Director J.J. Abrams and co-writer Damon Lindelof have spent quite a bit of time lately defending the gratuitous but fleeting scene of Alice Eve in her underwear in Star Trek Into Darkness. The initial debate over how sexist this bit of heavy handed fan service really was has in turn sparked wider discussions across the internet about how her character Dr Carol Marcus and Uhura were handled in the latest Star Trek sequel.

Increasingly fierce battle lines have been drawn between those who dismiss the supposed controversy as overblown hysterics and those who see it as a major faux pax for one of the most historically progressive genre franchises. Whilst discussing the issue on Conan, J.J. Abrams shared a clip of a deleted scene of a topless Benedict Cumberbatch having a grumpy shower. Interview video below including the literally steamy clip .

Shown alongside a brief scene of Kirk with his shirt off it seems like this particular Cumberbatch visual treat is supposed to help prove the film really did have at least intentions to take an equal opportunities approach to glimpsing attractive partially naked men and women. While there’s probably some logic in trying to use a naked Benedict Cumberbatch to placate angry fangirls and diffuse the situation; in truth it may only add further fuel to the escalating debate. Particularly as this piece of  Space Sherlock fan-service didn’t actually make the final cut of the film.