Star Trek Into Darkness - Part 1

Written by:

Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof

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Directed by:

J.J. Abrams

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Release Date:

2013

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures... is going to be the last for a while I'm afraid. I'm taking another two month break, so the site will be going into cryosleep until December. But I figured I should give you something to read while you wait, so I've written about an entire movie this time! It's the second of the Kelvin Timeline films, Star Trek Into Darkness!

Though I ran into a slight problem with the first draft of my review, as it turns out that the movie shares the record for the longest runtime of all the Trek movies with The Motion Picture, and it's about people constantly running everywhere and doing things instead of staring at the viewscreen in awe. I ended up with twice as many words as my average movie review and three times as many as my average TV review! Though my recap is still slightly too short to qualify as a novel, so I can't joke about it being the unofficial novelisation.

I never like doing this, but I've decided to split the review into three parts and publish one part a day, for the sake of all humanity. That way each post is merely excessively long, not ridiculously long. But they are all going to include SPOILERS for the whole movie, and I'm considering basically anything in Star Trek besides Star Trek Beyond to be fair game this time as well. So there'll be a few Star Trek: Discovery spoilers from its first two seasons.

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I haven't done a great job of stitching together this panning shot, but I think it gets the point across.

The film starts with Kirk and McCoy in disguise sprinting through a scarlet forest with a stolen sacred scroll they've swiped while the mountain behind them begins to explode. Weirdly the locals seem more concerned about the scroll than they do about their very obvious volcano problems. I can tell because they've been very careful to miss with every single spear they've thrown, like they don't want to risk damaging it.

Kirk, on the other hand, has very good aim, as he manages to take down his own space horse with only one shot (on stun). Though the way McCoy has to explain to him afterwards that it was meant to be their ride makes me feel like this was new information to him. It's also at this point that we learn about the status of the volcano, the plan to lure the locals away from it, and the fact that Spock, Sulu and Uhura are currently inside it.

Are Federation shuttles actually designed to survive inside volcanos? Turns out that they're not, and Sulu seems a bit annoyed that Kirk decided to ignore him and send them into one anyway. He's being a bit reckless with his crew's safety there. In Kirk's defence, spaceships in real life are apparently designed to withstand more heat than the hottest volcano as they need to survive re-entry.

At least Spock's suit looks like it's designed for volcanos, and if it's not then they're in trouble. Though Spock's more concerned about Kirk potentially breaking the Prime Directive by interfering with the indigenous life forms. Spock's a really handy character to have when you need to give out exposition like this, because he's the kind of guy who would tell you things you already know.

Spock's lowered into the volcano on a cable, carrying a super ice cube to cool it down. That's just Kirk's nickname for it by the way, the science in the movie isn't actually that dumbed down. It's actually a cold fusion device! You know, to make it cold. Even though a Google search for 'cold fusion' will tell you it's a type of nuclear reaction that occurs at room temperature. They were actually doing better with 'ice cube'. And is it really wise to cap a volcano? (It is not).

Also it occurs to me that they could've sent a drone to do this insanely dangerous job. Or at least someone who isn't the ship's first officer. But I suppose someone from Vulcan is uniquely qualified to be in a volcano... and not just because he's already lost one world and doesn't want a repeat of it.

The shuttle's warp nacelles start to overheat, forcing Sulu to abort. Spock wants to see the job through as the entire planet will be rendered lifeless if the volcano blows, and he gets his wish when the cable snaps and drops him inside! The shuttle's wrecked at this point and they have to ditch it somewhere outside, so that'll be a fun artefact for the inhabitants to find later.

Oh, if you're wondering why I'm focusing on this anemone wannabe ambling across a branch, I had the exact same thought while watching the movie. I suppose it's a reminder that it's not just the people they're trying to save, it's the whole unique ecosystem. Plus alien life on alien worlds... that's the whole point of travelling light years across space in starships.

This entire sequence on Nibiru was shot on IMAX to really sell the wonder and beauty of it; I think a lot of the location shots were in fact. And I'm watching it on a low res DVD with all the details killed by the compression!

I love the colours in this sequence, but all these vivid red plants everywhere do raise the question of where aliens get their bright yellow dye from. And their yellow outfits raise the question of why Kirk and Spock are disguised in grey.

By the way, at least some of these actors are actually wearing suits disguised as white skin, so there's a movie fact for you. Also the forest was actually a tiny set extended with CGI. And that baby probably wasn't real! I'm actually glad they went with a fake forest instead of digitally altering the colour of a real one though, as that never quite works out right.

The villagers are far enough away now from the kill zone, (lucky that they brought the kids out to the scroll chase) so Kirk and McCoy lodge their sacred scroll in a tree branch and jump off a cliff while they're all busy worshipping it. Man it's so weird to see McCoy doing action scenes and swimming. But not as weird as seeing the Enterprise underwater.

But an underwater spaceship doesn't look great in screencaps, so here's a shot of it coming back out again filmed with a telephoto lens that makes it look like these folks are sitting on the saucer section. Even if the front of the ship was touching the cliff, that bridge window would still be 150 meters away right now.

Why was the ship submerged? It's never really explained, and considering what we get when the writers do explain things I think that's probably for the best. Scotty hangs a lantern on by saying that it was a terrible idea, but I'm sure they must have had an excellent reason for it and if we'd seen the first half of this episode it would all make perfect sense. More sense even than that other submerged Federation ship hidden from the 'primitive' locals in Star Trek: Insurrection.

Kirk really has to agonise over revealing the ship to the inhabitants in order to save Spock, but in the end he ignores his first officer's pleas over the radio to let him die and makes the choice to break the Prime Directive, take the ship over the volcano, and beam him out in the nick of time. They couldn't have just beamed him out while the ship was underwater because of, I don't know... volcano radiation.

Spock is saved, the device goes off, and the inhabitants drop the scroll and begin worshipping an incredibly accurate illustration of the Enterprise instead, which immediately demonstrates in an efficient and visual way why Starfleet has a Prime Directive. 2000 years from now these aliens will have developed into those folks from Galaxy Quest; an entire species doomed to be nerds.

It's hard to miss that the drawing of the Enterprise fades into the actual ship, but something I didn't catch the first time was that the falling ash becomes the starfield. 

That's actually amazing and I love it. In fact I like this whole teaser, maybe even more than Star Trek 2009's opening with the destruction of the USS Kelvin. It's a fun mini Star Trek adventure that sets up who these characters are at this point in their lives and the kind of things they've been up to, and J.J. Abrams' direction here is fantastic. In my opinion.

Plus it's the most Star Trek thing to happen in all of the Star Trek movies so far. They've boldly gone to seek out new life and found a new world. And they're interfering like crazy to save them. You know how much seeking out new life has happened in the other movies so far? Zero. None. It's never happened until now. They made new life at one point, but other than that the closest we got was the USS Reliant seeking out planet with no new life.

After some ☆.。.:*・°☆. warp trails ☆.。.:*・°☆.。and the dramatic reveal of the title, the movie then becomes the only film to ever pull off playing 'London Calling' when the drama moves to London, without it being obnoxious on the nose. Though that's only because it's actually a brand new track by Michael Giacchino with the same name.

We see Mickey from Doctor Who get harassed by his dog, then he drives over to a hospital with his wife in a hover car so that they can worry about their sick daughter for a bit. There's no dialogue, but the tears in their eyes and the sad piano music says it all, and we have to sympathise with them because they own a dog. Suddenly Sherlock from Sherlock appears and breaks the silence, saying that he can save her.

By the way, Benedict Cumberbatch clearly wins when it comes to names, but the actress playing the mother is called Nazneen Contractor, and I think that's pretty impressive too.

The father asks who he is, but the mysterious man just stands there staring at him for a full seven seconds as the music gets more dramatic. Cut to Kirk having a threesome with two alien girls, with Body Movin' by the Beastie Boys playing on an antique record player. No sign of his antique Commodore PET 2001 computer from Wrath of Khan this time though.

Kelvin Timeline Kirk is basically the pop culture interpretation of the character, except without Shatner's... idiosyncratic way of... delivering lines, so it's not a huge shock to find him in bed with two woman with pig tails and actual tails. That's as many alien chicks as Prime Timeline Kirk slept with in three seasons! Probably, I haven't actually counted. Oh also they're sisters, played by real life twins, so there's some more Into Darkness trivia for you!

Unfortunately Kirk's called away to Starfleet Command, and in the next shot he's walking with Spock, really optimistic about their chances of getting to go on a five year mission. Also he literally says "Hi ladies, Jim Kirk" to some passing officers, because it's important to remind us that he's a git.

But it turns out that Pike actually called him in to chew him out, because his and Spock's reports of the Nibiru incident don't quite match. Kirk lied to Starfleet about breaking the Prime Directive! And now he's pissed that Spock told the truth!

Pike's walking with a cane after his ordeal in Star Trek 2009, but he is walking, so he walks over and explains that Starfleet's mandate is to explore and observe, not interfere. Then Spock starts being annoying so he kicks him out so he can focus on Kirk and ask him what he did wrong.

The Prime Directive in Star Trek is interpreted different ways by different captains, with Picard learning towards the 'it's a shame millions have to die but what can you do?' side, and Sisko leaning towards mentioning it once in season one and never bringing it up again, but it seems to me that the point of it is to make sure captains have to really think about what they're doing and not just make an emotional choice. Starfleet is not an amoral organisation, they want to do the most good, and I remember Kirk Prime believed that the three most important words were "let me help." But they don't have the right to get involved in other people's business without their permission and their capacity to affect a society is greater than their ability to predict the consequences of their meddling.

But even Picard has made the choice to break the Prime Directive to save other worlds and Prime Kirk did it all the time. The Prime Directive is there to protect developing cultures from the Federation's influence, and basically give them the right to make their own mistakes and find their own way to live. If a culture is wiped out entirely by a volcano, then they're not developing any more, they're dead, so interfering at that point isn't likely to make things worse. Kirk said as much himself in the Original Series in episodes like For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.

Pike says he wouldn't have interfered with their destiny, but I'm sure Starfleet would've been fine with Kirk saving Nibiru if he'd owned his choices, took responsibility and informed them of exactly what happened. But he didn't. He covered it up. And it turns out that's what Pike's angry about. They can't have a captain they don't trust flying around space with a starship capable of starting wars and obliterating worlds, especially if they'd have to learn about it second hand! The first duty of any Starfleet officer is to the truth.

He's also a bit unhappy about Kirk's disregard for his crew's safety, and Kirk's defensive attitude about it really isn't helping his case. He points out that he hasn't lost a single redshirt since taking command last year, but what he's really saying is 'I'm clearly awesome and I should get to do what I want'. His lack of humility and responsibility isn't a good look and Pike is not impressed.

But what Pike thinks doesn't matter, not in this draft of the script, as he wasn't invited to the tribunal. His job is to inform Kirk that he's lost his command and is getting sent back to the academy! Man, being demoted from captain to cadet is almost as bad as him being promoted from cadet to captain in the first place, but he's being a whiny little baby right now so he should be grateful he wasn't sent to his room with no dessert. Also he should appreciate the Star Trek IV reference, as Kirk Prime was demoted for breaking regulations to save Spock as well.

Back in the sad part of the movie, the father uses the mysterious man's blood to save his daughter, then heads off to work in the gigantic Starfleet base hidden under the Kelvin Memorial Archive in London! It's not clear what they do here, but I can see a lot of torpedoes.

The father puts his ring into a cup of water, incinerating himself and everything else in a huge explosion. So if we know one thing about this mysterious man, it's that he really hates those torpedoes and wants them all destroyed.

The explosion blows up the building above as well, and the camera pulls back from the fire and the screams to reveal that we're watching this from a window in his house, with the photo of his daughter there to remind us why he did it. It's a great shot I reckon.

Plus that's some real dedication right there. Once he'd given his word he was honour-bound to do a suicide bombing in the middle of the city even though he'd already gotten the cure for his daughter and could've presumably just called his boss and had the three of them beamed away somewhere that Benedict Cumberbatch could never find them. The dog too!

Then we get a scene that was added in reshoots after people realised that the film hadn't given us reason to like Pike yet.

It begins with an ice cube dropping into a glass, but there's no explosion this time as it's just Kirk ordering a drink. Then Pike comes and sits between him and the woman he was about to drunkenly chat up, so this is basically taking the bar scene from Star Trek 09 and cutting to the chase. Though it turns out that Kirk remembers the bar fight against the cadets going a lot better for him than Pike does, showing how he has a tendency to re-edit his recollections to better suit his ego.

Pike reveals that "they've gave her back to me" (Star Trek: The Motion Picture reference) and Spock's been transferred to another ship, so he wants him to be his first officer on the Enterprise! It's going to be a bit awkward, going back to his crew in a more subordinate position, but this is exactly what Kirk should've had to begin with: time on a starship leaning how they operate, gaining experience, and observing how a veteran captain handles situations. He should've been a helmsman, not a commander.

Their heart-warming reconciliation is interrupted when Pike gets a text message on his communicator telling him of an emergency session that they both have to attend right now. And Spock's there too!

Kirk's not keen to see the guy though as he feels he stabbed him in the back by telling the truth after he saved his life. Yep, amazingly he's still blaming Spock for his demotion instead of himself. Though he has to keep reminding him that he was demoted, because he didn't have time to adjust the rank on his uniform. He does at least admit that he'll miss him, to which Spock can only stare blankly.

Hey I like their meeting room. I'd say it reminded me of the war room in Dr Strangelove, with the lights hanging above the circular table, but I haven't actually seen the movie.

These are the senior commanders from all the ships in the region, and on the left is their boss, Admiral Marcus, played by Peter Weller! This is his second Star Trek role as he made an appearance right at the end of Enterprise as a xenophobe who tried to destroy Starfleet Command. It's lucky he failed really or else he wouldn't have gotten this job.

Marcus tells them that he received a confession from the father just before the bombing stating that Commander John Harrison had forced him to do it, so now all the captains here are going to take their ships to set up a blockade and catch him when he tries to escape the planet. For once there's more than one ship in the quadrant!

Kirk's not listening though as he's distracted by the surveillance image on his screen. I'm not sure why the captains were provided with a photo realistic 3D reconstruction of the scene, but Kirk uses it to fly through and spot Harrison climbing into a medical jumpship with a mysterious bag. It's a well done shot I reckon, as it really looks like someone moving a camera around a frozen scene.

He starts talking to Pike while Marcus is still giving his briefing and is understandably told to shut up. But Marcus wants to hear what he has to say. Oh I see what the admiral's up to, he's trying to hijack Pike's role as Kirk's awesome mentor figure!

Kirk feels that if Harrison wants to hurt Starfleet he's not just going to attack an archive and run. He's set up a situation he knew would get them all gathered here! You'd think this new information would inspire the other officers to start thinking about their own safety, but they are all very slow to react to the jumpship hovering outside the window with its spotlights turned to 'evil'.

This scene of Harrison firing into the meeting room reminds me a little of one from the Voyager episode Alliances, but 17 years of improvements in VFX and 100 times the budget have left it looking a little bit more impressive.

I suppose he must have known that Starfleet would have absolutely no defence against an aircraft attacking their HQ. It's a bit of a dick move though, taking a medical vehicle and converting it for murder by welding guns to the wings; transforming a device made to help people into an instrument of vengeance.

Kirk tries shooting back at it from a side window but it's too heavily armoured, so he ties a fire hose around his gun and tries lobbing that at it instead.

He gets it right into the air intake, so that part of the plan works, but I don't think he really thought the rest of it through. Either the jumpship's going to get winched to the wall or the wall's going to get winched to the jumpship, and neither outcome is going to be ideal for the person standing between them. I'm a bit surprised that a 23rd century building still has a fire hose, but I suppose we learned from Die Hard a long time ago that they're very handy for action scenes.

The engine eventually yanks the entire hose housing out of the wall and Kirk's bloody lucky that he's able to dodge it in time as it flies over to wreck its target. But the job's done and Harrison is neutralised, demonstrating why this immature liar version of Kirk gets to be the protagonist. He's not just the most insightful person in the room, he's the one who gets up to solve problems.

While Kirk is saving the day, Spock is trying to save Pike, though he's ultimately unsuccessful. Then for whatever reason he decides to mind-meld with him as he dies. Maybe it's a part of his Vulcan traditions, seeing as they typically pass on their katra before death.

Kirk arrives a little too late, and finds that he's lost another father figure thanks to a main antagonist's mission of revenge. He is a bit upset about this.

Meanwhile the crippled jumpship smashes into the side of the skyscraper and then falls, giving the dumbass spectators below their cue to scurry somewhere safer. But Harrison escapes, using the transporter in his bag to beam all the way to Afghanistan the Klingon homeworld.

Yeah, we're just beaming from planet to planet now, no big deal. They were already pushing it in Enterprise when Captain Archer got his ancient prototype NX-01 starship to the Klingon homeworld in 4 days without going full speed. Now Khan gets to jump there instantly and with absolute precision; he didn't even end up in a water pipe or whatever. I guess he was lucky there wasn't any of that volcano radiation on the other end that blocks transporters unless you're directly overhead.

To be fair we've seen other races with this kind of technology before, like the Providers from The Gamesters of Triskelion, the Iconians from Contagion and the Sikarians from Prime Factors, but the difference there is that they had the technology and we didn't. You can't just give Starfleet a way to teleport across space in the blink of an eye and then put it back in Pandora's box afterwards by saying it's classified!

The ultra-long range transporter is only a problem because this is a franchise movie. If it was a single film you'd think nothing of it, but it's not and that means it's a short sighted decision. The heroes are supposed to need to travel to reach other planets, it's Star Trek, not Star... Gate. Speaking of bad decisions, why would a human beam to the Klingon homeworld? It's like a mouse beaming into a cat's mouth. Sure the other mice with phasers are less likely to come after you there, but that's because it's a shitty place to be! Though I suppose he could go down to the Orion outpost and take over running one of the brothels.

Anyway, back on Earth Scotty tells Kirk where he's gone, then Kirk and Spock interrupt Admiral Marcus's meeting of admirals to request their ship so they can go get him.

Like all commanding officers in Starfleet, Marcus likes collecting his little ships, though the one on the left's not that little. I wonder what he tells people when they ask him what that one is.

He also has the NX-01 Enterprise from Enterprise on his table, which is interesting as it's one of the rare clues that the Kelvin Timeline was similar to the Prime Timeline before Nero turned up and blew up the Kelvin. He was originally going to have an Original Series Enterprise-style ship hanging from the ceiling as well but it didn't make it to the final movie.

Kirk's gut tells him that he needs to go on a roaring rampage of revenge and Marcus is actually cool with this, because his own gut feeling is that all-out war with the Klingons is inevitable, whether they send a ship after Harrison or not. Incidentally the movie takes place in 2259, two years after the Klingon War takes place in the Prime Timeline, so it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

Man, Marcus's office is too big! How does he even get any work done in here, with people staring down at him from the balcony?

Marcus tells them that the Kelvin Archive was actually a secret branch of Starfleet called Section 31 and Harrison was one of their top agents. The first time I watched this I was hyped that they were using a Deep Space Nine villain, and a little confused at the scale of their operation. After watching Discovery though I've had to get used to the idea that the group somehow managed to fall into total obscurity after being a legitimate arm of Starfleet for years. Still not keen on it though.

We also learn here that Marcus was the one who talked Pike into joining Starfleet, giving Kirk more reason to see him as a replacement mentor. Then he shows them his awesome new torpedoes! They're invisible to sensors and have a range so great that they can fire them from from the edge of the neutral zone and blow Harrison up without the Klingons having any idea of what just hit them. Not entirely Starfleet procedure, but Kirk's fuelled by vengeance right now and it's hasn't been that long since Starfleet procedures nearly got Spock killed, so he's more than up for it.

Funny how they use shuttles all the time in these films instead of getting there instantly using the transporter. I suppose when you've got interplanetary beaming tech in your script you need to make it seem like spaceships can be considered the better option.

I'm not keen on these jackets with the transparent plastic window so you can see the seams in their shirt underneath, though I think it's the weird material that bothers me more than anything else. Kirk, on the other hand, is more bothered by McCoy trying to do a medical examination on him from the seat behind. I think his concern is supposed to be a hint that Kirk's too worked up over Pike's death to think clearly, but it comes off like Kirk has a medical problem that's never addressed.

Spock's coming with them as well, as Kirk got him reassigned as his first officer again, despite his tendency to stab him in the back. He's already objecting to the mission, saying that it's not very Starfleet to bomb someone on a foreign planet from light years away without a trial. It's immoral, illegal, and it might start a war. Man, Spock's a real downer.

But Kirk cheers up a bit when Lt Carol Wallace, his new science officer, shows up. Spock's feeling a little threatened by another science officer moving in on his turf, but as far as Kirk's concerned, anyone who annoys Spock is more than welcome to sit between them.

And their shuttle catches sight of the USS Enterprise, arriving about three and a half minutes earlier than it did in the first movie! Though this time the music's much darker.

As soon as they get on board Scotty takes his turn to complain about the torpedoes, saying that he can't authorise them being brought onto the ship until he knows what's inside them. Meanwhile Keenser's in the background riding one of them and giving thumbs up to the camera.

Hey Keenser, the movie's already done its Dr Strangelove reference. Get down.

The torpedoes are shielded from their scans, so Scotty can't detect what kind of fuel their using. He doesn't know what kind of effect they'll have on their warp core when they start up, so he's not going to allow them on board.

This conversation gives the movie an excuse to show us the ship's warp core, which we actually didn't see in the last film. We saw the Budweiser Brewery part of engineering that takes up the majority of the secondary hull, but we didn't see the matter-antimatter reactor. Mostly because they couldn't afford to build a set. But now for this movie...

... they still didn't want to spend the cash on a set. So they went and filmed around this device instead, which doesn't look like any warp core I've ever seen in Star Trek, but it does look fairly awesome.

This is the National Ignition Facility, a research device designed with the goal of using the most powerful laser in the world to achieve nuclear fusion ignition, which should finally allow us to get some fusion reactors built. So it's pretty much the closest thing we have to a warp core right now I suppose.

Scotty's not happy about the ship being sent on a military operation and threatens to resign over the torpedoes, giving us the familiar "I thought we were explorers" line. I don't know where Starfleet officers get this idea as the amount of time they spend exploring is actually minimal, even in the older stories. Starfleet's main goal is to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no one's gone before, to ferry ambassadors around, to check up on archaeologists and penal colonies, to help out with science experiments, to be a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada, to fight in a war against the Klingons... basically whatever you need a starship for, Starfleet does.

Though what they don't do is long-range missile strikes on terrorists in foreign territory, so whatever you think about Starfleet being a military, you have to concede that Scotty's right there. But Kirk really needs the torpedoes to get revenge for Pike's death so he's not backing down either. They get a bit shouty and Kirk finally accepts his resignation, leaving poor Scotty in shock. This was not how he saw his day going. But good on him for sticking to his principles (and getting off the ship before it explodes). Not sure about the way he makes Keenser resign too though.

I feel like they've really turned down the lens flares so far compared to the first movie, but there's an epic one here when Kirk comes to tell Ensign Chekov that he's been promoted to chief engineer... and he should put on a red shirt. We're left to wonder which part of that bothers him the most as he sits there shocked.

Personally I probably would've chosen someone with a higher rank than ensign, maybe even someone from the engineering department. But Kirk only knows what he's been taught, and Captain Pike taught him to take the lowest ranked member of the crew and immediately give them a ton of responsibility.

The ship departs the station and an unnamed woman takes over the navigator chair. As it should be! It's too weird to have both Chekov and Sulu sitting at the front together in a Trek movie. In the Motion Picture Ilia was navigator until she got V'ger'd and was replaced by DiFalco, in Wrath of Khan it was Saavik, and in Search for Spock it was Scotty. In Final Frontier Chekov was finally sitting next to Sulu again on the Enterprise bridge as navigator, but by Undiscovered Country Sulu had left and Valeris was the helmsman!

So the crew are finally on the ship, getting their mission started! It took just under 38 minutes on my PAL DVD, so a little longer than usual. You'll have to wait a bit more to read the rest of my review though I'm afraid, because this is where I'm ending part one.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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COMING SOON

Star Trek Into Darkness will return tomorrow!

I don't know if you want to leave a comment about the first third of a movie, but you can if you want. It's all good.