Olson


Engineer Olson was a Starfleet operations division officer, and chief engineer of the  in 2258.

In that year, the Enterprise engaged in battle with the Romulan mining vessel Narada, which was drilling into the planet  in an attempt to deploy a small amount of red matter into the planet's core. 

As the operation of the Naradas drill blocked all of the Enterprises transporter functions, Olson, along with  and , were assigned to space jump from an Enterprise shuttlecraft to the Naradas drill platform, and subsequently use a series of explosives to disable it.

Commencing with the space jump, both Kirk and Sulu pulled their parachutes approximately 2,000 meters from the platform, but Olson, in an attempt at thrill-seeking, continued to free-fall, pulling his chute at the last possible moment, when he was almost directly over the platform. 

As a strong gust of wind caught his chute, Olson slammed into the platform, and was pulled over the side. Unable to fight against the force of the gusts, Olson was pulled, along with his chute, directly into the drilling beam, and was instantly incinerated. As Olson was carrying the charges meant to disable the platform, Kirk and Sulu were forced to improvise, using disruptor rifles to complete the mission instead.  replaced him as chief engineer shortly before the Battle of Earth. ()

Appendices

Background information 
Olson was played by Greg Ellis.

Olson spoke with a northern English accent, typical in the Manchester-Lancashire area of the UK.

He was the first Enterprise "redshirt" to be killed in the film; the script even referred to him as "Red Shirt Engineer" several times. 

Olson was initially to have been played by Greg Grunberg, who later recalled, "They offered me the red shirt Olsen [....] I wanted it so bad, obviously I would take anything from [Director] JJ [Abrams], but that role in particular, because as soon as they see me in a red shirt people would be like 'oh my god he is going to die', it would have been great." However, Grunberg had to decline the role, as he was busy working on another movie, though he ultimately voiced Winona Kirk's new husband heard in the film .

There was a Cadet "Olsen" serving aboard the  in the script of unmade movie Star Trek: The First Adventure, which – much like the film Star Trek – would have been about the Academy days of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Apocrypha 
In the  The Gemini Agent, Olson, mis-spelled "Olsen", is the chief engineer of the  in 2255 during Starfleet Academy's Zeta Fleet Training Exercise.

External link 
 

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Humans
Starfleet operations personnel
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) personnel (alternate reality)