Star Trek TOS Movies: The 10 Best Fight Scenes, Ranked

Star Trek is legendary for its fights scenes, though often in the wrong ways— at least the original series. There is no shortage of fights in the rebooted movie franchise by J.J. Abrams, but pure fight scenes in the movies featuring the original cast are surprisingly rare. The contests in those films tend to be more mental or spiritual, though they're some of the most legendary clashes in Trek history.

Captain Kirk and crew faced enormous odds in the original run of movies and lost a lot. They also gave as good as they got, preserving despite overwhelming odds.

10 Reborn Spock Vs. Klingons

The '60s series loved to throw Kirk, Spock, and everyone else into major brawls with the biggest probably being in "The Trouble With Tribbles," one of the classic episodes. The movies got away from this for the most part. When fights happened they were brief, like the battle between the newly reborn Spock and the Klingons that had captured him on Genesis.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock is underappreciated. One reason is it actually features the most straight-up fighting in the original movies, and this brief scene has Spock fighting and pushing Klingons to their deaths.

9 Uhuru Vs. Mr. Adventure

Less a physical fight than a contest of wills, Uhuru proved she was more than a mere communications officer in Star Trek III. The crew of the Enterprise has been reassigned and Uhuru gets transporter desk duty. Little does her ambitious and very green co-worker (billed as "Mr. Adventure") know that she's playing a long game.

Uhuru draws a phaser on him and locks him in a closet as Captain Kirk and the other crew sneak through the transporter onto the mothballed Enterprise. She schools this poor kid in the hard reality of space travel in a way he'll never forget.

8 Kirk Vs. General Chang

This fantastic contest of wills plays out across the entire span of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Though the meaning of the film's title is somewhat murky, the battle between Kirk and Klingon General Chang isn't. The stakes are crystal clear: live or die.

Chang needles Kirk from their first meeting through a mock trial that sees Kirk sent off to a Klingon prison to their final duel in space. Chang, played by legendary actor Christopher Plummer, captains a Bird of Prey that can fire while cloaked. He can't hide from Kirk forever, though.

7 Kirk Vs. Starfleet

Uhuru's sending another Starfleet officer to timeout is part of a wider battle within Star Trek III. Kirk and crew steal the Enterprise out of spacedock against Starfleet orders in one of the most thrilling sequences in the entire film.

The audacious plan requires the effort of everyone involved. Sulu overrides the spacedock doors, which try to close them in. Scotty sabotages the warp core of the Excelsior, which will go on to become the first command of Hikaru Sulu.

6 Kirk Vs. God

In terms of potential, this is probably the best title card in the entire slate of Star Trek fights. Kirk vs. God? Can't be beat. Unfortunately, the result isn't as spectacular as one might have hoped, which is just one reason that Star Trek V: The Final Frontierdidn't quite work.

God isn't actually God, but a powerful alien trapped on a remote world looking for a starship. Kirk battles him with his wit and intelligence and eventually yields the floor to Sybok, Spock's long-lost half-brother— not that anybody ever really talks about it.

5 Spock Vs. Punk Rocker

One of the best fight scenes in the original Star Trek movies isn't really a fight at all. At least for the one guy. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, one of the best in the entire franchise, the crew goes back in time to 1986 (then the present day) to save a pair of whales from extinction.

Blending in is hard for everybody, especially when Kirk and Spock encounter a young man on a bus blasting punk rock from his boom box. He won't turn it down— if anything, he turns it up— so Spock deploys the classic Vulcan nerve pinch and problem solved.

4 Kirk Vs. Horned Alien

In Star TrekVI,Kirk and McCoy are sent to the Rura Penthe penal colony after being convicted by a Klingon court. There Kirk runs afoul of a giant horned alien. This unnamed alien is bigger and stronger than Kirk but his newfound friend Martia tells Kirk to kick the alien in the knees.

He does and ends the fight right away. Kirk is confused until Martia tells him that not every species in the galaxy "keeps their genitals in the same place."

3 Kirk Vs. Soran

Star Trek Generations is technically a film featuring The Next Generation crew, who had their own big fight scenes, but it's the last to feature members of the original crew (before Spock shows up in the reboot, anyway). It also features one of the biggest sustained fight scenes of Kirk's career. He throws some vicious punches to stop Soran from destroying a star and wiping out an entire solar system.

Kirk outduels Soran and ultimately saves the day, but at the cost of his life. He dies after the bridge he was on collapsed into a deep canyon.

2 Kirk Vs. Kruge

Star Trek III ends with Kirk's other major mano-a-mano battle in the movies. After the loss of the Enterprise, he beams down to Genesis, and there he gets into it face to face with Captain Kruge. Kruge is significantly stronger than him— he lifts Kirk right off his feet— but Kirk is Kirk and he never gives up.

Kruge really should've guessed that from the fact Kirk blew up his own ship to kill a bunch of Klingons. Kruge takes a boot to the face and falls to his end.

1 Kirk Vs. Khan

The biggest fight scene in all of Star Trek doesn't feature a single punch. In fact, the two combatants never properly meet. Khan and Kirk duel from the bridges of their respective ships in arguably the greatest Trek film in the franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The two characters were originally meant to meet in the film and duel in a sword fight, but their contest remained a battle of will and wit. Kirk uses all of his cunning and experience to outmaneuver a superior opponent, whose arrogance blinds him to the painfully obvious.

Source: screenrant.com