The Worst of Star Trek: The Movies

The Worst of Star Trek

The Movies

Section 31

Alex Kurtzman was seemingly hellbent on making a Discovery spinoff Section 31 tv series, based on the super secret black ops organization originated in DS9 and bastardized in Discovery.  COVID related production schedule issues and Michelle Yeohs best actress Oscar win for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" resulted in the series (unwanted by the fans) being reworked into a streaming movie.  What we ended up with was a dogshit Suicide Squad/Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff with a cast of characters that it's honestly hard to care about in a movie that barely has anything to do with Star Trek.  After watching it once, I wish I could take that hour and a half back.

 

Into Darkness

The second Kelvin Timeline reboot movie.  J.J. Abrams and co's attempt to retell (and rip off) the Wrath of Khan story, while cramming in elements of Space Seed, Section 31 and the Klingons (also a gratuitous Alice Eve in underwear scene) resulted in a breakneck pace, all action movie that has more lens flares and "pew pews" than actual story beats.  Also, straight up copying or even directly stealing lines and whole scenes from what is almost universally considered the best movie in the franchise left a bitter taste in the mouths of many hardcore trekkies.

Nemesis

The Next Generation casts final movie outing rates very low on my list for several reasons.  Poor directing, the goofy, out of place truck chase scene on the planet (whose inhabitants were said to be pre-warp in the previous scene...), the mental rape scene with Troi and the Viceroy followed by Picard asking Troi if she can "endure any more of these assaults" WTF?, and the death of Data (I know this was Brent Spiner's request) was off putting.  As a final outing for the TNG cast this movie failed and disappointed.  Fortunately 20 years later Star Trek Picard season 3 gave the TNG cast the sendoff they deserved.

Honorable Mention: Star Trek (2009)

The always divisive first movie in the Kelvin Timeline trilogy.  Using the time travel element to reboot the franchise is one thing, but having it come off as if the previous 43 years of Star Trek no longer exist left a bad taste in the mouth of hardcore fans.  Other missteps include turning the Enterprise into a hotrod, turning Star Trek from thought provoking storytelling into breakneck paced pew-pew summer blockbuster action flicks, and Kirk going from nearly expelled from Starfleet Academy for cheating on the no-win Kobayashi Maru scenario to promoted to captain and given command of the Enterprise by the end of the movie.  See my Kelvin Timeline movies post for more complaints.