Among Star Trek’s History of Transporter Accidents, This One Hits Hardest

And the Director’s Cut later actually amped up scene even more, on purpose

Jun 08, 2025

The narrative history of the Star Trek franchise is littered with transporter accidents.

They range from the philosophical (the original series episode “The Enemy Within”), the deeply consequential (Star Trek: Voyager’s “Tuvix”), to the nearly absurd (Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Rascals”). And, of course, so much more.

But one stands out.

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That’s, of course, the malfunction that kills Commander Sonak and another new officer boarding the newly refit Enterprise in the early going of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I was a young, newbie Star Trek fan when I first saw that scene. And to say that it made an impression would be the worst kind of understatement.

I was more than unnerved. Ten-year-old me was terrified in a way that certainly I hadn’t expected from Star Trek, and frightened in a visceral, lasting way that Star Trek rarely ever would. (Perhaps the only other time the franchise would so affect me would be TNG’s truly disturbing “Chain of Command.”)

That scream.

That scream was the central focus of the scene, and that scream more than frightened me. It stayed with me.

After watching The Motion Picture, that scream found a way to inhabit my idle thoughts in a way I couldn’t shake for a long time.

And even today — decades later — I can’t think of that scene, or even the film as a whole, without recalling that scream. (More on that in a moment.)

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But as much as that transporter scene couldn’t exist without that scream, or its visual effects, it wouldn’t have its power without superb performances by three actors in particular.

Those would be James Doohan as Scotty, William Shatner as Admiral Kirk, and Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand.

And in a scene that’s so short — only about 90 seconds in a movie that runs more than two hours — it works because of some choices that might seem almost imperceptible as they slip by.

But the accident and its immediate aftermath would not be nearly as powerful, or memorable, without them.

The action actually begins with an intercom call to Scotty and the admiral in Main Engineering, warning of an impending malfunction of the new transporters aboard the just-refit Enterprise.

And we immediately know how serious this is not only for the sounds of the alarm klaxon but because both Kirk and Scott run towards the transporter room where the doomed transport already is in progress.

Frantic warnings from the Enterprise to halt the transport are too late, and Kirk and Scott come practically skidding into the transporter room and land behind the console next to Rand, who’s now the ship’s transporter chief.

She’s already fully engrossed in her task, trying without success to stop the beam-in already in progress. She’s alarmed at the events underway certainly, but by no means hysterical.

In fact, Rand’s alarm is one more device that raises the dramatic tension in this brief but crucial scene. (I would also argue that this is probably Whitney’s best and most meaty work in the role until her final appearance as Captain Sulu’s first officer in the Star Trek: Voyager episode, “Flashback.”)

Kirk immediately takes over at the console. As an aside, the fact that Kirk takes over from Rand has always irked me. She’s the officer trained for this very function and carrying out her job as well as can be expected (a fact that Kirk himself acknowledges at the end of the scene) so what real value is this formerly desk-bound admiral actually adding?

However, I do realize that Shatner’s the star here and putting him in charge of the action only raises the stakes further. (Not to mention that the movie was made back in 1979, after all.)

Being so brief, the beats that make this scene so compelling also are small but powerful. And Whitney and Shatner each contribute strongly and noticeably.

Each with facial reactions and body language, as well as respective bits of dialogue. Rand’s horrified recognition, “They’re forming!” and Kirk’s own horror-struck, “Oh my god!”

Yes, we get the brief glimpse of the figures contorted in the transport beam and, of course, that otherworldly scream.

But the camera is mostly just on Kirk and Rand for most of this sequence.

They’re the ones — with their reactions — who make it as vivid and effective as it is. And it’s our imaginations that are left to fill in the rest.

That is the mark of great acting.

That transporter scene would prove pivotal in an entirely different way decades later when producer David C Fein helped on the latest 4K edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director’s Edition.

Specifically, this scene was amped up even further with the intention to move the film from its original “G” rating, to a more “grown up” “PG.”

Fein told CinemaBlend’s Mick Joest:

I’ll tell you exactly what I told my sound department… ’It should definitely be a nails on a chalkboard level of tension,’ but I also said, ‘Imagine if you were in the most horrible pain of your life and you needed to scream just to get it out, but you had no way, no orifice, to even scream. What would it sound like if, finally, you could make some sound, what would that sound be?' It’s funny, I talk about it, and the hairs on the back of my neck still stand up… So I said to the sound department, ‘We’re not G. You really want to make people nervous from this, and you need to scare them to the point of really making it the realistic fear of what was happening. Because it really is one of the most horrible deaths in the history of Star Trek, but it also got us a PG rating.

And Joest, himself, wrote:

When it comes down to it, the transporter accident might truly be the most important scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director’s Cut. Had it not been for the rating change, some of the franchise's fans might not have even given the movie a second look and assumed they had their fill of Trek villain V’Ger. Now, we’re blessed with a finished and re-edited version of the movie that elevates it to the level of respect it should’ve had if [director] Robert Wise (who is the force behind amazing films like haunted house movie The Haunting) was able to properly do everything he needed the first time around.

Although Star Trek: The Motion Picture gets a lot of flak, even today, I hope fans can really appreciate how important and consequential this brief, 90-second scene is in the history of the franchise.

Watch the full transporter scene here: