Starship Nomadic, Northern Ireland STARSHIP NOMADICA NORTHERN IRELAND STAR TREK FAN GROUP
FILM 13 OF 14 · 201613
STAR TREK

Star Trek Beyond

NOMADIC PICK · STRONG RECOMMENDATIONThe Kelvin crew at their most likeable.
US RELEASE
22 July 2016
UK RELEASE
22 July 2016
RUNTIME
122 minutes
UK CERTIFICATE
12A
DIRECTED BY
Justin Lin
MUSIC
Michael Giacchino
BUDGET
$185 million
BOX OFFICE (WORLDWIDE)
$343.5 million
FIRST STARDATE
2263.2

WRITTEN BYWritten by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung

PRODUCED BYJ.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Lindsey Weber, Justin Lin

IN BRIEF

SPOILER-FREE

Nearly three years into their five-year mission, the Enterprise crew answer a distress call into an uncharted nebula and are ambushed by a ruthless enemy, leaving them stranded and scattered on a hostile world.

SYNOPSIS

SPOILERS
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSISHIDE SYNOPSIS

Some 966 days into the five-year mission, Kirk is restless. A peace gift, an ancient relic called the Abronath, has been rejected by the alien race he offered it to, and he has quietly applied to become a vice admiral at the vast new starbase Yorktown. Spock, shaken by news that his older self has died, is privately planning to leave Starfleet to help the surviving Vulcans, and he has parted from Uhura. When an alien named Kalara arrives in an escape pod claiming her ship is stranded inside a nearby nebula, the Enterprise goes to help.

On the far side, a swarm of small ships commanded by the alien Krall tears the Enterprise apart. Krall wants the Abronath, the missing piece of an ancient bioweapon. The crew abandon ship and are scattered across the planet Altamid, where most are taken prisoner. Kirk and Chekov expose Kalara as Krall's agent, Spock and McCoy bicker their way through the wilderness, and Scotty is rescued by Jaylah, a scavenger whose home is the USS Franklin, an Earth starship lost a century earlier. Krall gets the relic and drains life from captives to keep himself alive. Reunited, the crew free the prisoners from his base, get the Franklin flying and break up the swarm by broadcasting the Beastie Boys' “Sabotage” across its communications link. The ship's old logs reveal Krall is Balthazar Edison, the Franklin's captain, a former soldier who came to despise the Federation's peace. Krall reaches Yorktown to release the weapon, but Kirk pursues him through the station's ventilation system and ejects both Krall and the bioweapon into space. Afterwards Kirk turns down the promotion, Spock decides to stay, Jaylah is accepted into Starfleet Academy, and the crew celebrate Kirk's birthday as a new Enterprise is built.

BEHIND THE CAMERA

Roberto Orci was announced as director in 2014 but left that December, and Justin Lin, best known for the Fast and Furious films, took over. Simon Pegg and Doug Jung were brought in to rewrite the script in early 2015, with Pegg saying the studio had found the earlier draft too Star Trek-y. Filming ran from June to October 2015, mainly in Vancouver and Squamish, with location work in Dubai and Seoul. The release was set for July 2016 to coincide with the franchise's 50th anniversary. Weeks before it opened, Anton Yelchin died in an accident, and the film is dedicated to him and to Leonard Nimoy. Reviews were warm, but box office fell short of its predecessors.

DID YOU KNOW?

  1. 01The Franklin's registry, NX-326, is a nod to Leonard Nimoy's birthday, 26 March.
  2. 02Sulu is shown with a husband, Ben, played by co-writer Doug Jung. Simon Pegg described it as a tribute to George Takei, who criticised the decision.
  3. 03Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a cameo as an alien Starfleet official, and football manager Carlo Ancelotti appears briefly as a Yorktown doctor.
  4. 04Spock looks at a photograph of the original crew, including Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei and Walter Koenig.
  5. 05Shohreh Aghdashloo joined the cast as Commodore Paris during reshoots in March 2016.

CONNECTIONS

  • Edison served in the MACOs, the military unit that joined the crew of Star Trek: Enterprise for the Xindi mission in its third season (2003 to 2004).
  • The closing shot of the new Enterprise echoes the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), when the original crew are given the Enterprise-A.
  • Spock's grief for his older self pays tribute to Leonard Nimoy, whose Spock Prime crossed into this timeline in Star Trek (2009).

AWARDS

Academy Award nomination (makeup and hairstyling); Saturn Award nominations including Best Science Fiction Film

SOURCES WE CHECKED