Deus ex machine, sci-fi style

Our hero, in attempting to rescue a kidnapped team member, has found himself trapped under the debris of a collapsed building that was booby trapped. His trusty sidekick, who has repeatedly tried to free him without success—that junk is heavy, man!—refuses to abandon him. They are about to be confronted with enemy engineers who have come both to free them and to capture them, and have raised their weapons to keep firing as long as possible, when—on cue—the “spiritual descendants” of Star Trek’s Scotty beam them up directly into their ship’s sickbay. Okay, to keep some semblance of realism, the ship suffers major damage when the shields are lowered to allow the beam-up, but still . . .Yeah, it does get a bit predictable after literally decades of watching science fiction television and movies. But let’s face, who wants to see the good guys captured by the bad guys?