Doctor Carol Marcus was a secondary protagonist in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. She was originally portrayed by the Australian-American actress Bibi Besch. In the Kelvin timeline she was portrayed by Alice Eve.
The daughter of Alexander Marcus, Marcus worked on Starbase 1 during the late 2250s and early 2260s. During that time she met a young Starfleet officer named James T. Kirk. Marcus had a relationship with Kirk which produced a child she named David around 2260. Feeling that neither one of them were meant for a permanent relationship, Marcus raised her son on her own, asking Kirk to keep away from their son.
Marcus was considered one of the top molecular biologists in the Federation and was offered many positions, but refused any where her skills could be put to use in military applications. In the mid 2260s, she was working on the ARK-7 space station, helping to study the origins of life in the universe. The team accidentally created a virus that was deadly to Vulcans and Romulans, but Leonard McCoy quickly found a cure and administered it to both Spock and a Romulan war party sent to destroy what they believed was a biological weapon. Convinced by Captain Kirk and his crew that the virus was an accident, the Romulans left to return home while Marcus and her people sterilized the station and destroyed all their research to keep the virus from being recreated.
In the 2280s Marcus began working with her own son - now a Doctor himself - and a number of other scientists - on what they named Project Genesis. This involved creating an energy matrix and delivery device to enable the rapid terraforming of lifeless celestial objects such as planets or moons. By 2285, Marcus and her team had created a Genesis Device and were working with Starfleet to locate a suitable planet to use the device on. During the search process, the crew of the USS Reliant came across the exiled Khan Noonien Singh, who hijacked their vessel. Khan had the mind controlled first officer Pavel Chekov contact Marcus to tell her Reliant was on the way to the Regula One station where she and her team were working with orders from Admiral Kirk to take possession of all the Genesis materials. Even though Marcus had a complicated relationship with both Kirk and Starfleet, she refused to believe that Kirk or Starfleet would do this, and hid the Genesis Device on the Regula planetoid the station was orbiting.
When Kirk rescued them, her beliefs were confirmed that Starfleet had not been behind the theft of the device nor the deaths of her fellow scientists. She and David were beamed on to the Enterprise. After the final battle with Khan, Marcus attended Captain Spock's funeral and then stood with Kirk and McCoy, observing the new Genesis Planet that had been created when Khan had detonated the Genesis Device inside a nebula. She went back to Regula One to help identify the deceased scientists and crew, and then went to each of their families to deliver the news personally. During one of these visits she was informed that David had been murdered by a Klingon under the command of Commander Kruge.
Despite the firm intent of Marcus, her son, and the other scientists that the Genesis Device was only to be used for peaceful purposes, the device was very controversial, and some governments feared - not without valid reason - the device could be used to carry out genocidal attacks on others. Marcus was forced to live in seclusion with a detachment from Starfleet Security watching her so that she wouldn't be kidnapped and forced to hand over her knowledge of Genesis. While she was free to leave Pacifica anytime she wanted, Marcus rarely did so because she had to take an entourage with her when she left her home.
By 2293, she and Kirk had repaired their relationship and planned to live together after Kirk's retirement. While on Themis in 2293, she was seriously injured in a Klingon attack led by General Chang which was staged as a test of his prototype bird of prey, but she fully recovered. When Kirk was lost during the disastrous launch of the Enterprise-B she attended Kirk's funeral on Earth and met some of the other individuals Kirk had become friends with over the years.
Marcus was still alive in the late 24th century, still living in seclusion on Pacifica. She was tricked into revealing the secrets of Genesis to moss creatures, who then created a Genesis wave that devastated a number of alpha quadrant worlds. Marcus and the Klingon Maltz sacrificed themselves by destroying a station that would've created a second Genesis wave.
Trivia[]
- In the early drafts of Star Trek III: The Search For Spock Marcus was slated to return before producer Harve Bennett cut her out as he felt she didn't add anything to the story and as a cost saving measure. Besch felt some degree of disappointment over not being included in the film, even though she told Bennett after seeing the movie that she understood why Marcus wasn't in the movie.
