The 2025 Academy Award nominations have been announced after delays caused by the devastating fires in Los Angeles, and the numerous nods got us thinking about how the Star Trek movies have fared at the Oscars. And the answer is… terribly. Not counting Section 31, which can be classified as a telemovie, there are 13 features spanning from The Motion Picture in 1979 to Beyond in 2016. Together, they have been nominated for a grand total of 16 Oscars, all in tech or makeup categories. And they've won exactly one Oscar. You read that right. One Oscar.
And the Oscar went to Barney Burman, Mindy Hall, and Joel Harlow, who triumphed in the Best Makeup category for their work on Star Trek (2009). Interestingly, Star Trek (2009) accounted for a full quarter of all of the Star Trek franchise’s Oscar nominations, as it was also up for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing.
The lack of nominations in major categories should surprise no one, as the Academy tends to ignore genre productions. There are notable exceptions, of course. The Lord of the Rings trilogy did just fine, earning 30 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Ian McKellen for The Fellowship of the Ring). The Return of the King won all 11 categories for which it was nominated, including Best Picture and Best Director (Peter Jackson).
For our money, Ricardo Montalban deserved an Oscar nomination for his work as Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Would Montalban have beaten Louis Gossett Jr. for Best Supporting Actor? No one knows. But he certainly could have taken a spot occupied by one of the other nominees in 1983, which included John Lithgow, James Mason, Robert Preston, and Charles Durning. Similarly, Alice Krige should have been nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her fearsome, seductive performance as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact.
She was certainly as good as the 1997 Oscar nominees, Joan Allen, Barbara Hershey, Lauren Bacall, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and the winner, Juliette Binoche. And lots of Star Trek fans think Jonathan Frakes was worthy of a Best Director nomination for First Contact and feel Star Trek (2009) should have been among the Best Picture nominees in 2010, especially since the category had been expanded to 10 entries.