Summary[]
Captain Kirk offers an ancient artifact that is said to be a weapon as a peace gift to an alien civilization, but they refuse and attack him. Upon his premature return, the device is stored in an archive drawer on the Enterprise. The time is three years into the Enterprise's five-year mission. As his 30th birthday approaches, Kirk is tired of space travel and plans to apply for the position of vice admiral of Yorktown, a huge starbase on the edge of the Federation. The Enterprise is docked at Yorktown when a lifeboat with an alien woman is rescued from space. The woman, Kalara, says her ship was lost on the other side of a nebula, so the Enterprise is sent to rescue the other crew members.
As the Enterprise arrives at the destination, a planet called Altamid, the ship is attacked by a huge swarm of small vessels that cut their way through the hull. The attackers sever the nacelles. The alien leader, Krall, appears aboard, beginning to search for the ancient artifact. But Kirk can hide the device from him. Scotty manages to divert warp power to the impulse engines to escape, but then the attackers cut off the Enterprise's neck. In order to stabilize the ship, Kirk, with the help of Uhura, separates the saucer from the remains of the neck. But Uhura is captured by the attackers. The surviving crew members abandon the ship, but the Swarm ships snatch all escape pods from space, including Sulu's. Scotty escapes in a torpedo, McCoy and Spock hijack one of the Swarm ships, while Kirk, Chekov and Kalara leave the saucer using "Kelvin pods" in the last moment before the crash on Altamid.
On the planet, McCoy tends to the wounded Spock. Spock tells the doctor that he learned of Ambassador Spock's death and that he plans to leave the Enterprise to serve New Vulcan. In the meantime, Scotty runs into a young alien woman named Jaylah, who defends him against some attackers with the help of holographic duplicates of herself. She leads Scotty to her "house", a grounded old Federation ship named USS Franklin, and asks him to make it spaceworthy again to escape from the planet. Like many other aliens over the years, she and her family were kidnapped by Krall. Kirk knows that Kalara led the Enterprise into the trap. She promises to cooperate from now. Kirk, Chekov and Kalara board the crashed saucer of the Enterprise in order to scan for the missing crew members.
When Kirk pretends to salvage the alien device, Kalara calls Krall's people. Kirk deliberately allowed her to call Krall in order to find out where he is located. Krall's people, however, arrive sooner than expected. In order to escape, Chekov activates the maneuvering thrusters of the Enterprise. He and Kirk escape, whereas Kalara is crushed when the saucer gets overturned. In Krall's camp, Uhura has to witness how Krall "sucks the life" out of his prisoners to regenerate. She and Sulu briefly manage to break free. They discover that Krall is monitoring Federation channels and obviously plans to attack Yorktown. But before they can act, Krall apprehends them again.
He threatens to kill Sulu if no one points him to the whereabouts of that old device, the Abronath. An alien Enterprise crew member, Syl, opens the tentacles on her head where Kirk put the device. Krall takes the Abronath and completes a lethal biological weapon, which he tests on Syl. Some of the crew reunite on the Franklin as Kirk and Chekov run into one of Jaylah's traps and Scotty puts the old transporter into operation again to beam out McCoy and Spock. Spock locates Krall's camp scanning for a Vulcan mineral in Uhura's talisman. The transporter of the Franklin, however, is not capable of beaming out the missing Enterprise crew members because of lacking signal strength. So Kirk takes a motorbike to create a diversion with holographic copies of himself, while Jaylah, Scotty and Spock release the prisoners. Jaylah loses her transporter beacon fighting against Manas, one of Krall's aides who once killed her father.
Kirk remembers that he promised to leave no one behind and grabs her hand mid-air during a jump with his motorbike so both can be beamed out. Krall and the Swarm, however, have already left the planet to attack Yorktown and kill all of its inhabitants. Scotty reactivates the engines of the Franklin so the crew of the Enterprise can follow the Swarm. But it would be a totally hopeless battle. Spock and McCoy, the two crew members who are a bit familiar with the technology, beam over to a Swarm ship again to examine the possibilities. They find out that a strong high-frequency signal transmitted to the Swarm could disrupt it. Scotty has the idea for a radio transmission of "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys.
Once the music plays, the Swarm ships all collide and explode - except for three, one of them manned by Krall. Krall enters the atmosphere of Yorktown to release the bioweapon, but Kirk takes the Franklin into the flight path so the small vessels get stuck in the old ship's hull. Krall survives the crash. In an old recording from the Franklin Uhura identifies Krall: It is the captain of the Franklin, Balthazar Edison. He was one the three last survivors of the ship and managed to live on on Altamid with the help of life-prolonging technology that some aliens left behind.
He holds a grudge against the peaceful nature of the Federation and wants to incite a war. Kirk can keep him from releasing the bioweapon in Yorktown's ventilation system. Krall is blown out into space where the bioweapon dissolves his body, whereas McCoy and Spock rescue Kirk with a Swarm vessel. Sulu is reunited with his husband. The two, like Jaylah and the remainder of the crew, join Kirk's birthday party. Kirk declines the offer to become the vice admiral of Yorktown. He and his crew are looking forward to their voyages on the new starship, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A.
Errors and Explanations[]
Internet Movie Database[]
Character error[]
- Kirk immediately orders the ship to go to warp after Krall's initial attack on the Enterprise destroys the main deflector dish, but the deflector dish is effectively required to travel at warp speed. Without it debris, rocks and particle matter would be able to impact the ship at faster-than-light speeds, causing considerable damage. This may not be an error on Kirk's part however - given that the Enterprise cannot effectively defend itself against the attackers and is taking critical damage, he may have made the tactical decision that a jump to warp without the deflector was an acceptable risk in an effort to save the ship.
Continuity[]
- While it has been established that the Franklin was the first "Warp-4" vessel and was drafted into Starfleet at a later point after the events of "Enterprise", thereby earning the "NX-326" designation, the "NX" designation is still in fact an error. Within the Star Trek universe, NX is a designation used for lead ships in a new class during their evaluation and testing phases (such as USS Excelsior being NX-2000 in Star Trek III, but is designated NCC-2000 by the time Sulu is commanding in Star Trek VI) - as Franklin was already 10+ years old by the time the Federation was created and had already been replaced by more advanced technology (NX-01 Enterprise), the vessel would have been assigned an NCC-326 designation and not NX-326. The NX designation could be due to the Franklin starting life as a Warp 2 design which was later upgraded.
Factual errors[]
- The USS Franklin is flown off the cliff at one quarter impulse. Since full impulse is equivalent to a quarter of the speed of light, one quarter impulse is ~40 million mph, which if available would not lead to the behavior of the ship seen in the film - the ship would fly straight up out of the planet's atmosphere within seconds. This could be a reference to one quarter of the available impulse power, using an engine that is operating at much lower efficency than normal.
Incorrectly regarded as goofs[]
- The movie takes place inside a nebula, and we are indeed shown a nebula: a huge gas cloud. The characters even refer to the density of gas as they move through it. It also has some rocks and debris in it. Star Trek nebulae often have rocks and debris in them. (Of course in real life, nebulae and asteroid fields would be indistinguishable from vacuum as far as a tiny starship is concerned.)
- When the Enterprise's deflector array is damaged, Kirk orders the ship to go to warp to escape the danger. According to Star Trek technology, starships can't go to warp without a deflector dish or they risk extreme damage from hitting particles at warp speed (the deflector, as it implies, deflects them). Given that the ship was in the process of being ripped into tiny pieces already, Kirk took a gamble.
- The ship suffers damage and cracks into several pieces, without losing gravity or power. These very important functions are presumably designed to work properly despite damage to the ship. The movie establishes that the ship's actually designed to separate into two pieces and continue to operate normally.
- The amount on ships and soldiers that the enemy has in it's swarm changes dramatically during the final battle. From a few thousand to tens/hundreds of thousands when they are attacking the station. Previously in the film it is stated that the planet has deep and large underground caverns so it is entirely possible that there were more ships underground.
- The amount of soldiers that would be needed to pilot all the ships would be huge as it was shown that they contain at least 1 soldier in each ship. When they were watching the video logs near the end of the film, Idris' character clearly states that they found drones. It is quite possible that the bulk of the enemy fleet is made up of drones and controlled by the hive mind that the music disrupts.
- When Kirk takes a seat in the USS Franklin, he buckles up with old fashioned hip seat belts. In the next shot he suddenly has the newer shoulder chain-like seat belts The shoulder belts were there the whole time, he simply hadn't put them on yet; they cut away to other characters as Kirk put the shoulder belts on.
- When the Enterprise is being attacked and starts to roll in space, the crew (again) starts running along the side walls of the deck and back again. It's already been established that artificial gravity comes from "grav-plates" installed under the walking area/deck floor. As inertial dampeners are needed to counteract accelerations that the crew might feel as the ship moves, when those were taken offline (or at reduced power) the rolling of the ship introduces another pseudo-gravity, causing people to walk along the walls.
Plot holes[]
- When the saucer section of the Enterprise crashes on Altamid, it stays relatively intact. An object of that size however that enters the atmosphere of an M-class planet with shields and stabilizers down (meaning in an non-braked fashion) should burn up - at least much more than depicted - due to atmospheric friction. Even if it wouldn't, a structure that massive would undergo major disintegration on impact due to the negative acceleration. In any case such an impact would result in a great deal of ground displacement and therefore a big crater. The structure of the ground could be capable of absorbing the impact.
- The number of the fighters in Krall's swarm varies immensely: the docking spires visible inside Krall's base only appear to be able hold maybe a few hundred ships. The swarm forming above the base shortly before the final battle already is made up from a few thousand ships, while in the final battle itself, there are several tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. Krall's base is also nowhere large enough to offer space for all the pilots of the swarm ships, which are shown to be manned by at least one soldier each. There were likely docking spires in other nearby locations, many of which were packed with drones.
Revealing mistakes[]
- When the Enterprise is being attacked and starts to roll in space, the crew (again) starts running along the side walls of the deck and back again. It's already been established that artificial gravity comes from "grav-plates" installed under the walking area/deck floor. These grav-plates can be adjusted to increase or decrease the amount of gravity so if the ship rolls you stay where you are. If artificial gravity loses power, you float. The system could be designed to keep going for a set period even after total power loss.
Ex Astris Scientia[]
- Bernd Schneider: Where are the transporters of Yorktown when Kirk tries to stop Krall? Where are the fighters? Where are the rescue shuttles? Kirk is "the only ship in the sector" here for no obvious reason. Maybe Krall found a way to disable them.
- The Abronath is underwhelming as a superweapon. Even if it was not possible for some reason to destroy it or simply beam it into space, there would have been several more options for countermeasures against this quite obviously slow weapon. Killing people and leaving the infrastructure intact (which is what Krall may have wanted) works a lot better with gas or with radiation. In any case, the Abronath was hardly worth all the effort for Krall, whose Swarm ships are much more formidable. The bioweapon could be designed so any countermrasures would make it more effective.
Notes[]
- ↑ As of early 2020, this production seems to have been cancelled
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