Malcolm McDowell’s life was threatened because of Star Trek: Generations

Malcolm McDowell played the villain on Star Trek: Generations, and as it turns out, the dislike of his character moved offscreen as well.

In a story that is straight out of a movie, Malcolm McDowell had to have a police escort to the premiere of Star Trek: Generations. McDowell’s nephew, Alexander Siddig, who played Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, told him that his life had been threatened as apparently the threat had shown up on the internet. [via LandmarkCinemas] And McDowell was given police protection in the form of two LAPD detectives.

McDowell shared the story in SFX Magazine some years ago and said basically nothing happened.

"“My wife and I went out at 10 o’clock to go for a meal, and the detective was in the corridor… nobody there! We come out onto Madison Avenue… not one person on the street. I went, ‘Why don’t you take off?’, and he went, ‘I can’t, sorry.'”"

Malcolm McDowell thought the whole thing was a joke, but this could have been a serious situation

Too many fans to count were furious when Captain James T. Kirk died because of McDowell’s character, Dr. Tolian Soran. Not only were they upset that Kirk had died to begin with, they thought, if he had to die, this particular death was meaningless and that he should have had a more heroic death.

I agree with that part (see link below), but McDowell wasn’t to blame for how the script was written. Fortunately, nothing happened to the actor because of his villanous role. For McDowell, he thought it was all a joke, but because the internet was so new, no one knew if the threat needed to be taken seriously. And sadly, nothing has changed as we still don’t know when such internet threats need to be taken seriously.