For many, Alice Eve was a highlight of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Eve, who was off of big roles in She’s Out of My League, ATM, and Men In Black III seemed poised to be the next big breakout star of the Star Trek franchise when she showed up as Carol Marcus, the daughter of RoboCop. Uh, I mean Admiral Marcus, played by Peter Weller (who played RoboCop).
Her role and story arc in the film probably would’ve been better serve across multiple episodes of a Star Trek television series, but due to time limitations, it was a pretty good outing. Carol was on a quest to uncover and expose her father for the crimes he was committing against the Klingon homeworld of Qo’nos and Starfleet as a whole. It eventually set up several great scenes with Eve and Weller that really helped make the film a standout in the new trilogy.
Needless to say that when things were set in motion for the third film in the Kelvin timeline and the subsequent sequel to Into Darkness, Star Trek: Beyond, many thought that Eve would reprise her role as the intrepid and dynamic doctor Marcus.
That was until she wasn’t.
Despite the chemistry, Eve had with Chris Pine (Kirk) and Karl Urban (McCoy), Beyond scriptwriter and series actor Simon Peg (Scotty) could not find a way to write Marcus into the movie. Ignoring the fact she had a bubbling relationship with Pine, and the fact that her prime-universe counterpart was in charge of Project Genesis, there were plenty of roles she could’ve fit during the film.
Considering Beyond saw the crew get separated into groups, Eve’s Marcus could’ve easily taken control of one of the groups, or been written in with Pine and Anton Yelchin’s Chekov to make them a trio.
This isn’t even counting in other ways she could’ve been used to help expose or explain the fact that the film’s villain, Krall, was in fact a former member of Starfleet. There were hundreds of ways to work her in, and for Pegg to just claim he couldn’t think of anything for her to do is lazy and uninspired.
Huh, go figure…