One of the major talking points since Star Trek Beyond’s release has been the notable absence of one Carol Marcus as played by Alice Eve.
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In the build up to Star Trek Beyond’s release, it was pretty obvious that one doctor was missing from the cast list. Alice Eve’s take on Dr. Carol Marcus was one of the few highlights of Into Darkness but the decision had been taken that she would not be returning for the 3rd film in the Kelvin timeline. Throughout production and up to the films first trailer the question was asked with little or no response from the team behind the film, even Alice Eve herself wasn’t sure.
"“Well, I’m not sure about my return [for the next film], but ‘Star Trek 3’, I think, is going to go in an interesting direction, and I look forward to it.”"
It seemed strange to fans that her character would not be in Star Trek Beyond in some capacity due to her having such an important role in Into Darkness. Carol Marcus played an important role with the films story which would eventually see Captain Kirk welcoming her as a part of the Enterprise family at the end of the film. This indicated that JJ Abrams, at the point of making Into Darkness, had plans of including her in future films.
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Now thanks to a guest spot on the official Star Trek Podcast we have the reason straight from the horse’s mouth. The horse is of course Simon Pegg, co writer of Star Trek Beyond.
"“With this it felt like we would under-serve her if we included her, she might end upfeeling like she hadn’t been given the amount of screen-time she deserves, so rather than bring her in and just have her be a supporting role, like, have her not be in this one, and when the time comes [bring her back]. The worst thing to do would be to have her in the film and have that character be killed, and that felt like a cynical thing to do. We thought rather than have Carol Marcus not be used to a reasonable capacity, let’s just not include her, have her be alive, in canon, and ready to come back at any time.”"
So that’s the official line when it comes to Alice Eve not being in Beyond. I personally think that originally she was in the film, as before coming on to writing duties, Simon Pegg said that there was a script in place but they were not happy with it and basically rewrote the film. I think that original script had Alice Eves character in it and maybe, just maybe saw the relationship blossom more between Kirk ad Marcus, the relationship that would eventually see the birth of Kirk’s son. I also think this is one of the reasons why we got the controversial ‘Marcus in her underwear’ scene from Into Darkness, as it was a prelude to Kirk and Marcus getting together.
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