ve never seen before and will never hear from again.
That’s where the whole Star Trek red shirt memes all come from, after all.
. That isn’t to say that the franchise shies away from killing its side, or even main characters though.
While redshirts are often used to prove the seriousness of a situation,
it gets a little more complicated when the talk comes around to the side and main characters
who've given their lives to the franchise.
There are good and bad ways to handle or present a real character death.
Sometimes, they are grand and heroic and other times… not so much.
Today we look at the latter.
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Here is our list of 10 Disappointing Deaths in Star Trek. Warp Me!
Not a duplicate of Harry, not a mirror universe version, a clone, a changeling or an android imposter.
The exact same character whose mom called the captain because he had forgotten his clarinet.
The adorable young starfleet officer that nearly got swindled by Quark on Deep Space 9
and had to be rescued by known ruffian Tom Paris. That guy.
That perky young Ensign. He’s super dead apparently.
In the second season episode, Deadlock, Voyager gets caught up in a technobabble anomaly
that splits the ship into two identical Voyagers occupying the same point in space but out of phase with each other because, science.
Long story short, the Harry that we have come to know is unceremoniously blown out into space
when a nearby bulkhead ruptured near where he and B’Elanna were working.
The engineer was able to save herself but there was no hope for Harry.
Don’t get me wrong, a known character being killed suddenly can have a great impact on viewers.
It’s not like that hasn’t been done before.
. Yeah, it was an emotional moment watching Harry float out into space, still reaching out to B’elanna.
It could have been a moment that set a new and exciting tone for Voyager.
Ultimately, though, the impact was greatly lessened by the end of the episode
when the Harry from the “other” Voyager was sent through a portal to the first Voyager before the other Voyager was destroyed,
thus undoing what could have been an interesting story arc within the span of a single episode.
In at number nine, Bjazel from Star Trek Picard (PIC)
What a villainous piece of work Bjayzel was.
She was a gang-leading, human trafficking, borg parts stealing, Icheb killing, evil badass
who looked a freaky amount like a young Marina Sirtis.
She was a villain who had potential to be complex enough to return repeatedly over time.
We already knew enough about her to know what an evil baddie she really was.
We were invested. Then everything went sideways
Picard and the crew of La Serena, now with 100% more seven of nine,
are on the trail of Dr. Bruce Maddox which has led them to Freecloud
. A few Hilarious hijinks later, and we learn that he is being held by a woman named Bjayzel.
More hijinks, including Picard with an eyepatch and an outrageous “French” accent,
then it looked for a half a second like the baddie might live to be a baddy another day.
Tricking Picard into giving her two badass phaser rifles,
Seven beams herself back to Bjayzel’s bar and fires her phasers, turning the somewhat surprised
Bjayzel into a fine cloud of red mist.
Yeah, the moment was cool, but it did rob us of revisiting a deadly enemy hell bent on scrapping Seven for parts.
That could have been cool, making Bjayzel’s death more disappointing than impactful.
On the other hand, Sir Patrick Stewart imitating that French accent? I love it.
In at Number Eight (8), we're talking about Hugh from Star Trek Picard (PIC)
When it was first learned that Jonathan DelArco would be reprising his role as Hugh the Borg in Star Trek: Picard,
, it was hard to imagine exactly how the show might use him in the story.
. Turns out, the 2399 version of Hugh couldn’t have been further from the individual borg drone
that appeared in a couple of episodes of The Next Generation.
By the time Picard met him again at the Borg Reclamation Project,
Hugh had shed his borg implants, or as many as may have been possible,
and become a well-rounded XB working to save as many others as he could.
His eventual death at the hands of the Romulan Agent, Narissa
was enough in and of itself to earn DelArco’s Hugh a place on this list of disappointing deaths.
Knowing that we won’t likely see the character again (never say never)
was enough of a disappointment on its own.
Tragically though, his death was disappointing as well. Killed by a single thrown knife, in the middle of a fight that wasn’t even his. Tragic.
Personally, I would have loved to see him go on and lead a full XB revolution onboard the cube,
or perhaps even command the legions of Borg Drones still onboard,
however even those drones got a disappointing death via the airlock… oh well, a man can dream.
In at Number seven (#7), James T. Kirk from StarTrek Into Darkness, yes we're diving into the Kelvin Timeline.
It’s hard to say who eventually decided that Into Darkness should be a soft retelling of Wrath of Khan.
Whoever it was took what should have been a pretty decent movie and turned it into a funhouse mirror of what is one of,
if not the best of, the Trek franchise’s movies.
One of the most iconic moments in all of Star Trek’s roughly 800 episodes and 13 movies came when Spock sacrificed himself to save the Enterprise
in the original Wrath of Khan movie.
It was the ultimate, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one” moment,
and it elicited a genuine emotional reaction from fans.
Into Darkness took that moment and “cleverly” switched the roles around
so that it’s Kirk who makes the sacrifice and Spock is left yelling Khan’s name.
While Wrath of Khan at least left Spock dead for the span of about one movie before his friends have to find him
nd resurrect him by rejoining his spirit and his body. In Into Darkness, Kirk’s death is completely undone within minutes
because of Khan’s apparently magical blood. No impact. No emotional reaction. Terribly disappointing death.
In at Number Six (#6), Osiria from Star Trek Discovery Season 3
Why? What is it about “new” Trek that says they have to kill off potentially interesting female antagonists?
Bjazel, Narissa, Osira, Surta (kind of)... any one of these characters could have grown into a fully fleshed out villain.
In the case of Osira, they even went so far as to add depth to the character.
Osira was introduced to us as a fairly stereotypically mustache twirling villain.
Over time, though, we came to learn that there was actually some real depth to the character.
She was a ruthless villain who would do anything,
other than stand trial for her crimes of course, to help her people.
Sure, she had the power to take on what was left of the entire Federation, but she was also witty and clever and provided a fantastic foil for Burnham,
who would go on to end the season as Captain of the ship.
The disappointment here comes, once again, from the loss of another possible villain who could have popped up from time to time, just for funsies.
In at Number five (#5), we have Shaxs from Star Trek Lower Decks!
Just because a death is full-on glorious, and exactly the way the character would have chosen to go out,
doesn’t mean it can’t be disappointing.
Lieutenant Shaxs, The Head of Security and leader of the “bear pack” died not only saving a fellow officer but the lives of everyone onboard the Cerritos as well.
His death took place In a giant fiery explosion during a chaotic fistfight.
Honestly, it’s not clear how his death could have been any more appropriate.
The death of the aggressive Bjoran was disappointing not because of the planning or execution of his death,
but for the simple fact that (in theory) it means that we won’t be seeing a fan favorite again on the series… or does it?
Of all of the Star Trek series that might find a reason to bring the character back to life, it would be Lower Decks.
We’ll have to wait until next season to get the real story behind this one.
In at Number four (#4), James T. Kirk from Star Trek: Generations!
We’ve already covered the rebooted version of Captain James T. Kirk in this list,
but what about the original, William Shatner version of Kirk?
Turns out, when you look at it, his on-screen death was pretty disappointing as well.
In his own time, Captain Kirk was thought killed when a chunk of the Enterprise B was left open to space
after difficulties in rescuing El-Aurian refugees from a powerful energy ribbon.
Kind of a lame way to kill off the franchise’s best-known character.
Fortunately Kirk was, in reality, swallowed by the massive anomaly we would come to know as The Nexus.
Alive and well in a place where time has no real meaning, no one knew what truly happened to the decorated Captain
Captain until Jean-Luc Picard became trapped in the ribbon as well and was guided to Kirk by Guinan (or a reasonable facsimile).
The two Captains of the Enterprise team up to leave The Nexus and defeat the evil Soren’s plans.
Unfortunately, the metal bridge that kirk had been standing on gave way in dramatic fashion,
sending the metal structure, and the famous Captain spinning down a rocky cliff. Kirk was killed by the fall.
Aside from the irony of a Starfleet Captain being killed by a bridge,
there really isn’t much to say about this particular death for this particular character other than to say that it was underwhelming.
James T. Kirk who survived all of those perilous adventures throughout his career… killed in a fall.
We’re not saying that this wasn’t a good time for the character to be killed off.
It was an effective way of passing the movie torch from one Captain to another.
It’s just the way that it was done was so underwhelming that it’s hard to see this death as anything but a disappointment.
In at Number Three (#3), we're talking about Tasha Yar from Star Trek The Next Generation.
Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar only appeared as a regular on The Next Generation for a single season.
The fact that we, as Star Trek fans, have continued to hold the character in such high regard owes
a lot more to the decisions that were made after Yar’s death than those made surrounding it.
After Yar’s death in Skin of Evil, we saw Denise Crosby return in the third season fan favorite episode: Yesterday’s Enterprise
e to reprise her role as Tasha Yar and then, after her character is sent back in time,
Crosby returns as her own half-Romulan daughter. That character is one of the most enduring Villains in Star Trek
and is a serious contender to show up again in PIcard.
With all of that said: When Denise Crosby wanted to leave the show,
, she was killed by an evil puddle of garbage bags when it flung some kind of random black energy at her. Just dead.
For no particular reason.
. So, no matter how cool the chain of events that brought Crosby back to TNG afterward, it’s hard to get past the disappointment of the presentation itself.
In at Number Two (#2), We're talking about Jadzia Dax from Star Trek Deep Space Nine (DS9)
When Terry Farrell, the actress behind Deep Space Nine’s Science Officer Jadzia Dax, decided that she wanted to leave the show
at the end of the sixth season a decision was made to kill off her character.
This wasn’t anything new, of course. TV writers have and had been writing characters out of shows through death for a long time.
It was the way that they killed off a character that viewers had loved for six seasons that made
Jadzia Dax’s death a disappointing one.
In temporary command of DS9 while most of the rest of the crew sets off on a mission to invade Cardassia,
Jadzia gets the good news from Dr. Bashir that it should be possible for she and Worf to have the baby
they were told they probably couldn’t have.
In celebration, she uncharacteristically decides to visit the Bjoran shrine
gets surprised by a pah-wraith possessed Gul Dukat who uses a blast of energy that ultimately kills her.
So little was thought of her death that they had Gul Dukat actually lean down over her body to tell her what amounted to “Oops, didn’t mean to kill you”.
Not only did the writers kill her off for no reason, they then admitted it was for no reason. How disappointing.
In at Number One (#1), It's Jean-Luc Picard, from Star Trek Picard (PIC)
Actual, real-life tears may or may not have been spilled when Picard died in Raffi’s arms in the finale of Picard Season 1.The moment was nearly perfect.
Picard had sacrificed himself in the hopes that he could win the hearts of the Synths who were in the process of summoning a giant snake robot style armageddon.
He’d had the opportunity to symbolically say goodbye to his old friends through his short conversations with Riker,
and he’d had the chance to say goodbye to his “new” friends as well.
Then we got scenes from Rios and Seven as well as Raffi and Elnor that were basically written to keep the tears flowing…
Then five minutes later, he was alive again.
Throughout the episode, Doctors Soong and Jurati were putting the final touches on the Golem
that was meant to transfer an aging Soong’s mind into an android body, which foreshadowed what was to come.
In the end, of course, the golem was used to house Picard’s mind instead,
thus resurrecting the former Captain as though nothing had ever happened.
Talk about taking the punch out of a character’s death!
So that’s going to do it for our list today. If you think of someone that we missed, be sure to let us know down in the comments.
Let us know if you think we should rank these disappointing Star Trek deaths differently as well,
or perhaps someone else should take that number one slot.
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For now, I’ve been Captain Jack thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!