Ever since the trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness hit the web, fans have been scratching their heads over one particular shot - Alice Eve in lingerie. When the movie hit opened over the weekend, we were still left wondering Was that shot really necessary? After getting bashed by critics on Twitter, writer Damon Lindelof had to admit himself that the shot was gratuitous.

Salon notes that Lindelof had been asked about the scene before the movie came out, since it didn’t really gel with all the chaos and havoc Benedict Cumberbatch’s villain was shown causing.

“Why is Alice Eve in her underwear, gratuitously and unnecessarily, without any real effort made as to why in God's name she would undress in that circumstance?” Lindelof wrote in an email to MTV News. “Well there's a very good answer for that. But I'm not telling you what it is. Because... uh... MYSTERY?”

But on Monday night, the writer answered critics who had been wondering why it was necessary to show Eve getting changed. In the scene, she asks Kirk to look away as she gets into another suit to protect herself from the environment she’s about to go to. But why couldn’t she have just slipped that suit on over the Starfleet outfit she was wearing before?

“I copped to the fact that we should have done a better job of not being gratuitous in our representation of a barely clothed actress,” Lindelof wrote. “We also had Kirk shirtless in underpants in both movies. Do not want to make light of something that some construe as mysogenistic.”

The long-time J.J. Abrams collaborator added, “What I'm saying is I hear you, I take responsibility and will be more mindful in the future.” He also noted, “I need to learn how to spell ‘misogynistic.’”

Star Trek Into Darkness opened on Thursday and grossed $84.1 million over the four-day weekend.

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