Star Trek Beyond Spoiler Discussion

If you’ve seen the new movie here’s a spoiler zone to talk about it. People who haven’t seen it yet, stay away.

The SDCC showing and IMAX marathon were Wednesday (July 20) night, and the first regular showings start Thursday (July 20) night, so it’s time to discuss.

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That moment when Spock looks at the photograph of the crew circa Undiscovered Country? All the feels. That was like the most beautiful moment of the whole film for me.

Agreed, there were cheers from the audience in the cinema during my showing. Beautiful moment!

Just came back from watching it and I’m in Essex/ East London boarder in the UK.

No cheers when the photo of the original crew was shown but I had tears in my eyes. A lovely tribute.

yes. I teared up at that.

Shatner finally got in the movie! Sort of… ;-)

I’m sure he demanded a fee for it too. ;)

They were all duly compensated for their likeness in the film under SAG guidelines. What remains to be known is whether they individually negotiated as they have the right to do, or accepted the same compensation offered by Paramount. I wonder if any of them considered refusing (especially George Takei, considering).

Yes! This was such a powerful moment and it fit so well within the story too.

Yes! I loved that! I was so unexpected and just oh such a fantastic touch!

Aye, I felt the same! Also when the camera cuts to Anton when kirk says “to absent friends…”

I do love the launch date of the Franklin… 2160. I hope they have a Novel coming out that explores the the history of the Franklin and it’s crew.

I felt like I was seeing the Voyager episode “Endgame” when I saw that scene, then I had a flash-back to when Captain Picard did the toast with the vintage Picard wine in ST: Nemesis – toasting Data. Very fitting indeed!!!

Since The Search for Spock, (where it first appeared) that seems to be the standard Trek toast.

I think that photo was from The Wrath of Khan.

From ST V actually.

Yup. You nailed it.

Sulu wearing a captains uniform and the bridge has red panels, I think it is from 6 not 5.

Nope. Check Nichelle’s hair. It’s always a giveaway.

Yep, that computer interface started in ST V.

How was the Franklin (the first warp 4 ship) launched in 2160…when that was after the NX-01 (the 1st warp 5 ship)

In the original 2009 Star Trek promotions, they established that the Kelvin Timeline was created farther back in time than the crossing of Narada + Spock. While we’ve accepted the timeline change happened when Kirks father was killed, in reality, some members of the Narada crew made it as far back as the Roman Era. There were some great hidden promotional images of the paleolithic hill carvings showing a pointy eared giant.

Don’t think hey said it was launched in 2060, but that it was lost in 2060. My guess is that it’s a 2030s or so design.

You’re mixing up your 1’s and 0’s my friend, very binary of you :)

But… ST: Enterprise made it VERY clear that the NX-01 was the first ship equipped with a transporter. A small one. Let alone one that can transport 20 people. Again, all they had to do was call it a warp 6 ship and everything works.

In a previous interview the producers said that the changes to the timeline went in BOTH directions. In other words, the JJ timeline is different past, present and future. This decision was made so that they didn’t have to stick with any of the Star Trek Canon, including Enterprise.

So lame & inconsistant. contradicts the first film.

They made it VERY clear that this was the first transporter to be able to transport people. In the first episode there was a discussion about how it had previously only been used to transport cargo.

Scotty modified the Franklin’s transporter.

Think about it though – Idris’s character mentioned the Xindi and the Romulans – most likely the Franklin was in service at the time and may have received upgrades prior to being lost

Perhaps it was a testbed that was refitted for actual duty, like the space shuttle Challenger was? Or perhaps 2160 is the launch of that particular mission but the ship existed on other missions prior to that?

This must have been a mistake, NX 01 was the first warp 5. How could they make such a mistake.

I’m not trying to be a jerk,but: Who cares? Maybe it was a test ship that was relaunched later. Didn’t they ask Memory Alpha for help on this?

Maybe they did it on purpose to give us something to nitpick. Enterprise was a giant retcon anyway.

A friend of mine thinks they make those holes intentionally to give people something to pick at. That they really are indeed as aware of the canon as they claim to be.

Saw it today. It was the first Warp 4 ship.

The same way Bennet and Co. gave us Klingon Birds of Prey.

People make them every day. Don’t you?

Because those in charge of the new franchise don’t really care about continuity that much, just a flash/bang action fest full of ‘splosions

The new film was very much focused on character work.

Franklin is officially pre-NX-01 just wasn’t explained clearly in the movie. Think of it as the NX-Gamma.

He said federation’s first warp 4 ship. Nx-01 was pre-federation.

Also, saw ENTERPRISE pilot yesterday on HEROES & ICONS and the NX-01 were warp 4 ships that their engineers pushed to break warp 5 during their service. They weren’t built to be warp 5.

Actually, in one scene Archer says something like “This is called a warp 5 engine”, suggesting to Trip to increase Speed to warp 5.

timeypizza,

You are getting ahead of yourself. When Archer was given permission to use the NX ship to take the Klingon courier home, here’s what Tucker said to Travis:

TRAVIS: How fast have you gotten her?
TUCKER: Warp four. We’ll be going to four five as soon as we clear Jupiter. Think you can handle it?
TRAVIS: Four point five.

NX ENTERPRISE was only a certified Warp four ship on her first mission launch. The engine had been designed to be warp five capable but the ship was launched without that being achieved for it. Taking the ship to warp 5 would have been a big untested unknown for that particular ship design during the mission which is why Tucker and Archer never took her that high during its course.

The Enterprise was still undergoing a shakedown at the time. It’s normal during the breaking in period for any new ship not to immediately take them up to full speed – the assumption (which is usually correct) is that there’s a lot of fine-tuning that still needs to be done to the engine before it can actually produce its rated output in the field. I can only imagine that they’re even more careful about that kind of thing with a warp engine than they are with a diesel one today. Plus, if you consider the fact that they were trying to navigate within the relatively crowded space of the inner solar system, there really wasn’t room for the ship to fully stretch out her legs, as it were. She was definitely a Warp 5 ship – they just hadn’t reached the point yet where they were ready to try it yet.

Joseph R.

Re;shakedown

True. But remember it was given the NX designation because it was an EXPERIMENTAL design. They were not breaking in an established 100th production line ship/engine model whose engine’s design was known for thousands of voyages of reliable warp 5 cruisings, This was an “it should do warp 5” engine/ship and NOT a production line will do warp 5 model.

And I repeat they only pushed it to warp 4.5 for the trip to Klingon because at that point it wasn’t regarded as safe enough to do warp 5 given their passenger and the nature of their mission, i.e. at launch it was only considered a reliable warp 4 engine regardless of what it should be able to do under its experimental design parameters.

NX-01 could have been upgraded from 4 to 5.

Just got back from the movie too and was confused about that part as well.

That was MY nit pick! All they had to do was change ONE word. Call it the first warp SIX ship. And everything works.

Faulty memory of a historical detail.

My theory is that for whatever reason, they made the switch to the new (TNG and on) warp scale earlier in the Kelvin timeline. In which case, that would make the Franklin closer to a Warp 7 ship by the scale they were using in ENT. Which would nicely explain the 3 digit registry number and the USS prefix as well – she’d be one of the early Federation designs.
The other possibility is that the Franklin was a much older ship that had been mothballed and then refitted and pulled back into service for the Romulan War – in which case, she’d be the NX-01’s immediate predecessor (or possibly simply a technological testbed.)
Honestly, either works.

I like this theory

Yes, this is what makes the most sense – Franklin was in service prior to the NX Class and was retrofitted with appropriate technology (transporter, for example) – was a possible total refit and new designation (given a significantly higher registry number than NX-01).

I thought that was around the time the USS Franklin went missing, some time shortly after the foundation of the Federation.

I loved the MACO and Xindi war references too.

I think that was the day the ship was lost. It was described as the first ship to break warp 4, which means it had to be launched before 2151, which the Enterprise was launched. They were really good about canon in this one (squee!!!), so they would have gotten that right.

It was a moving scene, but perhaps a missed opportunity. It was a perfect opening for the Shatner cameo that was reportedly considered for the first movie — the holographic greeting card to Spock recorded before Kirks death.

Which would have stopped the movie cold – and doesn’t fit at all.

Agreed, Jack.

Pretty sure that photo is actually the cast photo from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

You’re wrong John, it’s definitely from STVI

its Star Trek V….for many reasons, not including which Sulu’s uniform, Uhuras gray hair, the beige carpeted bridge, and the fact that it is from Star Trek V

Sorry, Trekman, but YOU’RE wrong. It’s from ST:V. Look at Uhura’s hair for proof.

incorrect, The picture is from STV, in STVI Kirk’s hair is grey

It’s Star Trek V. Sulu is wearing is helmsman uniform and Uhura’s hair is frosted

He’s not the one that this wrong Trekman.

Check your facts before telling people they are wrong
It is definately Star Trek V cast Photo.

Jep, STV it is – with the lighter bridge and a greyhaired Uhura.

And Kirk sitting in the captains chair

You’re correct, the bridge there was beige, the TUC bridge was maroon.

Yes you are correct

It was nice but I wish they had done a Photoshop and had a composite from the original days – this was easier.

Better to have an original unaltered photo that we as fans already recognize IMO. Because we’re looking not only at supposed fallen characters, but fallen actors that we love as well. Keeping it authentic made it more meaningful for me, personally.

And as we lose more people, this connects the primes, with the Kelvins

It would have created to much visual comparison if they showed the TOS crew at that age…this way…they could show them 30 years down the road…i think this was the best choice

No, I like the fact that it showed them having grown old together, like a family….I think that aspect really moved Spock.

Agreed. They are a family and they will grow old together.

Except for Chekov (Anton)

No way, the movie era picture is much more fitting. Them older Spock how long they were meant to be together.

I believe the point of using a photo from The Final Frontier was to make Spock was that the crew would eventually grow old together and remain a family.

yep, definitely “the” moment

It was a bit more sad for Spock as it seemed he was alone for those scenes. Where were his friends? The script really needed another writer to read it through.

The photo is a cast photo publicity still from Star Trek V. Beige colored bridge. Uhura’s swept back hair with white highlights. Not ST6. :) It was a great moment. I cried.

It also brought more influence of Prime into the Kelvin timeline, and connected the two beautifully and deeply. Felt a bit like a ST:VI moment, reverent and thoughtful. Crew as family. And we were brought in as part of the family by that photo we all recognize, even if we can’t quite place it.

I applauded. I was the only one in the theater to do so, however. It was a fairly sparse audience. I saw the movie at a 2 p.m. show; there were maybe 20 others in the audience. (Maybe more saw it in 3-D; I opted for 2-D.)

I imagine that the rest of the audience were probably thinking ‘what is this pretentious a hole doing making a racket during one of the most poignant scenes in the movie’. Nothing more annoying than the selfish c words who feel the need to applaud during movies. No offence intended just my personal thoughts on this type of pathetic, self indulgent behaviour.

“No offence intended” rings hollow after calling someone a “pretentious a hole” and a “selfish c word”.

Of course “pathetic, self indulgent” person, no offence

The picture of the “classic” crew is from Star Trek V The Final Frontier and NOT from The Undiscovered Country.

I agree with that. If you grew up with them, it definitely hit home.

A beautiful moment, but I felt there was a missed opportunity to have a few more items in that box that might have been recognizable to the fans. Obviously not to make a big deal out of like the photo, but it might have been nice to have some connection to Unification, however obscure and brief, to bring TNG into the 50th anniversary movie.

I think that was from Star Trek V actually, but still an awesome moment. I only noticed right away because of Uhura’s hair and the look of the bridge.

“It was a moving scene, but perhaps a missed opportunity. It was a perfect opening for the Shatner cameo that was reportedly considered for the first movie — the holographic greeting card to Spock recorded before Kirks death.”

I agree. It was a good place to put in Orci’s Shatner scene. The only problem with that, thematically, was that it would only have Kirk, not the rest of the crew. On the other hand, after Nimoy’s very sad demise (I read this weekend that he wanted to be in Beyond and the filmmakers wanted him in as well, but he had to turn them down because of his illness. He knew he wouldn’t be in any shape to film. He passed away four months before filming began), having an appearance by Shatner might have been pretty powerful and had a lot of resonance.

I knew they were going to acknowledge Spock’s passage in the film from the reviews I read. I didn’t know how they were going to get an emotional punch out of that without any scenes from Nimoy or even a recording of his voice (was that even possible with how ill he was at the time? Yeah, the movie was probably still being written but perhaps Pegg and Jung could have come up with some possible lines that would fit into what they thought they were going to do? I don’t know and I’m not blaming anyone, I’m just sad that Nimoy wasn’t in this one). The picture at the end worked well (and I recognized that it was from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier right off the bat. It’s the worst ST film, but that’s a great pic of the crew).

Well the photo scene was emotional and cool, a part of me felt like it was a snub. “You pricks want Shatner, there ya go!”. I agree, the Orci scene with Shatner would have worked perfectly here.

Spock turns on a holoemitter and you have Shatner’s Kirk recording a new message. Whether it be Spock going to Vulcan, Spock’s birthday or a message Shatner recorded when he retired, doesnt really matter. But a message that essentially says ‘look how far we’ve come’. While’s he’s speaking you do a montage scene of archival footage that is appropriate to the words – showing Spock and Kirk on the TOS ship…the films, their WoK scene etc. Make it a message that speaks to how important their relationship was and ends with something akin to “we still have time…to do so much good.” Perhaps Kirk refers to “just have to get this Enterprise B appearance out of the way…but time marches on Spock….”

As far as stopping the film cold or taking people out of it, I dont think so. Not at all. That part of the film was already sentimental in a way with both Kirk and Spock reconsidering their decisions to move on, and the crew ends up looking to the future (quite literally looking “up” at the new Enterprise). It would have worked as a 50th Anniversary tribute and a tribute to Nimoy.

Should have done it. Should have….

TUP, you have no perspective, a shatner hologram rambeling on over a clip show- what is this a golden girls movie? Who would recognise him anyway- the supposed nu trek fans/audiance know him as fat old shat from denny crane fame. It worked because the cast photo had Spock Prime in it who was already in the films & seen earlier & recognisable & then people work out who the cast is- unless they are old fans of course.

“JoTUP, you have no perspective, a shatner hologram rambeling on over a clip show- what is this a golden girls movie? Who would recognise him anyway- the supposed nu trek fans/audiance know him as fat old shat from denny crane fame.”

Bull. They could have easily used CGI to make a short scene with Shatner’s Kirk. It was done in his DirecTV (?) commercial, it was done in the Tron sequel, and in X-men United.

It would’ve been no longer, probably, than Nimoy’s Spock cameo in Star Trek Into Darkness. I don’t recall anyone complaining about that scene. It was largely extraneous, but people love Nimoy’s Spock so it got a pass. In the same way, people love Shatner’s Kirk. Using the holographic message, it could have been a way to get Kirk Prime in the ST Beyond.

All that said, the picture was a good choice. It worked. I do think, though, that the holo message would’ve been more powerful.

Oh, well, looks like that ship has sailed again.

DrH – Orci’s idea was that Kirk recorded a farewell message for Spock prior to Spock leaving to go attempt reunification with the Romulans. This idea never made sense. In the beginning of “Unification” Spock has been missing for a matter of weeks. Why would Kirk have recorded a farewell message for him 87 years earlier?

As I recall, Orci had supposed that Spock had gone to Romulus shortly after the Khitomer Peace Accords, when there was a thawing in Federation-Romulan Empire relations.

By the time of TNG, of course, the cold war had started up again.

That said, they didn’t have to refer to Spock going as an ambassador to Romulus at all. They could’ve just said he was on his way to the Klingon Empire as an ambassador or Starfleet Liaison to coordinate the de-militarization of the Neutral Zone. That would’ve probably been better.

That was a photograph from “Trek V: Final Frontier” – notice Uhuras grey hair.

Apparently, Nero let Spock keep his personal items or a tricorder/data drive with his personal pictures on it.

Could have been in his pocket…

Trekboi,

Re:Pockets

I think it is a good catch on your part that while Starfleet uniforms don’t have pockets, Spock was wearing his fancy Vulcan civvies as Ambassador that did.

I just think it was sad that he forgot that it was right next to his lock pick and spare hand phaser that he also secreted there.

If Spock needed pockets, surely he’d have found a way? Spock would have found a way!

DrH,

Re:letting him keep pictures

I suppose it would be consistent with Nero wanting PT Spock to be very cognizent of what he was taking away from him, i.e. maximize his suffering just as seeing with his own eyes the destruction of Vulcan would.

OK guys , enough with the photograph ,we know by now since 50 people already made that clear.

DrH,

Wouldn’t it make more sense that the Jellyfish’s AI, thinking KT Spock to be the Ambassador, gave the memory dongle to him as it perceived in executing his last command they were heading to the last roundup? Then when Scotty beamed him out he handed it over to PT Spock or had it delivered to him after the entire scheme of things had been revealed to him by the Ambassador.

that really was pretty awesome.

Even more important was the reason it was important to Spock’s storyline. He valued his shipmates/friendship more than rebuilding Vulcan. A tear-jerker for me too.

I grew up with the original series and all the movies. I saw this movie last night and was annoyed at the jumps in the story truths, as far as I know them. The Enterprise did not go out this way on this planet.
We are supposed to accept these characters as the younger versions of our.crew. If so, how does Young Spock mourn Ambassador Spock, his older personage? Why doesn’t Spock react to seeing his crewmates as older versions in the group photo?
While I applaud the homage paid to Leonard Nemoy and his character as Spock this is not his time nor Shatner’s, even though I adore them both.
I had to vent because these events pulled me out of the action.

eonard Nimoy died in February 2015, so this is definitely the time to play homage to both the actor and to his character, prime Spock.

Spock responds to the photo by recognizing that Prime Spock lived a life valuing his time with the crew of the enterprise and changed his mind about stepping away.

So, is the audience supposed to believe that Kelvin timeline crew are the same physical counterparts as prime timeline crew? Pine looks more like Shatner in the new film, but Anton Yelchin looks nothing like Walter Koenig, nor does Simon Pegg resemble James Doohan. Can someone explain this to me?

Shatner explained it in the 1970’s “Get a Life”

I guess Paramount should have invested in taking DNA samples from the actors & funded research into cloning so they could recast a reboot film with identical humans.

Trekboi,

Re:1970’s “Get a Life”

Mr. Shanter most assuredly did not as he had never heard of that phrase until the SNL writer Robert Smigel (AKA Triumph, The Insult Comedy Dog Hand Puppet) wrote the 1986 skit with which Smigel persuaded Shatner to give voice to Smigel’s self-admitted comedy bully views on the matter (See: Triumph take on STAR WARS fans waiting in lengthy queues.) Shatter thought the line “Get a life!” could be comedy gold but he had never heard it before, and the SNL writers’ table said at the time Shatner’s numerous table read attempts to say the line were so wrong and off that it was the funniest thing about the skit. Smigel eventually took mercy on the aching lungs of his laughing fellows and gave Shatner proper instruction on how to say Smigel’s line.

It’s just something you have to roll with.

Best moment in the movie

I so agree. I teared up.

“all the feels”? What does that even mean?

On the way home I was thinking Spock looks at the photo and realized his girlfriend isn’t going to stay young (and thin) forever.

Thoughts on the Enterprise A design?

I really want to get a closer look at it. Not sure of my initial reaction.

Its the same design isnt it?

I watched the movie 3 times and it is definitely different engineering section larger and nacelles we’re apart like the prime timeline. Top of the saucer behind the bridge a little different.

The nacelles were understandably beefed up lol

I thought they looked slimmed down than the current design, and the impulse engines were beefed up. Gonna check it out again tonight ;)

Well, it’s a tricky thing getting those cup sizes right…ooops I meant nacelles.

Watched the film lastnight, 1st showing here in Roanoke VA. First, I loved the film, personally this is better than ST:II, yes I said it friends. As for 1701-A, yes the nacelles are different, somewhat more like the Franklin’s form what I noticed, I know a lot of fans have complained about the reboot E – personally I like like them all, I’m happy that they are still making films and shows, to see new fans coming into our Trekkie world and enjoying it is a nice sight to see. Anyway, At first glance I wasn’t too pleased with the new ship, but as she spun around at the end I started to enjoy the new look. There will never be anything as pretty in the entire series as the A from ST:4-ST:VI IMO.

They mentioned early in the film that there was a ship with more powerful weapons under construction. Time for some time with them klingons

They didn’t specify more powerful weapons. Kirk mentioned the Enterprise’s scanners, and Commodore Paris said there’s only one ship more advanced, so…probably beefed-up weapons, but that wasn’t said.

Second viewing last night: “more powerful technology” [nothing specified]

Didn’t love immediate the time-lapse construction. Felt too easy. This ship is one of humanity’s herculean efforts, massive and hard to build. Utopia Planitia is an important place. (or maybe it’s Iowa in Kelvin, also an important ST locale) Are they just throwing them together on starbases now? But I guess this is a new, modernized and automated world, and I should probably let go and get with it.

John NYC, your first sentence makes the rest of your comment pointless. It was time lapse. Exactly. A LOT of time was shown in a very SMALL, compressed period. So, no, not throwing them together. It was a filmmaking trick, not a new manufacturing speed.

Exactly…. I asked my 6 year old how they could build it that fast as a joke and even he got it.

John NYC,

I think PaulB is right that the time lapse was meant to compress the number of years it took to finish building it. What’s puzzling is the implication that Kirk and his 400 rescued crewmen just busy-worked around the base during all that time till it was ready?

It must have been great for Sulu. And, I suppose, Jaylah, could have completed the academy by then?

If you look at POPULAR MECHANICS diagram concept art of the USS Franklin, it is a HILARIOUSLY small ship. It could not hold 400 crew members. It could probably hold only 50-100 tops. It should have been packed, when Kirk goes below decks to search for Krall. Which begs the question, how many Enterprise crewmen actually survived?

Well, it undoubtedly could HOLD 400 people. It just isn’t desiged to be crewed by/sustain that many people.

But like you said, it probably had less than that. I’m thinking at least half the crew was wiped out, from hull breaches, death rays, etc. And that’s probably a conservative number.

Remember prime enterprise held 400 crew, the new was much larger and held 700

And if half of those 700 were red shirts, well, we all know what happens to them.

I’ll say that maybe the Franklin diagram got the scale a little wrong? But it appears that not that many Enterprise crew survived. Maybe less than 100.

Given they could beam 20 people at a time out of Krall’s stronghold, with 10 seconds or so time to recharge between transports, they could maybe beam 5 groups over in the time shown during the prisoner breakout – no more than that was shown on screen.

It would seem that many, if not everyone in the engineering section and dorsal perished; the shuttles couldn’t take off – they were shown briefly being impacted by Swarm ships; – and in the attack and uncontrolled crash surely there were many casualties in the saucer section (not really shown, though).

It seems that the refit “one year later” after STID gave the 1701 swept-back pylons that we didn’t really get to see in detail, and the 1701-A is back to the original pylon profile, but much thicker and without the curve; more like an airplane wing. Almost comically beefed up – but likely not to get broken off as easily.

“It would seem that many, if not everyone in the engineering section and dorsal perished”

I concur. Which leads me to wish we would see Kirk feel responsible for losing that many crew members. At least have him address it *somehow*. He’s the CAPTAIN. The ship got BLOWN up! I just don’t think the “absent friends” lines connected the dots enough.

@DJT, The captain’s duty after the death of a crewmember is to write to the family. This would have been a very sad scene for a fourth act, so they wouldn’t think to do that. But some dialogue on the way to the party would have been good between McCoy and Kirk, to the effect that it’s the toughest duty Kirk has.

Kirk checked with Silicone. They got the saucer cleared out before the crash.

Having just left for shoreleave I doubt the whole crew returned for the rescue mission into the nebula

Interesting point.

The engineering hull and nacelles were almost finished when the time lapse began. The saucer section and the finishing pieces for the rest of the ship seemed to be attached as pre-completed components. That and Bones’ complaint that Kirk didn’t try to get the crew more down time on Yorktown, made me think that the final assembly of the Enterprise A took weeks, not years. I’m sure its in the novelization. Some adventurous soul can dive in and get us an exact timeframe.

I also found the time-lapse construction shot was like the film itself- rushed. The movie can’t slow down for some moments to have weight. CGI also shares in some of that blame. Have to say, the Enterprise-D crash in Generations had more weight and punch using primarily miniatures with CGI enhancements.

Agreed. Zip, zip, zap . . . the Enterprise is rebuilt. Nothing’s really lost. Nothing really matters; just hurtling from one set piece to the next in a headlong rush to the next CGI explosion. At least when the D crashed, we were witnessing the demise of the D. At least it meant something.

A huge portion of the film involves the ship being ripped apart and nearly getting away. I appreciated how much of. Fight they were actually able to put up, using the impulse engines to draw the drones away from the pods.

Morg- What movie were you watching, it had many slow character moments, I actually missed JJ’s ADD style which gave every shot/scene an intensity Lin could not reproduce.
& you can’t compare the D saucer crash with full crew to this empty enterprise crash, what do you want 2 & a half minutes of enty sets blowing up while trees whiz by?

What you’ve said does not make sense. @John NYC

Well, it’s a time lapse! It could have taken weeks, months, even a few years to build. I liked it. It was cool!

This thread got me thinking. I wonder how it would have worked if while in the nebula time stood still for Kirk and Crew, yet back at the Yorktown time marched on. The crew could have been declared lost, and they built another Enterprise. Therefore when they return to stop Krall, Grunberg’s character could have been shocked when Kirk and crew come to save the day. This way after the battle, the final touches could be put on the ship.

Pretty cool idea Trekkie!

The way this Alpha came into being is probably the same way the Prime Alpha came to be. The explanation is simple. In STIII, when the original old girl was destroyed, an existing Constitution Refit was already under construction and being completed back at Earth. Once the Enterprise was destroyed, Starfleet made tbe decision to have that starship rechristened Enterprise, with a new registry, NCC-1701-A. This is most likely the case here. The Constitution Refit that became the new Alpha was most likely going to have a different name and registry, seeing as it was already under construction by the time the Enterprise and her crew arrived at Yorktown in the beginning of the film. Which was mentioned by Commodore Paris when she was discussing the rescue mission with Kirk.

A very plausible scenario as well. I missed the comment from Commodore Paris about another starship under construction. But looking back on the “old girl” for a moment wasn’t the TOS Ent-A a refit of another starship in the novels? Actually it may have been the old USS Yorktown, can’t remember. But something is made of it as that is how they explain some of the ships issues present in STV:TFF

I believe the accepted story behind this (and I believe it is canon) was that the Enterprise A introduced at the end of ST:IV had originally been the USS Yorktown NCC-1704. The fact that they went to Starbase Yorktown in ST:Beyond was a nice reference albeit a dead givaway for the fact that we were going to see at least a glimpse of the Enterprise A in the film at some point

& what do the do with the assigned crew on the starbase ready to board their new ship- “oh Sorry James Kirk needs a ship, go home?”

Trekboi,

The KT Enterprise held 700 crew members. Even assuming casualties, there’s no way Kirk could have crammed all the survivors in The Franklin.

Also, what became NCC-1701-A wasn’t even completed in construction and we know from the 2009 effort that crew are not assigned until a Ship’s construction is completed and it is ready for spaceflight. So, in all likelihood there were no displaced assigned crew, but one wonders upon what pool did Kirk draw to replace his own lost crew members?

Surely the Federation has various ships of various sizes and purposes under construction at all times. Ships are promised to commanders, but not always granted. (such as Kirk after his time in the Admirality) So most likely crews have not been assigned depending on the stage on construction. The Kelvin ENT-A was ramped up visually for us to see, so we cannot be sure how long it was (sure the novel covers it) and whether or not that ship was meant for Kirk or another Captain and her crew.

I liked it too. We see this same photography technique applied to the construction of office towers today, it seemed like a pretty neat idea to use that thought to a starship’s construction.

It looks a lot better with the hull between the neck and deflector dish being shorter.

The saucer section looked thicker in some way to me… The nacelles seemed better proportioned to the size of the ship. The nacelle struts were not as swept back, closer to being straight vertical between the hull and nacelles. Overall it looked more Heavy Cruiser instead of sleek with big engines.
Personally, I am ready for Kirk to win a fight and for the Enterprise to win a fight.

Yes my eyes locked right in to the straightened out struts. It spaces the nacelles better. I was hoping for more of a shoutout to the TMP refit. It was smart to not show any of the interior. That means they have a clean slate for the next film. Maybe we’ll even get an engineering set!

Well – I didn’t really see that much of a brewery seen in Beyond.

No. They wisely kept all the shots in engineering tight on Scotty, so you didn’t really see much of anything.

Saw it again in 3D today. The pylons are thicker, nacelles are thinner, the neck is also thicker and moved more forward like the Prime E-refit. The saucer looks normal enough and the bridge module looks more like the refit as well- I think they got rid of the window as well! This refit version of the Enterprise definitely looks better IMO.

Well the *next* film is set in the Kelvin timeline and will star Chris Hemsworth (as well as Pine, in some capacity), so unless they employ time travel yet again (which I pray they don’t, as it’s over-done now), I doubt we’ll see the 1701-A in the next movie. The one after though perhaps, assuming it actually happens. Even if it does, we’ll obviously also need a new Chekov due to Anton’s tragic passing :(

Do we really need a new Chekov? I would open the movie midway through the Kelvin Universe version of the Deadly Years with several of the crew already aged. McCoy naturally injects the crew with the cure but sadly Chekov does not respond to the treatment. Chekov could then spend the rest of the movie in sickbay but perhaps sacrifice himself heroically during a crisis. I think something like this would be better than recasting or having an offscreen death. It also provides the perfect solution to the dilemma of finding a way to give Shatner a cameo. Not to mention Koenig, Takei And Nicholls.

Corinthian7,

If you recall the episode, Chekov wouldn’t need a treatment because he was the only one who didn’t catch the aging ailment. In fact, his immunity was how McCoy found the cure.

Disinvited, that Chekov didn’t get the disease in the original doesn’t matter… Look how different (yet the same) the new Khan situation was, even how similar things happened to the “wrong” people…

Yeah, recasting would be distasteful. Also JJ already said that he would not be recast. I think Keenser, Jayla,or that Gatt cybernetic dude might be cool to replace him. Or maybe a hole new character. What does anybody else think?

@Tuvok, I say, bring back Ensign Darwin from STID. She filled in as Navigator while Chekov filled in for Scotty in Engineering.

I’m betting on Lt Arex from the animated series. Just need an actor with lots of cosmetic work. Any of the Kardashian’s have three arms yet?

Tuvok,

Re:recasting would be distasteful

It has been explained to me that some feel the role needs to be retired like a sports jersey in the death of a team’s member even though my growing up in times when jocks always harassed theater geeks does make a sports metaphor strike a rather discordant chord for me.

I get the sentiment and that JJ apparently holds it.

But for me, this is theater and there’s always an understudy in the wings ready to take on a role if for some reason the headliner can’t, i.e. the show must go on.

Recasting distasteful? Then kindly explain to me how it wasn’t distasteful when Pegg and Urban were cast after their roles’ originating actors died?

Transfer him to the USS Reliant.

The new navigator should be Lt. Arex. CGI. Voiced by Chris Doohan.

Saavik maybe?

I think it’d be a perfect time for Kevin Riley to make a return.

JJ already said they are not recasting Chekov. You have Jayah now.

She is an engeneer not a navagator.
They have no right to Kill off an original series Character. They need to write him out so he can be recast along with all the other roles when they reboot it again.

Don’t forget what Chekov did during the last movie. That navigator wasn’t just an engineer, but King of the fekkin Engineers!

They can just send him elsewhere rather than kill him. Not like Checking was always around anyways. Also the whole point of these reboot is that they can tell any story with these characters.

The Next film isn’t happening yet- this film has to be a hit.
They have already said they would not re-cast chekov

I heard Hemsworth was going to be in it but I also heard they were trying to figure how to fit him in. Have you actually heard the next film won’t feature current crew and will be set in the past or is that speculation?

@martin, She did the best she could after being attacked by the swarm. She died like a great lady. Broke my heart, this time.

Yes… I found it interesting that even though we all knew it was coming it was still gut wrenching watching her go down. Unlike in Generations when I was cheering.

Was thinking the same thing about being ready to see them win a fight! Even maybe someone twice their size?!

I have to say, I knew going in that they were going to get Enterprise-A, and it’s just as odd and ungainly as the previous one. Bless the designers, but this E is at the bottom of my list in terms of aesthetics. How I wish they had looked to TMP Enterprise for inspiration. No harm no foul if you dig it, but I call both versions the Frankenprise!

To each his own, I guess. The reboot-prise has grown on me and while it’s not my favorite design, I like that they’re sticking to their guns with this universe’s aesthetic rather than doing a big throwback or reinventing the wheel again.

I LOVE THE NEW ENTERPRISE[s]. I have since I first set eyes on her in 2009.

I respectfully disagree with you MORG… Enterprise D is the ugliest of the Enterprises in my opinion. But that is just MY opinion.

I was disappointed. I was hoping for something new, a new class of ship, something at least as different as the refit was from the original, something as different as the Excelsior-class was from Constitution, Ambassador from Excelsior, etc. Whole new toy to play with and they wasted it.

Has anybody got a picture of the new Enterprise A? I’ve been looking on the internet and can’t find anything except for the original time line NCC1701-A. Would like another look at it.

I really enjoyed the film and thought it was much better than STII Into Darkness. Now looking forward now to Star Trek Discovery and then the 4th film.

Unless someone does framegrabs from an illegal torrent, we’ll have to wait for Paramount to release concept art, or for the home video releases. I’m hoping Eaglemoss does versions of the refit 1701 *and* the new 1701-A… you know. For reasons. :)

I knew they would replace the ship. I was just hoping they would drop that stupid letter. Just call it Enterprise again. No reason not to.

I didn´t think it could get uglier – I was wrong.

Was it just me, or did they “fix” the one thing about the nacelle pylons that really turned me off… The pylons were noticeably curved-up in the original design… Always disliked that… But the A, it looked like they were straight and the nacelles spaced further apart. Did anyone else notice this?

I like it! And LOVED that we got to see the entire ship built!
The less tapered nacelles, new pinstriping, and slightly tweaked saucer design felt like a good retooling of the original Church design. I also really sort of liked how they moved the attachment points on said nacelles forward to the point where bussard collectors are directly adjacent to the pylons. In the end I got the sense of a late model revised form of the Constitution-Class the Kelvin timeline produced, which is exactly what it should be.

Some parts are nice and an improvement, but overall I think they made her even uglier.

Loved it, The energy and passion behind the film is commendable.

I feel this movie is the closest in feel to the old star trek, this is not a world builder as such from the previous two movies so we can just let the characters be themselves. Perhaps of the crew lt Uhura suffers from little to do, with Jaylah’s presence having more significance. I enjoyed that extra attention to detail, the impulse engine conundrum as an instance, which you see in the opening dismantling. the set design on the planet reminds me of past star treks and immediately think on “the deadly years” and DS9’s “homecoming”.

Star Trek Beyond features perhaps the most amazing use of a universal translator i’ve seen, not content with simply speaking english with matching mouth movement but overlaying the speech over the original dialect was super cool.

I think it has my favourite configuration of the Enterprise in the Kelvin timeline, I loved both of them. The new A register seems bulkier as a design requisite given the structural failings the previous iteration endured in the swarm attack. I see the reference to narrative restructure of the design in the interview with Double Negative. It really fits given the ending.

Krall is conceptually cool, with a bit more time given to his development he could have been more sustaining. as the rescue attempt happens I still had a few questions but we see the movie wrapping up into familiar 3rd act territory.
so The movie does feel undernourished in this department.

Trek has an exciting future. With the netflix streaming (the concept pisses me off no-end) we will have dual iterations of my favourite franchise.

I think the tech side of Trek interests Bad Robot producers the least of all of it’s elements, but I think that portable, wearable UT is the best tech innovation BR has come up with. Kudos for that.

I really liked the UT.

Sure beats the old TOS hand-held version ;^}

What was of great relief to me was that no hay was made of Sulu being gay. It really was just an incidental thing, acknowledging that Sulu has a family, and it wasn’t taken any farther than that. Nicely done!

Although it sounds like they cut two good scenes – a simple hello kiss when they see each other (not making out – just a normal kiss that any couple would share after being away) and Sulu telling Uhura how he was scared for his family / and felt selfish that they moved out there so he could be on the Enterprise but still see them.

As it is, if they hadn’t announced it – you wouldn’t know at all what the relationship was.

If “you” = straight people with limited-to-no experience of being around gay couples, sure…

They cut to the reaction shot of Kirk just at the moment they probably kissed hello. So it’s suggested but not shown. That was my impression, anyways.

Jack is someone who, I suspect, knows full well the experience of being around gay couples and not only that, being one half of a gay couple.

With whatever had been cut, it did seem that Sulu could have been greeted by any close member, like a brother and daughter, for instance. No doubt the cut scene was to placate the priggishness of places like China and Middle Eastern nations.

Apologies to you, Jack, if I have spoken out of line. It is just that you were open about your sexual orientation some time back in a thread which discussed homosexuality and suicide…

PS – Was the guy who played Sulu’s better half the writer Doug Jung? He looked so much like the writer.

@ Keachick: Yes, Sulu’s husband was played by Doug Jung.

What I thought was interesting was the scene where Kirk looks at them and smiles. It looks as though there’s a hint of regret in that smile though. Like perhaps he feels he’s missing out on a part of life. I just thought there was more to that look and smile.

@ Steve: I was thinking the same thing but wasn’t sure whether I was reading too much into it.

No apologies necessary. :)

It’s interesting about Jung – Cho was saying he really wanted Sulu’s husband to be Asian… and they couldn’t find an Asian actor in Dubai who would do it… so Jung stepped in.

Jack,

Re:interesting about Jung

I’ll say, people here were giving me all sorts of grief when I wanted to know how they got that past the Dubai censors as direct physical harm as a legal penalty is simply a reality of choosing that location for this?

Be clear, I am more concerned about what sort mindful planning and security precautions were considered in pursuing it. Not that this violation of those extreme local laws were challenged, as they should be.

Jack,

Re:interesting about Jung

That last line still didn’t come out clear. I think these extreme laws should be challenged, but wanted to know that this was thought out in advance so that precautions were taken so that life needn’t be carelessly or easily lost in serving that direct protestation of them.

John Cho remarked that a scene was written wherein Cho expresses to Kirk the selfishness of bringing his family to Yorktown.

Ohhh, man, that would’ve been great. Kirk could have said something like “Risk is our business …” with Sulu saying, “Yeah, we knew the risks, but right now I regret it …”

I’d read it was to Uhura, but yes.

I wish they’d included those brief scenes too; would have added depth and reminded everyone about the ones committed military [and Starfleet] folk leave behind, and the worries they have.

When they announced it they made it clear it was just going to be a little moment and yet people freaked out anyway. All it did was showing Sulu being with someone he cared about like any story like Uhura and Spock. And yet we had to listen to the usual double standards of how Star Trek is suddenly showing ‘sexuality’ as if this who time no one has ever been in a relationship with anyone in 50 years, including these films.

Anyway I thought it was fine. I hope next film we learn more about his family though, especially since Sulu is the only one with family and a kid. MAYBE Spock and Uhura will follow in the next one. ;)

As it was, it added to the personal connection with the attack on the Yorktown.

After all the cultural hay thrown around about the Sulu scene, I just found myself wanting Kirk, (and us) to be introduced to the man, and have Kirk shake his hand!

@MORG, Agreed. It would be a good family moment (and we would have learned if the little girl is Demora)! And again would have emphasized “the folks we leave behind”

I disagree. IF they really wanted to make the gay thing a side bar thing why not have one of the crew couplings (one successful, the other not) shown in the beginning during Kirk’s log reading be same sex? Same point is made. No known character gets their sexuality switched.

ML31, about known characters getting their sexuality switched… for all we know, the Sulus of both timelines could be bi. There ya’ go, no switch!

They truly went above and BEYOND with the Enterprise references — I almost laughed when they said Military Assault Command Ops, and they even threw in a Xindi reference for good measure! Props to Pegg and Jung for doing their research!

Yes, I was SUPER happy about those references.

Also the rumors about Yorktown’s disappearance, which related to TOS, particularly, “a giant green hand in space” … LOL!

you mean the franklin’s disappearance. Yorktown is the space station

Sorry, both historical things being of the same era, I got them mixed up. Benjamin Franklin, Battle of Yorktown ….

yeah “a giant green hand in space” brilliant!

I enjoyed the end credits where they actually showed the green hand in space! Where was Appollo?

Yes. You’d think that people who claim to be huge fans or ones who do that kind of research would know that the first warp 5 ship was also the first with a transporter. They they would know the ship ought to have been the first warp 6 ship.

ML31,

I’ve watched the ENTERPRISE pilot this Sunday on HEROES & ICONS, NX-01s were constructed and launched as warp 4 ships with transporters. Their being pushed to hit warp 5 came later.

ML31,
Not only was the Enterprise a warp 4 vessel but with Franklin its transporter was modified by Scotty to beam up the people. I do not think it was inherently capable of doing it without alteration. He even made comments about it.

Agree. I only which we saw the jumpsuits for the crew.

Totally enjoyed it. Some great character moments for everyone – I thought Chekov had a really good run of scenes and I liked him being alongside Kirk in their scenes. The Bones/Spock dynamic was awesome as was Montgomery ‘Scotty’ and Jaylah :)

I think they also paid a great deal of respect to Leonard Nimoy, that picture scene almost had me tearing up!

Sulu’s family was handled well, I liked that Uhura ‘sacrificed’ herself in the saucer sep scene and I think they gave the Enterprise a decent send off in her final stand.

Loved the nods to other Trek, there was even reference to a ‘floating green hand’ lol, and all the Enterprise stuff – but how is the Franklin the first Warp 4 ship when the NX-01 had a Warp 5 engine?

Ship lovers – thoughts on the Ent-A?

My thoughts on the Franklin ship question is being that it was a test bed for the warp 4 (as mentioned) it was not commissioned into full service until 2160 toward then end of the Earth/Romulan War when all ships available were pressed into service. Kind of like when Starfleet used old ship frames during the Dominion War.

Paul, excellent response for a head-scratcher of a reference … I could’ve sworn I remembered NX-01 Ent going faster than Warp 4

I thought it was *lost* in 2161, meaning it could have been launched whenever.

@Mike, Ahhh, there ye go!

They COMPLETELY had me with that glowing green hand reference. I thought Krall was gonna be revealed as a godlike alien testing all of them. Better to go the Charlie X/Gary Mitchell route…

lol, loved the glowing hand reference. That was one just for us

Someone mentioned it somewhere and on my second viewing I noticed the Green Hand actually appears in the closing titles ;)

@ Dshibi: You ask: How is the Franklin the first Warp 4 ship when the NX-01 had a Warp 5 engine?
In the movie, they said that Krall/Edison got the ship after the Xindi and Romulan Wars after his services as a MACO were no longer required. I interpreted it as: They gave him an old ship just to give him something to do because they couldn’t just fire him.

Still makes no sense. The registry is NX-326, has to come after NX-01. Should have made it the first warp 6 ship. Would have put it after NX-01 and right in the middle of the Romulan War.

I was thinking about this as well. However, there is mention of MAACO and Xindi which would mean this ship was around during the time of ENTERPRISE, and could have been constructed after. Every ship doesn’t always have to be more powerful than the last. There are Ferraris out there but people still drive Corolla’s.

Absolutely, the registration throws it all out. Also, on a screen display it shows a registry NCC-7317 (or something similar) which is even more confusing!

I read somewhere else that the #326 was an easter egg reference to Leonard Nimoy’s birthdate.

Read Paul’s post above.

Not sure they worried about making sense on the registry. March 26 is Leonard Nimoy’s birthday, so the registry number is just a nicety to honor him. IMO

Hmm. OK. I guess. So… why didn’t Krall go home after he got his fleet of bee ships up and running? Why sit around for a century moping and eating all visitors?

And how does destroying Yorktown Station show that it is better to stand apart than to be unified? Seems to me if he succeeded it would have the opposite effect he desires. His motives are amazingly unclear or not well thought out.

ML31
Umm, he was insane?

See “every terrorist ever” forotivations that don’t make sense.

AlanMorlock,

Re:every terrorist ever

King George regarded the American Revolutionary guerilla fighters such as The Swamp Fox, as terrorists, then there are those who so label the founders of the current nation-state of Israel, etc.

Also insanity, and terrorist, are very subjective terms and the author George Orwell expressed many truths about using such words to mean whatever the speaker needs to persuade in his novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, where he also expressed an ancient truism as “History is written by the winners.”

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Terrorist

I believe that as STAR TREKs go you will find that DEEP SPACE NINE explored a lot of how one man’s terrorist can be another man’s freedom-fighter. And that spilled over into TNG and obviously the Maquis in VOYAGER.

Because he was looking for the other part of the black goo weapon.

Dshibi, Uhura was totally BOSS. I am SO happy.

Yes, and it was Uhura who worked out just who Krall really was – using her aural discernment being that she is a (xeno)linguist. This was a big clue.

I was momentarily puzzled by that, but I chalked it up to a change in the Warp Scale. Remember

Sorry about that. Remember how the scale changed between TOS and TNG, where 10 was set at the max number? Maybe Warp 5 in ENT is like Warp 2.7 on the Kelvin Scale. And the Franklin was a warp 7 ship, but only a Warp 4 ship to Kelvinites. That would explain the new warp effects.

I took it as the ship was used much earlier. Edison was made Captain later. In the prime timeline, when Spock was made Captain of the Enterprise, there had been three previous captains. Same with the Franklin, in my book. I wish they had used the Columbia, only to tie it in even closer.

I believe it was said that the ship’s identifier was changed after it became part of the Federation. So it was named USS Franklin after the Federation was formed. Maybe it was assigned an NX number at the same time to conform to the naming patterns of the other ships in Starfleet? Becuase IIRC the original testbed ships before NX-01 didn’t actually have numbers.

I saw it Wednesday night, and enjoyed it. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it again in cinemas, but that may not be possible, depending on how long it runs. We are travelling and would be lucky to be staying in a town with a cinema, let alone one showing STB. As it was, we travelled to a relatively nearby regional centre to see it, and stayed overnight before returning to where we are currently based. It usually takes me several viewings to ‘catch’ everything. I laughed out loud at ‘you gave your girlfriend a tracking device?’. I was also moved by the scene where Spock starts sorting through Spock Prime’s bequest and finds the photo of the Prime crew. This showed how much the crew meant to Spock Prime, and would have fed in to Spock’s reconsideration to leave Starfleet behind, along with his realisation of how much Uhura means to him. Speaking of Uhura – I liked the scene where she used her aural sensitivity (again) to discover Krall’s background as a MACO who couldn’t adjust to peace after the Romulan War, and who’ s ship’s stranding pushed him over the edge. I also liked the throwaway ‘green hand’ line: a call back to Who Mourns for Adonias’ for those who remember TOS. I even ‘liked’ the Beastie Boys music – no, I didn’t like it (not my kind of music), but I appreciated the irony of using the music in that manner to confuse the swarm. Overall, I found it an enjoyable, and watchable Star Trek movie.

My wife and I both spotted the aforementioned hand in the end credits as well.

Wait. What?

I caught it too!

I saw the hand in the credits as well. Early, on the left side.

Yes!

Crap! I missed that! Looks like I have to go see it again!

Looks like I will have something to look for when I get the BD.

Someone said the Doomsdau Machine was in the end credits too- where?

Freaking “Sabotage”, man. Also, Edison / Krall had somehow, what, FORGOTTEN about the USS FRANKLIN? Did we EVER get a satisfactory explanation about the Arbonath? And WTF was up with the lifeforce-draining bullshit? Oh, this movie was “The Galileo Seven” and “Insurrection” by way of “Event Horizon” and “Sunshine”, with far too liberal a dash of “Ender’s Game”.

Right on. What a great backstory Krall could’ve had. Idris Elba is an amazing actor, and they just wasted him. The idea behind the character was amazing; could’ve been a classic Star Trek adversary. But… they wasted him.

I thought Krall’s backstory was strained to the limit of believability. I liked the movie, but that was easily the weakest element of Star Trek: Beyond. Bad Robot seems to have a problem coming up with believable villains. “There’s no more war, and they made me a Captain, so I’m going to kill millions of innocent people and leave my perfectly good starship sitting idle for 100 years.” Huh?

Umm, the impression I got [and I need to see the movie again] is that Edison, on his abandoned ship, his crew dying off, became deeply disturbed about his “abandonment” by Starfleet. [It would’ve been nice to have seen a brief discussion about how Starfleet searched for them for years.] I’m not sure about this part, but I think the aliens he took up with as he became Krall saved him? So then he decides upon revenge against the Federation. Made a melodramatic sort of sense.

How the Arbonath related to that I’m not sure. As a “Life Extension” device it was creepy as hell, but was that its original purpose?

Yeah they really needed to explain Krall MUCH better. His entire back story is just confusing. Did Starfleet look for them? I imagine they did as they always do? How come he just abandoned his ship instead of trying to fix it? It took the Enterprise crew a few hours and they didn’t have any special equipment. And then Krall had no problem getting to Yorktown with his fleet, then how come he just never left sooner. Why was he able to leave now if he’s been stuck there 100 years? And why does he look like an alien now? I assume it has to do with the device but again its never explained at all.

Krall was interesting but the film couldve taken 10 more minutes to make his motivations clearer. A flashback scene couldve helped a lot as well. Still a good film but couldve been stronger.

Tiger, I agree. What was with the weird gear-like devices spinning on Krall’s shoulders? Walking weird. He was human, why the weird alien-like speech? Why the weird deformation? Did he lure other alien species in? I dont know, it’s like there was a lot of Krall’s backstory left on the cutting room floor.

He was obviously using alien technology to extend his life, probably originally configured for alien DNA, so it’s likely that it deformed him as a side effect.

I don’t know how/why Krall abandoned the Franklin and seemingly forgot about it — he was very underdeveloped and largely incomprehensible — but in get the impression that most of the work restoring the ship had already been done by Jaylah over a period of years.

I don’t think that Jaylay was able to restore much. Her house was not well lit at all and it was only when Kirk, Chekov and Scotty, with their greater skills etc, began working what tech the ship had, did her house really start to “come alive”, as it were. Jaylah found the music banks and got that working but the technology to do with navigation etc probably did not make sense to her and she had few, if any, skills on knowing how to get it to work properly. Also, some of it was damaged, which is why she wanted Montgomery Scotty to fix her house.

I think that Kirk and Chekov managed to salvage some tech from the ruins of the Enterprise which Scotty may have been able to use, but that was not clearly shown. However, I thought that was one of the reasons why Kirk and Chekov went back to the Enterprise, other than to set a trap for the alien woman who sent the Yorktown an SOS…

There’s answers to most of the questions on Krall if you read between the lines.
For a start, the “Nebula” that they were in was long viewed as impossible to navigate. So with the Franklin stuck in there, there was no way that Starfleet was going to be able to reach them (or any reason they’d expect the Franklin to have gone inside.) Also, according to Scotty the ship was probably deposited on the planet as a result of a freak wormhole transit. In short, they were thrown FAR beyond the range of Starfleet at the time. So far that it took 100 years of expansion before they ran into the Franklin. And then plopped Yorktown down practically on his doorstep. I highly doubt that those little ships of his had anywhere near the range to get further than that.

As for why he looks like an alien, the device (which I’m pretty sure is that suit he’s wearing) causes him to absorb various genetic traits of the people he devours. If you look carefully, you’ll notice all the various aliens that we see on the surface of the planet share traits with him. Once he starts absorbing humans again, he very quickly begins to look more and more human, presumably since the bulk of his genetic code still is human.

The Franklin being abandoned makes sense given that getting her engines powered again required work by a highly skilled engineer. There were 3 survivors from the Franklin. I doubt that the ship’s engineer would have been one of them. As for actually getting her flying, we saw that it required careful coordination from a minimum of 4 people (Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, and Jaylah) and there were presumably several other support tasks that needed attention as well. All probably beyond the capabilities of a 3 man crew that may not even have had a pilot.

Finally, the question of motivation. That, to me, actually makes the most sense. We saw plenty of skepticism aimed at the very idea of the Federation during ENT, not to mention no small amount of outright hostility. Imagine you’re Krall. You have serious doubts about allying with other races to begin with, but you’re a good soldier so you go along with it. And the races you do join with are ones that humanity has a history of cooperation with: the Vulcans, Andorians, the Tellarites.
Then, you set out for the frontier. Your ship is almost immediately lost, along with all but 2 of your crew. You try to send out distress calls, hoping for rescue, but it doesn’t come. You and your men are now trapped on a world that looks to be host to several other shipwrecked crews, all of whom are fighting with each other. You and your crew make use of your military training and manage to carve out a piece of the planet for yourselves, gaining the use of a technology that lets you prolong your lives because you’re confident that, eventually, Starfleet WILL be coming for you.
And then, it does. They plop Yorktown down right on his doorstep. Understandably hesitant to just reintroduce himself to humanity given his current appearance, he decides to learn a bit about what Starfleet has been up to. At which point he discovers something that horrifies him.
The Federation has grown far beyond the original trade and military alliance it was in his time and has become a full on nation. Mankind is just one of many species within it, no longer a separate nation of its own. And, probably worse, its members include the Xindi. In fact, they seem to have had a hand in setting up the new government. And they’ve adopted policies that are actively disdainful of the kind of things he’s been doing for the past century.

Krall is a secessionist. He wants things to return to the way things were during ENT because in his mind, that’s not just the way things are supposed to be, but the way they have to be for humanity to avoid stagnation and irrelevance. He sees most of these alien races that make up the Federation as potential enemies, and humanity’s willingness to ally so closely with them as a weakness brought about by Federation philosophy. He honestly believes he’s helping humanity by tearing down the Federation. Freeing them from a government that has allowed them to become complacent and content with being a small part of a larger whole rather than setting up an empire of their own.

Joseph R. Brilliant summary.

Yes, the movie does make sense and so do the motivations of Edison/Krall make sense (to him). They don’t have to make sense to us, because ultimately, it is the results of his way of thinking that the surviving Enterprise crew have to contend with.

These movies are more about getting on with *pulling out the spear from the injured deer so that it can survive, rather than spending much of the time trying to work the how’s, why’s, who’s of how the deer came to be injured in the first place, while the animal bleeds out/dies of infection…*. Certainly it may help to know a little of the background, but that is not the main focus and nor can it be.

* Buddhist parable.

Keachick,

Sorry to throw cold water on your parable but if one mindlessly yanks a spear out of speared animal that’s still alive, that act alone is liable to hasten the animal’s bleeding to death and not stem it. As in all things, is best to take a measure of a situation and carefully consider the possible consequences one’s acting than to just randomly act under the assumption that doing something is better than nothing, when in fact in the moment it may not.

This was a Buddhist parable and, suffice to say, if it was Buddhist, then there is nothing mindless about it. Generally speaking, removing an object like a spear or bullet is what needs to happen, with care. In fact, Dr McCoy did just that with Spock and after he did so, he cauterised the wound which allowed for two things to happen – a) stem the bleeding, and b) hopefully prevent infection. Dr McCoy dealt with the injury in the best way that he knew how, with what he had at his disposal.

What Dr McCoy did not do is start to question what those ships were and what was their overall purpose, who were those aliens aboard the ship, how Spock got injured, what was he exactly doing at the time, what kind of metal was it and where did it come from.

That is the point of the parable.

It is likely that, in those days in Northern India 2,500 years ago, the people then would have known that just removing the spear alone was not enough and did similar to what Dr McCoy did with Spock. They tended to the wound. They left the questions until afterwards.

Keachick,

Re:nothing mindless about it

Indeed, I never said there was anything mindless about the parable. If anything, I was indicating the apparent mindless action of your interpretation that you seem to claim supported hasty actions over mindful consideration of the goals hoped to be achieved in removing the spear. And in response, you even backed up my concern by pointing out that none other than Dr. McCoy himself, needed to do more, i.e. cauterization, than merely remove the spearing object which is what you originally indicated was the only act the parable teaches that was necessary.

You have further elucidated your interpretation to indicate that you believe the parable warns against being aware of other questions in attempting to aid wounded creatures.

It’s a novel interpretation but my limited exposure to Buddhist principles leads me to believe the the most likely interpretation is “Be at one with everything, but act in the moment.”

Disinvited – “but if one mindlessly yanks a spear””
Why are you nitpicking like this?

Why conclude, in the first place, that I do not take into account that the act of pulling the spear out of the injured animal would be predicated on knowledge of how to bind the wound afterwards etc?

Another hypothetical situation (just like the parable) – A doctor will tell a cop, other interested parties, that he successfully removed the bullet from a gunshot victim, (without going into all the details on how he achieved this). Are you going to call the doctor’s actions mindless, hasty, because all he told people is that he removed the bullet?

“you believe the parable warns against being aware of other questions”

That is not my interpretation at all. It is about dealing with most important and relevant issues and then seek answers as to the how’s, why’s etc once the immediate threat, issue has been dealt with. The fact that one can be given to not prioritising actions indicates awareness of varying issues associated but lacking in mindful discernment and possibly lack of knowledge. Being aware is one thing, but what one chooses to act on first, second, third etc is another. The parable is about awareness, mindfulness, focus (ie not being distracted), and PRIORITISATION.

i’m buying what you’re selling on this.

Sssshhhhh! Not a film to be thought about. Just enjoy it.

@CmdrR, yes, like most Trek movies, old and new ;-)

Yeah, I need more here too. May pick up the novelization and perhaps more depth / explanation is given to Krall, his crew (drone pilot / bees), and more on the Franklin.

“but was that its original purpose?”

It’s purpose was to be the movie’s Maguffin.

Marja, re: “became deeply disturbed about his ‘abandonment’ by Starfleet.” — the same think that drove Khan in the ST II.

It seemed to make sense to me. From the logs Kirk viewed, it seemed like Edison was going crazy, which I thought may have been an effect of whatever Alien DNA thingy that infected him. I think it amplified old feelings about MACO and the Federation, etc, which only got worse over the years.

Agreed! Krall’s did not need a secrete identify.

The ship was wrecked. Jalah rebuilt it. Meanwhile Edison had gained access to tons of machines and a drone workforce.

Don’t think they were going for an Oscar dude. It worked

Spiked Canon,

Re:Oscar

When has it become acceptable for humans to aim for less than the highest they think possible in striving for their goals?

Or to put it more to the point, why is it OK for JJ to aim for Oscars with STAR WARS but unrealistic for him to do so with STAR TREK?

The life draining was necessary, so that you could have a man, 140 years old, surviving, strong, and virile to battle our crew. Also, it caused the disguise so that we didn’t know who he was until the end of the movie. And of course, its the reason that he captured and killed anyone who came to the planet, to feed off them.

As for why he forgot about the Franklin. Seems mostly a plot hole. However, there is no reason to think that one of the 3 of them had the knowledge to repair the Franklin– or the chance that it would just crash again… keep in mind it took Jaylah, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov to repair and get it off the ground.

And they had 23rd Century technology to speed the repairs along…that the Franklin crew obviously wouldn’t have had when she crashed.

This juicy “tid-bits” could be added into the DIRECTOR’s cut of the film??? We can only hope!!!

Maybe he forgot the Franklin because he gained superior technology?

My sons believed that Krall and his two surviving crew members were sent insane because of being alone and abandoned. It sounds reasonable to me. They were lost/abandoned and so was Nero, except that Nero saw his entire world imploded. How sane would most of us remain in such circumstances, I wonder?

Now, I know that some people are going to get all antsy about this explanation as in “Oh no, not the insane trope again”, but the reality is that most of us live on an edge when it comes to being rational and “losing it”.

I think that a form of “space sickness” as in lacking in some of the normal reasoning faculties, as well as, in some cases, developing dangerous psychosis, may well be a real hazard when venturing deep into space etc. After all, Krall was a military man who could not easily adapt to a non-combatant role, even before the Franklin was severely damaged/lost.

They probably tried and couldn’t fix it. Maybe the Chief died in the crash. After a time they didn’t need it anymore. They had the swarm. I would have like to see the ending between Edison & Kirk a bit different, longer. One of my few complaints. But I’m sure they didn’t want to slow it down…

Seeing the film tomorrow, not worried about “spoilers” at all, but from all I’ve heard and read about the Krall “reveal” it seems like a letdown and an excuse to get in a revenge-seeking adversary once more (strike three, you’re out!). It would have annoyed me more if I had first learned about it in the theater tomorrow morning. In any case, I’ve rarely if ever cared about learning spoilers ahead of time. (Just saying, “It’s only a movie…only a movie…only a movie!”) ;)

To follow up my earlier post:

Saw it, and loved it! JJ’s team finally got it right! I’ll go back to the theater for seconds, possibly thirds! :)

Vokar, re: “an excuse to get in a revenge-seeking adversary once more (strike three, you’re out!)” — Yes, that bugged me. It was another movie that ultimately ended up being about having the Enterprise prevent a crazy guy from unleashing a terrible weapon. It was done to perfection in Wrath of Khan. There was no need to see it over and over again in Nemesis, the 2009 reboot, and this one. Most of the best Star Trek has not revolved around single-man adversaries, yet so many of the movies do, including all three of the new ones.

@ anotherscott:

As much as the tiresome “revenge-seeking adversary” trope annoyed me, the STB movie on balance delighted me in ways the previous two “NuTreks” couldn’t begin to do. As for NEM, that one was a disaster in so many ways, IMHO, and the worst of the entire ST movie franchise.

How many henchmen did Krall have? It seemed as though every ‘bee’ ship that we saw had a pilot… and there were billions of bees. If Krall sucked the life outta anyone he met, how did he get so many people? And why didn’t he resemble some of the other races we saw (briefly) with Jaylah; how did he get the big lizard face?

Some good points made. I was wondering about the arbonath myself. But not too much because that is really just a Maguffin. Not that important. Yes, he SHOULD have known where the Franklin was. Perhaps he felt he salvaged all he could from it? Perhaps he blew it off because he had his bees? If taking beings lifeforce or whatever makes him a little more human why is he still so lizardy a hundred years after crashing and capturing beings? Are the bees really new? Is the effect temporary? Does he need humans to become more human? Not sure how important any of this is but it calls to the fact that Krall’s motives and story are amazingly unclear for a trek villain. He came across as just a silly mustache twirller.

As far as the absorption goes, he only starts regaining a humanlike appearance after absorbing the energy of humans. So I’m assuming his alien features come as a result of absorbing aliens.

He actually says “my old friend” when he sees it in space. He didn’t glforget about it but probably didn’t know Kayla got it running.

Just got back from the IMAX triple bill. Beyond just felt like proper Trek, more than any of the Kelvin Timeline films. Loved it.

Totally agree. Really enjoyed it!

I did the IMAX tripple too :)

I was lucky enough to go to the SD comic-con premiere. Live orchestra and choir played the soundtrack along with the picture. All of the cast and crew (minus Anton of course) were there and shared their thoughts with the audience. It was such a great event and the movie is the best in many years. They listened to the concerns of long-time fans and made a film that works for everyone. I can not wait to see it again!

That was an amazing night!

@Herbert and AHarvey, I. am. so. envious. Glad you got to enjoy such a special thing — it’ll stay with you for a lifetime!

@Marja thanks! I’ve been a trekkie since I was knee high to a tribble and this truly was a special night I will never forget.

I tolerated the Beastie Boys in Trek09. JJ’s clearly one of their biggest fans that he cannot help but put them in every single one of his movies, even those that doesn’t make much sense (They’re actually in Star Wars too). They were only in Trek09 for a few seconds and that was it.

But having the Beastie Boys actually save the the day in Star Trek? For a Star Trek movie that’s being released on the franchise’s 50th Anniversary, it’s an unfortunate creative decision for one simple reason. It doesn’t play to Star Trek’s strengths. This isn’t our cast of science fiction icons thinking their way out of a problem to save the day, it’s simply playing the Beastie Boys on the radio. If there is any one key element that separates the fans of Star Trek from the general audience, this will probably be it. Remember when Brannon Braga mentioned a studio exec who wanted each episode of Enterprise to feature a boy band playing? We’re not only at the stage where that kind of idiotic idea is now acceptable in Star Trek, it’s now a dictating force at how the stories are told.

Look, I know this comes across as “How I see Star Trek is how EVERYONE should see Star Trek!”, but how can using the Beastie Boys in a JJ Abrams production not be looked at as blatant pandering?

I mean, if you’re going by the movie’s logic, they were “thinking their way out of a problem” — I certainly wouldn’t have thought to blow up the ships with music. It’s just a cheap plot gimmick, sure, but I think it fits with the character of these movies — and regardless of how you personally feel about hip hop. People said the same thing about rock and roll in the 60s.

It actually works. They jammed the frequency with counter noise. If you understand how transmitters work, howe you can get clear signals and interference from other noise. You would see this wasn’t a cheap gimick. This actually fit in to the movie as it is a known tactic in military counter strategies.

The song fits in the plot to… they are SABOTAGEING the enemies plan.

If your upset cause they used the song… grow up. If you heard the roaring 20s rag time bands then you would be upset cause it wasn’t Jimi Hendrix cause it wasnt a 60s song.

STARLORD-CA,

You make reasonable points but using UHF with its speed of light limitations and NOT subspace with ships traversing those distances?

No one was traveling at suspace during that scene. And they had to come in close for it to work.

LogicalLeopard,

Re:Subspace

Subspace is used for faster than light communications and not travel, unless you count transwarp beaming.

EXACTLY

@ Starlord, I liked it, and the full circle back to young Kirk playing it as he ditched his dad’s car out of a sense of rebellion, and now he’s using that music to beat the enemy. I also liked that it was Jaylah’s taste in music [which is why we heard “Fight tha Power”] to play in “her house.”

I believe they used it on VHF, which is weird, but weren’t they flying at sublight speed near the Yorktown station?

I’m in concert with this. I was dreading the moment in the movie when Sabotage was going to be used, but the reason they used it and how they pulled it off was fantastic. I actually found myself enjoying it.

The music didn’t blow the ships up, it removed their guidance and they ran into each other.

Yes, the music was supposed to be blowing them up, they weren’t just running into each other. Sulu awkwardly states it when they are working out how to destroy them.

The stupid aspect is not using the Beasty Boys for this job, it’s the entire concept of using soundwaves on such an advnaced technology to blow them up. They could have used whale song to achieve that – which would have been a brilliant Trek moment nostalgia-wise – but it would have still been an awful concept scientifically…

But then again, this version of Star Trek doesn’t subscribe to any science journal. It’s just comic bookish entertainment. Which is cool btw… TOS wasn’t hard science either.

How is it stupid? If you disorganized thousands of spaceships flying in very fast and tight maneuvers and they start hitting each other… they are going to go boom.

Because they had whale song handy?

Jack – Every time I read your comment above (ie “Because they had the whale song handy?”), I burst out laughing. Good one, mate, good one!

It does seem that, in this new format, we have to read or scan posts we have read before in order to see what new comments have been posted more recently. It has its pros and cons.

smike,

Re: whale song

A nice touch on your part given “we”, the audience of fans, know how destructive such a whale broadcast can be. But how do we get this crew to that knowledge given that in this iteration, to them, humpback whales are just another sad chapter in Earth’s history of man fueled extinctions?

I think Pegg chose THE BEASTIE BOYS because it’s an inside joke and appeals to his humorous bent of sf reasoning that he developed in his Cornetto Trilogy of films.

LOL! I’d rather have had BEASTIE BOYS instead of the whale songs – but I doubt it would have fit as seamlessly as it did in Beyond as opposed to having something similar in Voyage Home. I think it fit very nicely…:):):)

Beastie Trek! XD

It was fitting Sabotaging the swarm drones. Especially Krall probably knows the song as the Franklin crew rocked to the beats and the shouting.

Also seriously, do people really need spoonfeeding of the movie’s intricacies?

RIPIX,

Re:Beastie Trek

My local library has thousands of songs available for checkout that I know of, doesn’t mean I like them all.

There you go. You might have a song in there that annoys you and you might happen to listen to it. Isn’t that annoying?

What’s more annoying than playing a song from Krall’s old human captain life to disorganize his drones? Especially how he hates his humanity.

RIPIX

Re:annoying

Which was exactly my point when I said “Especially if he isn’t particularly fond of their music to begin with?” Thanks for agreeing with me.

https://trekmovie.com/2016/07/21/star-trek-beyond-spoiler-discussion/#comment-5315002

I know. We have to spell it out for the masses. Lol

So.., the OTHER versions of Star Trek, i.e. the ones you endorse, subscribe to science journals? Man, I laugh at your inferior intelect

Jeyl,

Given that the “real” enemy is revealed to be just another Starfleet human malcontent, again, I suppose it would make some sort “sense”. Especially if he isn’t particularly fond of their music to begin with?

I couldn’t disagree more with your entire post. Pandering to whom? A) it’s a cool, albeit 22-year-old song, but it’s not going to draw in a Bieber/boy band/etc-loving general audience B) it’s “classical” music in this time frame C) it’s a callback to Trek 09.

And D) it’s fast paced like the scene, where whale song isn’t.

are you guys serious with the whale song??? OMG LOL

Know what would have been the only thing better than Sabotage? Blaring the song from the punk rocker on the bus in Star Trek 5.

“The only question left is HOW MANY MEGATONS!!!!! And Iiiiiiiiii hate you, and Iiiiiiii BERATE you!”

LogicalLeopard,

Re:punk rocker on the bus

The punk rocker on the bus was again from Star Trek 4, the one with the whales, and NOT 5. And I agree, if speedy tempo and not an overwhelmingly powerful communication wave, was essential to the disruption, then his favorite tune would be apropos.

Weren’t the eugenics wars going on in the early 90s. The Beastie Boys shouldn’t even exist in any Star Trek timeline.

I love the Beasty Boys music scene, especially the final scream/destruction. Great climax of that scene!

Maybe in the eugenics wars “Sabotage” was a song that inspired the resistance. Not that I know jack about the eugenics wars

Marja,

Re:Eugenics Wars

Really? I thought those were the secret wars that only the Coasties served? ;-)

Or, it inspired the actual Eugenics wars! Khan was singing to himself, “Listen all yall, it’s a sabotage…..listen all y’all it’s a sabotage….”

Sabotage came out in 94. Khan waited until 96 for the Eugenics wars. He likes the Beastie Boys too.

LogicalLeopard,

US President George H. W. Bush weaponized music in 1989.

Disinvited —

L – O – freaking -L!

Gregs,

Re:The Beastie Boys shouldn’t even exist

No, no, they HAD to exist. Don’t you remember George H Bush developed the warfare tactic of blaring raucous music at military warlords to take them down [see:Noriega of Panama]. So you see, The Beastie Boys were essential to our defeat of the Eugenics warlords in Bush’s secret CIA wars against them.

That made me laugh.
PRICELESS!

It was one of the best parts of the movie. The timing of the “whaaaaaa” (guy jumps off the bridge in the BB clip) when the ship hits the surf wave of alien ships was spot on. The whole cinema cheered (silently) “F*ck you, Aliens!”
Sometimes you have to go with the flow of the movie and not make it a historically-fictional correct experience.

Ha. Exactly.

“Young minds. Fresh Ideas. Be tolerant.” -Kirk to Scotty in ST:III Using “classical” music (as Spock said it was) was great. Fit perfectly. Loved it.

Beastie Boys = classical music to them…. Plus it’s totally Kirk talking a computer to death.. Or at least makes just as much sense that they used that hectic music beats and shouting to confuse the drone computers.

How the times have changed! If this had been TNG era, Picard would be leading the crew in a Rodgers and Hammerstein sing-a-long over VHF to blow up the CGI particle menace! Honestly, I don’t like the inclusion of the Beastie boys, (or really ANY rock or pop) in Trek. Too much pop music in films can seem to date them. Also, cutting up the big action climax into a music video had me kind of rolling my eyes at a time when I wish I were more tense and involved…

What about Magic Carpet Ride in First Contact?

Yeah, I know. I give that one a pass because of First Contact’s time travel angle, and they were going out of their way to show the “wild n’ crazy” side of Cochrane. As a one-off joke, I’m good with it. Having the action climax of Beyond become a bit of a music video didn’t sit as well with me , I admit.

At least they didn’t use opera! :)

The TNG era would have never used something like a Steppenwolf song unnecessarily during a high energy moment. Oh wait…

It was quite possibly the most ludicrous and silly thing in the history of Star Trek. I don’t like the Beastie Boys, but it made me laugh out loud, so I bloody well can’t complain, can I?

And singing Gilbert & Sullivan doesn’t date a movie?
I love it!

Keachick,

Re:dating movies

I’m not sure of your meaning here? Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas were all created and originally performed on stage long before sound motion pictures enabled people to sing their aires on screen. How can one accurately date a film because someone on screen is singing a G&S tune?

For example, I fail to see how you can tell when the motion picture musical THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE was made merely by knowing it was an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan?

Any piece of music or song could “date” a movie. Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, along with eg Mozart and Puccini operas, were all composed before talkies. However, they have all been recorded and could be played on vinyl records from as far back as and now there are CDs and many can be downloaded to Ipods. Some operas have been made into film, like Bizet’s Carmen.

I was referring to the delightful scene from ST:Insurrection which had Capt Picard and Worf singing a G&S song in order to distract Data…

Perhaps that is why previous Star Treks used classical music and music from, eg well-known 19th century operettas because this music had stood the test of time, ie music that many people still love to listen to centuries later. The music had developed a “timeless” quality about it.

Beastie Boys Sabotage one day being described as “classical” music? – personally, a head scratcher for me, but there you go…:)

I was kind of upset at the Beastie Boys saving the day. Only because I was hoping Chuck D and Flavor Flav would save the day. Oh welll, Sabotage, like Kirk said, is a good choice.

Question: Will they EVER use “Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys? Seems appropriate, and it’s one of my favorites.

It worked for me and I got the concept of disrupting the swarm with radiowaves. Loved the Bones line – ‘Is this classical music’ and Spocks ‘I believe so.’

I felt they were stealing from when Mars attacks “playing yodeling music to defeat your enemy” got a laugh at that!

I agree, Jeyl. It was silly and juvenile to even consider having the solution to the overwhelming enemy numbers be playing pop music at them. This is Star Trek, not Macross. It’s poor storytelling, and it’s just lazy.

I loved it. I was really nervous after the first trailer. But things got better. Great Star Trek movie.

I was the only one in the theater who laughed when McCoy said “In a pig’s eye you are!”

I was the onyl one to laugh at that as well.

I was waiting for Spock to say “I am not in pig’s eye, Doctor, as is perfectly obvious”

I forget the conversation that was used in, can you remind me?

@Beyond, Just before Spock and McCoy ventured out on that flying ship. McCoy was remonstrating with Spock, “you’re critically injured, you can’t do this.”

Me too. Perfect line reading by Karl.

I saw Beyond over two weeks ago at the Australian premiere and have been eagerly awaiting the response from fans. I have to admit that I’ve been really surprised by the positive reaction to the film, I walked out thinking fans are really going to hates this – for all the reasons people complained about the first two films in the new series. I’ve always been a fan of the Trek films and Trek’09 was a very unexpected and pleasant surprise, who would have thought that you could completely recast Star Trek and make it work! Into Darkness definitely had its moments (I love the opening scene) but was let down by an unnecessary reworking of WOK, but we all know this. Beyond starts off well enough, though using a lengthy piece of voice over is bad film making 101. Yorktown is an interesting edition but as the story progresses the whole film felt to me as though we could have been watching any generic blockbuster / actioner just with Star Trek characters shoved it there. You know as soon as Kirk mentions that the gift to the (little) aliens at the beginning is a piece of an ancient weapon that this will be the mcguffin some villain will want and of course that is exactly what happens. Reviews have already critiqued Krall’s poor motivations but I found the whole ‘sucks their life energy’ thing all abit weird and just a skimmed over convenience to set up the reveal that Krall was / is human – which still didn’t make me care about his motivations. Action – there’s a lot of it in this film and I know fans criticized the previous two films for being too action oriented. I don’t have a problem with action as long it makes sense and in Beyond it was so much more chaotic then in the previous film, much more in line with the Michael Bay style of ‘What the hell am I looking at here’. JJ does action very well, as seen in Force Awaken and that aspect of his talent is missed here. Also Kirk, and other members of the crew are suddenly more super human than ever, serving all sorts of falls and fights meanwhile Spock is impaled by a piece of ship and is too injured to do anything on his own – hence McCoy, as doctor, accompanying him everywhere. I won’t go on but need I mention the whole sequence set to Beastie Boys ‘Sabotage’ – a polarizing inclusion in the first film, a reason people hated the first trailer for Beyond, little did anyone know the track would feature so heavily again and for such a dumb reason. I’m going to see it again – maybe I was just in a bad mood the night I saw it. I love these character and I really like how this cast has made them their own. Fingers crossed that on second viewing I can see what people are liking so much about this film.

“Beyond starts off well enough, though using a lengthy piece of voice over is bad film making 101”

Well, it’s certainly not bad Star Trek. It’s a bloody Captain’s log.

Hahaha! Absolutely right! The Captain’s Log was always an essential piece of ST storytelling. I missed there not being one in STID as I do love hearing the words “Captain’s log, stardate…” when I’m watching ST.

There were another couple of spots in the film which would’ve benefited from a brief entry in the log …

I know, right? Early Trek episodes even had Kirk recording a long and stating basically that “unknown to anyone onboard” such and such is happening.. So Kirk tells us through the log things he doesn’t know are happening.

CaptainSheridan,

I’ve always thought the idea of the log was for the Captain to record his thoughts on the events “after” they’ve occurred. So, I’ve never thought that in the episodes he was running along the corridors hitting the comm panels recording color commentary to the log as the actual story unfolded.

Watch The Naked Time for an example of what I’m talking about. Kirk says something akin to “unknown to the crew of the Enterprise an alien virus is spreading throughout the ship”

Just watched the salt monster one again, Kirk mentions that they didn’t know all three of them (he, McCoy and dead kid) were seeing a different version of Nancy Crater.

@Dis, LOL
What a hilarious visual, and a great idea for a parody

I always thought that was a ridiculously used device for exposition, when TOS Kirk is talking in the PRESENT about stuff he doesn’t even know yet. I suppose if they had had Kirk record the mission log after the fact [so that, for narrative, they could sprinkle the entries in here and there] and used Past Participle it would have sucked all the energy out of each story, LOL

I thought Kirk relating events in his Captain’s log was a great way to inform us as to the what’s, how’s, where’s etc of the Enterprise and its crew at that particular time. Some of the scenes were quite funny…

@Keachick, Yes, like Kirk’s reflections on the crew over the three years, how things happened “For the good [young couple kissing] and the not-so-good [young couple across the way splitting up]”.

Funny. I called JJ talent-less.

Voice over-they were paying homage to TOS. In retrospect they could have introduced Edison about half way through and build the climax more. Everything else was fine

GWA, Can’t say I agree with all your assessments, but I’ve experienced the “what the hell am I looking at” with JJ’s films too.

One thing I found particularly disorienting was the construction of Base Yorktown. But then I’m a two-dimensional thinker, pretty much.

This movie reinforces, for me, the wonder of the BIG cinematic screen. Smaller screens just can’t do some of those scenes justice. We were shown the Yorktown space station, inside and out, and I kept saying, “OMG! Wow! That’s just incredible”.

I didn’t find the look of the space station that aesthetically pleasing but the fact that we were shown an entire city in space within a transparent dome was something else. Could we be able to build such a workable structure out in space one day? Just imagine it!

With the arrival at Yorktown they were going for some TMP vibe. Really long sweeping shots underlayed with majestic music.

You live on a flat plane? ;)

@Matt, Just a little WOK Spock humor.

re: “what the hell am I looking at” – I had the same experience, a lot of the action stuff was just “visual noise” where I couldn’t follow anything and had no idea what I was looking at. The first time I had that experience was in Joel Schumacher’s “Batman and Robin” and that was an unfortunate thing to be reminded of.

Well, if a Captain’s log voice over irked the first time, I doubt a second viewing will change your thoughts about the film.

I’m so glad JJ didn’t direct this, Justin Lin has done good things.

And please for the love of all, please bring back Doug Jung and Simon Pegg to write the next Trek movie. Justin Lin as well.

I literally let out a gasp and sobbed like a 13-year old girl, just hugged by Justin Bieber, when Spock opened Spock Prime’s picture case. A great tribute to Trek itself and to those passed on.

That tribute at the end though, with the birthday party, to absent friends — then it cuts to the crowd centered on Anton — was just as touching. I still can’t get over everything wrapped up in this movie, all the things it makes me feel. That final shot with the crew, looking out at their new Enterprise reminded me of the end of Undiscovered Country, everybody posing for a picture as we gaze ahead at the future. This is exactly the sort of feelgood movie 2016 needs.

Justin Lin said in an interview that that shot of Anton was a last-minute edit after Anton’s sudden death.

didn’t know that….thanks.

Commodore Paris. Tom’s Great Great Grandmother? Or just Great Grandmother?

LOL yeah I thought the same. He comes a long history of Starfleet officers. Another great touch.

Or a reference to Leonard Nimoy’s character on Mission: Impossible.

I doubt that, thats going too wide.

Great film, Thank you Mr. Lin 🖖

Simon and Doug, nicely balanced film, thank you all!

somethoughts, kind of wishing they were scripting the next one too.

What about the Enterprise A guys? Pylons and nacelles were different. Reminded me of something I saw in concept sketches for the JJprise before ST09

Honestly I wasn’ttt too keen on that Enterprise-A at all. I didn’t like how the registry was so large under the saucer. I thought it was kinda an ugly final shot. And I’m surprised they had the audacity to put in the A at the end, dictating the constraints of the next movie instead of letting them make something new. I would’ve been fine without a Starship Enterprise in the next film. It cheapens the whole destruction of the ship, kinda like when they did it at the end of Voyage Home. But I gotta hand it to the people who called this months ago — we got a new ship after all! But is it the new ship we really wanted? We’ll see in Trek 4

Don’t forget that the “-A” designation means they decommissioned the registration, command and crew of an existing ship and rechristened it. This one is not very likely to be state of the art or even held together any better than the challenges Scotty was already facing with the one at the picture’s start.

Commodore Paris stated in the beginning of the movie that they’re constructing the most advanced starship ever built at Starbase Yorktown. It’s foreshadowing for the 1701-A, clearly the ship was named Enterprise after the original’s destruction.

Yes exactly, when Paris said that line, I turned to my cousin and said “Enterprise-A” straight away. He agreed with me.

LOL I had the same thought. The second she mentioned a ship being built I thought, “There it is.”

Disinvited – Actually, that’s all just fan speculation and non-canon theory. Nothing in Trek canon establishes anything about the “-A” designation. I think there was something in Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise, maybe, but nothing else I can recall in canon Trek.

PaulB.

Speculation? Perhaps, but no more fancical than that of THE VOYAGE HOME’s NCC-1701-A being a “new” construction after all the remarks about it in THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK being an obsolete 20yo design and all the experienced season crewmen speculating on the way over to see their new ship for the first time unsure of what model they’d get after Admiral Morrow declared her day over:

“SCOTT: With all appreciation, sir, I’d prefer to supervise the refit of Enterprise.
MORROW: I’m afraid that won’t be necessary.
SCOTT: But, sir…
MORROW: I’m sorry, Mister Scott, but there will be no refit.
KIRK: Admiral, I don’t understand. The Enterprise is not…
MORROW: Jim, the Enterprise is twenty years old. We feel her day is over.”

If that was the Admiralty’s thinking, where could they have possibly come up with a newly constructed ship for the NCC-1701-A? And if it’s a newer model designation as your reasoning seems to point, what kind of “new” model” looks outwardly identical to a 20yo “her day is over” design? Not to mention the refit in the 1979 movie was clearly resulted in a new radically different model so if “-A” is meant to indicate that how do you explain the designation’s absence for the supposed 20 years of that movie’s ship?

“McCOY: The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe. We’ll get a freighter.
SULU: With all respect, Doctor, I’m counting on Excelsior.
SCOTT: Excelsior? Why in God’s name would you want that bucket of bolts?
KIRK: A ship is a ship.
SCOTT: Whatever you say, sir. Thy will be done.”

Before we get into Starfleet operating procedure, which DOESN’T EXIST, Decker says in TMP “This is an almost totally new Enterprise.” Aka, new. Whatever. Didn’t you see the lame fast-forward construction of the ship? Design is terr-i-ble any way you cut it.

Mike,

I don’t deny that’s the implication they want to lead the audience towards, but, for me, the KT films have had a bad case of throwing things in and then pulling the rug out from under you with something akin to “We never SAID it was…” so I tend to look for more explicit indications than I normally would.

Disinvited, take a chill pill. Seriously, that was rather an excessive rant in response to my factual comment. Yes, it was speculation either way. We do not know IN CANON the origin of 1701-A. There are stories that Roddenberry said it was the rechristened Yorktown (I think), but nothing IN canon one way or the other.

So, that’s it. Speculation either way. The rest of your hyper-aggressive comment is going to remain unanswered because there’s no point to it. It’s an aggressive rant on tangential topic. My original comment remains unaltered by anything you said. Now, tone down the aggression, and you’ll probably get nicer replies.

PaulB,

What’s so aggressive about pointing why there’s unanswered questions as to what “-A” was originally thrown on there to distinguish or designate?

And for it to be a rant, you’d have to be able to point to some statement indicating that I was displeased about something you said. I gave no such indication. You, on the other hand, seem oddly displeased about speculation on something for which you contend there’s absolutely no meaning.

IIRC, wasn’t the prime timeline’s Enterprise-A stated somewhere to have been a quick refit of (wait for it) the Yorktown? Appropo, if true, because (a) the space station in this movie being named Yorktown, and (b) the original name of the Enterprise, in the 1964 treatments that Roddenberry wrote (before he changed it to Enterprise) was (wait for it again) Yorktown.

No, It doesn’t. they Enterprise A in this movie was a brand new ship. We saw them build it brandy new in front of our eyes. In the beginning of the movie the Admiral very clearly says there is a ship more advanced than the Enterprise being built there.

What are you talking about? We literally *see* it being built from the keel up in time-lapse montage; and it’s stated earlier in the film that the new ship they’re building there is more advanced than even the Enterprise, which was implicitly still the Federation flagship at the time of its destruction. The 1701-A is the newest and best ship in the entire fleet. Also, that’s not what adding a letter means – granted in the Prime timeline the “A” was a rechristened old ship that’d recently been refitted (& who’s crew had presumably already been reassigned) as the only new ship available was the Excelsior which was in the process of having its entire failed experimental transwarp drive replaced with a brand-new warp drive larger than any they’d built before (the out-of-universe explanation being that the Excelsior NX-2000 originally *was* intended to be renamed & renumbered as the Enterprise 1701-A at the end of ST:IV, but the design proved too unpopular with the fans & they couldn’t afford to design & build another new model, so a reuse of the previous design was the only option) – but all the succeeding ships were brand-new, and they still had incrementally-appended versions of the 1701 registry too.

I thought the new A looked kinda fat and weird, but I would have to look again. I enjoyed the sequence of building it, which ties into ST09 teaser with the welder.

Is that this concept art you meant on your mind?

Yes. The neck on the 1701-A is more like the prime universe refit though. The placement of the neck and nacelles are like those concept renderings. The nacelles are wider apart ala the refit/original. The secondary hull is more like the refit than the concept. Basically, it’s the JJ design with much better proportions.

Here is the scale of the new ship. Not an artist here, but it is a comparison.

It was stupid. Can’t stand the bubblegum design. Looks like something a talented 6yr old would come up with.

I had hoped they would have “tweaked” the “Big-E” to be more-like the TOS / TMP era, but from what I saw in Beyond, I can appreciate the new ship design more and more. I still don’t like those barbie-microphone warp nacelles…LOL!

I felt really bad when the villain said “Cut it’s throat,” and that’s the end of the NCC-1701 as we knew it… I really wish they’d tweak the new 1701-A for the next film. Just a WEE BIT!!!

Still trying to figure out why they couldn’t implement features of the USS Vengeance into the 1701-A. They probably had the technology less classified, now with Admiral Marcus out of the way from STID.

BeyondtheTech,

Re:Vengeance

I’m with you on that. How could the ship everyone thinks the NCC-1701-A is, be state-of-the-art if it doesn’t exceed the previous state-of-the-art?

I could understand Starfleet wisely being cautious about using any software or tech that Khan directly had his hands on as likely to have hidden backdoors and even possible “terrorist” AIs lurking in the code. Much as I like to keep the two shows apart, Khan did after all emanate from a LOST IN SPACE writer, anyone remember when enemy agent Smith on LOST IN SPACE programmed the Robot to regularly check on his health status and it extricated him from the suspended animation “jail” Major west had confined him to?

BeyondTheTech, do we have any reason to assume they didn’t? The Vengeance design was predicated on it being a battleship and nothing else. The Enterprise is supposed to be a long range exploration cruiser. Makes no sense trying to copy the hull shape of the Vengeance when you’re not building a battleship, and there’s nothing at all stopping them from installing any of the applicable equipment in an Enterprise style hull.
For all we know, they incorporated the designs into the refit the Enterprise got at the end off Into Darkness.

Loved it, The energy and passion behind the film is commendable.

I feel this movie is the closest in feel to the old star trek, this is not a world builder as such from the previous two movies so we can just let the characters be themselves. Perhaps of the crew lt Uhura suffers from little to do, with Jaylah’s presence having more significance. I enjoyed that extra attention to detail, the impulse engine conundrum as an instance, which you see in the opening dismantling. the set design on the planet reminds me of past star treks and immediately think on “the deadly years” and DS9’s “homecoming”.

Star Trek Beyond features perhaps the most amazing use of a universal translator i’ve seen, not content with simply speaking english with matching mouth movement but overlaying the speech over the original dialect was super cool.

I think it has my favourite configuration of the Enterprise in the Kelvin timeline, I loved both of them. The new A register seems bulkier as a design requisite given the structural failings the previous iteration endured in the swarm attack. I see the reference to narrative restructure of the design in the interview with Double Negative. It really fits given the ending.

Krall is conceptually cool, with a bit more time given to his development he could have been more sustaining. as the rescue attempt happens I still had a few questions but we see the movie wrapping up into familiar 3rd act territory.
so The movie does feel undernourished in this department.

Loved it, The energy and passion behind the film is commendable.

I feel this movie is the closest in feel to the old star trek, this is not a world builder as such from the previous two movies so we can just let the characters be themselves. Perhaps of the crew lt Uhura suffers from little to do, with Jaylah’s presence having more significance. I enjoyed that extra attention to detail, the impulse engine conundrum as an instance, which you see in the opening dismantling. the set design on the planet reminds me of past star treks and immediately think on “the deadly years” and DS9’s “homecoming”.

Star Trek Beyond features perhaps the most amazing use of a universal translator i’ve seen, not content with simply speaking english with matching mouth movement but overlaying the speech over the original dialect was super cool.

I think it has my favourite configuration of the Enterprise in the Kelvin timeline, I loved both of them. The new A register seems bulkier as a design requisite given the structural failings the previous iteration endured in the swarm attack. I see the reference to narrative restructure of the design in the interview with Double Negative. It really fits given the ending.

Krall is conceptually cool, with a bit more time given to his development he could have been more sustaining. as the rescue attempt happens I still had a few questions but we see the movie wrapping up into familiar 3rd act territory.
so The movie does feel undernourished in this department.

Trek has an exciting future. With the netflix streaming (the concept pisses me off no-end) we will have dual iterations of my favourite franchise.

I know this is a dumb thing to get fixated on… But the “first warp 4 ship” line *really* threw me off. It was an odd mix when there were so many great nods to Enterprise, but this line seems to fly in the face of the whole “first warp 5 ship” concept that the series was based around. Most of the possible rationalizations I’ve heard for this seem to be pretty big stretches. (It doesn’t help that I just finished a rewatch of Enterprise Monday.)

I was also kinda iffy about the concept that they went from slowly producing ships at a rate of one every few years to over 300 within 10 years, but I’m going to guess Romulan War + Federation resources sped things up.

Yes, I’ve unfortunately allowed nerdiness of this level to impact my enjoyment of the film, at least to an extent. Want to go back and see it again shortly while doing my best to ignore these items and focus on more substantial stuff. That said, the movie was a lot of fun, but there were a lot of little odds and ends and background questions that kept taking me out of it to some extent or other, especially when it came to Krall’s history, plan, resources, etc. I suspect some of it was addressed in the film and I just missed it.

I actually loved all the Enterprise references, since I think the last two seasons of that show are some of my favorite Trek for some reason. Krall’s backstory was papered over though and I’m prettty confused as to most of what actually happened. But this movie tied itself to pre-reboot Trek in subtle and appropriate references on so many levels, not as brazenly as in STID, and that really worked for me. To me this movie is like a love letter to Star Trek, and a reminder of why we all love it.

Ditto. “Warp 4” set off my Nitpick alarm. Plus, I thought NX ships were meant to denote they were experimental. So by the time this ship is launched, the class is still an NX? or was this a new experimental variant? Was Warp 4 simply a brain fart?

Enterprise creatives misunderstood and misrepresented NX as an actual class rather than an experimental designation – just one of the thousands of things they did so horrilby wrong.

Pretty sure that the Franklin was older than the NX-01. However, it was still in service after the founding of the Federation unlike Enterprise and probably got a refit. Also, perhaps it got a new serial number later on. NX in the Federation is experimental type vessels (Excelsior and Defiant are examples, both which later became classes), NX in the United Earth era was a class. I still think it fits into canon. “First Flight” is the only episode I can think of that suggests we went from the NX-Alpha and Beta to the NX-01.

Yeah I noticed that too. It is older. They mention the Franlin’s a Warp 4 vessel. Another lame oversight.

I think the launch date of the Franklin was 2150….2160 I think was in it disappeared during the Romulan wars….they went through the discussion pretty quickly but I think that is how it went.

Yeah, that “warp four” reference was stupid. They could have just said “first warp six ship” and everything would have made sense… ten years younger than the NX-01, higher registration number, set after The Romulan Wars, you know…

But then, maybe this “Warp 4” reference was our 50th anniversary gift honoring all previous continuity glitches, a way to celebrate that Vulcan had no moon, that the Klingons didn’t have a devil and that Warp 10 was not possible… you know, these nitpickers’ favourites we couldn’t live without LOL

The warp 4 stuff jumped out to me as well. However, it is worth noting that the warp scales did change over the franchise’s history. In TOS, anything over Warp 10 was considered unsafe velocities, but the Enterprise and other vessels did surpass it on several occassions. It wasn’t until TNG that warp 10 was deemed the “maximum”. So, it’s entirely possible that the warp scales also changed between Enterprise and TOS, or maybe the timeline changes somehow resulted in the scales being changed earlier. So… it’s conceivable that “Warp 4” in the time of Beyond actually was faster than what Enterprise considered to be “Warp 5”.

If we want to be super nerdy and nitpicky about it, haha. ;-)

Could have been Warp 5 in the Prime universe, but we forget we’re in the “Alternate” timeline, where possibly, things are different???

TREKWEB Yeah, take THAT nitpickers! ;-) I like it.

Trekwebmaster… No, the point of departure between the Prime and Kelvin timelines is 30ish years before Star Trek: Beyond. USS Franklin was 70 years before that.

Tom, excellent retcon!

Do we know that there were ships capable of having a Warp 4 engine, before the Warp 5 project that produced the NX-01 Enterprise? I may be incorrect, but I think they went from Warp 3 to 5 engine type. Not excusing, but the details may not be listed as a reference, hence the discrepancy.

My guess would be that the Franklin was a prototype ship that was apart of the NX program ( like the Alpha and beta) but an a larger scale. once the tech was proven they build the NX-01 and the Franklin was mothballed. Once the war with the Romulans started they probably upgraded any ship they could lay their hands on and re-commissioned them. Not sure on why it got the NX designation other than the fact that it was an experimental ship when first build. no idea at all on why the number was so high.

I think that is the most likely explanation. According to Memory Alpha, there was a five year gap between the Warp 3 barrier being broken by the NX-Delta, and the start of construction of NX-01. The Franklin could have easily been another, larger scale test vehicle built in between. It was probably then refitted for regular service at the start of the Romulan War. And maybe it was allowed to retain its NX registry prefix as a tribute to its NX program roots.

From what I understand of it NX-01 Doesn’t count as a Federation ship, it was a Starfleet Ship and the Franklin was a Federation ship after the Romulan-Earth war, it’s not well Explained but that is the logic I can come up with sence the Franklin came after the Foundation of the Federation.

Bill Peters —> I can buy that explanation. Thanks!

Yeah that confused me to no end too. He sounded like he had an inferior ship to the NX-Enterprise but clearly he would have had to been commissioned after Archer to fight both the Xindi and Romulans. So yeah I guess thats what happened. But then you have to wonder why would the Franklin be a warp 4 ship? Why can’t it just be a warp 5 ship like the Enterprise? It didnt add anything to the story other than confusing us lol. But not a huge deal of course.

@ Tiger: I understood it as: He got the ship AFTER he had fought in the Xindi and Romulan Wars. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the ship wasn’t built earlier.

OK I can buy that. I guess everyone is confused on why did the ship has to be older than the NX Enterprise since as far as I can tell it added nothing to the story.I thought maybe it would be a warp 4 vessel to slow them down a bit getting to the station and yeah that did nothing since they showed up 10 minutes later lol. And until Krall said he fought the Romulans and Xindi I think we all assumed this happened before Archer. But yes they couldve just gave him an older ship.

Yeah, although the registration number would seem to preclude that. I have trouble buying the warp speed recalibration excuse too.

Here’s my best theory so far (barring the “warp 4” line just being a stupid mistake): It seems kind of weird that they got up to NX-318 (or whichever it was) within ten years when it took years to build NX-01, 2, and 3. I initially wrote that off to accelerated building for the Romulan war and the increased resources of the new Federation. But what if part of it was folding pre-NX-01 ships into the Federation Starfleet, thus giving them new registries? So the Franklin was older than Enterprise but basically got recommissioned as a Federation Starfleet ship. (Given the design it was probably built by Starfleet but maybe not originally given a registry of the sort used by Enterprise and Columbia.)

I chafe a little at a recommissioned ship getting an NX registry, but (setting aside Enterprise’s weirdness with “NX”) it could have been to honor the ship’s history as an experimental ship.

Cap’n Calhoun,

Don’t forget that in the PT they established the “honor” of a vessel replacing a more notable one destroyed in service by carrying over its registration number. So it could have been originally an NX-00 or whatever broke warp 4 first and then “inherited” its current number as it replaced some other destroyed in battle ship that came after the NX-01.

Yep.

Perhaps the NX Enterprise class ships existed outside the established numbering system, like the Seawolf class attack submarines of the U.S. Navy. The last of the Los Angeles class was U.S.S. Cheyenne, hull number SSN 773. Hull numbers SSN 21, 22, and 23 were assigned to the Seawolf, Connecticut, and Jimmy Carter, respectively. After the Seawolf class were cancelled, the Virginia class picked up with U S.S. Virginia at hull number SSN 774.

Also had pulse phase cannons and spatial torpedoes. Anyone catch that line?

Yes. I Inferred from that that she was older than NX-01 and hadn’t been refitted with newer weapons systems. My guess is that they gave Edison command of an old junker that had been pressed into service during the Romulan war.

The US navy in 4 years from 1941 to 1945, built many hundreds of new ships including 100 aircraft carriers of all sizes.

photon70,

Re:Ship Building

All well and fine for aquatic vessels but the complete manned Orion spacecraft is 5 years and counting.

Very good movie with a nice tribute to the original cast at the end. The regulars were pitch perfect. Jayla was terrific. Elba was kinda wasted, could have been anyone under all that makeup. Didn’t love 1701-A looking exactly like 1701… again. But no movie is perfect. Congratulations, Lin and Co.!

I think the A registry has a difference again. The Struts are, much thicker, and around the neckline seems to be beefierl. I’m off for a second viewing so I’ll confirm it. they weren’t angled back like the previous version that crashed, but I don’t think it was the same as the first configuration as the first two movies also. The nacelles were smaller.

I didn’t like the fast forward ship build. It took me out of the movie. I would have rather they look out the window after the party and see them putting the finishing touches on the 1701-A, like in ST 4. Besides, Commodore Paris stated that there was a ship under construction before they left on the mission. They could have just renamed that one, like in ST 4.

Pretty sure this timeline’s 1701-A is the ship that was already under construction, but it’s not clear. That would speed up the shipbuilding time.

Yeah, the 1701-A would have to be the ship already being built at Yorktown or Kirk and Co. would need to hang out at the starbase for 3 or 4 years, if the pace of construction in ST ’09 is any indicator.

Wow…Cool… I hadn’t thought about that. This could explain a lot…

BTW: Commodore PARIS? I must have missed that name. But brilliant choice. She sounds lilke Janeway and has Tom’s name? An ancestor? Probably. His father was in Starfleet, too, wasn’t he?

I don’t think she looks exactly like the JJprise. The elements of the ships are essentially the same, but the proportions are much much better, more in keeping with the refit and resemble some of Ryan Church’s concept designs. The nacelles are wider apart from each other and no longer appeared squished together. The neck/interconnecting dorsal is placed in a more forward position on the secondary hull, ala the refit. From the top down perspective, she looks like a TOS/refit/JJprise hybrid.

DJT,

Are you sure it wasn’t just a spruce up of an existing end of tour ship? Because it seems very odd that a new ship would look exactly like a 3 year old model. Not to mention hasn’t PT Trek established that the “-A” designation was used on a decommissioned ship being reregistered/rechristened as another ship’s replacement and NOT a new model designation like -B, -C, and -D?

What? No. The letter designations are for new ships with same name and main registry. Trek was never consisting with this though as the case with the USS Saratogas. Never on screen was there a reference to the ncc1701-a being a renamed other ship.

That was like two days after she said a ship was under construction and nowhere near ready.

Did she say it was nowhere near ready? I don’t remember that. Need to re-watch.

Maybe not – but said the Enterprise was the on,y ship advanced enough to navigate through the nebula (which seemed pretty easy, btw).

Agreed, DJT. Maybe they wanted to give some of the shipbuild nerds some visual fun there. I would much rather someone on the Enterprise crew had remarked on the new ship being close to finished.

As for waiting a long time for the refit to be complete, I imagine that after three years in space the crew’s entitled to a few months of leave. [months not years].

It was fun seeing the -A on there. A tribute to a crew that saved the galaxy [yet again!]

But I have to say, Elba communicated Edison’s desperation, then resignation, then bitterness, very well. The makeup was awfully heavy, but when we get to see Edison, it’s a reward. I was puzzled by Krall’s difference to the other aliens with him, concluded it was ethnic differences, then concluded it was because he was a Human hybrid with the new race and that’s why he looked so different from them. [???]

I like a lot of the little nods to the other series, even if the anal-retentive/OCD nitpicker in me was wondering why the first warp 4 ship was NX-326 and the first warp 5 ship was NX-01. Lol. but the fact that the Franklin crew was wearing ST:Enterprise uniforms, that the Franklin itself was so much like NX-01, and there were a bunch of other nods subtle and otherwise in there, while not feeling like fan pandering, I think they did a great job. A fun story – simple and straighforward but one that holds together, and lots of character moments to go along with all the action and FX. Great job. The corrected all the errors made with STID. The next movie has a lot to live up to. Long live 1701-A!

Beyond is one of the best trek movies ever made. I’m still in shock… yes it was that good!

Spock laughing was such great moment. I think I teared up two times in the movie(you know where)

I also really loved the ending. Can’t wait for the next movie!:)

yes, we have seen Spock get po’d in the first two JJprise movies, now he laughed and it was great!

It was stupid. Vulcan’s don’t laugh. That’s why Sybok laughing in “The Final Frontier” is a dramatic reveal for his character. Spock’s my favorite character but Quinto just isn’t that good, he’s too robotic. Maybe it’s his material.

Maybe, but a) they do smile and b) Star Trek V never ever happened 😁

And did you notice McCoy’s reaction to the laugh? A sign that Spock (who did laugh once or twice in TOS and it was usually a bad sign) is in rough, rough shape.

re: “Vulcans don’t laugh.” Well, rarely, which is why McCoy said “now I know you’re delirious.” But also, this Spock is more in touch with his human side than Prime Spock had been (perhaps related to the destruction of his planet). We’ve seen that clearly in his relationship with Uhura, which would have been totally out of character for Prime Spock as he was in the original series.

Kenji, McCoy said, “Now you’re delirious” …
I liked McCoy’s battlefield surgery [cauterization] … but Spock didn’t like it too much … AAGGHHHHH

Spock laughing almost ruined the entire film. Sorry, but it might be “fun” but it underminded the character to a degree that hurt the film. These are established characters and we still, no matter who writes, directs or produces, get away from the notion that Trek needs to be fixed. It doesnt need to be fixed, it needs to be saved.

I came away with his laugh was caused by his state of health following his injury – he was “delirious”. It fits for me. A great segment betw him and McCoy.

It wasn’t a “fun” moment. Dr McCoy became concerned when Spock start laughing because that meant that Spock had become DELIRIOUS, which is medically not good. Spock, being a vulcan/human hybrid, is certainly capable of laughing, except that in these particular circumstances, it was clearly not a good sign. Dr McCoy said so in the movie.

Spocks laugh, and any other emotional display is clearly acceptable in the Kelvin timeline. This Spock is NOT the same as the Prime Spock. His nature is the same, however his life experiences have been quite different. To expect Kelvin Spock to behave the same way that Prime Spock does is just silly. I for one welcome the exploration of the character Spock who is more in touch with his human/emotional side.

I took my teenage son and daughter who have seen TOS and TOS movies as well as all of the JJ movies. My daughter brought a friend who this was her first exposure to Trek. She liked it but was of course confused by the Prime crew picture and asked why the crews don’t look anything alike!
I thought it was a nice, unexpected touch but accentuated how this reboot crew pales in comparison.
Did the Shat finally see some $$$ from the JJVerse?

Shatner’s original contract gave him profit participation in STAR TREK. He’s probably already been receiving something – how little depending on how horrible Paramount’s Hollywood accounting has been.

Thanks to Priceline he’s like a billionaire. I don’t dig into people’s finances.

It certainly had its beautiful moments that you can enjoy time and again… all the audiovisual references to previous installments, the 50th anniversary / RIP Nimoy moments, the humor and character interaction, the brilliant TOS-ish score cues, the heavy ENT nostalgia surrunding the Franklyn, that absolutely made sense given that TOS and NextGen used to bump into “old” Federation or Earth ships time and again, the look and feel of the planet that FINALLY gave us a glimpse of what Star Trek could have done with those “strange new worlds” if taking it seriously… so yeah, there are at least 50 things to love about this movie…

BUT…there are still HUGE pivotal problems that keep this movie from being truly great… the paperthin plot surrounding a once-again underdeveloped villain that has no accessible motivation, the almost cartoonish deus-ex-machina “Beasty Boys save the day” moment… Mars Attacks anyone? The over the top action, especially with the destruction of the big E… c’mon…a warp core breach would end the ship within seconds! In parts the movie felt like a parody of Galaxy Quest, a movie which had been a Star Trek parody in the first place… what’s next? Defending the Borg via whale song?

All in all, I’d give it a B-. Far better than STID but still lightyears away from being an A.

Defeating the Borg via whale song, not defending :-)

The Beastie Boys didn’t save the day – the crew’s quick thinking did.

Jack, exactly. They used what they had on hand. And apparently the crew of the Franklin liked ’80s-’90s music.

At least “Into Darkness” was, uh, forgive the pun, tonally dark-er. This film had some lame jokes and gags. Almost expected fart jokes.

One’s sense of what constitutes humour is very subjective. I thought that many of the jokes and gags were funny and some not so much. Others may disagree as to which I thought were funny.

Actually a slightly giggly, amused response to a member of the crew farting would have shown just how human, in a generally healthy sense, that these people were, despite their education, skills, talents. Whether we like it or not, a common, innate response to audible flatulence is a grin or giggle, however much people may (try to) stifle such responses. Such responses are obvious among children, but as we grow and *mature*, we are expected to stifle these reactions. However, it does not mean that they are not there. They are just under the surface.

I have no idea as to why involuntary bodily functions like flatulence evokes, by and large, a giggle response from most people but they do and it seems to make no difference when it comes to the age, maturity, education etc of people.

“Actually a slightly giggly, amused response to a member of the crew farting would have shown just how human, in a generally healthy sense, that these people were”

Oh good grief. Are you 10 years old? Your idea of Star Trek and most others’ idea of Star Trek do not mesh.

Actually, it is a known medical fact that the average adult human will fart approximately 12-14 times within a 24 hour period. It is now understood to be a sign of a healthy digestive tract. Farting more or less can be a sign of something going wrong, especially if there is pain associated.

What has this got to do with ideas about Star Trek? Most of the crew of the Enterprise are human beings and this is part of who we are as humans. If a crew member is letting off more than normal, then that could be a sign that the diet needs to be amended and that a stop-off at a place like the Yorktown is more than due.

I doubt that 10 year olds know this.

In TOS, the humour (often accompanied by the Clarinet of Humour) was lame/clunky, but adorably so. This fit in just fine.

Recall the Borg weakness was simply implanting a command to sleep

I liked the first quarter (post-awful CGI creatures opening) with the much trailed Enterprise destruction; found the trudge around the planet dragged; liked the third quarter with the second attack and found the end villain face-off fell flat.

For me, it is Chris Pine and Karl Urban that continue to carry these films. Quinto, Saldana and the tragically late Yelchin are fine but again Cho does not exude Sulu to me and Simon Pegg is an unconvincing Scottish Simon Pegg. I tend to love Pegg’s work but sadly not as Scotty and I felt he was a bit self-indulgent with his scripting – certain moments could have fallen to others in the ensemble rather than yet more Scotty screen time.

Jaylah is a welcome presence but the villains fall flat and sadly repeat Into Darkness’s in disguise routine.

I was disappointed by how much the trailers showed of the film and I’d avoided the final trailer – the film played out pretty much as I expected with only one surprise which I didn’t like anyway.

The IMAX 3D presentation was the smoothest I’ve seen so far but a bit too much tilting resulted in dizziness in a few scenes.

The soundtrack was better than Into Darkness’s but still not as distinctive as Giacchino’s first Star Trek offering.

I liked the various Trek references which somewhat surprisingly but appropriately and fittingly were Star Trek: Enterprise-heavy.

All in all, it was OK. The action sequences worked well but the rest felt underpowered. 3.5/5 stars.

Krall’s theme was very similar to a recurring theme in Giacchino’s Cloverfield ‘Roar’ theme. I liked it. Better than the forgettable into Darkness original parts.

Giacchino’s score had A LOT to do this time around. Many, many brief musical references to TOS, Horner’s scores, Goldsmith’s, &c. But it was very touching at the end.

Huge fan of Cho’s Sulu. A more interesting character than Takei’s.

Yes, I prefer John Cho’s Sulu. Always have.

Just got in from seeing the movie! Enjoyed this one so much more than “Into Darkness”! The call backs to the original series were heartfelt and didn’t feel tacked on just for the sake of fan service. I don’t care much for the series “enterprise” but it was really enjoyable to see that series referenced so much. The way Nimoy’s death was handled was superb. The original cast photo got to me more than I want to admit in this post…my wife sitting next to me can attest to that, haha! Just an enjoyable and well written Trek movie. One small gripe, I could have gone for more of a “refit” look for the Enterprise-A. Well done to all involved in this movie! Star Trek feels like Classic Trek again!

I don’t feel like I really got a clear look at the Enterprise-A … will have to study on it more in my next viewing.

Has anyone found a good screenshot of the Enterprise-A? I remember liking that the nacelle’s were wider apart… that’s all I remember…it looked similar to what we had before.

Finally a Star Trek movie! Folks go see it…

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie with all of the references to Star Trek of the past. There are some issues I have with the movie including the USS Franklin but all in all, I think it’s a really great movie.

I found it interesting at the end of the movie that they did not show any internal shots of the Enterprise A. I feel that it is likely due to the creative personnel wanting to keep that area of the ship open to an update, if they decide to do that.

I’m excited for the fourth Kelvin Timeline Star Trek. Hopefully since they’ve already announced it, they will be able to have another one ready for us in 3 years instead of the longer 4 year gap we had from ST09 to STID.

Bud, I’m excited too. But wow, wouldn’t it be super-nice if we could see it in two years instead of three …!

@ Marja: If they really have writers and a basic story idea already 2 years shouldn’t be a problem.

With it already being announced that Chris Hemsworth will be reprising his role as George Kirk in the next film, can’t help but wonder if William Shatner will also make his long awaited cameo-return to Trek. I have a feeling time travel will be VERY prevalent in the next film.

I think it’s a great Star Trek movie. I loved the Enterprise nods. And it really was a character driven movie. Spock’s photo, and the cut to Chekov at the toast “to absent friends”, oh God, they were so touching and moving. I cried. I actually loved the ‘save the day with “classic” music’ thing. It was very TOS. Remember when Kirk and Spock found a crystal and a piece of metal and magically made a phaser to fight Nazi aliens? Crazy, not always believable solutions to equally contrived problems were common on TOS. We all wanted something true to the original series, did we not? The only problem I have is Scotty’s “Warp 4” comment. I’m just choosing to believe that Scotty wasn’t remembering correctly and misspoke. All in all it’s a wonderful movie for the 50th, and I’m going to go see it again tomorrow, and Saturday, and possibly Sunday.

Second Gen Trekkie,

They didn’t just “find” a crystal. McCoy had injected one each under Spock and KIrk’s skin as a transporter ID chip, much as we now do for pets. Something, he came up with after they couldn’t retrieve Kirk via transporter from the 1960’s Air Force Base in TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY when the authorities parted him from his communicator.

Spock formulated that if they sacrificed their ID chip crystals, that he could form a crude put powerful enough laser using the two, that they would have to remove from under their skin, and the incandescent bulb in their cell which most early crude ones were rich in infrared light, which is why they are so energy inefficient as a source of visible light, and melt open their jail cell’s lock.

It is important to realize they weren’t just two grains of salt Spock retrieved from their meals but etched and polished functioning technology that Spock re-purposed. He wasn’t doing the GILLIGAN’S ISLAND trick of the professor making a laser gun from coconuts.

I’ll admit that I didn’t take the time to look it up, and my memory of TOS isn’t as good as my memory of TNG DS9 and VOY. However there are plenty of times that ridiculous solutions are used, especially in TOS. Once they reversed time by reversing the direction of their orbit around a planet. I’m sorry I used a bad example, but the overarching point I was making is still valid.

Second Gen Trekkie,

Re:Once they reversed time by reversing the direction of their orbit around a planet

That wasn’t from the first Trek series but Reeve’s SUPERMAN movie.

I’m not saying there aren’t wobbly science moments but your inability to accurately cite one off-hand definitely calls into question your estimation of their plenitude.

I’m not thinking of Superman. They did it also.

Second Gen Trekkie

Name the epiosde. The first series never did a planet orbit time travel.

Episodes that touched on time travel:

THE NAKED TIME (Warp engine cold start)
TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY (Probably the one you are misremembering but this was the one that established a black star first threw them back then Spock figured out how to use what he learned from that to slingshot around Sol to first go back and undo all the changes they made in the 1960s US Air Force then go forward to their time.)
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR (alien timeship)
CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER (Guardian)
ASSIGNMENT: EARTH (slingshot Sol again)
WINK OF AN EYE (Skalosian water)
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS (alien time machine “library”)

Orbit reversal is used in TOS’s “MIRROR, MIRROR” as an effect to denote the mirror universe. No time travel involved.

And I loved Chekov explaining that Scotch was first made by a little old lady in Russia ;-)

Marja – Oh yes. LOL!

Actually I was laughing at various bits when nobody else was. Very stoic lot the local theatre goers here or perhaps they didn’t get stuff?

Bones became a barman/doctor in this film. I always thought that Saurian brandy was legal and that it was Romulan Ale that was illegal. Who knew that Chekov liked Scotch? LOL

I went in feeling that, if they screw this one up, the main issue will be that the franchise’s 50th anniversary is ignored. Not only did was it the best Trek film since ST:FC, the tribute was unexpectedly in-your-face and brought tears to my eyes in a flash. They’re all there in that tacky little photo, and it was a deciding moment for Quinto’s Spock as to where his first, best destiny lies.

I want to get closer look at the new Enterprise, too, for sure.

I don’t understand why these directors think they need to move at such ridiculous high speeds and give so much screen time to action scenes. I thought the movie was great but it was hard to follow at points and didn’t give you time to think or feel. 09 and ID both had much more depth. This isn’t because Beyond spent so much time on frenetic action. A good example of what makes me mad– they discover video of the Franklin crew and Kirk walks away with little interest because he sees a motorcycle.

I think the idea of the movie, the writing, and acting were all great, it was just the execution– too fast, too furious. But at least no lens flares.

*is because Beyond spent so much time on frenetic action.

What was Kirk supposed to do? He noted the video, but unfortunately the crew were (apparently) all dead. However, the motorcycle was there, real and intact. But would it work? Yes, it seems that it did and fantastically so!

Plus Kirk said his dad had a similar bike, so there was an emotional connection

Lt Dan,

Re:Dad’s Bike

Not to mention an inside joke if you recall Pine’s dad rode cycles on CHiPS.

That was definitely a plot error. I think at least twice, characters referred to the Franklin crew as “long dead”. Let’s see, you are attacked by what appears to be an alien species on an alien world. You find that other species have been captured alive. You find a Federation ship that is intact and you dont care to go through the logs for clues as to what happened, who the alien’s are, what their motivations are etc?

No thought that sure, the crew should be dead but it doesnt mean their decendants wouldnt be alive. They had to assume Kral was indiginous to that planet and since the Franklin crew survived, they would have had some interaction.

Kirk wondering off and being more interested in dirt biking was another example of what a lame Captain he is in this time line.

Well I think we know the obvious issue behind Kirk’s disinterest and if they focused on it it too long we wouldve caught on what really happened. But yeah I have to agree. I mean they are stuck on this crazy planet and find a century old ship you would think they would be a bit curious of what happened to the occupants.

BUUUUUT, that said they would have if they weren’t trying to plan a rescue mission which was urgent. Maybe the better idea wouldve just been better to discover the video later?

The occupants who would have died 100 years before?

Cried so much in Beyond. What an homage to Nimoy/Spock

Just saw the film and absolutely loved it. Truly reminded me of what ” Star Trek ” meant and felt like a original series episode for sure!

To the Star Trek V: The Final Frontier cast photo I did as well have a tear looking at Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly, Takei, Koenig, Doohan and Nichols. Will always love them for the memories they have brought us.

Thought the Krall character was very interesting being tied to Captain of the Frankin back in the 22bd century after the Federation was formed. Loved the discussion he told Kirk of him being a MACO, fighting against the Xindi and Romulan/Earth War but feeling betrayed by the federation for throwing Captain at him and realizing that the Federation were not going to save him.

As to the Enterprise NCC-1701-A damn glad to finally see her after 26 years since ST:VI. I believe the vessel being built inside the station Yorktown was a ” modified ” Constitution Class REFIT ship going to be named USS Yorktown but since the actions of Captain Kirk and Crew ( felt like ST:IV saving earth ) Starfleet decided to honor the late Enterprise with keeping the 1701 by putting a ” suffix ” Alpha next to the registry number. I’m really interested to see the inside of the Enterprise-A to see what her bridge looks like, new systems, def is a bigger ship and hopefully a new captains chair.

I can’t wait to see Beyond again! 😁🖖🏻

Funny, 47 comments before mine…

I saw a 7pm show on Thursday night, and for a young TOS-loving man who grew up in the Berman era Trek, and one who loved Enterprise in its first run in high school, this is the Star Trek film I’ve been waiting for. ST09 paved the way, STID stumbled while carrying the baton, and this film went beyond. It pays so much love and respect to TOS, as well as validating ENT, that my gripes about the film are so minor, the shear fun of the film makes up for it.

Now, I wanna see some art of that new A…

my thoughts exactly

I thought this was an incredibly strong outing. First movie since “Insurrection” that didn’t have any scenes on Earth. I was initially surprised that the movie starts with Kirk being bored of his five-year mission, and that they acknowledged Nimoy’s death on screen through the passing of ambassador Spock. But, obviously they needed to do both of those in order to have their respective payoffs at the end. Having the cast photo from Star Trek VI in the box is completely illogical-Spock brought a photo album with him on the jellyfish starship, as he was trying to save the Romulan home world? – and yet it’s the highlight of the movie.
I think McCoy had more screen time in this one than the previous two films combined. The McCoy and Spock interaction was likely the best character dialogue we’ve seen since Star Trek IV. And the sound effects were as joyful as pure ice cream -I loved every swoosh, every beep, every computer ping, and every one of the old-style transporter hums.
Doctor Who gave us a completely enjoyable 50th anniversary movie event three years ago. So pleased to see that now Star Trek has done the same.

I was mildly bugged by:

How would Krall not know where the Franklin is – although maybe he didn’t remember/care anymore, and the traps etc. were for the others on the planet.

Why/How did Kirk and Chekov’s pods have rank-specific/size-specific field uniforms for them (although there could be a spacey technology answer). They’re the only two that landed with intact pods and without being captured.

Okay Jack,
The traps were set by Jaylah

Krall probably doesn’t care because the ship failed to support the lives of his crew and very nearly himself. It’s old tech. The new race he meets has advanced tech with swarm ships. Why go back to the old? How was he to know that a crew from a much more recent technology would be able to refurbish that “piece of junk”?

The spacey technology answer to the Kirk and Chekov pods is that they could probably enter their names/numbers and get a uniform from a replicator within the pod. Cold weather uniform for a snow planet, warm weather uniform, temperate, &c.

As for Spock, there was no replicator on the Franklin, so he had to don one of the uniforms he could find to replace his blood-stained duds.

I’ll tell ya though, the number of different uniforms was baffling, particularly the very ugly dress uniforms Kirk and the Admiral were wearing. I liked the cute little jackets though :-)
And I especially liked that the women’s uniforms had rank insignia. Thank you, film makers, for listening to fans!

Ha. I know Jaylah set them – what I meant was, who was she trying to keep away – others on the planet/Krall’s evil henchman? If Krall’s had forgotten/whatever about the ship, then that makes sense.

Yes, I know. The uniforms that Kirk and the Yorktown Admiral were ugly. (I believe that Chris Pine said that one of the costumes was tight and uncomfortable. It is hard to believe that it would not have been this one).

They only need three – one being a stylish dress uniform; one for normal day wear and the other for exploring planets etc. The jacket and pants looked very practical and so cool!

The each took their own pod, prob labelled for the command crew? Krall maybe knew where it was but didn’t care or know anyone was living in it?

Kirk and Chekov were amongst the last to eject. Kirk ejected when the saucer was already deep in the atmosphere, the atmospheric friction causing the swarm ships to explode.

I think it’s this that save them from being captured.

Just because Spock had a physical photo of the crew, doesn’t mean he carried it from the Prime Universe around in that form. Logically a very small memory could carry many. Maybe one day we’ll really have something like that… no wait.. we already do..

Hee! Excellent point Old Fed!

OldFed,

Re:a very small memory could carry many

Good point. Not to mention PT Spock appeared to have mastered some art forms. Can you imagine pointillism renderings at the hands of such a Vulcan?

About the ambassador Spock thing, isn’t it weird how no one seems to mention its actually young Spock’s older self? They talk about him like he’s Spock’s dad or mentor but that IS suppose to be Spock lol. As O’Brien use to say: “I hate temporal mechanics.”

It’s a bubble universe theory, I think, which means it’s Spock from another bubble …

I’m like O’Brien thar.

I thought that too. Unless you watched 09, you really have no idea that the heck is going on with the old Spock thing. I figured, since they were talking about death, a perfect time for Bones to mention Spock facing his own mortality since, in fact, its HIM that just died…although a future version of himself.

Not to mention, if everyone knows that Spock Prime is Spock Prime, how is he not the most hunted man in the galaxy? Every race would be wanting to interrogate him, including the Federation. I sure hope AlSpock is already working on preventing the star from exploding years down the line, not to mention working on getting some wales (whoops, since you cant return to your time, then we can assume THIS Kelvin Timeline earth is destroyed when the probe comes calling).

TUP,

Re:Kelvin Timeline earth is destroyed when the probe comes calling

Hard to say. Their tech has advanced so maybe its not that big a deal now? And there’s always the chance PT Spock taught KT Kirk how to speak humpback whale in the meld? I mean surely Gillian’s made some advance in that over his PT years?

re: “Unless you watched 09, you really have no idea that the heck is going on with the old Spock thing. ” True. Same with the scene in “Into Darkness.”

John, eh?
Having the cast photo from Star Trek VI in the box is completely illogical-Spock brought a photo album with him on the jellyfish starship, as he was trying to save the Romulan home world?
That was probably a box he never traveled without. His 125+ years in a little box … how Vulcan [honoring tradition], how simple, a way to keep his memories.

One thing I found interesting was the cloth item with the Vulcan inscriptions on it. That alphabet was designed by a fan artist :-)

One nod I would have loved is if the ancient weapon Krall was after was Iconian in origin. Would have loved that reference because it still would not have explained the Iconians, more mystery. Granted it was never really established in the prime universe if the Iconians were peaceful or conquerors. Still I think it would have been great.

in no particular order, my thoughts, likes and dislikes, except for the first thing.. i liked it the most. the photo of the TOS cast in spock’s belongings. made my eyes moist. irregardless of how spock prime had the picture, i’m glad it was there in the movie. so many possibilities from that for the future of the jj-series.(possible future easter egg reference like the spock prime mindmeld with kirk in ’09, and the fact bones told kirk his bio scans were off in STID).

this movie was better than STID. i still like khan, first contact, undiscovered country, and voyage home more.

this movie is almost a reworking of guardians of the galaxy, though. bad guy hunting for/going to unleash a weird smoke weapon at a place where a lot of people are at, hero ship crashes there trying to save it, good guys being captives.

i liked when scotty cracked his fingers to see what he could do on the yorktown’s computers–throwback to the voyage home, when he was typing in the composition for transparent aluminum.

i liked the first bit of the movie, just wish the cgi was a little better on the creatures.

when mccoy is scanning kirk after that, the tv spots and trailers showed kirk saying “going to the bar for a drink”–i liked that line/expression more than the one they used in the film.

the story/plot was okay. a little more krall/eddison backstory would’ve been great. but that’s something these jj movies have lacked, more backstory for the bad guy. also, what exactly was the device/what did it do other than killing them, did it eat at their oganic matter? something i’ll have to see again and pay attention to, i think.

the spock/bones horses**t banter was funny. also, spock having emotions/crying/laughing i was okay with, but it should’ve been noted on screen more than it was that it was odd for him.

it seemed like just about every scene was missing a scene before it. kirk and chekov are a mile away from the saucer in the daylight, and all of a sudden it’s night and they get there? sulu and uhura are captured, and all of a sudden are on the planet, then they break free? scotty is hanging on the edge of the cliff, and all of a sudden he’s exploring? stuff like that could’ve used a couple more transitional scenes. not jumping from step 1 to step 3 would’ve helped the pacing of the movie. i’m not saying slow it down to TMP levels, but they’re literally jumping steps and saying stuff too fast to realize what’s going on.

i’m okay with the sciencey part of how the crew busted up the franklin(soundwaves), just that whole part should’ve been slowed down in the movie. i knew from the first trailer that kirk was reacting to the beastie boys song being played so that’s not an issue. would’ve been a nice callback to first contact if they played ‘magic carpet ride’ at somepoint.

i liked the ‘found footage’ of eddison/krall, but would’ve liked that bit to have been longer–didn’t it show ships coming to pick up the crew? they were all wearing ENT era uniforms.

i didn’t pay too much attention the the enterprise-a, but i knew(and just about everyone else) that it would happen, like the khan reveal in STID.

i liked all the different aliens, but would’ve enjoyed seeing some familiar aliens–bajorans, andorians, klingons, etc.

i liked the references scotty made to the green hand and romulans, as well as the green hand in the credits.

i didn’t like the ‘warp 4’ comment, but that can be ignored.. to me that’s a mistake like delta vega, transwarp beaming, and stardates being wrong.

i would’ve enjoyed seeing what happened to the other parts of the enterprise. are the nacelles still in space? the stardrive section? the little neck part below of the saucer that uhura and krall were on?

exactly how many survivors were there? the franklin is a small ship, were there only 60ish? beaming 20 at a time would’ve taking a while if that ship had around 500, and most survived the attack and crash.

krall’s base was big, but where were all his soldiers? 40,000 guys had to eat or sleep somewhere in between kamikazing.

would’ve liked to see a flashback or something to jaylah’s childhood or how she got to be on the planet.

and finally, i think if there are characters on the screen not speaking english, they should have subtitles, regardless of movie/tv show. jaylah talking to the 2 guys when she saved scotty.. what did she say?

Punctuation and capital letters matter if you want people to actually read your posts.

TrekFan,

What? No e e cummings fans allowed in STAR TREK fandom?

What’s next? Banning discussions of Shakespeare’s importance to STAR TREK because the Bard couldn’t spell?

First viewing left me wanting more. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first two. It didn’t seem as polished as the first two films. The characters seemed more like caricatures of their respective roles this time. The writers were trying too hard, hitting the characters, especially McCoy, with all the broad strokes…and I do mean all. Less is more guys…you went way overboard with McCoy. The characters seem to be more of the actors own creations in the first two films. This time they seem to trying too hard to copy the originals. I really missed the opening title sequence, previously appearing after the opening teaser, that said “Star Trek”. Missed the “punch it” effect of the ship exploding off into warp speed. I thought the music, like the makeup design, wasn’t very inspired. No new real memorable cues, just rehashes of prior work. A lot of the interior sets were too “busy” making it a bit harder to follow the close-up action and the villain wasn’t very good. I thought the director had a good eye and I liked how he kept the camera moving with interesting angles and composition and hats off to the costume designer who delivered a handful of fun and good looking original designs. Anyway…those were first impressions. I look forward to seeing it again, in 3D this time, to see if I can enjoy it a bit more after getting my little nit-picks out of the way.lol

Yeah, it reminded me of the later TOS films.

@ Jonboc: Just got back from my 2nd viewing. I liked the movie after the first viewing even though I’m well aware of the thin plot, the clicheed villain etc. After the 2nd viewing I can say that the good stuff, the humour and the character interactions, definitely outweigh the weak points of the movie for me.

My only complaint, and it is a tiny one, is that you see Uhuru with Krall and then the next time you see her she is with other crew members including Sulu, and it felt like a transition or re-introduction of friends scene was missing.

I loved it. OMG, I loved it. I say this having been “meh” about the 09 movie and utterly and completely hating Into Darkness. I went into this movie thinking, “Ok, I’ve read spoilers, so we’ll see.” The destruction of the Enterprise was surprisingly emotional for me. This finally *felt* like a Star Trek movie–to me, this is up there with WoK and TUC. Well done, Scotty!

Ale’ing frequencies open!

Here’s my own creation! Just a fun geeked up spot; no spoilers! Man… if it were only that easy to beam in a drink! Hey, scientists… get workin’ on it!🖖🏼

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_EsK4SBTLA4

I was bored through most of the movie. Krall’s motivation for hating the Federation was a joke. I chuckled a couple of times at the Spock/McCoy banter. Also, near the end, when Kirk confronts Krall in the air chamber, it was so stupid that Kirk would pick that moment to debate philosophical issues with him. The original Kirk would have phasered Krall unconscious and then discussed things with him when he woke up in the brig. Instead, we get the cheap ploy of it allowing Krall the opportunity to overpower Kirk. Yawn.

I give Star Trek Beyond a 6 out of 10, and that’s being generous. The actors are great, but the writing remains weak. I will never watch this movie again. It wasn’t engaging the first time, so what would be the point?

Did you cry, Harry? C’mon, admit you cried when you saw the old photo! ;-)

AJ, I admit a glimmer of nostalgia washed over me when they showed the photo of the original crew, but then when I saw how thick the dead rat on top of Shatner’s head was, I snapped out of it.

@Harry, too bad you’re not seeing it again. I could swear there was a bald joke in there somewhere

The bald joke is when Bones says to Kirk, “at least we have a full head of hair”

I was disappointed by the Krall stuff, especially after Pegg had talked about deconstructing the idea of the federation and expansion – I thought it would be a species that had somehow been damaged by Federation intervention.

I give it a 7.5. Didn’t think I’d see it again, but was given another ticket and actually enjoyed it more the seocnd time.

Thats true, I thought the story would be about imperalization or how the Federation involvement effected a planet negatively even if by accident. Instead its about a Starfleet officer who is just pissed they didn’t rescue him in time. I liked the backstory but the way they were talking about it, it sounded like something very different.

Tiger, I don’t think Edison was “just pissed,” I think he had gone slowly insane. But I agree about your initial impression that it’d be about Federation expansion, and that Krall disputed his planet’s decision to enter, or an accidental Starfleet intervention, or something. Bit of a head-scratcher.

Maybe they just wanted to give the audience a good look at Mr. Elba. [I didn’t mind that at all!]

Yeah fair point. I shouldnt have said he was simply angry and he was going crazy after being stuck there so long, ala Khan! As I said I did like it but they couldve cleaned up his back story a bit better. It seems like the only issues people have in terms of story is his changes and connection to the planet and the Franklin. Everything else was pretty solid for the most part.

His hatred of the Federation stems from the fact that its very establishment took away his very identity. He was a soldier, not an explorer.

Exactly. That’s what I thought was going to happen as well, and I think that’s really a missed opportunity. That would have been a much more solid plot, villain, and character motivation but I feel that got sacrificed for a ‘big reveal’ which was so contrived and poorly explained. Should have been more of a moral issue with expansion, especially with the presence of Yorktown, and the sovereignty of Krall’s people, which would have created a more sympathetic and multi-dimensional ‘villain’. What we got really was very different from how it was explained. I heard they originally had enough for almost two movies, so I think a lot of important stuff got cut. Should have traded some of that with the constant action, because that’s all the movie really was; action sequences threaded along by a thin plot. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the movie, but it needed a lot more work…

Me too. At least a species that felt they had being wronged by a Federation deal or treaty would have made Krall a stronger antagonist.

Someone who felt he was doing the right thing for his people, ie, for the good of the many, Krall would lead the fight.

@photon, I had thought that was going to be the plot, or central to the plot anyway, based on Krall’s saying “this is where the frontier pushes back”. I think that might’ve been better, a feeling by a culture that they had been overtaken by Federation ideals rather than being able to maintain their cultural identity.

But hmmmm, then the audiences with whom he is so popular [including me] would never have got to see Idris Elba without all that makeup!

And the message [though I’m sure some will think it’s heavy-handed] about dealing with the aftermath of wars and their effect on the warriors was a valid one IMHO.

Agreed for the most part Harry. I liked it more than you but maybe because I’m assuming it will be full of nonsense. My buddy said “I went in with very low expectations and the movie met them. So there”. That was his way of saying it wasnt terrible but not good.

So go watch your Betamax copies of TOS then. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

And now we have an Alternate Reality version of the Enterprise A, not looking forward into seeing an Alternate Reality version of the Enterprise D and Enterprise E

The Alternate Reality version of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A should have been called USS Enterprise NCC-1702 and then commonly refer it as Enterprise 2. We’ve already created the Alternate Reality version of the Enterprise, why created an Alternate Reality version of the Enterprise A😒

Jim H, I suspect NCC-1702 is a registry number already belonging to a sister Constitution class starship.

The next available registry number would probably be something like 1821, not 1702.

My review for Georgia Straight:After putting together a new cast for Roddenberry’s iconic bridge ensemble, and taking them through two prequel adventures, JJ Abrams has handed off the directing reigns to Justin Lin, fresh from the Fast and Furious franchise. Despite angst from some of the Trekmovie faithful who felt that Trek was already getting too colourful and blockbustery, Lin was an obvious choice, having amply demonstrated his ability to blend playful spectacle with a sense of bonding among a chosen family.

This camaraderie is both the subject and subtext of Star Trek Beyond, which finally takes the new cast away from Earth-centered peril into the heart of their five year mission.

At the outset, Kirk (Chris Pine) finds himself wondering about the purpose of their deep space shenanigans. Strange new worlds are losing their appeal. He frets about having outlived his dad. If only he had a worthy adversary, someone who could truly imperil and therefore confirm his attachment to the Federation and his mission…

It’s a shame to hire Idris Elba for the antagonist role and then bury him under a reptile mask, but his Krall does convey real peril. Since the trailer has given it away, it is not a massive spoiler [warning: massive spoiler] to mention that the Enterprise crew finds itself wrecked on an uncharted planet in deep space, with nothing to save them but raw intelligence, witty banter, and a convenient new friend, the alien scavenger girl Jaylah (Sofia Boutella, spunky).

I have qualms about the movie, including pointless 3D and arguably the most absurd Trek action sequence since the Uhura fandance in The Final Frontier, if not the Melkotian re-enactment of the OK Corral. But Trek is inherently goofy, and that’s not a detriment. At its best, Trek is a story about people who know, and appreciate, that they are the greatest crew in the fleet. That’s what I felt as a kid watching a black and white TV, and for significant stretches of this movie, felt again. It’s not Beyond. It’s Back.

Just got back from the movie. I’m a HUGE TOS fan, and I like TNG and ENT as well. I hate to say it was a big let down. Up until the point where the Enterprise was destroyed was good, and the last 15 minutes with Elba were fine. But the rest just seemed rushed. John Cho’s lines were especially bad – there was really no point in him or Saldana to be in the movie at all.

Very frustrating movie to be honest. They should’ve spent far more time on Elba’s backstory. Quinto, Pine, Cho, and Pegg were all underwhelming. Urban was great as always, but didn’t have much to work with. The Beastie Boys segment (as much I love them) was possibly the most cringe inducing moment I’ve seen on film.

It all just seemed so rushed. The first thing I thought after it was over was that it’s clear why Star Trek is a television show, not a movie franchise. They just wasted the Krall character, I wanted to sympathize with him at the end but was given no time to do so. The idea of a military hero whose time has passed him by is something I would’ve liked to see more of, but I suppose Kirk vroom vrooming around on his motorcycle was more important.

I’m honestly not sure if I’ll go see the next ST movie in the theater. I think it’s just passed my by. At least I’ve got Netflix to watch the oldies, and I’m good with that. I hope other folks enjoy the movie more than I did.

There was a good movie in there somewhere. That’s what bothers me the most.

Also, I went to a 7:40 showing in my town, and there were 8 people in the theater.

Well you got a brand new show coming as well so maybe that will make you happy. :)

And sorry you didnt like Beyond. I was expecting to hate it but I did really like it. But I can’t disagree with your points, I can see your argument clearly and agree on Krall. But it is all subjective and I didnt have problems with most of that. It was mostly Krall I was disappointed in and yes the Bestie Boys music bit felt a bit stupid to me too but its better than magic blood. All in all I liked it but you clearly didn’t. Hopefully you will like the new show and yes we do have have all those past stories to watch over and over again. In fact I been watching quite a bit of them this past week myself.

The fight music seemed to have a 60s feel. Giacchino has good ear for those sound cues.

The swarm radio weakness made no sense, did listening to the Beasties make them explode? I was puzzled though willing to go along with it for the laughs.

If Krall is a stranded Federation officer without the resources to fix his ship and get away, where did he get the tech to build the bee swarm? why did he misplace his own ship to Jaylah?

What was in Roberto Orci’s script???

Saw this with the marathon. Into Darkness has some good FX bits but on this go round I felt that Cumberbatch was OH VER EE NUN CEE AY TING hammily and that Kirk was just making terrible decisions and being a heel, which is not what I want out of Trek.

Want Chris Chapel back in Trek to provide some tension but then again, maybe to subvert the trope – would be nice to have a Trek that passed the Bechdel test

It disrupted the signal that was guiding them all and blew them up — again, doesn’t make loads of sense.

Actually, it made sense to me.
It wasn’t sound waves that did the swarm in, it was the fact that Kirk and Co jammed the radio frequency that the swarm ships were using to coordinate their movements. To jam a broadcast signal, you broadcast something else at that frequency at a higher amplitude – picking Sabotage was a little silly, they could have used pink noise, but that wouldn’t have allowed for the exchange between McCoy and Spock:
MCCOY: Is that classical music
SPOCK: I believe it is
That got a lot of laughs in the theater.
The loss of the coordinating signal caused the swarm ships (which were piloted by robots of some kind I think I remember them saying) caused the tightly packed ships to start colliding with each other. That bothered me less than contemplating the amount of time the crew would all have to wait at Starbase Yorktown waiting for the Ent-A to finish construction.

Still, I think it was the best of the Kelvin-timeline aka reboot movies. In light of the strength of this one, I’m surprised they didn’t ask Pegg and Jung to script the next one.

Jack,
It worked for me :-)

Yes, the Sabotage song worked for me. It was the frequency they used that disrupted the swarm. They could have used any song. As Kirk said, “Good choice”, especially given what playing the SABOTAGE song at that frequency was meant to do.

Actually someone else pointed this out further up the message board. I agree!

@Marja Yeah, it worked for me too – and it made more sense than other Trek solutions over the years.

It just like Kirk talking computers to death in a way!

@ Kenji – re: “What was in Orci’s script?” George Kirk, I assume…

re: the gambit underlying the Beastie Boys was the same one that put the Borg “to sleep” at the end of The Best of Both Worlds… with 1000% better underscore. :)

Kenji,

Re:why did he misplace his own ship to Jaylah?

He lost it to her in the divorce? ;-)

@ Kenji: It is said in the movie that the mines and the worker bees already existed on the planet when he got there. As for why he apparently forgot about his own ship: It seems like he wrote it off as unsalvagable after getting stranded aon the planet (and he wasn’t a big fan of being turned into a ship’s captain even before that). Instead, he took control of the mines and the bees and the life-force draining machine. Since he spent about 100 years on that planet it’s possible that he forgot about his old ship (that he never cared about) at some point. It’s also possible that the machine that allowed him to live that long affected more than just his appearance.

I have always been bothered by the way Chapel was treated in this BR timeline. She would have just been a great addition as part of the crew!

Overly fast and furious could have played the really good bits a little longer.

I liked Jayla’s character and the idea of splitting cast up. Without doubt best bit was Quninto-Urban banter. Glad Nyota got some really good scenes.

The points of loss were well integrated and I am glad that they used a picture of the entire original series crew rather than the unused Kirk hollogram concept. Given Shatner’s regrets after Nimoy’s demise it would have been disingenuous for that concept to be used and this approach echoed the idea that in the Reboot universe it’s about the entire crew not one person. In terms of reflecting Spock’s crisis of direction ZQ reflected so much of the way a life well lived (Nimoy’s) affected him personally and how that affected him. It made for a genuine performance. For old school Trekkies there were some good connectors the idea of Spock laughing reminded me of , “Humans smile with so little provocation.,’ and Bones reaction assuming he was deletions was trek humour at its best. Definitely the best of the three movies.

What was well done was the delay to the revelation of motivations of Krall. In the light of the number of attacks on authority by ex military Personel it is a stark warning as to societal attitudes to sacrifice poorly thought out politics and abandonment of those who protect that such we take for granted. ‘the future implications of this attitude are starkly portrayed in true Trek fashion. Of course the Crew save the day but that wasn’t the point of the TOS episodes it was to get us to think beyond.

Well said, Rufus! I, too, was excited to see Uhura’s action [Starfleet fighting techniques!] and courage — she wasn’t afraid to challenge Krall. And Spock’s crisis of direction ZQ reflected so much of the way a life well lived (Nimoy’s) affected him personally and how that affected him. Yes!!

Also your a stark warning as to societal attitudes to sacrifice poorly thought out politics and abandonment of those who protect that such we take for granted.

Indeed. This is probably one of the most heart-breaking things the U.S. has done in the last 20 years. Well, hell, in the last half century, maybe more. Paying lip service to “our honored troops,” while abandoning them with illnesses [Gulf War Syndrome, Agent Orange-related illness], terrible injuries, TBI, and PTSD. So I could certainly understand Edison’s bitterness at being abandoned [as he saw it] by the Federation. Would have liked some mention that Starfleet searched for Franklin for many years … maybe I’ll hear it on re-watch.

Yes, what does it become of soldiers who have spent the best part of their lives in combat mode when their particular skills are no longer needed and are deemed anti-social? Some adapt but others don’t for various reasons. What to do?

Good movie way better than STID which I did not care much for. But why on earth did some of the beautiful VFX have to have such awkward pacing & editing. It seemed like they were trying to keep the running time down so sped a few FX shots up. I would like Justin to go back & slow a few shots of the movie down a little in a directors cut. The ending especially of the Enterprise being constructed went by way too fast at first it seemed like a projector glitch then smash cut into warp drive all within the blink of an eye. Pacing was just too frantic in that key last scene it should have been slowed down to perhaps treble the length & look slow & graceful so you could admire the new ship & new warp FX.

Apart from that its a very solid movie & almost but not quite as good as ST09. I would not mind if Justin came back as director again either he did a good job & the entire movie was done from Jan2015-July 2016 so well done to Simon Pegg & Doug Jung for pulling this more than passable story effort together.

When the saucer crushed the alien women it got an almighty cheer in my theatre she was not a likeable character at all!

Music was a bit of a let down though seemed rushed & hurried like time ran out so this was the best they could do in the 2 months or so they had.

@Paul, I suuuure would like to see a 2-1/2 hour Trek movie. Or even a 2:15 movie. At two hours, it seems like they cram in, and throw, information at you at warp speed.

I liked this film better than 2009, I think, mainly because we didn’t have all that nonsense about Kirk having to hurry up and be captain by the end of the movie. Nor did we have Nero or a black hole or red matter ….

Not impressed. As a fan of all of the series, and most of the movies, I was disappointed. The movie started out promising. The 3D was impressive, and the story line indeed had that “Star Trek feel” to it, at first. As the plot moved along, downhill, I felt like it was too rushed, contained too many innacuracies, and became a disorienting mess. I was not a fan of the use of the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage as a “weapon” in the vacuum of space…huh? (I think that’s where I began looking for a freezer to crawl into.) There was also, in my opinion, a lot of lazy writing. I know that they have to make Star Trek appeal to the masses, and not just to the fans, but you can’t keep trying to dumb down the story to its least common denominators.

To me, this was kind of a weak and cheesy, anticlimactic solution — like plain old water killing the aliens in SIGNS.

Other productions have handled something similar with much more realistic approach. SG1 had a similar problem where they were able to defeat the high tech machines with relatively antiquated technology — i.e. bullets vs. ray guns, because the high tech creatures weren’t interested in anything less advanced than they were. I suppose the Borg operated that way to some extent too. In the end, I would have rather seen some old-school tech on the Franklin that would defeat the drones which did not occur to Scotty and the new tech generation — instead of music (however old-school).

True, it’s in keeping with the often cheesy TOS solutions to problems, but still I would have preferred something a little less campy — not to mention seemingly derivative of GOTG.

Um… Why wouldn’t radio waves work in space? The music was basically talking the drone computers to death.

CaptainSheridan,

They “work” in space but as the spine of a nervous system of the swarm their speed of light limitation over the distances involved makes it untenable. We experience delays even using geostationary orbiting satellites for communication. Imagine how well your heart could function if it had to wait for such a delay to get its next signal to beat?

The swarm ships were mostly flying in very close formation so the delay because of light speed shouldn’t be a problem.

DIGINON,

But Krall was controlling them and I didn’t get the impression he stayed with the swarm through all their maneuvers?

Isn’t that why they had to fly really close to the swarm? Plus they were not traveling at FTL in that scene anyways.

CaptainSheridan,

Re:FTL

FTL travel has little to do with it, it’s the distances in space being traversed regardless that has to deal with speed of light limitations. It’s the reason we can’t drone control the robots on Mars directly by human hands on Earth.

The problem as I see it is the drones were designed to function and function well in the service of mining on an orb’s surface, light speed limited communications serve well there. But you take that same tech and have it go into space organizing and functioning as an interstellar spaceship, hiding in nebulae, etc. and the speed of light limitations have to be addressed somehow with each fantastical maneuver over those distances. Recall also, the Enterprise’s saucer section, all by itself, can travel at near light speeds on impulse alone. Because of the light speed limitations of the Swarm’s communication backbone, their organization would have fallen apart if they tried to pursue Kirk’s saucer going at 90% of light speed.

“FTL travel has little to do with it, it’s the distances in space being traversed regardless that has to deal with speed of light limitations. It’s the reason we can’t drone control the robots on Mars directly by human hands on Earth.” – Disinvited

But there were never distances significant enough where the speed of light delay would have any impact. The swarm was tightly packed, communication would have been virtually instantaneous. Only when they were separated by thousands of miles would there be any appreciable delay.

nscates,

Look, because of the Swarm’s communication VHF backbone they can’t traverse space at a siginficant percentage of the speed of light and stay coordinated as a swarm as that would disrupt it. The Enterprise’s long and short range scans work at what is effectively faster than light. The Swarm shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on the E because of they have to do it at sub-light speeds to remain coordinated but that restriction means the E should see them coming long before they could surprise Kirk and crew. Something akin to when in the PT the Ekosians fired nuclear missiles at the Enterprise in PATTERNS OF FORCE and they saw them coming long before they could approach to distances that would make them a threat.

In traversing space from Altamid to Starbase Yorktown, the Swarm’s reliance on VHF limits their options, i.e. they shouldn’t be able to go to warp as a Swarm because they don’t use subspace communication to stay coordinated. And yet, they do somehow traverse such distances relying on VHF such that a warp capable starship, The Franklin, can’t catch up to them far ahead of their getting anywhere near attacking Yorktown and depositing Krall.

The other problem is Krall is the “brain” of the Swarm but isn’t always in the Swarm as a part of it.

Disinvited..
I agree that there wasn’t really any explanation of why the swarm was able to get so close to the Enterprise without detection. Definitely a plot hole, there. I don’t agree that that the speed they were traveling would have any impact – especially if the big E’s short range scans operate at FTL speeds (which I hadn’t heard before and can’t really confirm, btw – can you provide a source for that?)

As for the the swarm approaching the Yorktown, did they go to warp to get there? I’ve only seen the movie once so far, so I don’t remember. I thought that crossing the nebula would be an impulse-only trip, what with all of the asteroids and all (which seem a bit out of place in a nebula, but I’m no expert). But, all that said, you are correct; VHF (and all forms of RF broadcast, for that matter) propagates at close to light speed and cannot go faster – since it is all part of the same EM spectrum as visible light. If the swarm went to warp, they would not be able to coordinate via VHF or UHF.

As far as Krall being the “brain” of the swarm, that seems unlikely or he would have never been able to board the Enterprise for fear of his swarm crashing into itself as soon as he releases the controls. More likely (but not canon, since they never show us) there is some level of artificial intelligence which organizes the swarm and accepts external guidance or targeting. There actually is animation software that does some of that already on the market. If you’re curious, google the term ‘flock animation’. It’s been around since the early 00s and was first showcased in LOTR, if memory serves.

Thanks for the reply.

Regards

nscates,

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Sensor

“The term sensor, also referred to aboard starships as subspace sensors…” — Memory Alpha

Also recall, the impulse engines can achieve a significant percentage of the speed of light. That means the crew and ship will experience time slowing down for them which they will see as the rest of the universe speeding up. How can conventional radio waves such as radar serve them under such conditions where the ship itself will be traveling almost as fast as the radio signals it normally emits to sense?

I don’t know how the Swarm manages to cover the space that it does staying coordinated using an externally emitted and received VHF radio signal for that and navigation. It definitely can’t at warp and at relativistic speeds it needs to compensate for the increases in the ships’ masses and extreme Doppler shifts in their signals going out and returning and process the signal faster than I can conceive to be useful before the ships traveling nearly as fast get there? These accelerated super signal processing abilities don’t seem practical to be built into each member of the Swarm for its conventional mining operation needs. And even assuming it somehow manages that there’s not enough time left for doing anything about what such dangers as those signals may be indicating need avoiding. But again, if the Swarm is traversing space at a significant percentage of the speed of light there’s no way that a warp capable Franklin can’t catch up to them long before the Swarm can get anywhere near the Starbase.

The reason the swarm got so close to the Enterprise is because the E had just come out of the nebula where any kind of communication was not possible and sensors were offline. Krall and the swarm were waiting for the Enterprise.

Sulu warned Kirk of something ahead, then the swarm attacked, knocking out shielding, sensors etc almost instantly. The swarm took out the nacelles, which meant the Enterprise could not go to warp. Maybe Kirk should have ordered the ship to turn around sooner but I am not sure that would have made much difference. Possibly, with no one having fully operational sensors, the Enterprise could have done some maneuvering towards the other side (ala TWOK) – might have worked. Then again, as soon as Krall realised they were turning back, he ordered “cut their throat”, so same result…

Yes.

@Dis, wouldn’t the swarm’s networking pass the “bad” signal through their own comms system?

Yeah… radio totally works in space. NASA wouldn’t be able to do anything without it. The music was basically drowning out the drone’s navigation signal, so they all crashed into each other.

“I know that they have to make Star Trek appeal to the masses, and not just to the fans, but you can’t keep trying to dumb down the story to its least common denominators.”

You mean that they make Star Trek appeal to a small range of people, ie “least common denominators”?

Who says that the makers keep trying to do as you suggest? Did you need the story to be less dumb in order for it to appeal a greater common denominator?

The only apparent inaccuracy mentioned has been the reference to the USS Franklin’s warp drive capabilities and that has to do with what people know of Star Trek canon.

If I am to understand you, it would seem that no communications etc could be possible in the “vacuum of space”, yet we know such is possible. So why not use that particular song at a particular disorientating frequency? As Kirk correctly said, “Good choice…”

I don’t know what you have been watching, but it clearly has not been Star Trek since its inception in the mid 1960’s.

Okay, apparently the Franklin did have a pretty bitchin’ stereo. How fast does a radio wave travel? Was that sub space radio? Does a radio wave interfere with the guidance systems of drones? That’s pretty simplistic. Everyone in the Galaxy had better be aware of that trick. And if these were the radio waves, and not just “sound waves” somehow traveling through the vacuum of space, why blast the audio portion, especially on the bridge, while the ship is in heated battle? To get everyone pumped up to “kick some ass”? If this were a truly tense situation, silence on the bridge (for clear communications) is critical. If you are going to write good science fiction, you need good science. I get it though. It’s only a movie. They made a conscious decision to write that in, and most people either liked it, or took off their thinking caps and overlooked it. As far as watching Star Trek, there is not an episode of any Star Trek series, or Star Trek movie that I have not seen. I’ve seen every single one, and I’ve read many of the books too. How about when Spock is screaming in pain when he was injured, and Bones yanked that piece of metal out of him? It has been explained many times that Vulcans suppress physical pain. In the Star Trek world, this was just not consistent. Yeah, Spock is only half Vulcan, but expressing physical pain by screaming is equated with conveying emotion and lack of mental discipline. That’s why physical torture doesn’t work on Vulcans. That could have been written better, in my opinion. The term least common denominator is used to imply that the story (and the science) is reduced to its simplest terms. You can’t just use a bunch of big words, and then do a bunch of dumb things. The fans are going to show up anyway. I paid my $14 to see it at the first showing. Star Trek used to be more cerebral. Captain Kirk won many conflicts with his wits, not with sensory overload.

Well, they also said that they didn’t want it to be easily detected…

I take it you’ve never seen Operation: Annihilate where Spock cries out after being attacked by the flying rubber vomit parasites, then pants heavily & grimaces in pain?

Yes I’ve seen it, and I remember those parasites. My brothers and I called that the Dog Barf episode. Those parasites supposedly inflicted the highest pain measurable. Remember the K3 scale they used to measure pain? The pain was supposed to be so intense that it caused its victims to go insane. With that being said, when that Spock got attacked by the parasite (suddenly) he still didn’t carry on like this Spock character did, and he managed to control the pain. Sure, it was a bad wound in Beyond, but that Spock even had time to mentally prepare himself for a relatively “less severe” pain. In Operation: Annihilate, the episode actually featured how Spock could control even the most extreme pain imaginable. In this movie, they could have toned it down quite a bit for consistency. I would like to imagine Spock, in that situation, either directing a few condescending remarks toward McCoy during the procedure, or going the other way, by offering comments of reassurance that he is okay, that Bones is not hurting him. The screaming and flopping around, in my opinion, was a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Spock to Bones in Operation: Annihilate: “Pain is a thing of the mind. The mind can be controlled.”

@Trekker, I felt like grunts would have been more appropriate, then maybe a yell when McCoy cauterized the wound.

Maybe in the KT young Spock didn’t get as much mental discipline training as TOS Spock. [After the Narada incursion] Sarek, his father, as an ambassador, would have been flying all over the galaxy, solidifying relationships among the different species in the Federation. [I just retcons em as I sees em!]

It seems that this Spock is a lot less controlled…as we’ve seen in his relationship with Uhura, his loss of control choking Kirk, his tears of sadness when Kirk is in the warp core and his rage at Khan. To me, it’s apparent that his Vulcan control is just not as developed as old Spock’s

Trekker – Both Spocks are half-human and the KT Spock is not as enamoured or is necessarily following the strict Vulcan disciplines as his prime timeline counterpart did. Besides, his much older counterpart advised him to “do what FEELS right”.

The only time you saw overt emotion from Spock in this film was when Bones pulled out the piece of metal and then cauterised the wound – painful stuff, and when Spock began laughing. Bones understood this laughing to be a sign of delirium, which caused him to start becoming very worried about Spock, despite his earlier ministrations. Dr McCoy could partially treat Spock’s wounds only and knew he needed more medical attention…

KT Spock has managed to maintain a good calm veneer most of the time throughout all three films, despite some of the horrible events that he has had to face.

Re: Vulcans screaming
I agree that perhaps that was a bit much. My reasoning is that Spock was readying himself to accept the pain and “breathe through it” when McCoy so rudely interrupted him with “What’s your favorite color?”

Having had a very similar and painful experience myself, I could relate. It didn’t relate to shrapnel though, thank God!

I think that Dr McCoy was trying to distract Spock with the question from the pain but it had the opposite effect.