Why Was Alice Eve Not In Star Trek Beyond?

In J.J. Abrams' 2013 feature "Star Trek Into Darkness," Alice Eve appeared as Dr. Carol Marcus, a science officer who came to the U.S.S. Enterprise to examine a shipment of photon torpedoes. Working with Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), she finds that the torpedoes were used as covert coffin-shaped tubes, intended to smuggle cryogenically frozen compatriots of the villain Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch). She would also eventually play a key role in stopping the evil machinations of her vengeful father, Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), who aims to pilot a wicked warship called the U.S.S. Vengeance on a mission of destruction. 

The character of Carol Marcus had previously appeared in Nicholas Meyer's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," wherein she was played by actress Bibi Besch. In that film — set in the original "Star Trek" timeline, recall — Dr. Marcus was an old flame of Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and it was revealed that she had been raising their son in secret. She was also the developer of the Genesis Wave, a miraculous form of radiation that could instantaneously terraform an entire planet. In tribute to "Wrath of Khan," the Kelvin timeline version of Dr. Marcus engaged in some light flirtation with Captain Kirk (Chris Pine). 

When "Into Darkness" ended, it seemed reasonable that Dr. Marcus would remain a member of the Enterprise's crew, expanding the usual cast with a familiar character. When the follow-up film, Justin Lin's 2016 sequel "Star Trek Beyond" came out, however, Dr. Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Why wasn't she around? Was Alice Eve busy? 

In a 2016 episode of the podcast "Star Trek: The Pod Directive," (transcribed by Syfy) "Beyond" co-screenwriter Simon Pegg explained why Dr. Marcus was absent. It seems that he didn't want to give her a mere supporting role.

"Star Trek" shows tend to be ensemble dramas, and a weekly release schedule allows the shows' writers to alternate between lead characters. One episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," for example, may focus on Geordi (LeVar Burton), while the next will be about Worf (Michael Dorn). 

Movies, frustratingly, don't have the time or the bandwidth to tell whole ensemble stories. Because they have to run about two hours, screenwriters can't write stories wherein every single character has an arc, forcing them to focus on maybe one to three characters, maximum. 

This leads to an ethos of "we need to give them something to do" screenwriting, forcing small amounts of meaningless incident into the hands of supporting players who deserve — and are capable of — much more.

"Star Trek Beyond" cleverly separates its core cast near the beginning of the film — the Enterprise crash-lands on an alien world, and the survivors are scattered over its surface — but not everyone plays a key role in the plot, nor do they have deeply involved personal journeys. For Simon Pegg, adding an additional character to his scenario wouldn't have allowed them to do anything. He liked Carol Marcus, and Alice Eve is a talented actress, but Pegg felt she deserved more:

"With ['Beyond'], it felt like we would under-serve her if we included her, she might end up feeling 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]."

Which makes sense, given how busy "Beyond" was as a movie.

Pegg continued: 

"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."

You can rest assured that when a major, important character dies in a mainstream drama, it's a sure sign that the writers have run out of ideas; rather than invent a creative, engaging story, they lazily reached for the nuclear option and murdered off someone audiences care about. Pegg acknowledged that he could have done the lazy thing, included Dr. Marcus, and then killed her for dramatic effect, but he liked the character too much to murder her. Instead, she can be in future Trek installments. 

Of course, a fourth Kevin-set "Star Trek" movie has been stalled for years. It's looking unlikely that Alice Eve will return and time will tell if a film even gets made. 

As previously reported by /Film, the writing of "Star Trek Beyond" was a massive challenge, and Pegg frequently butted heads with director Lin over what would and wouldn't go into the movie; each one hated the other's ideas. It didn't help that Lin was tasked with inventing a "Star Trek" story under a time crunch, and didn't have a Trek project ready to go. It was hard enough for Pegg to write the story he did without adding Dr. Marcus to the mix. One can sympathize.