(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-42709454-1', 'chronotrek.com'); ga('send', 'pageview'); A chronological review series of Star Trek in all its forms. More information and a table of contents can be found by clicking About below. Interested in submitting your own review? Contact me at [email protected] for details. Please don't send a review unsolicited, this e-mail is to express interest so we can work out what episode you review.
Not a week has gone by that I haven’t had some sort of issue with CBS All Access, whether it’s getting the Xbox app to properly sync to my account or stream interruptions, buffering, hiccups, or skips. Since my initial subscription lasts through this week, I figured now was a good time to just go ahead and cancel. I wanted to support the show and watch it how it was provided, even as much as I thought from the beginning how terrible an idea it was that CBS was using it to launch their premature ejaculation of a service. But it’s clear now that I cannot do that without massive headaches and frustration. I don’t need that in my life. I’ll continue to watch the show (obviously, that was never not an option, and there are always ways to watch Star Trek) but I will not give CBS All Access another dime. You get one shot at something like this, and you blew your first impression hard. My best hope is that CBS realizes what a colossal mistake this was and moves season 2 to Netflix in the US and Canada like it is in literally every other country on the planet.
I'm finding that I'm just not getting the enjoyment I should out of a Star Trek series by having to deal with reviewing it (especially with having playback issues on CBS All Access). I've decided to postpone any further reviews until at least the end of the season. I'm just going to enjoy it for now.
What do you call the prologue of a prequel? The pre-prequel? With most of the announced cast still not making an appearance in this episode nor the titular ship, plus a direct continuation of the plot from the last episode, in other hands this might have been released as a tie-in book called "Road to Discovery." Despite that, they're really showcasing their budget and it's got me excited for what lies in store. I don't think mentioning a battle is much of a spoiler when the title of the episode has the word in it. Effects-wise, it's impressive. Cinematographically, it's a little static. There's a sense of "realism" in it as large ships don't dodge in and out of combat like they're dogfighters, but instead fire volleys while staying static or moving slowly and deliberately like a naval battle of old.
I suspect we have a long way to go with Michael Burnham. She's brilliantly stupid. I think she may be a case study for future generations as to why Vulcan emotional repression is psychologically unhealthy for humans to practice, because pretty much every time she has a lapse in logic it leads to catastrophic results. I absolutely believe she has good intentions and will grow, but for now I have whiplash from her decision making.
In a flashback to seven years ago, Sarek and Burnham beam aboard the Shenzhou. Michael is fresh from the Vulcan Science Academy and hasn't interacted with other humans in so long she appears to have completely forgotten how, speaking frankly and rudely to Georgiou as she welcomes her to her new post on the ship. Before Sarek departs, he tells her to "behave." Georgiou is very patient with her as she welcomes her to her new home.
Snap back to reality, OH! There goes mutiny. Georgiou has Burnham sent to the brig as Starfleet ships arrive to greet the Klingon fleet. Georgiou contacts the Klingons and tells them to withdraw from Federation space so that they may begin peaceful talks. T'Kuvma predicts her final line which he calls their great lie, "We come in peace." He speaks to the Klingon houses about his vision of a united Empire. Not all the ships listen to him, as he is of a lower status and in no position to dictate. But enough of them find truth in his statements that they rally behind him and fire on the Federation fleet.
Connor, the Ops officer, suffers a concussion during the initial volley and is ordered to Sickbay. Instead he goes to the brig, and he seems to have a mix of confusion from the concussion as well as having an ethical crisis. While Burnham tells him to get to sickbay, he bemoans the fighting, that they are supposed to be explorers. Then he's blown out into space as a hull breach tears through the brig. Michael is only saved by her cell's force field.
Burnham showcases her brilliance talking to the ship's computer, which is apprehensive at listening to a prisoner and initially does not think that safety protocols have been met to allow her freedom from her cell, but she's able to rationalize with it that her force field will last only 8 minutes more and there is atmosphere on the other side of the brig door, so opening a small hole in the field will push her through toward the door before exposure to the vacuum renders her unconscious, and she's freed from the brig.
The Shenzhou is badly injured in the fight and begins drifting toward the accretion disk of one of the stars, but Admiral Anderson's ship, the Europa, shows up to tractor it to safety. He contacts T'Kuvma to negotiate a cease fire, and T'Kuvma tells him to "expect my envoy," which happens to be a cloaked vessel designed specifically for cutting ships the fuck in half. It decloaks right on top of the Europa and starts demolishing it. Escape pods are launched and the ship self-destructs to deal more damage to the Klingon vessel.
With the Starfleet ships adrift or dead, the Klingon High Council head back home while T'Kuvma revels in his victory. The Shenzhou's weapons are down, but transporters are still functional, and if they can detach a torpedo warhead and put it on a worker bee, someone can fly it into T'Kuvma's ship. Georgiou plans to do it herself, but Burnham shows back up on the bridge and says if they kill T'Kuvma, they'll make a martyr of him. They need to capture him alive to humiliate him and weaken his position as a Klingon revolutionary. Georgiou is willing to set aside for the moment Burnham's betrayal and comes up with an even better solution for that warhead.
As T'Kuvma tractors in the floating dead Klingons on the battlefield, the warhead is beamed onto a body and detonates just as it's tractored inside the neck of the vessel, cutting off the head. Georgiou and Burnham beam aboard the bridge and take out several Klingons there before getting split up into two hand-to-hand contests: Burnham vs Voq, and Georgiou vs T'Kuvma. Voq tries crushing Burnham's head between his hands, but she gouges his eye with her fingernail. Georgiou gets to show off her martial arts skills (you don't cast Michelle "Crouching Tiger" Yeoh and not have her fight a Klingon hand-to-hand), but is unfortunately bested and impaled on a bat'leth. Ignoring the whole plan in a moment of rage, Burnham switches her phaser to kill and punches a hole in T'Kuvma's torso, before Saru forcibly beams her back. Voq holds T'Kuvma in his arms as he dies and vows all Klingons will unite behind his sacrifice.
The crew of the Shenzhou abandon ship. Michael Burnham stands at court martial where she pleads guilty to all charges, stating that service was only ever her goal but she has ruined everything and gotten them into a war. She is sentenced to life in prison.
SPECULATION
I think we're going to see an abandoning of the honoring of dead bodies here. With T'Kuvma dead thanks in large part to collecting Klingon bodies, I suspect they'll return to treating them as empty husks.
I hope Voq gets a really cool eyepatch from that gouge Michael gave him. I'm thinking similar in style to General Chang's riveted patch.
NITPICKS
Michael's skin starts to react almost instantly upon contact with the vacuum but she's only passing through it for six seconds and has a partial atmosphere from the brig pushing her along. If she was out there for an extended period, I could buy her skin reacting, but this was six seconds. She should have gone through fully unscathed.
Wouldn't mining the dead be considered a war crime?
Life imprisonment does not seem a sentence befitting a future humanity. Penal colonies, at least in the 24th century, are rehabilitative, not punitive.
FAVORITE QUOTES
Georgiou: Congratulations on your recent commencement.
Burnham: Respect is earned, as is friendliness.
Sarek: Yet, diplomatic niceties must be observed.
Burnham: This is hardly a negotiation.
Georgiou: First contact, then.
Georgiou: Unidentified Klingon vessel, this is Captain Philippa Georgiou of the USS Shenzhou. We are on the outermost borders of Federation space, but make no mistake—you and your artifact are in our territory. We regret the situation has resulted in the death of your warrior. We offer you two choices. Leave immediately, or open a dialogue with us. Hopefully, it is the latter, so that we can reengage with the Klingon Empire and prove to you that now, as always...
T'Kuvma: Here it comes. Their lie.
Georgiou: ...we come in peace.
T'Kuvma: No! They do not! They come to destroy our individuality! Shall we rise up together and give them the fight they deserve?
Klingons: Remain Klingon!
T'Kuvma: Fire!
Connor: Why are we fighting? We're Starfleet! We're explorers, not soldiers.
Computer: Chance for survival estimated at 43%.
Burnham: I'll take it.
Burnham: I wanted to protect them from war, from the enemy. And now we are at war, and I am the enemy.
It's a little hard to separate my impression of The Vulcan Hello and Battle at the Binary Stars since they flow together into a complete narrative. I suspect outside of CBS's interference insisting this be a streamed show and wanting something to entice broadcast viewers to sign up for All Access right away that we would have just treated this as a 2-hour single episode premiere like prior Trek series. I'll try to do my part and just focus this on the first episode despite having watched both back to back. The title theme has some cool elemental visuals in keeping with Bryan Fuller's style (think Hannibal or American Gods), but the music doesn't feel like it will ever become iconic. I can't recall a tune to hum along with like I would with the other series. Instead, it seems more to hint and echo at motifs of better themes. Title music doesn't have to be Jerry Goldsmith's hum-a-melody style, but it's nice when it is. At least it's not Rod Stewart.
The Klingons have been visually redesigned and it's probably going to take me some time to get used to it. Klingons do tend to have a history of getting reworked every couple decades, so it's not without precedent. The difference is that the makeup job done here does not appear, to my layman's eye, to be something unachievable in the nineties, when I consider alien design for the later seasons of TNG or all of DS9. So while the first Klingon facelift was both budgetary and an advance in makeup, this seems arbitrary, making Klingons different just to make them different. I'm also hoping we're going to see more clothing that resembles their leather-bound look from series of yore, because right now it looks like they're all wearing ribcages. I could see it being this particular ship's garb, but once we delve further into the other Klingon houses we'll see what they look like.
I'm not getting a strong sense of Starfleet unity from this crew. I gather this crew is not the final crew based on promotional materials and the ship being named the Shenzhou, not the Discovery, but even so, I don't get the feel of an intrepid crew of brave explorers. Instead we see a timid and cautious crew (embodied in Science Officer Saru) only kept together by the measured hand of Captain Philippa Georgiou and the hybrid passion/dispassion of First Officer Michael Burnham. We're a hundred years out from Enterprise and ten years until Kirk's five-year mission, but it feels to me more like we're hot on Archer's heels and a long way to go before we get to a Starfleet prepared for alien menageries and salt vampires.
It's May 11, 2256, and my 271st birthday. Captain Georgiou and Commander Burnham are on a planet entering an 89 year drought. In order to save the native population, they blast through bedrock down a well to break through to the aquifer. They're unable to hail their ship, the Shenzhou, due to a dust storm, so Georgiou has them walk in what appears to be circles, but she's actually drawing the Starfleet chevron in the desert so the Shenzhou can see them and pick them up.
The Shenzhou goes to make repairs to a damaged relay on the edge of Federation space in a young binary star system. Saru, the lanky Kelpien science officer (it took them long enough to cast Doug Jones in Star Trek) believes the relay was intentionally damaged, and Burnham is inclined to agree due to Starfleet's reputation for rapid repair deployment. If someone wanted to lure out a starship, it worked. There is an object that is actively obscuring optical sensors in an accretion disk, and Burnham volunteers to make an EVA flight out there to inspect it. She loses comm signal once in range of the object, but finds an ornate stone and steel sculpture. Once she lands on it, it seems to react to her presence, raising spires all around her, and she is confronted by another humanoid in an EVA suit. She looks at his insignia and his bladed weapon. He is Klingon. He charges at her, and she fires her suit's thrusters to get away, knocking his bat'leth into his chest in the process and cracking her visor.
On a nearby cloaked Klingon vessel, they have retrieved the body of the dead warrior and T'Kuvma, the captain of the vessel, leads them all in the Klingon death ritual, staring into his eyes and yelling to Sto-vo-kor that a great warrior is coming. Unusual for Klingons, they actually take great care of the body, wrapping it in a shroud and sealing it in a sarcophagus that they place on the outer hull of the ship, where it is among thousands of others. This is new Klingon behavior. T'Kuvma speaks of a prophecy and of Kahless, wanting to unite the great houses of the High Council and restore the Empire. His ship appears to be populated with outcasts, including an albino named Voq, Son of None, who volunteers to "light the beacon" and proves his faith and devotion by holding his hand to fire.
Burnham dreams of her childhood, being raised and taught on Vulcan as a human, with Sarek as her instructor. She appears to be the sole survivor of a Klingon attack on a Federation colony and while she attempts to embrace the logical nature of Vulcanity, the death of her parents is something she cannot emotionally shake off. She awakens in sickbay, where she's being treated for radiation exposure, and aborts the treatment mid-process to run to the bridge. Her suit's recording systems did not function at the beacon, and so none of the crew know of the Klingon presence. She convinces Georgiou to go to red alert and lock phasers on the beacon, which causes the Klingon vessel to decloak. The captain orders her to return to sickbay to complete her treatment because she needs to be living if things escalate.
Starfleet Command orders the Shenzhou to hold position and wait for reinforcements, and Admiral Anderson personally berates Burnham for bothering "a warrior race we've hardly spoken to for a hundred years." Starfleet is hoping for a diplomatic solution to this Klingon incursion, but Burnham argues they only understand strength and violence, an attitude that gets her accused of racism. They hold position, and then the beacon is lit. To call it a beacon is a bit of an understatement. Despite the Shenzhou being a starship with windows that ought to be able to filter out significant quantities of light for flying near stars, they are effectively blinded by the beacon. Filters at full leave nothing but white in the viewscreens, and the beacon broadcasts on multiple frequencies, including audio ones. Shutting down the comm system still has the ship's sympathetic vibrations from the beacon.
Burnham calls Sarek on Vulcan and asks how the Vulcans dealt with the Klingons, since they've had a peace with them for a long time. She brings the advice to the captain. Before formal dialogue was established between the two species, the standing policy of Vulcans was to fire first at any Klingon vessel they saw, to communicate in a language they understood. Burnham wants them to fire everything they have at the Klingon ship, but Georgiou will not fire first and chews Burnham out in her ready room for becoming insubordinate on the bridge and being cavalier with wanting to engage her crew in battle and death.
I suspect Burnham has a long way to go to reconcile her hatred of the Klingons with her Vulcan upbringing, but it's not here yet. In a desperate move, Burnham mutinies, neck-pinching Georgiou in the ready room and ordering the bridge to lock weapons despite Saru's protests. Just as she orders to open fire, Georgiou returns to the bridge thanks to Burnham's weaksauce technique and belays the order, training a phaser on her mutinous first officer. Before another move can be made, the beacon's call is responded to, as a fleet of 24 Klingon warships warp into view.
SPECULATION
T'Kuvma appears a different and more spiritual leader of Klingons, showing reverence for dead bodies. It doesn't last, since by Worf's time, Klingons are back to considering dead bodies empty shells for disposal, while still highly spiritual, considering the belief in Sto-vo-kor. This appears to be a much different religious order.
Since this is on the outer edge of Federation space, are we about to see the formation of the Federation/Klingon Neutral Zone?
It's an interesting choice making a woman of color use the racist dogwhistle "it's not race, it's culture." I suspect we're going to see a series arc of Michael coming to grips with and overcoming her ingrained prejudice of Klingons.
NITPICKS
Why couldn't Burnham and Georgiou have beamed closer to the well? Bet they could have been in and out without having to draw a beacon and exposing the local population to a starship in low atmosphere.
The binary star appears to be a recent merger between the two stars, but even so, the accretion disks of each star appear too fixed to their parent star. There should be a lot more material that's bending toward the center of gravity between the stars.
Why couldn't Burnham warn Georgiou about the Klingons using the Sickbay intercom?
The Klingon redesign definitely makes them more alien, but the complete removal of hair is a problem to me, since to Klingons, hair is a symbol of virility.
Sarek mentions there being a "new star in the sky." While the beacon certainly makes use of subspace to call in the Klingon great houses, the light from the beacon must be limited to light-speed and therefore nobody would be seeing this "new star" for years.
FAVORITE QUOTES
T'Kuvma: That is why we light our beacon this day. To assemble our people. To lock arms against hose whose fatal greeting is "we come in peace."
Georgiou: It's hard to imagine you've served under me for seven years. I think it's time that we talked about you having your own command.
Burnham: I'm grateful, Captain, though I would be significantly more so if I thought we had any chance of returning to the ship.
Burnham: How did they find us?
Georgiou: I set a star.
Georgiou: Saru's Kelpien. He thinks everything is malicious.
Saru: As Science Officer, I can provide a far more concrete and detailed analysis than simply reading data off a monitor.
Georgiou: Mr. Januzzi, contact Starfleet Command. Send an encoded message. Tell them we have engaged the Klingons.
Voq: I will light the beacon.
T'Kuvma: Speak your name.
Voq: Voq, son of None.
T'Kuvma: You have no family blade of your own. You cannot assume the birthright of a noble house. You are unworthy.
Voq: I am worthy not by blood, but by faith. I serve the light of Kahless. I am reborn in his flames.
Saru: Your world has food chains. Mine does not. Our species map is binary. We are either predator or prey. My people were hunted, bred, farmed. We are your livestock of old. We were biologically determined for one purpose and one purpose alone: to sense the coming of death. I sense it coming now.
Burnham: 240 years ago, near H'Atoria, a Vulcan ship crossed into Klingon space. The Klingons attacked immediately and destroyed the vessel. Vulcans don't make the same mistake twice. From then on, until formal relations were established, whenever the Vulcans crossed paths with Klingons, the Vulcans fired first. They said hello in a language the Klingons understood. Violence brought respect, respect brought peace. Captain, we have to give the Klingons a Vulcan hello.
Georgiou: Battle is not a simulation. It's blood and screams and funerals.
I’m having trouble getting CBS All Access to connect to my Xbox, though it’s working on a Fire TV in another part of the house, but that’ll be a more social viewing so I won’t be in the proper reviewing mindset plus I doubt my viewing companions will appreciate frequent pausing and rewinding. So instead of getting my mood spoiled fretting over technical difficulties, I’m just going to relax and watch and enjoy the first new Star Trek on TV in a decade and I’ll give it another watch for review purposes tomorrow.
pippitypippin said: What will your tag be? Netflix in the UK is going to be broadcasting Discovery a day after the US so I’ll be a day behind. Thanks.
I usually do a bunch of tags, I think I’ll be tagging it as both #dis and #dsc as well as longer tags like “#star trek discovery”. I’m also conscientious of people outside the US and Canada getting the episodes a day late, so I will be hiding all spoilers in all future reviews behind a cut.
I’m having trouble getting CBS All Access to connect to my Xbox, though it’s working on a Fire TV in another part of the house, but that’ll be a more social viewing so I won’t be in the proper reviewing mindset plus I doubt my viewing companions will appreciate frequent pausing and rewinding. So instead of getting my mood spoiled fretting over technical difficulties, I’m just going to relax and watch and enjoy the first new Star Trek on TV in a decade and I’ll give it another watch for review purposes tomorrow.
I finished just under the wire before Discovery comes out. Obviously, I’m going to be reviewing Discovery. I can’t exactly follow the old goal of reviewing everything in chronological order as Discovery fits between Enterprise and the Original Series, but I’m not changing my name so just gotta deal with it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I will be changing up the format of my reviews a little bit. Since this is uncharted territory as I’m reviewing things I’ve never seen before (the original project was not my first viewing of all Star Treks), I’ll be adding a speculation section to join nitpicks and favorite quotes. Favorite quotes might be diminished as a category just because I’ll have lost my primary resource for transcripts, http://www.chakoteya.net/, so I’ll have to manually type those up. Shout out to Chakoteya, you’ve been a fantastic help, even if you didn’t have Star Trek Beyond transcribed.
Also, in consideration that these will be brand-new episodes and spoilers are a concern, particularly for those outside the US who won’t be getting the episodes until the next day, I will start with spoiler-free impressions of the episode and keep the recap wholly after the cut.
For now, I’m going to remove the parental controls I placed on my WoW account to force me to get these reviews done under the wire. See you folks Sunday! LLAP
This is it. This is the one. It took two movies of setup but we've finally arrived at a proper Star Trek movie that feels like it should. We're in the five-year mission, Kirk is rocking those pointy sideburns from the TV series, and for once we're nowhere near Earth and the ship is actually exploring deep space. The film starts with Kirk visiting some CGI aliens as a neutral representative of another species that has presented them an ancient weapon artifact as a peace offering. The Teenaxi do not take the peace offering as intended and instead attack Kirk. Fortunately, they're about the size of chihuahuas, and Kirk is able to beam back to the Enterprise with just a couple of them tagging along, running loose in the corridors. He managed to tear his shirt, of course. Since the Teenaxi didn't want the artifact, he has Spock catalog and store it.
McCoy swipes some whisky from Chekov's locker and has a drink with Kirk, who is turning 30. Kirk is a year older than his dad ever was, and is getting mopey. The endless expanse and his responsibilities as captain are isolating him a bit, and he's applied for a vice-admiralty position on Starbase Yorktown, a brand-new station on the outer frontier that looks like Justin Lin really wanted to direct Inception. He's recommending Spock replace him as captain of the Enterprise, but unbeknown to him, Spock is considering resigning his commission in Starfleet to help repopulate the Vulcan species, a decision that's caused him and Uhura to break up. (Though, really, he'd only need to take leave every seven years, he wouldn't have to quit his job.) Uhura wants to give back the necklace Spock gave her that belonged to Amanda Grayson, but Spock insists she keep the gift.
An escape pod approaches the Yorktown with a distress call. The lone occupant Kalara says her ship and crew are stranded on the planet Altamid. It's on the other side of the nebula near the Yorktown. Kirk volunteers the Enterprise for a rescue mission, using their advanced sensors to navigate the nebula's thick debris fields. They arrive at Altamid and are quickly met by a vessel of unknown configuration that starts jamming their comms before breaking up into a swarm of "bees" that attack the ship. They're frighteningly methodical, attacking with suicide runs. First they take out the deflector array, then sever the warp nacelles, then start boarding the ship by impaling the hull with breaching pods. Phasers do minimal damage as they only destroy a few bees at a time, and the swarm completely avoids torpedoes.
The leader of the swarm, an alien named Krall (hi Idris Elba!), begins looking for the weapon artifact stored aboard the Enterprise. He has the ability to drain the life from other humanoids, leaving them as dessicated husks. Kirk gets to the artifact first and gives it to a crewmember with a facehugger-style head to hide. Scotty reroutes impulse power to draw from the warp core so they can try to escape at impulse, and the swarm severs the saucer from the stardrive section to cut the power feed. Spock and Bones are in the turbolift when this happens and their car is launched into space before a bee captures them, but they're able to kill the pilots and take control of the bee themselves.
The impulse drive is still attempting to draw power from the warp core, and in order to switch it back they'll need to perform an actual saucer separation, removing what's left of the neck from the saucer. Kirk orders the crew to abandon ship while he performs the separation but like Kirk and McCoy, the escape pods are all captured by the bees. Scotty hides himself in a torpedo and launches it, knowing the bees will avoid his torpedo, letting him fly to the surface. Uhura helps Kirk fight off the invaders as they prepare for saucer separation but Uhura is stuck on the neck section with Krall when the separation is complete.
Even with impulse engines drawing from saucer power, they don't have enough boost to escape the gravity well of the planet. Kirk orders the bridge crew to escape in Kelvin pods. It's a cool escape pod system on the bridge, likely added because of George Kirk's sacrifice flying into the Narada. It's a single pod bay with individual pods loading in one at a time. Kirk is the last of the bridge crew to escape in a pod, and the saucer crashes to the surface below.
Most of the crew have been rounded up by Krall. Kirk, Chekov and Kalara's pods land near each other, Scotty escapes his torpedo before it careens off a cliff, and McCoy and Spock crashland their bee. Scotty meets an alien named Jaylah who has been stranded on this planet for years. She is a highly skilled melee fighter and engineer, developing holographic duplicates of herself to confuse in a fight, and she's constructed many traps to protect her home. Her home, as Scotty discovers, is the 22nd century Earth Starfleet vessel Franklin, humanity's first Warp 4 ship. Jaylah and her family were captured by Krall years ago and she escaped, fending for herself ever since.
Kirk and Chekov get Kalara to admit that she lured them into an ambush. She claims her crewmates were being held hostage by Krall and he'd let them go if she lured the Enterprise here. Chekov isn't able to scan for the rest of the crew, but the tricorder range is limited so Kirk suggests they hike back to the saucer and see if they can get its sensors online. While there, Kirk heads to the lockers to pretend to retrieve the weapon, and Kalara attacks him and informs Krall of its location... just as Kirk and Chekov wanted. The artifact is obviously not here, and they are able to get Krall's communication frequency from her call. This turns into another Inception-style gravity bending fight scene as Kirk and Chekov run through hallways to avoid Kalara and Krall's other minions. They end up igniting the saucer's thruster fuel tank which buys them time to escape, but flips the saucer and kills Kalara and the other minions. While looking for other survivors, they get caught in one of Jaylah's traps, an amber-colored gas that quickly solidifies and encases them. Jaylah frees them from it after Scotty assures her they're friends.
Uhura, Sulu, and the rest of the crew are rounded up in a camp. Krall reveals to Uhura that he can speak English, broken as it is, and he harbors a deep hatred for the Federation and its ideals, which he believes to be a lie, of peaceful coexistence that stand in stark contrast to the natural competition of evolution. Uhura and Sulu are able to break out of their holding cell thanks to a rather acidic sneeze by Keenser, Scotty's tiny alien assistant, and they find a monitoring system that's tapped into Federation frequencies. Krall knew that the weapon was aboard the Enterprise the moment Spock cataloged it. Once Krall knows it's not aboard the Enterprise, he realizes one of the crew must have it, and threatens to kill Sulu unless it's given up. The facehugger alien opens the back of her head to show it, and Krall is able to complete his superweapon, the Abronath, which he tests on said facehugger alien, who is dissolved before Uhura's eyes.
Spock is impaled by a piece of shrapnel on their landing, and McCoy has to improvise a cauterizing implement after pulling out the piece. Spock explains why he and Uhura broke up to McCoy, stating that he's planning on resigning his Starfleet commission to return to New Vulcan. He hasn't spoken to Kirk about it yet. There's plenty of banter to be had between the two, something that we hadn't seen quite enough of in the last two films, and they're definitely making up for lost time. Just as they are found and surrounded by several bees, Scotty reactivates the transporter on the Franklin and beams them over one at a time.
Spock's injury is able to be better treated on the ship, and thanks to that necklace he had Uhura keep that happens to have a unique radioactive signature, they're able to track down where Krall's camp is. ("You gave your girlfriend a tracking device?") Scotty reconfigures the transporter, an older model that was originally intended only for cargo, and believes he can get about 20 crew at a time with it so long as they can erect transport enhancers near the base. Jaylah is apprehensive about helping them go back there, fearing they will all die like her father did, but Scotty gives her a pep talk and Kirk has an idea about how to mount a distraction during the rescue attempt.
Using a vintage motorcycle that was aboard the Franklin, the holographic duplicator, and a canister of that insta-amber gas, many Kirks drive many motorcycles around Krall's base, distracting Krall's minions while the rest of the team gather up the crew and beam them to the Franklin a group at a time. Jaylah gets separated from the rest of the group and loses her transport beacon when she gets into a big ole fight with the guy who killed her father, but Kirk is able to get her out when he does a big ole Fast and the Furious style stunt of jumping off his bike as she falls off a roof and grabbing her while he's in process of being transported.
As they are all rescued, Krall mobilizes his bee fleet for departure. Now that he has the Abronath, he can use it against Starbase Yorktown. Kirk asks if Scotty can get the Franklin up and running to pursue them, and Scotty thinks it's impossible without a "jump-start"... which would involve dropping the Franklin off the cliff it sits on and waiting until it hits terminal velocity before firing thrusters. So of course they do that, because Sulu is Sulu and can fly anything. I can't stress enough, once we see the Franklin in full silhouette, how much it resembles the NX-01 Enterprise. This is not the last homage to the Enterprise era in the film, which is great because it means the filmmakers know that they still have to acknowledge anything before 2233 as canon to both timelines.
Pursing the fleet, Spock and McCoy beam over to one of the bees since they have prior experience flying them. They quickly fight off and eject the drone pilots, and then examine how the thousands of ships in Krall's swarm coordinate with each other. Recalling the Enterprise signal jam that was most likely a broadcast storm attack from the swarm, they realize that such a system of coordination and communication would be vulnerable to VHF frequencies. Jaylah has a boombox with Earth music on it that she's been rocking out to throughout the film. They plug it into the ship and broadcast "Sabotage" which not only disorients the bees, it actually blows them up. Yeah. They blast Beastie Boys to blow up ships. Is it dumb? Yes. Is it awesome? FUCK. YES. They surf a wave of exploding bees and give the frequency to Greg Grunberg at Yorktown's command center, who boosts the signal, repelling the attackers.
Krall's ship manages to break through the airlock and they take the Franklin to pursue it into Yorktown. They're able to stop his ship but he escapes from it. On the Franklin, Uhura watches an old recording of the crew and realizes she recognizes the voice of Captain Balthezar Edison in the recording... it's Krall. Edison was a MACO who served on NX-01 Enterprise during the Xindi campaign in the Delphic Expanse and fought in the Earth-Romulan War. When the Federation was founded, MACO was dissolved and Edison was absorbed into Starfleet and given the Franklin. Somehow the ship got lost, possibly through a wormhole, and stranded on the planet Altamid. Edison felt abandoned and betrayed by the principles of the Federation, and discovered that the former inhabitants of the planet had left behind a bunch of mining drones and life-extending technology. They find more dessicated crew corpses and realize he might look human now.
And he does, almost. He still has the Abronath and plans to release it into Yorktown's air recycling system, where it will kill all inhabitants of the station. Kirk pursues him atop a skyscraper that houses the central chamber of the system and they fight while Scotty attempts to shut down the system to prevent it from getting spread. After a fight of both fists and of ideals between Kirk and Edison, not to mention some bizarre tricks of intersecting artificial gravity fields at that altitude, they manage to get an emergency valve open to the outside and Edison gets sucked out into space with the Abronath activated, only consuming him, Kirk also careens toward the valve but is caught by Spock and McCoy, who still haven't figured out how to land their bee yet.
Commodore Paris tells Kirk that after his actions, the vice-admiralty position he applied for is his, but he realizes that vice admirals sit behind desks all day, so he declines the appointment. His first best destiny is on the bridge of a starship, and they just so happen to be building one at Yorktown. Spock opens a box of Spock Prime's belongings and finds a promotional cast photo from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and realizes he should stay with his crew after all. McCoy organizes a surprise birthday party for Kirk with the whole crew, where they toast to the crew and to absent friends (as Chekov is center in frame). Scotty manages to pull some strings and gets Jaylah an application to Starfleet Academy. And the five-year mission is resumed after a brief hiatus as the new starship built at Yorktown is christened NCC-1701-A, USS Enterprise.
NITPICKS
The JJverse films standardized stardates so they follow the Gregorian calendar, with the number following the point being the day of the year from 1-365. So for the film to start on 2263.2 means it's January 2nd, 2263, and Kirk is celebrating his birthday. But Kirk was born on the day of the Kelvin's destruction, which was 2233.04 (I assume leading zeros are optional), otherwise known as January 4th. Maybe McCoy was starting the celebration a few days early, or maybe Kirk's log was 2 days before.
The viewscreen on the Enterprise bridge has to be built to similar tolerances as every other bulkhead on the ship, especially as it is forward-facing and contains the senior crew of the ship. Therefore, there is no way in hell they wouldn't have built it to be able to withstand a few blasts from a freaking hand phaser.
Where is the deflector array on the Franklin?
Why wouldn't they return the Teenaxi who got beamed up with Kirk? Isn't that kidnapping?
FAVORITE QUOTES
Kirk: I ripped my shirt again.
Kirk: Captain's log, stardate 2263.2. Today is our 966th day in deep space, a little under three years into our five-year mission. The more time we spend out here, the harder it is to tell where one day ends and the next one begins. It can be a challenge to feel grounded when even gravity is artificial. But, well, we do what we can to make it feel like home. The crew, as always, continues to act admirably despite the rigors of our extended stay here in outer space. And the personal sacrifices they have made. We continue to search for new life forms in order to establish firm diplomatic ties. Our extended time in uncharted territory has stretched the ship's mechanical capacities. But fortunately our engineering department, led by Mr. Scott, is more than up to the job. The ship aside, prolonged cohabitation has definitely had effects on the interpersonal dynamics. Some experiences for the better, and some for the worse. As for me, things have started to feel a little episodic. The farther out we go, the more I find myself wondering what it is we're trying to accomplish. If the universe is truly endless, then are we not striving for something forever out of reach? The Enterprise is scheduled for a reprovisioning stop at Yorktown, the Federation's newest and most advanced starbase. Perhaps a break from routine will offer up some respite from the mysteries of the unknown.
McCoy: I found this in Chekov's locker.
Kirk: Wow.
McCoy: Right? I mean, I always assumed he'd be a vodka guy.
Kirk: A vodka guy, exactly.
McCoy: You guys break up? What'd you do?
Spock: A typically reductive inquiry, Doctor.
McCoy: You know Spock, when an earth-girl says "it's me not you", it's definitely you.
Paris: It isn't uncommon, you know, even for a captain, to want to leave. There is no relative direction in the vastness of space. It is only yourself, your ship, your crew. It's easier than you think to get lost.
Uhura: How do you know our language?
Krall: I know your kind.
Uhura: I am Lieutenant Nyota Uhura of the USS Enterprise. And you have committed an act of war against the Federation.
Krall: Federation? Federation is an act of war!
McCoy: They say it hurts less if it's a surprise.
Spock: If I may adopt a parlance with which you are familiar, I can confirm your theory to be horseshit.
Jaylah: I am Jaylah. And you are Montgomery Scott.
Scott: Aye, Scotty.
Jaylah: Come now, Montgomery Scotty.
Scott: Wait a minute, is this your ship?
Jaylah: No, Montgomery Scotty. It's yours.
Chekov: Do you even know what the combustion compressor looks like?
Kirk: It's square, right?
Chekov: No, it's [Kirk fires] round.
Kirk: That's what I said.
Scott: Music's a bit old fashioned for my tastes, not to mention very loud and distracting, but hey, well played.
Jaylah: I like the beats and shouting.
Scott: I have an idea, sir, but I am going to need your permission.
Kirk: Why would you need my permission?
Scott: Because if I mess it up, I don't want it to be just my fault.
Spock: Leaving me behind will significantly increase your chances of survival, Doctor.
McCoy: Well that's damn chivalrous of you, but completely out of the question.
Spock: It is imperative that you locate any surviving crew.
McCoy: Here I was thinking you cared.
Spock: Of course I care, Leonard. I always assumed my respect for you was clear. The dialogue we have had across the years has always...
McCoy: It's okay, Spock. You don't have to say it. Well, at least I won't die alone! [Spock is beamed out from behind McCoy] Well that's just typical.
Spock: Lieutenant Uhura wears a vokaya amulet which I presented to her as a token of my affection and respect.
McCoy: You gave your girlfriend radioactive jewelry?
Spock: The emission is harmless, Doctor, but its unique signature makes it very easy to identify.
McCoy: You gave your girlfriend a tracking device?
Spock: ...That was not my intention.
McCoy: I'm glad he doesn't respect me.
Krall: Your Federation has pushed the frontier for centuries, but no longer. This is where it begins, Lieutenant. This is where the frontier pushes back.
Kirk: I think you underestimate humanity.
Edison: I fought for humanity! We lost millions to the Xindi and Romulan wars. And for what? For the Federation to sit me in the captain's chair and break bread with the enemy?
Kirk: We change, we have to. Or we spend the rest of our lives fighting the same battles.
Kirk:You won the war, Edison. You gave us peace.
Edison: Peace is not what I was born into.
Edison: You can't stop it. You will die.
Kirk: Better to die saving lives than to live by taking them. That's what I was born into.
Kirk: I heard about Ambassador Spock. Is that what you want to mention that time in the turbolift?
Spock: More or less. I trust your meeting with Commodore Paris went well.
Kirk: More or less.
Kirk: Space. The final frontier.
Spock: These are the voyages of the starship...
Scotty: Enterprise. Its continuing mission:
Bones: To explore strange, new worlds. To seek out new life,
Chekov: And new civilizations.
Uhura: To boldly go where no one has gone before.
The Enterprise, in surveying the planet Nibiru, has discovered that a volcano is due to erupt that will likely wipe out most life on the planet, Yellowstone caldera style. There is a primitive village at the base of the volcano, and Kirk lures them away from the initial blast zone by stealing one of their sacred scrolls, causing them all to chase him and McCoy until they jump off a cliff and swim to the Enterprise, stupidly hidden underwater. Meanwhile, Sulu, Uhura and Spock are flying inside the caldera to lower Spock down on a line to deploy a device that will freeze the eruption in its tracks. The ash intake is damaging the shuttle's engines and when Spock's tether accidentally severs, Sulu is forced to leave him behind on a small rock surrounded by lava or the shuttle will crash. The only way to get Spock out of there is with a direct line of sight transport, but they'd need to come out of the ocean to do that, exposing the ship to the view of the natives and violating the Prime Directive. Spock tells them to leave him behind, but Kirk ignores his protest and does it anyway, beaming Spock aboard just before the bomb goes off and freezes the eruption. He shrugs off the Prime Directive implications even as the natives begin drawing silhouettes of the Enterprise in the sand.
Back at Earth, Kirk and Spock have been called to report to Admiral Pike, who asks about the Nibiru survey mission. Kirk calls it uneventful, which doesn't mesh with the report Spock filed regarding their violation of the Prime Directive. Kirk is angry that Spock went behind his back to tell on him for saving his life, and Pike dismisses Spock from the room to dress Kirk down for filing a false report, violating the Prime Directive, and furthermore failing to even understand what he did wrong. He says that there was already a hearing convened and they've decided to strip Kirk of his command and boot him all the way down to cadet.
Pike finds Kirk at a bar and cockblocks him to share a drink. He tells Kirk that they gave the Enterprise back to him, and he was able to lessen Kirk's punishment. He'll serve as Pike's first officer with Spock transferred to the Bradbury. They're called in to an emergency meeting at Starfleet Headquarters, where Admiral "Robocop" Marcus informs them he got an email from Mickey before he 9-11'd Section 31 that he was coerced into doing it by Michaelvick Dogfightmatch. Admiral Marcus is declaring a manhunt for the dude, but it doesn't add up to Kirk, especially because he doesn't know it was a Section 31 facility and on its face appears to just be a library. He realizes that once said terror attack would happen, all the captains and first officers would convene in this very room.
Sure enough, Obamadict Cumbarack shows up in a small craft to Godfather 3 the room, killing pretty much everyone except Marcus, Spock and Kirk. Pike gets hit in the chest and Spock melds with him as he passes. Kirk ties a rifle to a wall-mounted firehose and throws it through a broken window into the engine of the shuttle, crippling it. He sees Wimbledon Tennismatch beam out as his craft breaks apart around him. Scotty is able to locate the transwarp beaming device he had aboard and has found its coordinates: "Not Khan" beamed himself to Qo'noS, the one place they can't go.
Kirk requests Marcus reinstate him as Captain of the Enterprise and reassign Spock back as his first officer so he can enter Klingon space and pursue Frumious Bandersnatch to bring him to justice. Marcus grants him his request with specific orders. He'll arm the Enterprise with experimental torpedoes that can be fired from long range and will be undetectable by the Klingons. They'll warp in to the edge of Klingon space and fire on Buttonwillow McKittrick's location. Along with the torpedoes comes a weapons expert, Dr. Carol Wallace, which everyone going into the film already knew was actually Carol Marcus, but the filmmakers sure know how to insult their fans by pretending they pulled one over on them. Spock is also suspicious of her and looks into it. Scotty has a serious problem allowing the torpedoes on board because he doesn't know their composition or how they might interfere with the Enterprise engines, and when Kirk orders him to approve them despite his objections, he resigns. Kirk assigns Chekov to replace him as Chief Engineer, saying "Go put on a red shirt," which is a little less funny now considering Anton Yelchin died shortly after filming Star Trek Beyond.
Before Scotty leaves the Enterprise, he implores Kirk not to use the torpedoes, advice that Kirk takes to heart. As they warp to Qo'noS, he announces that they will be seeking to arrest "John Harrison" and only use the torpedoes as a last resort. Spock discovers that Carol Wallace is Carol Marcus, the daughter of Admiral Marcus, and she forged her transfer papers to get aboard. Before she can explain what she's doing here, the Enterprise violently drops out of warp in the Klingon neutral zone due to a coolant leak Chekov discovers. Kirk, Spock, Uhura and two redshirts take a ship confiscated from Harry Mudd and dress in civilian clothes so as not to tie their mission to Starfleet, while Sulu is given the conn and sends a transmission to "Khan't" warning him to surrender or get BTFO. Chekov will try to get the engines up and running before they return.
It looks like the Klingons overmined Praxis a little earlier in this timeline, as Qo'noS has a moon that's breaking apart. The transporter coordinates lead to an uninhabited section of Qo'noS, and en route to its location, Uhura decides to start up an argument with Spock over his rash actions on Nibiru, his seeming lack of care for her feelings when he chose to die, and she tries to bring Kirk into the argument. Spock counters that he's felt grief and despair before, when he melded with Pike, and knew it was the same feeling he felt magnified when Vulcan died, and so he chooses not to feel it again, but it does not affect his feelings for Uhura.
Even though it's an abandoned area of Qo'noS, they have the luck to encounter a random patrol and despite putting on a good chase are completely surrounded. Kirk is ready for a fight, but Uhura opts to use her Klingon to attempt to negotiate instead. She meets face to face with the patrol leader and tells him they are here to hunt down a human criminal with no honor. The Klingon is not moved by her calls to his sensibility, and begins throttling her. But of course, Trenchadict Matrixbatch shows up in a long coat and a bunch of guns to blow up the Klingons. Once the patrol is eradicated, he demands to know the number of torpedoes the Enterprise is armed with. Spock says they have 72, and "Harrison" immediately surrenders. Kirk accepts his surrender, then punches him a bunch. It doesn't seem to phase his prisoner one bit.
On the Enterprise brig, "Harrison" notes they haven't gone to warp yet, suggesting he suspects sabotage. He gives Kirk coordinates to investigate, saying there will be answers to his war on Starfleet there, and he suggests they open a torpedo to see what's inside. Spock warns that he's trying to get into Kirk's head, but Kirk listens anyway because something doesn't add up. He calls Scotty back on Earth and asks him to do him a favor and investigate the coordinates, which take Scotty to a secret shipyard orbiting Jupiter. Speaking with Carol Marcus, she explains that she forged her credentials because she had full access to Section 31's weapons programs except for these torpedoes which disappeared off the books, and she wanted to investigate. They take the ship to a nearby planetoid where Doctors McCoy and Marcus perform surgery on a torpedo and discover it's housing a cryotube with a 300-year-old man inside.
Kirk returns to the brig to find out what's going on, where Bunchacrunch Creamsicle hams it up to reveal that his name... is... KHAN. As if that means anything to Kirk, but maybe Khan was playing it up for the fourth wall. I should point out that Khan was previously played by a Mexican actor portraying an Indian man and now he's suddenly Whitey McLondon. The only thing I can think is that in this timeline, Khan, being of South Asian descent, was likely engineered with the British colonialism gene, turning him into the Englishest Englishman who ever Britted. He explains that Admiral Marcus has a goal of a militarized Starfleet, particularly after the Narada incident, and went and found the Botany Bay to get insight from genetic augments on building new weapons and ships. He held Khan's crew hostage to force him to do the work. Khan hid his crew's cryotubes in the torpedoes he was developing, but apparently Marcus found them. Khan assumed they had been killed, which is why he started waging war on Starfleet. He believes Marcus sabotaged the Enterprise so that it would be found when it launched the torpedoes, sparking a war against the Klingons that Marcus wants.
Proving his point, Admiral Marcus warps in on a big scary new Dreadnought-class vessel called the USS Vengeance. (Who calls it that? The script, apparently. It's never mentioned in the film.) Marcus and Kirk briefly pretend like they don't know that the other person knows that they know, but Khan was pretty much right. Marcus demands Khan be killed and asks him handed over. Kirk lies and says their transporters are down, and then tells Marcus Khan is in Engineering and they'll lower shields to let the Vengeance beam him over. He's really just buying time to make sure that Chekov has warp back online. Shields are never dropped, and they warp back to Earth.
Kirk figures they're safe, doubting the Vengeance can catch up to them, but Carol says the Vengeance has an advanced warp drive and will definitely catch up to them, which it does, firing weapons on the Enterprise and knocking it out of warp in orbit of the Moon. Marcus beams Carol over to the Vengeance and declares the Enterprise crew in league with Khan. He'll execute them all as traitors, even as Kirk begs to be solely held responsible. But before the Vengeance can fire again, all systems reboot. Scotty snuck aboard the Vengeance when he found it in the Jupiter shipyard, and is actively sabotaging it as he can.
Since it will take some time for the Vengeance to restore systems, Kirk sees an opportunity despite the Enterprise's own weapons being offline. Khan knows the Vengeance inside and out, being one of its developers. They turn the ship to align with a cargo bay airlock port on the Vengeance, and Kirk and Khan launch themselves out of an Enterprise airlock in EVA suits to traverse the gap in space. Scotty is accosted by a security officer while manning the airlock port and tries to stall for time, apologizing to him right before he opens the airlock and the guard is blown out into space as Kirk and Khan fly in. Kirk gives Khan a phaser locked to stun, and they head for the bridge.
Spock, meanwhile, gives his old buddy Spock Prime a call and asks him about Khan. Spock Prime warns him that Khan Noonien Singh was one of their most formidable foes and was only defeated at great cost. This scene really didn't need to be in here as it added nothing other than giving Spock Prime another scene when we got a wonderful sendoff for him last film. We all already know Khan is bad, he's the bad guy in the trailers. And since this situation is completely different from Wrath of Khan other than Khan is the bad guy, any advice Spock Prime gives is going to be generic at best and ultimately no payoff comes from it other than to remind people about Wrath of Khan, a much better movie.
Kirk also doesn't trust Khan and tells Scotty to drop him as soon as they hit the bridge. They take the bridge and Scotty stuns Khan, but his superior genetics let him shrug off the stun early and he starts kicking everyone's ass before going full Mountain vs Oberyn, crushing Admiral Marcus's skull between his bare hands. He demands Spock beam the torpedoes to the Vengeance, pointing out that if he doesn't comply, he'll just knock out their life support system since his crew will be unaffected in their cryotubes. Spock beams them over and beams back Kirk, Scotty and Carol. Khan resumes firing on the Enterprise anyway, but Spock had set the torpedoes for timed detonation, and the Vengeance gets fucked up. Kirk worries that they killed Khan's crew, but they removed the tubes beforehand and have them stored in sickbay.
But the damage the Enterprise suffered causes main power to go down and despite it being in orbit of the Moon five minutes ago it starts falling into the Earth's atmosphere. Kirk and Scotty head to Engineering in an Inception-inspired gravity tumbling scene. They can't reinitialize the warp core because an injector is misaligned, and there's no time to clear the chamber of radiation to fix it. Gee, that sounds a little familiar. Kirk is going to go in to do it anyway, and knocks Scotty out to stop his protestations. He manages to kick the injector back in place, and the ship restores power, rising out of the clouds.
In the most offensively derivative scene, Scotty calls Spock down to Engineering as they steal half the lines from Wrath of Khan while Spock and Kirk have a tearful conversation through a pane of glass. Kirk succumbs to his radiation exposure and dies. But, c'mon, we know it's not going to take, because Kirk's only weakness is shoddy bridge construction. Spock, in sadness and anger, yells "KHAAAAAN!" and I, in anger, yell "ABRAAAMS!!!!"
This brings me to a recurring point of contention with the JJverse films. There are plenty of human characters with emotions in these movies that don't cry, yet the stoic Spock has to be made compelling once a film by turning into a blubbering mess. Look, we get it, we all saw "The Naked Time" (or I did) and remembered him crying that he couldn't confess his love for his mother. It was a great moment. And it was made possible because he was intoxicated, not because he was in an emotional situation, and it was an incredibly rare moment in the series. Spock can be somber without resorting to tears. To be clear, I am not hating on characters crying in movies. I think that is perfectly fine. I am hating on the choice to rob Spock of his primary characteristic every movie to service lazy storytelling.
Khan and the Vengeance are not quite dead yet, and he decides to take his ship on a collision course for San Fransisco, first smashing into Alcatraz (what is this, a Roland Emmerich film?) then colliding with several skyscrapers. Khan survives this crash. They can't beam Khan up, but they can beam Spock down, who chases Khan through the panicked streets of San Fran, ending up on a flying car-top battle. Meanwhile, McCoy discovers that Khan's blood injected into a dead tribble restored it to life, and realizes that death no longer holds meaning in the Star Trek universe because they can just harvest Khan's platelets forever. Uhura beams down to stop Spock from killing Khan (though, as just established, wouldn't his superblood prevent that anyway?) and Spock just delivers a no-holds-barred beatdown instead.
Kirk wakes up in the hospital a few weeks later, neutering his heroic sacrifice for the Enterprise. Khan has been stuck back in a cryotube with the rest of the Botany Bay crew. A year passes and San Franscisco and the Enterprise have been fixed up. Kirk gives a speech about not letting enemies of the Federation pull Starfleet into militarization and they should focus instead on exploration. Boy, that sure would have been a nice message to tell Paramount at the start of this project. The crew boards the Enterprise and prepares to embark on a 5-year deep space mission. About time. It's only taken them two movies to get to a point where they can do the movies they should have been doing all along.
NITPICKS
Hey you know what would be better than lowering yourself into an active volcano to place a suitcase bomb then waiting for a starship to leave an ocean and expose itself to the natives so it can line-of-sight beam you? Staying in fucking orbit where nobody can see you and beaming the suitcase bomb down.
They could have called that bomb anything. They chose to call it a cold fusion bomb. That is not at all what cold fusion means.
What really bugs me about the violation of the Prime Directive is that Kirk never actually learns his lesson. He's only thrust back into the captain's chair out of necessity. At no point does he express regret for how he handled the Nibiru mission, nor does he even seem to comprehend the purpose of Starfleet's number 1 rule.
They make a big deal about giving Sulu the bridge like it's never happened. Sulu has, in fact, commanded the Enterprise before, last film, when Kirk and Spock were aboard the Narada.
The on-screen text identifies the Klingon homeworld as Kronos. It is, in fact, Qo'noS.
The Enterprise is in orbit of the Moon when it starts to careen towards the Earth. A quarter million miles is, in fact, pretty dang far, and the Moon would have had the stronger local gravity well.
Between two cuts of Kirk and Spock's hands against the window, in the first cut they are both making the Vulcan salute, and the next they are both holding their hands normally, with no transition out of said salute.
Why didn't McCoy test the blood of any of the other 72 augments to see if maybe they had the same magical superblood? They might not have needed Khan at all.
FAVORITE QUOTES
Spock: Had the mission had gone according to plan, Admiral, the indigenous species would never have been aware of our interference.
Pike: That's a technicality.
Spock: I am Vulcan, sir. We embrace technicality.
Pike: Are you giving me attitude, Spock?
Spock: I am expressing multiple attitudes simultaneously, sir.
Kirk: Why the archive? All that information is public record, and if he really wanted to damage Starfleet, this could just be the beginning.
Marcus: The beginning of what, Mister Kirk?
Kirk: Sir, in the event of an attack, protocol mandates that senior command gather captains and first officers at Starfleet HQ, right here. In this room.
Spock: Regulations aside, this action is morally wrong.
Kirk: Regulations aside, pulling your ass out of a volcano was morally right. And I didn't win any points for that.
Kirk: We have our orders, Scotty.
Scott: That's what scares me. This is clearly a military operation. ls that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers.
Kirk: Are you guys fighting?
Uhura: I'd rather not talk about it, sir.
Kirk: Oh, my God. What is that even like?
Kirk: This isn't going to be a problem, is it, you two working together?
Uhura: Absolutely not.
Spock: Unclear.
McCoy: You just sat that man down at a high stakes poker game with no cards and told him to bluff. Now Sulu's a good man, but he is no captain.
Kirk: For the next two hours, he is. And enough with the metaphors, all right? That's an order.
Uhura: At that volcano, you didn't give a thought to us. What it would do to me if you died, Spock. You didn't feel anything. You didn't care. And I'm not the only one who's upset with you. The Captain is too.
Kirk: No. No, no. Don't drag me into this. ...She is right.
Spock: It is true I chose not to feel anything upon realizing that my own life was ending. As Admiral Pike was dying, I joined with his consciousness and experienced what he felt at the moment of his passing. Anger. Confusion. Loneliness. Fear. I had experienced those feelings before, multiplied exponentially on the day my planet was destroyed. Such a feeling is something I choose never to experience again. Nyota, you mistake my choice not to feel as a reflection of my not caring. Well, I assure you, the truth is precisely the opposite.
McCoy: You know, when I dreamt about being stuck on a deserted planet with a gorgeous woman, there was no torpedo.
Khan: Intellect alone is useless in a fight, Mister Spock. You, you can't even break a rule. How would you be expected to break bone?
Kirk: I'm not aligning with him, I'm using him. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Spock: An Arabic proverb attributed to a prince who was betrayed and decapitated by his own subjects.
The year is 2233 and the USS Kelvin has encountered a lightning storm near Klingon space. Coming out of said lightning storm is a massive Romulan mining vessel turned juggernaut world destroyer, the Narada. It immediately opens fire and cripples the Kelvin, demanding that Captain Robau come aboard to discuss terms of surrender with the Romulan captain Nero. Robau knows this is a one-way trip, and passes command to his first officer, George Kirk. Aboard the Narada, Robau is asked about Ambassador Spock, a name he is unfamiliar with, and then asked for the year. Once his answer is given, Nero impales him on a spear and resumes firing on the Kelvin. George Kirk has the ship evacuated while he mans the bridge. Autopilot is broken, so someone has to stay behind and manually fly the ship into the Narada to buy the shuttles time to escape. As George Kirk is flying to his death, his wife Winona gives birth aboard a shuttlecraft. In their final conversation, they pick a name for their child: James Tiberius Kirk. Jim Kirk grows up quite the troublemaker, exemplified in a moment when he steals his stepdad's antique Corvette and drives it right into a quarry.
Meanwhile, sixteen light-years distant, a young Vulcan-Human hybrid named Spock is bullied by classmates who attempt to provoke an emotional response. He's able to keep it together until they insult his mother, which will turn out to pretty much always be his berserk button. His father Sarek consoles him about his internal conflict, and while he suggests fully embracing his Vulcan heritage, tells him that it is a decision only Spock can make. As a young adult, Spock asks his mother Amanda Grayson if she will take it as a personal slight that he is choosing to pursue kolinahr, but she says she will always be proud of him. He is admitted entry into the Vulcan Science Academy, but when the minister gives him a backhanded compliment regarding his human mother as a "disadvantage" to overcome, Spock gives them the Vulcan salute all the way to San Fransisco's Starfleet Academy.
Three years later, Kirk's become a caricature of a pop cultural perception of his serial philandering as he catcalls women on campus and sleeps with an Orion cadet only to learn she's roommates with Uhura, which he uses to then immediately flirt with Uhura as she kicks him out of her dorm. Kirk is retaking the Kobayashi Maru test for the third time (one wonders why they allow retakes) but this time he's altered the program allowing him to defeat the Klingon ships and rescue the crew of the Kobayashi Maru. Kirk is called before a special inquiry where he argues with Commander Spock regarding the purpose of the test, defending himself by saying the test is a cheat because there's no way to win, and he doesn't believe in a no-win scenario. Before the hearing can rule, all cadets are ordered to report to starships as Vulcan has issued a distress call and the fleet is away.
Kirk is not issued a starship due to academic suspension, but McCoy is able to sneak him aboard the Enterprise by giving him a vaccine that will exhibit medical symptoms, allowing him to transport his patient with him. Uhura is assigned to the Farragut, and complains about this assignment to Spock, who agrees to reassign her to the Enterprise. Captain Pike orders the ship to go to warp, and his new backup pilot, Lieutenant Sulu, forgets to take off the "parking brake" (external inertial dampeners), delaying their departure with the rest of the fleet. Pike orders Ensign Chekov to announce the mission over the comm system. When Kirk hears the mission, regarding reports of a lightning storm near the Klingon neutral storm followed by seismic activity on Vulcan, he realizes it's not a natural catastrophe, but that Vulcan is being attacked by the Narada, backed up by a transmission Uhura had heard regarding the destruction of a Klingon fleet at about the time of the lightning storm. After a brief argument regarding Kirk not belonging on the ship, Spock is convinced by his argument and recommends they prepare for battle once they drop out of warp.
The Enterprise drops out of warp into a debris field comprised of the other seven ships that went before it. The Narada is in orbit of Vulcan, deploying a mining laser from a long hanging platform lowered into the atmosphere. The laser is interfering with transporters and communications. The Narada fires on the Enterprise but stops when Nero recognizes the starship. He hails the Enterprise and greets Spock as though he knows him. Like before when he attacked the Narada, he asks Pike to come aboard to negotiate terms of surrender. Both Spock and Kirk advice against it, but Pike sees a tactical advantage in going over and tells Spock he's acting captain now, with Kirk as first officer. Since transporters are not functional, Pike takes a shuttle, and has an away team of Kirk, Sulu, and Chief Engineer Redshirt Olson come along.
When Pike passes by the mining drill, the away team jettison from the shuttle and perform an orbital skydive, flying close enough to the drill to not be detected so they can deactivate the laser at the base platform. Olson is a little amped up from adrenaline and pops his parachute too late, colliding with the platform and getting sucked under the laser. Kirk and Sulu encounter a couple Romulans who pop out from a hatch and engage in ye olde Star Trek fisticuffs. Since Olson had the explosives, they have to improvise and use the Romulans' disruptor rifles to fire on the drill platform.
This shuts down the laser, enabling transport and communications again, but a tunnel has been blasted all the way to the Vulcan core, and Nero launches something called "red matter" into the planet's core. Chekov calculates that the red matter is creating a black hole that will consume Vulcan, and the planet has only minutes left. Spock orders an evacuation of the planet and wants to head down himself to find the Vulcan Council, where his parents will be, since they'll be deep inside a cavern and not receive the evacuation order.
The Narada retracts the drill before Kirk and Sulu can beam off the platform and they're forced to do a skydive, which makes a transport lock harder to do, but Chekov runs to the transporter room and is able to stabilize the transport signal just before Kirk and Sulu would have splattered on the Vulcan ground. Spock beams down and finds the Vulcan Council and his parents and they evacuate to the surface so they can be beamed up, but the ground gives way under Amanda before she can be beamed out and Spock watches her die. The Enterprise leaves orbit as Vulcan is consumed by the black hole at its center. Uhura meets Spock in the turbolift, crying as he is stoic, kissing him (revealing they are in a relationship) and asking what she can do, to which he responds he needs everyone to "continue performing admirably."
Pike is interrogated by Nero, who wants security defense codes for Earth, while Pike demands Nero answer for committing genocide. Nero rants about exacting vengeance upon those responsible for the destruction of Romulus, but Romulus hasn't been destroyed, it's perfectly fine. Nero insists it's happened, because he watched it happen, and if Pike won't be more forthcoming with security codes, he'll shove a Centaurian slug down his throat. You might think that Centaurian slug looks and performs pretty similarly to a Ceti eel, and you'd be correct.
They speculate that the Narada must have come from the future, because its technology and firepower is beyond anything the Romulan Star Empire is known to possess, and the black holes created by the red matter could theoretically allow time travel. Spock notes that any changes made since the Narada entered this timeline in 2233 would have created an entirely new alternate timeline unhindered by TV show canon. Spock wants to take the Enterprise to regroup with the rest of the fleet, but Kirk knows the Nerada is going to Earth next and their only hope of saving Earth is if they pursue immediately. Their argument over the correct course of action leads to Spock kicking Kirk off the bridge, and then off the ship entirely, sending him in an escape pod down to the neighboring ice planet of Delta Vega.
There, Kirk has to run away from not one but two giant monsters pursuing him for a meal, eventually running into an ice cave where a humanoid figure scares the monster away with a torch. He turns around to reveal that he is Spock - the original Leonard Nimoy Spock Prime, aged and grey. In a mind meld, Spock Prime is able to explain what happened. In the future he comes from, he tried to save the galaxy from an unusual supernova that was threatening to consume everything. He was able to obtain "red matter" from Vulcan scientists in order to consume the expanding fireball, but was not quick enough to save Romulus from destruction. Nero blamed him for being too slow to act and attacked his ship, but they both were pulled into the black hole Spock Prime created. Nero arrived first, 25 years ago, while Spock Prime was spat out only a few days ago. Nero was waiting for him, and marooned him on Delta Vega so he could see Vulcan collapsing in the sky.
Spock Prime is dismayed to learn that Spock, not Kirk, is captain, and that they can't stand each other. He knows that Kirk's best destiny is in the captain's chair, and convinces him that he can have Spock relieved of command by proving he has become emotionally compromised by the events, which Spock Prime assures him he is. They head toward a nearby Starfleet outpost staffed by a small alien named Keenser, and Montgomery Scott, who claims to have been abandoned on this rock as punishment for testing transwarp beaming on Admiral Jonathan Archer's beagle, who never rematerialized. Spock Prime happens to know the completed formula to achieve transwarp beaming, which would enable Kirk to return to the Enterprise even as it warps away. Scotty tags along, happy to get off this frozen rock with no sandwiches on it. Kirk tries to get Prime to come with, but he says it's something Kirk has to do on his own, and the younger Spock must not be made aware of Spock Prime.
They get beamed into water reclamation in engineering, Kirk on the ground, and Scotty inside a pipe leading directly to a turbine. Kirk access a control panel to release Scotty before he's chopped into bits, and they're quickly set upon by security, including "Cupcake." Hauled up to the bridge, Kirk refuses to explain how he got back on the ship, and starts needling Spock to provoke an emotional response. Spock shows irritation, but it's only when Kirk says Spock must have felt nothing when his mother died and he never loved her that Spock totally loses it and beats the shit out of Kirk. Realizing his folly, he relieves himself of duty, making Kirk the captain now.
Kirk immediately orders the ship to change course for Earth to stop the Narada. Spock returns to the transporter room, where he lost his mother, and Sarek comes to console him. Spock worries that Nero has filled him with an uncontrollable rage, and Sarek advises him not to try to control it. Sarek years ago told Spock that he married Amanda because it was logical for the Vulcan ambassador to Earth to assimilate, but in truth he confesses he loved her. Spock returns to the bridge as Chekov details a plan to exit warp in the upper atmosphere of Titan to avoid detection from the Narada. Spock agrees with the plan and offers to beam aboard the Narada once they are in range so he can stop their black hole device. Kirk wants to go too to save Captain Pike. Uhura kisses Spock goodbye on the transport pad, and he calls her Nyota, the first name Kirk has been unable to get out of her for 3 years (and official confirmation for the rest of us Trekkies after decades).
Once they're beamed aboard, the Narada begins firing its mining laser at the San Fransisco bay, so all communications and transporters again cease functioning. Kirk and Spock shoot their way through Romulans. One Romulan is stunned so Spock can mind-meld with him and get the location of Pike and the black hole device. They find a small ship called the Jellyfish that chirps to recognize Spock when he comes aboard. Spock suspects Kirk knows more than he's letting on. Spock flies the Jellyfish out of the Narada and warps away to bait it away from Earth, as Nero cannot stand Spock getting away. Kirk meanwhile punches and shoots his way to finding Captain Pike.
Once Spock has gotten sufficient distance from the Earth in his ship, he drops out of warp and turns around for a collision course with the Narada. Nero's lieutenant warns him that if they fire on the Jellyfish they could ignite the red matter contained within, but Nero won't listen. As he opens fire, however, Sulu warps the Enterprise into the fray, phasers intercepting the Narada's weapons. The Jellyfish is on course to collide with the Narada when Scotty beams Spock, Kirk and Pike aboard. The plan works, the red matter igniting when the Jellyfish collides with the Narada, and a black hole opens up to consume the ship. Kirk hails Nero, offering assistance, but Nero would rather see Romulus die a thousand times than swallow his pride, so Kirk instead fires all weapons on the Narada. The Enterprise starts falling into the black hole themselves, even when flying away at warp, but Scotty saves the day by jettisoning the core and detonating it behind them, riding the blast wave to safety.
Back on Earth, Spock runs into Spock Prime, who says there are too few Vulcans left for them to ignore each other. Spock Prime says he didn't come with Kirk because he wanted them to discover their friendship organically, and he's become sentimental in his old age. He advises Spock to stay in Starfleet despite the need for the Vulcan race to rebuild and recolonize, a task Prime is willing to take up. Kirk has received a commission of Captain despite only being a third-year cadet and is granted command of the Enterprise for his actions, relieving Admiral Pike. Like, yeah, what Kirk did was commendable, but you don't just hand him the keys because he saved the day during a staffing crisis. Fast-track him, sure, but maybe let him graduate the Academy first?
NITPICKS
Why does Robau need to order the viewscreen polarized? Why hadn't the bridge crew already done this? It was bright enough to cause immediate discomfort to Robau, wouldn't it have interfered with the bridge crew's duties before this?
After a crewman on the Kelvin reports weapons offline, we see the Kelvin still firing weapons.
Why is the Enterprise being constructed on the planet's surface? It makes no sense. The ship is not built for landing and it increases energy costs exponentially to lift it up to space after completed construction.
I know there are deleted scenes explaining that the Narada was captured by Klingons and the crew held on Rura Penthe for 25 years before escaping, but since those are deleted scenes the film proper is left with a bit of a plot hole of just what it was Nero and crew did for 25 years, the only hint being that they destroyed 47 Klingon ships.
Sulu says he has fencing training, yet carries a space katana. One is a stabbing weapon, one a slashing weapon. Very different forms of combat.
Delta Vega was a planet on the galactic rim in TOS. Nero changed a lot of things when he traveled back in time, but he can't move a planet halfway across the galaxy and park it in Vulcan's backyard.
Supernovae move very slowly compared to any starship since the debris cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Unless this supernova was of Romulus' own star, they should have had years to prepare to deal with it. Also, there's no supernova in the universe that can threaten an entire galaxy. The square-cube law is in effect; as the shockwave expands linearly, its density diminishes exponentially.
The implications of transwarp beaming render the use of starships nearly obsolete. I assume that, since we did not see transwarp beaming in any of the 24th century series, the completed equation developed by Scotty was done sometime after the end of Voyager, since Scotty was still alive and well during that period. It certainly had to have been developed before the destruction of Romulus, which means that they wouldn't have needed the Jellyfish to deliver the red matter if they could just beam a capsule into the supernova to collapse it. This is, of course, assuming red matter is stable enough for teleportation; it may very well not be.
When the mining laser is deployed, we see a shot of fleeing cadets at Starfleet Academy. Where did these cadets come from if they had all deployed with the fleet to Vulcan?
While firing the laser right next to the Golden Gate Bridge makes for an impressive movie visual, wouldn't it make more sense to drill in a dry area? Water would constantly be pouring into the hole which could slow the drilling and impede the launch of red matter to the core.
FAVORITE QUOTES
Robau: You're Captain now, Mister Kirk.
Winona: We can name him after your father.
George: Tiberius? Are you kidding me? No, that's the worst. Let's name him after your dad. Let's call him Jim.
Spock: You suggest that I should be completely Vulcan, and yet you married a human.
Sarek: As ambassador to Earth, it is my duty to observe and understand human behavior. Marrying your mother was logical.
Minister: It is truly remarkable, Spock, that you have achieved so much, despite your disadvantage. All rise!
Spock: If you would clarify, Minister. To what disadvantage are you referring?
Minister: Your Human mother.
Spock: Council, Ministers, I must decline.
Minister: No Vulcan has ever declined admission to this academy.
Spock: Then, as I am half-human, your record remains untarnished.
Kirk: So, you're a Cadet, you're studying... what's your focus?
Uhura: Xenolinguistics. You have no idea what that means.
Kirk: The study of alien languages, morphology, phonology, syntax. It means you've got a talented tongue.
Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
Kirk: Well, not only.
Pike: Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's. And yours. I dare you to do better.
McCoy: Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.
Kirk: Well, I hate to break this to you, but Starfleet operates in space.
Barnett: In academic vernacular, you cheated.
Kirk: Let me ask you something, I think we all know the answer to. The test itself is a cheat, isn't it? You programmed it to be unwinnable.
Spock: Your argument precludes the possibility of a no-win scenario.
Kirk: I don't believe in no-win scenarios.
Kirk: Who was that pointy-eared bastard?
McCoy: I don't know, but I like him.
Uhura: And while you were well aware that I am fully qualified desires to serve on the USS Enterprise, I'm assigned to the Farragut?
Spock: It was an attempt to avoid the appearance of favoritism.
Uhura: No, I'm assigned to the Enterprise.
Spock: Yes, I believe you are.
Pike: I'm Captain Christopher Pike. To whom am I speaking.
Nero: Hi Christopher, I'm Nero.
Pike: You're blaming the Federation for something that hasn't happened.
Nero: It has happened! I watched it happen! I saw it happen! Don't tell me it didn't happen!
Kirk: How do you know my name?
Spock Prime: I have been, and always shall be, your friend.
Kirk: Wha... oh, look... uh, I don't know you.
Spock Prime: I am Spock.
Kirk: Bullshit.
McCoy: Permission to speak freely, sir.
Spock: I welcome it.
McCoy: Do you? Okay, then. Are you out of your Vulcan mind? Are you making the logical choice, sending Kirk away? Probably, but the right one? You know, back home we got a saying, "If you're gonna ride in the Kentucky Derby, you don't leave your prize stallion in the stable."
Spock: A curious metaphor, Doctor, as a stallion must first be broken before it can reach its potential.
Scott: I told him that I could not only beam a grapefruit from one planet to the adjacent planet in the same system, which is easy by the way, I could do it with a lifeform. So, I tested it on Admiral Archer's prized beagle.
Kirk: Wait, I know that dog. What happened to it?
Scott: I'll tell you when it reappears.
Scott: Are you from the future?
Kirk: Yeah. He is, I'm not.
Scott: Well that's brilliant. Do they still have sandwiches there?
Scott: The notion of transwarp beaming is like, trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.
Spock: I feel anger for the one who took mother's life. An anger I cannot control.
Sarek: I believe, as she would say, do not try to. You asked me once why I married your mother. I married her because I loved her.
Spock: It appears that you have been keeping important information from me.
Kirk: You'll be able to fly this thing, right?
Spock: Something tells me I already have.
Nero: I know your face, from Earth's history. James T. Kirk was considered to be a great man. He went on to captain the USS Enterprise, but that was another life. A life I will deprive you of, just like I did your father.
Spock: In the face of extinction, it is only logical I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race.
Spock Prime: And yet, you can be in two places at once. I urge you to remain in Starfleet. I have already located a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony. Spock, in this case, do yourself a favor. Put aside logic. Do what feels right. Since my customary farewell would appear oddly self-serving, I shall simply say good luck.
Spock Prime: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new lifeforms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Something's not quite right with Voyager. One might be excused for thinking we're watching a Mirror Universe episode with the fascist uniform modifications and Janeway's different haircut and Chakotay's Maori face tattoo and the Doctor being an android. Janeway agrees to help the Vaskan ambassador Daleth defeat their neighbors, the Kyrians, in exchange for knowledge about a nearby wormhole. But Daleth gets more than he bargained for when Janeway decides to use biological weapons of mass destruction on Kyrian city centers. We then pull back from a display screen to see that this is all a simulation on display at the Museum of Kyrian Heritage.
The museum's curator, Quarren, fields questions about Voyager from museum guests, and speaks of how it was a warship that assimilated crew from various cultures, and while they don't know of its impact throughout the quadrant, Quarren thinks it's safe to assume they interfered with many other races as well. The simulation continues playing as Voyager searches for Tedran, the leader of the Kyrians, and tortures a man to get his location. Just then, Voyager itself is boarded by a raiding party of Kyrians, and Janeway has Seven of Nine (appearing fully Borg) and her squadron of Borg drones fight them off and assimilate some to expand her fighting force. Meanwhile, Tuvok has captured Tedran and brings him to Voyager, where when he refuses to order the surrender of Kyrian forces, is summarily executed by Janeway.
Once the Doctor realizes he's talking to a Kyrian, he calls an intruder alert, but Quarren attempts to calm him down by telling him he's in a recreation of Voyager, not the real place, and it's been seven hundred years since he was last turned on. The Doctor isn't inclined to believe him, but once he runs out of the Engineering recreation and finds himself in the museum proper, he's forced to accept the reality of his situation. Quarren tells him that in their society, artificial life is considered equal and therefore held responsible for their actions, and the Doctor may very well face a war tribunal for his part in the atrocities committed by the Kyrians.
The Doctor insists that Quarren has the history entirely wrong. Quarren shows him the full simulation to get his input on it, and the Doctor says none of the people are portrayed accurately (with the possible exception of Tom Paris), and the Kyrians are portrayed as heroic martyrs and victims while the Doctor claims that Tedran was actually a militant aggressor and terrorist. Quarren angrily shuts off his program, assuming that the Doctor is lying to protect himself from the coming tribunal. But once Quarren has had time to calm down and think about it, he realizes that a hologram programmed for medical purposes would have no real reason to be programmed to so readily tell lies, and he should at least hear him out, so he reactivates the Doctor and gives him access to the holographic systems so he can tell his own side of the story.
Voyager was only involved in a trade agreement with the Vaskans, offering much-needed medical supplies in exchange for as much dilithium as they could carry. Daleth advises her not to tarry too long in their space because he's concerned a war is about to break out with the Kyrians, and no sooner is his warning given than the Kyrians attack and board Voyager, stealing supplies (many of which we can assume now reside in this museum) and holding hostages in the mess hall, including Tedran holding Seven hostage. Janeway and the Doctor go to attempt a hostage negotiation, but when Seven attacks Tedran while he's distracted, Daleth takes advantage of the moment and guns Tedran down to Janeway's dismay. Anything beyond that, the Doctor doesn't know, because he was shortly thereafter deactivated, backed up, and then brought online centuries later.
Quarren and the Doctor present this new version of events to a group of representatives, two Vaskan and one Kyrian. The Vaskans are very curious to see if this version of events can be verified, as it paints the Kyrians as the aggressors, while the Kyrian representative (who complains about her token status) thinks this is pure Vaskan revisionism and wants the Doctor prosecuted. The Doctor says he thinks the evidence to exonerate Voyager is already within the museum; a medical tricorder on display is the very one he used to confirm Tedran's death, and the readings should still be on the tricorder if they can access the data, which will verify he was killed by a Vaskan weapon, not a Federation phaser.
Once word gets out of such a massive rewrite of Vaskan/Kyrian history, protests and riots begin breaking out. An angry mob storms the museum and begins trashing the place, and the Doctor and Quarren have to hide. They come out the next morning to find the place in ruins. The Doctor is appalled that his presence and his version of events could cause such devastation, especially with the report of two deaths. As a physician, his job is to do no harm, and he feels his presence is doing harm, so he wants to be deleted. Quarren tells him that this animosity was already there and had been brewing and boiling for centuries, but an honest reconciliation of the true history might begin to heal the wounds of centuries of racial strife as each side stops blaming the other and accepts the true story. The Doctor relents and they start looking for the tricorder to continue their work.
This, too, is revealed to be a simulation from a more distant future, about the point in Vaskan/Kyrian history where they began to set aside oppression and animosity and come together as a unified and equal culture. Quarren died six years later but long enough to see the seeds begin sprouting, and the Doctor served as Surgical Chancellor for the planet for many years until one day he took a shuttle and attempted to trace Voyager's route back to the Alpha Quadrant, longing for home.
NITPICKS
If the Doctor has a backup module, why has there been such concern for the times when he risks being decompiled? If he did "die," they could just restore the backup. Or hell, what about "Message in a Bottle" when the Doctor is transported to the Prometheus and Harry and Tom try to create a new EMH? Couldn't they just load his backup?
FAVORITE QUOTES
Janeway: When diplomacy fails there's only one alternative. Violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way.
Quarren: The warship Voyager. One of the most powerful vessels of its time. Armed with photonic torpedoes and particle weapons, this ship of destruction could wipe out an entire civilization within hours. On this particular day in history, we were lucky. The death toll could have been much worse. By the time Voyager targeted our major cities, Tedran had already begun an evacuation. Thousands of lives were saved. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning of Captain Janeway's onslaught. As you'll see, her actions would have a lasting effect on our world. Even today, seven hundred years later, we are still feeling the impact of the Voyager encounter.
Janeway: How soon?
Tuvok: Best guess, one hour.
Doctor: Voyager wasn't a warship. We were explorers.
Quarren: Yes, I know. Trying to get home, to Mars.
Doctor: Earth! You see, you couldn't even get that right.
Paris: Fighter shuttles. A direct assault.
Neelix: Led by you? Good luck.
Paris: Watch your mouth, hedgehog.
Doctor: I don't know where to begin. Granted, this looks like the briefing room but these aren't the people I knew. No one behaved like this. Well, aside from Mister Paris.
Doctor: Tedran was a martyr for your people, a hero. A symbol of your struggle for freedom. Who am I to wander in seven hundred years later and take that away from you?
Quarren: History has been abused. We keep blaming each other for what happened in the past. If you don't help us now, it could be another seven hundred years.
Troi and Riker are getting married, and the gang's all here, including Guinan and Wesley Crusher in a non-speaking role apparently wearing a Starfleet uniform, undoing whatever character development had been given him, along with Worf who apparently is no longer the Federation ambassador to Qo'noS and is just back to being Picard's tactical officer, undoing whatever character development had been given him. (Hint: this could possibly be a theme for the whole film (hint: it is)) Picard, in his best man speech, begs them to reconsider the marriage and abandoning him for their own ship, the Titan, but Riker's been First Officer long enough. Data sings the happy couple "Blue Skies" while Worf nurses a Romulan ale insta-hangover.
Before the Enterprise heads to Betazed for the Betazoid ceremony, where everyone shall appear nude despite Worf's protestations, they pick up a positronic signature on a planet near the Romulan neutral zone and decide to divert course to investigate. Picard brazenly ignores the rules about the captain not going on away missions and that pesky Prime Directive (in what could possibly be a stark departure from Picard's entire history as a measured paragon (hint: it is)) as they drive a dune buggy across a desert, picking up android pieces (including a head that strongly resembles Data's) and shooting guns at the indigenous Mad Max car gang.
The Enterprise is greeted by the Scimitar, a gigantic Reman-constructed warbird that is clearly meant to be the final boss fight. They're invited aboard to meet Shinzon, and are surprised to find that he's not Reman, though he certainly identifies as one. He's actually human. More than that, he passes a striking resemblance to Tom Hardy Picard. After creeping on Deanna, he produces a blade and cuts his hand, presenting the knife as a gift. Back on the Enterprise, Dr. Crusher's analysis confirms it: Shinzon is a clone of Picard.
Shinzon invites him to dinner on Romulus, where he exposits his origin. He was created by a previous Romulan regime that had intended at some point to assassinate Picard and replace him with the clone, putting an undetectable spy right inside Starfleet. But as often happens on Romulus, the regime changed and the new government decided the plan was too risky, so they shuttled Shinzon off to the dilithium mines of Remus where he suffered under the Romulan heel, seeing no sky for over a decade. His only solace came from the Remans who took him in and raised him as one of them. After proving himself a capable military commander during the Dominion War, Shinzon and his Reman allies constructed the Scimitar and staged a coup, ensuring the freedom of the Reman people. Picard wants to believe Shinzon is genuinely extending an olive branch to the Federation, but tells him it will take time to earn their trust, especially after having just staged a violent coup in which the Romulan senate was killed.
Returning to the Enterprise, he's met with some unfortunate news. They've detected thalaron radiation from the Scimitar, an extremely lethal radiation that in the Scimitar's configuration has the potential to eradicate life on a planetary scale. In addition, they've discovered an unauthorized access to the ship's database, but Data's figured out a way to turn that into a tactical advantage. Picard wanted to take Shinzon at his word but it appears the dude lured them here under false pretenses. And just so we can fully establish that Shinzon and the Remans are EVOL, it turns out the Reman Viceroy Ron Perlman has telepathic abilities he can use to help Shinzon mind-rape Deanna Troi, because that's what passes for plot in 2003.
Just as Picard is refusing to let Deanna relieve herself from duty after being, y'know, raped (what the fuck, Jean-Luc, seriously), he gets beamed over to the Scimitar and tied to a bench so they can extract blood from him for... reasons. Shinzon (looking rather sickly) and Picard have a discussion about how each of them would have taken the same actions as the other had they had each other's lives, something they both delight in pointing out to the other while simultaneously strongly disliking considering themselves. B-4 beams aboard the Scimitar, the spy who accessed ship information. His use as bait is clear now. Of course, it was already clear to the Enterprise crew, because that's not B-4, it's Data posing as him, and he helps break Picard out by engaging in a hallway shootout culminating in stealing a Reman fighter and flying out a window. The Enterprise beams the fighter aboard before the Scimitar can tractor it, and goes to warp to rendezvous with the fleet that has been briefed on the Scimitar's thalaron weapon and its likely target of Earth.
Dr. Exposition Crusher (god they wasted her character in this film) explains that Shinzon was engineered to have an accelerated aging spurt so he'd match Picard's age when it was time to replace him, but they never activated the growth spurt, and the genetic modifications mean his body is starting to break down. It can only be treated by a "complete transfusion" (of what exactly she does not specify, but we can assume it means it would kill Picard), and that appears to be Shinzon's full interest in his original. Meanwhile, Data is forced to deactivate B-4, who doesn't even understand what he did wrong.
The Scimitar is pursuing the Enterprise in cloak, and waits for them to pass through a nebula that will interfere with their communications before attacking. The Enterprise is firing blindly against a cloaked vessel that Geordi can't find a way to track. Shinzon briefly ceases fire to project himself holographically into Picard's ready room, but it's more of a chance for him to gloat megalomaniacally before vanishing. (One wonders why he harbors more resentment for Picard than for the Romulans.) A couple of Romulan warbirds decloak who have decided that maybe they don't want a genocide on their conscience and are determined to stop Shinzon from eradicating Earth. One ship is destroyed and the other crippled, but it buys the Enterprise enough time to use an alternate means of tracking the ship, as Deanna reverses the psychic link between her and Ron Perlman to identify the Scimitar's location. They fire basically everything at the Scimitar which knocks out its cloak.
The Scimitar counters by focusing fire on one shield section, weakening it enough to send through a boarding party so that we can get some fisticuffs action in our big spaceship battle. Worf and Riker head down to deal with it, and Riker faces off directly against Ron Perlman, a battle which winds its way through Jefferies tubes, eventually leading to a poorly-secured catwalk over a bottomless pit (as we all know, starships have bottomless pits), where Riker is ultimately triumphant over Ron Perlman.
Another volley from the Scimitar causes major hull breaches, including turning the bridge viewscreen into a viewport, sucking the helmsman out into space before a force field can be erected. Shinzon positions the Scimitar directly in front of the Enterprise for a staring match, but Picard takes advantage of Shinzon's flair for the dramatic by ordering Deanna to take the helm and ram the Scimitar. (I don't want to seem racist, but it seems like every time a Betazoid is flying a starship, it crashes into something or gets sucked into the Delta Quadrant. #WereAllThinkingIt #SpeciesRealist #TheirEyesAreAllPupilAndNoIrisTheyCantFlyIfTheyCantFocus #Biotroof #IfItWasntClearIDontBelieveThis) This fucks both ships up, and at this point they've both exhausted their complement of weaponry. The only thing the Scimitar can do is back up to decouple the two ships and charge the thalaron array.
Their only hope of survival is to beam someone over to the Scimitar and deactivate the thalaron weapon, so naturally they're going to send over the most qualified combatant: Picard. (He's the main character so he has to punch the bad guy, can't let Worf get the glory or have anything meaningful to do in this film) Once they beam him over, the transporter systems short out, but Data knows Picard needs help, so he uses a hull-breached corridor to launch himself across the vacuum of space toward the Scimitar so he can climb aboard.
Picard fights his way to the Scimitar's bridge and easily dispatches the Remans who are supposed to be super-tough warriors, but whatever. Naturally, he uses his gun as a melee weapon and breaks it like an asshole, so he's now in a fistfight with Shinzon who turns out to have a couple knives on his person and starts swiping menacingly at Picard. They make it into the thalaron generator room, where Picard breaks a pipe off the wall as Shinzon charges at him and it impales the clone in his chest. And, because all clones are superhuman movie monsters, Shinzon menacingly pulls himself forward along the pipe to get face to face with Picard and get a last word in before dying. Data shows up just in the nick of time to slap a one-way transporter beacon onto Picard, sending him back to the Enterprise, while he fires a phaser at the shitty CGI thalaron generator, destroying the Scimitar and sacrificing himself for the Enterprise.
The surviving Romulan warbird sends shuttles to assist the Enterprise as the senior staff open a bottle of Chateau Picard and reminisce about their fallen comrade. Riker recalls first meeting Data in the holodeck as Data was trying and failing to whistle. Riker can't remember the tune. (It was Pop Goes the Weasel.) Notably silent in a moment that would be a time for a best friend to shine, Geordi instead gets no lines and is yet another wasted character in a film that's only serving as a Picard/Data vehicle.
The Enterprise-E is back at Earth spacedock getting rebuilt, and Picard sees Riker off as he goes to captain the Titan. B-4 has been reactivated, presumably with his Reman programming removed, and Picard is telling him about Data's sacrifice and hopes B-4 can one day become a more complete individual like Data was. As Picard gets up to leave, B-4 is humming "Blue Skies" to himself, an indication that he's starting to recall the memories Data implanted on him. Perhaps Data can live again... or perhaps Brent Spiner is getting too old to play an ageless robot.
NITPICKS
Romulan ale is no longer illegal, the trade embargo was lifted during the Dominion War.
Positronic signatures aren't exclusive to androids. A positron is literally just the antiparticle of an electron.
Thalaron radiation is described as being able to consume organic material at the subatomic level, which is nonsense. The distinction between organic and inorganic is made at the atomic level, since organic matter is matter that contains carbon. Once you go subatomic, it's just elementary particles and quarks below that. If thalaron radiation targets organic matter specifically, it has to do it at the atomic or molecular level.
What was the point of the mind-rape other than "Rawr I am a bad guy and I must do bad guy things!" I get that they did it to set up Deanna later turning it against them, but they couldn't have used their psychic power to, I dunno, steal secrets while she was on the bridge? They just used it to be creepy evil assholes?
Why do Remans have a control interface full of tightly spaced buttons when they have those massive fingernail claws poorly designed for such control schemes?
Why is Shinzon planning on using the thalaron radiation on Earth? What animosity does he have for Earth? I would think if he hated anyone, it's Romulans. Why not use it on Romulus?
First Contact established the Enterprise-E as having either 24 or 26 decks. Why is there a 29th deck all of a sudden?
Picard says he and Shinzon have the same heart. Picard's heart is artificial.
Worf's line "The Romulans fought with honor" is not given its due, at all. It's a throwaway line in the film, but when you consider Worf's entire story arc, for him to come to a point where he would ever say that is fucking huge from a character development standpoint. The dude HATES Romulans. They couldn't have thrown in at least one or two lines earlier in the movie where he expresses distaste for them?
Where is the catwalk area with a bottomless pit for the Reman Viceroy to plummet to his death? My first thought was a turbolift shaft, but there was a walkway suspended directly across the pit of death that would get in the way of a turbolift. Not to mention, this is on the erroneous deck 29. You're telling me there's a bottomless pit 3-5 decks below the bottom of the ship?
FAVORITE QUOTES
LaForge: Did you ever think about getting married again?
Guinan: No, twenty-three was my limit.
Picard: Don't worry, Number One, we'll still have you to Betazed with plenty of time to spare...
Riker: Thank you, sir.
Picard: ...where we will all honor the Betazoid tradition. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be in the gym.
Picard: Your wife would never forgive me if anything were to happen to you. You have the bridge, Mister Troi.
Janeway: The Son'a, the Borg, the Romulans. You seem to get all the easy assignments.
Shinzon:You may go.
B-4: Where?
Shinzon: Out of my sight.
Shinzon: The same noble Picard blood pumps through our veins. Had you lived my life, you'd be doing exactly as I am. So look in the mirror, See yourself. Consider that, Captain. I can think of no greater I torment for you.
Picard: Shinzon, I'm a mirror for you as well.
Voyager's season 7 was obviously written knowing it was going to be the last season not only of the series, but of the 24th century era. A significant portion of the season was devoted to bringing things back One Last TimeTM. For god's sake, they had an episode where the Ferengi were the villains, a genuine Klingon starship, one last bow for the Q continuum as well as bringing back the Talaxians. (I must confess, I enjoy the lanky Talaxian look that you just don't get from the stout Ethan Phillips, so it was nice to see them cast a wiry guy for Oxilon.) You had a whole episode celebrating the history of Voyager by literally splitting up the ship into its best hits (and worst, looking at you Kazon and flying macroviruses). Seska is like the Master on Doctor Who. No matter how many times you think they're Finally Dead For Real, something comes up to bring them back. And of course they brought back the OG Borg Queen, because who doesn't love First Contact?
Holograms seemed to get the lion's share of attention this season. From the Doctor taking over Seven of Nine's body (in the best goddamned performance Jeri Ryan has ever put on) to the exploration of sapient rights in regards to holograms, to just all the nifty things the Doctor can do when the special effects budget allows it, it definitely felt like the writers realized after six seasons "Hey, we have something pretty cool here." I am a little curious that their rights are considered separate from android rights since they are both artificial intelligences. I would have loved to see Data cited as case law in "Author, Author." It could have even been a fun Brent Spiner cameo if Starfleet brought him in as an expert witness to testify.
With that we almost close the book on the 24th century. Star Trek Nemesis is the only other piece of entertainment set in that era. The Voyager episode "Living Witness" takes place centuries in the future, and while Spock Prime is from this era when he enters the Kelvin timeline, none of that film actually takes place outside the alternate reality. So that's pretty much it.
I did it! Almost! Just some movies and a single episode to review! I'm pretty sure I can get it all in the can before Discovery comes out, what with putting out eight reviews in 5 days. By the way, Trek nerds: DIS or DSC? CBS is using DSC, but Voyager was called VGR internally and the fandom decided VOY was the correct abbreviation. Memory Alpha has picked DIS using this rationale. I find myself torn, especially because both DIS and DSC can be confused for other things (Disney and the Discovery Channel come to mind). I'm not particularly fond of either but I gotta pick. And before you jokers recommend STD, I'll remind you: A. grow up, and B. lol.
It's been 33 years since Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant, and the 10th anniversary of their return home to Earth. At the reunion, everyone catches up on what they've been up to since the return home. Harry, now a captain, meets Naomi Wildman's daughter, who he hasn't seen since she was a baby. He's been away for four years on a deep space assignment and missed the last few. Tom's got a paunch and is balding and is a published holonovelist. The Doctor arrives with brand new wife in tow, and has finally picked a name: Joe. Barclay has been adopted as part of the crew thanks to his efforts in helping get them home. B'Elanna Torres is a Federation liaison to Qo'noS. Notably absent from the reunion are Tom and B'Elanna's daughter, who is on a secret mission assigned by Janeway; Tuvok, who has suffered from a form of Vulcan dementia for many years; and Seven and Chakotay, both deceased.
After the reunion, Janeway pays Tuvok a visit because she's going to be going on a trip and she doesn't know that she'll ever be returning. He thinks she is an imposter, because Janeway always visits on Sundays and today is Thursday, but returns to frantically scribbling notes on the floor. Janeway gently strokes his head and kisses it before leaving him a gift on his nightstand: a framed TV Guide Voyager cast photo. She requests a house call from Doctor "Joe" who believes something is up because she's always tried to get out of routine physicals, but she just wants to get it out of the way before she goes on her trip. She asks him about an experimental drug he's been working on to protect against tachyon radiation, and orders him to give her some. He's apprehensive but an order is an order, especially when it's "classified."
Janeway has traveled to meet with a Klingon named Korath. Ensign Miral Paris, the absent daughter of the reunion, has been assigned to negotiate with him for a certain piece of technology in exchange for getting a seat on the Klingon High Council, which B'Elanna as Federation liaison was able to help procure. Janeway meets Korath (hey, it's Vaughn Armstrong playing yet another Klingon!) and he tries to alter the deal, asking for advanced shielding technology he saw on her shuttle. She demands he honor the original arrangement, and he kicks her out of his cave. She returns apparently hat in hand to agree to the new terms, but uses it as a ruse to get near the device she wants from him so she can slap a transponder on it and abscond. The Klingons try to pursue her vessel but it has advanced ablative armor deployed and she's able to get away.
Of course, that's not the end of things. She's met by the Rhode Island, Captain Harry Kim's ship, and he says he's taking her into custody. On the Rhode Island, he says this is being kept within the Voyager family and he'd prefer to keep it that way but he wants to stop her from doing what Barclay said she's doing. But she's known him a long time and is able to pull on his heart strings to get him to agree to let her go and attempt her plan. She outfits the device onto the shuttle and is ready to activate a temporal rift when the Klingons catch up with her. She calls back the Rhode Island to help hold them off while she passes through the rift...
Meanwhile, in Voyager's present day, B'Elanna has been dealing with several false labors and is about ready to tear the Doctor's head off over it. Harry's started a delivery betting pool. Chakotay and Seven have started dating, with Seven undergoing the procedure to prevent her cortical node from killing her for falling in love. She's also taking pointers from Neelix who's still in contact with them in his new job as Federation Ambassador to the Delta Quadrant. Neelix is thinking of asking Dexa to marry him. Tuvok loses a game of kal-toh to Icheb, which disturbs him and he has the Doctor check on his neurodegenerative condition. The Doctor does notice a decline and ups his dosage, advising him to let Janeway know. Tuvok will tell Janeway only if and when it impacts his job performance.
Voyager detects a nebula nearby that appears to be a wormhole hub. Harry gets his hopes up that one of them might point to the Alpha Quadrant. They set a course, but upon entering the nebula they have a near-collision with a Borg cube. Janeway has them leave as fast as they can, while the Borg Queen (played this time by Alice Krige, reprising her role from First Contact) observes from a distance and allows them to retreat unharmed. Harry wants to go back and is devising a strategy to evade or fight the Borg in order to get home, but Janeway puts an end to that and says the risk is too great.
A temporal rift opens near Voyager, and Admiral Janeway's shuttle comes through. She immediately barks orders to them to close the rift behind her, and Captain Janeway hesitantly follows them, but wants to know what her future self is doing here. "I've come to bring Voyager home," she says, on a transmission intercepted by the Borg Queen herself. Janeway is apprehensive of the Admiral, but has the Doctor verify that she is who she says she is. The Admiral has a plan for them to reverse course and head back into the nebula. Her shuttlecraft is carrying advanced technology that can be modified for Voyager that will allow them to kick some Borg ass and get through to return home.
The Queen comes to Seven that night as she regenerates and warns her that she knows about their plan and will destroy them if they come back to her nebula, punctuating the point by causing a low-energy surge in Seven's cortical node, knocking her out of her alcove. The Admiral says they shouldn't pay the threat any heed, as she has decades of experience fighting the Queen. With modifications to the ship complete (advanced shielding, ablative armor, and transphasic torpedoes that can kill a cube in one or two hits) they re-enter the nebula and easily fight off a few cubes before finding the source of the wormhole readings.
It's not just a few wormholes. It's one of the Borg's six transwarp hubs, from which they can deploy ships nearly anywhere in the galaxy in a matter of minutes. Janeway is angered that the Admiral did not tell her this is what it was, and the Admiral deliberately kept it from her because she knew Janeway would rather destroy the hub than get home. Janeway orders them back out of the nebula overriding the Admiral's demands. Janeway wants them to devise a plan to destroy the hub, because doing so could save millions of lives. They discuss tactics, but the Admiral grows impatient, because she's had years to consider these options and they don't pan out. The Queen directly controls the hubs from the Borg unicomplex, and any attack they launch would be almost immediately countered. They can't go through it and then destroy it, because the only thing at the other end is an exit. While they discuss things she's had years to ponder, the Queen is analyzing their new technology and developing countermeasures.
In a private conversation between the two, the Admiral accuses Janeway of making the same mistake she made seven years ago by putting the hypothetical lives of strangers above that of her own crew. Janeway seems to think Voyager comes out pretty well considering they eventually make it home, but she hasn't been told what they lost. Seven of Nine will die three years from now, and her death will utterly destroy Chakotay. He'll never be the same again, and he'll die after returning home. Tuvok has his neural degeneration. The cure lies in the Alpha Quadrant, melding with a family member, but if they wait another sixteen years to get home, it will be too progressed to treat. Altogether Janeway will lose 22 crewmembers before getting them home. That is what she is sacrificing by not going through the hub as it presents itself.
Janeway speaks to the senior staff and puts the decision in their hands. Seven years ago she made a unilateral decision stranding them here and it is not fair to make the same choice now without their agreement. But the crew, one by one, are willing to make that sacrifice. Tuvok is fully willing to sacrifice his mental health to strike such a blow against the Borg. Seven would gladly die in 3 years time to atone for her Borg atrocities by crippling them. In fact, she attempts to break up with Chakotay to spare him the grief her death would cause, but he won't have it. The future is not set in his mind, and any relationship has risks, ones he is fully willing to take. Harry points out that nobody wants to get home more than he does, and he is willing to put that on hold to hit the Borg where it hurts.
The Admiral remembers the idealism that she had lost over the years as she has her first cup of coffee in a long time, and realizes that this is the more important fight. Still, Janeway thinks there's got to be a way for the both of them to get what they want. The Admiral has an idea in mind that she once discounted for being too risky, but she thinks it's worth it now. Janeway injects her with a hypospray, the contents of which are unknown to the viewer, and the Admiral takes her shuttle out and into the transwarp hub.
As they prepare to assault the hub, Torres is in sickbay. It's a genuine labor this time. Tom wants to stay in sickbay for the birth of his daughter, but he's needed at the helm. B'Elanna makes him go. She'll be okay. The Admiral goes all the way to the Borg unicomplex, where she broadcasts an image of herself into the mind of the Borg Queen. She tells the Queen that Janeway plans to destroy the hub, a plan the Queen knows about and is unconcerned regarding its success. Even so, with Voyager's modifications, they'll do a lot of damage in the attempt and the Admiral is offering a path to avoid that. She'll give the Queen information on how to adapt to all of the modifications if she agrees to tractor Voyager kicking and screaming into the Alpha Quadrant. The Queen doesn't believe she'd betray them, but the Admiral says she's saving them from themselves. She's seeking to ensure the welfare of her collective.
Of course, the Queen has simply been buying time to triangulate the Admiral's signal, and finds her cloaked vessel easily. She beams the Admiral directly to her chambers and assimilates her... just as the Admiral wanted. Janeway injected her with a pathogen that is cutting the Queen off from the collective and causing all sorts of havoc within the collective. As the Queen begins falling apart, unable to control the adaptations of the transwarp hub, Voyager enters and begins launching multiple torpedoes to detonate several conduit apertures, causing a cascading failure to destroy the hub. The Queen watches as she loses the network, but finds a sphere that can still hear her thoughts and orders it to pursue Voyager. She reasons if they kill Janeway before she makes it home, her future version will never exist to infect her. (Which is silly, this future version of Janeway has already ensured her timeline's erasure, but don't tell the Queen that.) It's the last command she issues before collapsing lifeless on the ground, causing the unicomplex itself to be destroyed along with the Admiral.
Voyager is attacked by the sphere and allows itself to be tractored inside the vessel to shield itself from the cascading shockwave they're fleeing. An aperture opens a light-year from Earth, and Admiral Paris assembles all ships in the area to convene on it to fight back whatever Borg invasion is about to happen. But as the sphere emerges from the aperture, it explodes from the inside, Voyager emerging from the debris. Tom is called away from the helm to greet his newborn daughter, and Chakotay takes the pilot's seat as Janeway orders him to set a course for home. It ends rather abruptly at that point. The producers explained that they had already gone over the events of Voyager returning home in the beginning of the episode, but that's less fulfilling considering that future never happened now. I would have preferred a little less "All Good Things"-style future postulating and a little more proper homecoming celebration.
NITPICKS
I suppose this is more a retroactive nitpick for the episode "Natural Law," but Seven and Chakotay's relationship was even less set up than Troi and Worf's. They missed a perfect opportunity to start having them develop feelings for each other while among the Ventu. You can point to the holodeck Chakotay romance, but that counts as romantic development as much as Worf being married to Troi in a parallel universe.
It's not clear how Voyager was able to survive to get tractored into the sphere. I can extrapolate that they stood down to put the Borg at ease, but I wouldn't think the Borg would take any chances and would have boarded the ship anyway, and since they had the technology assimilated from Admiral Janeway's knowledge, they wouldn't need to assimilate Voyager's crew, just destroy them.
FAVORITE QUOTES
Lana: Joe has a real flair for romantic gestures.
Paris: Joe?
Doctor: I decided I couldn't get married without a name.
Paris: It took you thirty three years to come up with Joe?
Tuvok: You're an impostor.
Janeway: No, Tuvok. It's me.
Tuvok: Admiral Janeway visits on Sunday. Today is Thursday. Logic dictates that you are not who you claim to be.
Paris: Can't you induce?
Doctor: I wouldn't recommend it.
Paris: If this keeps happening, we'll never get any sleep.
Doctor: You think it's bad now?
Kim: Where's your sense of adventure?
Paris: I left it in that nebula and I'm not going back for it.
Kim: Don't you want to find a way home?
Paris: I am home, Harry.
Queen: You've always been my favorite, Seven. In spite of their obvious imperfections. I know how much you care for the Voyager crew. So I've left them alone. Imagine how you'd feel if I were forced to assimilate them.
Seven: Voyager is no threat to the Collective. We simply want to return to the Alpha Quadrant.
Queen: I've no objection to that. But if you try to enter my nebula again, I'll destroy you.
Admiral: Am I the only one experiencing deja vu here?
Janeway: What are you talking about?
Admiral: Seven years ago you had the chance to use the Caretaker's array to get Voyager home. Instead, you destroyed it.
Janeway: I did what I knew was right.
Admiral: You chose to put the lives of strangers ahead of the lives of your crew. You can't make the same mistake again.
Janeway: You got Voyager home, which means I will too. If it takes a few more years then that's—
Admiral: Seven of Nine is going to die.
Admiral: Must be something you assimilated.
Queen: What have you done?
Admiral: I thought we didn't need words to understand each other.
Queen: You've infected us with an neurolytic pathogen.
Admiral: Just enough to bring chaos to order.
The Doctor and Janeway are returning to Voyager on the Delta Flyer from a conference. But Voyager receives a transmission from Janeway on the Flyer routed through the deflector array stating that their comm system is in disrepair and they had to use the deflector, and for Chakotay to meet her in her ready room as soon as she's aboard. She explains that they had a run-in with an alien species who controls a territory spanning all the way to the Beta Quadrant with technology decades ahead of their own, and they demand that Voyager hand over its warp core and settle on a planet in the territory. Chakotay is surprised at how easily Janeway is laying down for these demands and how she's leaving him so in the dark.
Janeway asks B'Elanna to modify the Delta Flyer's tractor beam to be able to tow the warp core safely. Torres is confused and asks Chakotay about what's going on. Chakotay asks the Doctor to run an exam on Janeway because he's concerned about her behavior, and then goes to Astrometrics to ask Seven to scan for any cloaked ships like the type Janeway described. Seven isn't finding any, but they do receive a transmission from the species demanding they remand the warp core within ten hours or they will be destroyed.
Janeway has been kidnapped by two rogue Hierarchy officers and they've tapped into the Doctor's program, allowing them to see and hear everything he does. They're forcing him to deliver Voyager's warp core to them or they'll kill Janeway. She is insisting that he not comply, but he doesn't want to risk her death and carries on with his mission. In addition to the warp core, they demand some gel packs. The Doctor lures B'Elanna out of Engineering so he can go in there posing as her to grab some spares, but he's surprised by Tom, who's been trying to get B'Elanna to have a picnic with him somewhere because the baby is due any day and they'll never be alone again. The Doctor gets him to agree to dinner that night to deflect, and has to sit there and take it when Tom kisses him.
Harry calls Chakotay (the Doctor has hidden his combadge under a sleeve) and he poses as Chakotay to visit Holodeck 2, where Harry is able to determine the transmission from the "aliens" was actually sent and generated from here. He's able to even reconstruct that it was the Doctor behind it, which leaves the Doctor with another unconscious body to hide in the morgue. He tries to unwind with some music in sickbay, but is confronted by Tuvok, who sees that Janeway's holographic pattern had been accessed immediately before the deflector array transmission. Tuvok is able to block the Doctor's hypospray and begins shooting out holoemitters in Sickbay. The Doctor turns intangible and runs for his holoemitter, escaping the room with it attached.
Tuvok chases him down to the Holodeck, where he has filled the room with copies of himself. While Tuvok attempts to ascertain which one is real, the real one is making his escape in the Jefferies tube heading for engineering, where he poses as Chakotay and orders everyone to evacuate because the warp core is about to breach. Torres says all readings are fine, but "Chakotay" says the Doctor is interfering with the computer displays. She gets everyone out but wants to stay with Chakotay to help save the core before he says she shouldn't risk the baby. She's about to leave when Paris warns her over the intercom that the Doctor's emitter is in Engineering. The Doctor seals her inside a force field, and activates the ECH protocols which allow him to eject the core.
Tuvok tracks the Doctor to a Jefferies tube heading for the shuttlebay. The Doctor poses as Torres but Tuvok doesn't buy it. Unfortunately for Tuvok, the Doctor is on fucking point today and pulls a wall-run to get behind him and phaser-stuns him. He gets away with the Delta Flyer and the warp core, and Voyager is left without main power to stop him. The Doctor rendezvous with the Hierarchy renegades and demands they beam Janeway to her, but they fire on him instead to get him to release the tractor beam and then beam him aboard their vessel. After his impressive performance on Voyager, they're going to use him to steal even more stuff.
Tom finds Chakotay and Harry in the morgue and revives them. With no sign of Janeway anywhere, Tuvok deduces she probably never made it back to the ship. When they're able to restore main power, a recording of the Doctor playing the Blue Danube waltz at a recital plays on all comm frequencies, with several errors in the recording. They remember that he played without error, and are able to analyze the flaws to determine he's hidden the warp frequency of the Hierarchy ship in the song. Tuvok and Tom can follow its signature in one of the shuttles.
On the Hierarchy ship, Janeway has managed to slowly ingratiate herself to the subordinate officer with flattery while his superior does nothing but insult him. They load the Doctor's matrix with data and holomatrix parameters for their next heist, but it's too much data and begins destabilizing his matrix. Tom and Tuvok catch up to the ship and Tom beams aboard. After a struggle, the underappreciated subordinate turns on his superior and the warp core, Janeway and the Doctor are returned to Voyager.
Because of his matrix destabilization, it's not certain the Doctor will survive, and while Seven and Torres work to save him on the holodeck, he begins acting as though this is his final moments, and begins confessing embarrassing secrets that have weighed on his conscience, such as keeping a file on Janeway's orders he disagreed with, mocking Harry's clarinet skills, telling Neelix about Tuvok's rash, and biggest of all confessing love for Seven (which she brushes off as his cognitive processes malfunctioning). He vanishes, but then returns. Torres just had to turn him off and back on again. He sulks in Sickbay for the next week after that embarrassing display, and Janeway shows up to dole out punishment for his insubordination in stealing the warp core: a week without his mobile emitter, which she calls time served since he's not left Sickbay in that long. She invites him to the holodeck for coffee.
NITPICKS
The Doctor's bluff about the species that believes warp travel is damaging to subspace would be a lot more convincing if A. they didn't control literally thousands of light years of territory (how are they patrolling it and not being hypocrites?) and B. Voyager's warp drive was specifically designed to eliminate damage to subspace.
This episode really exemplifies the missed opportunities with the Doctor that can really be blamed mostly on A. lack of creativity from the writing staff, and B. a special effects budget. When the Doctor ran through the table, it just raises the question of why did we never see him reach his hands inside someone to perform surgery?
If the Doctor doesn't need the mobile emitter to be on his shoulder, why would he continually place it there, where it's openly visible and vulnerable?
FAVORITE QUOTES
Doctor: I didn't wake you, did I?
Janeway: That's all right, Doctor. Fifteen minutes of sleep is really all I need.
Doctor: Computer, access Lieutenant Torres' holographic template and download the physical parameters into my program.
[He makes the changes then realizes he's missing the baby bump.] Doctor: Computer, access medical file Torres Three and update her holographic template.
Doctor: I've had something on my conscience for a long time. After I was first activated, I kept a record of what I considered to be your most questionable command decisions. It's in my personal database. I hope you'll delete the file without reading it. Mister Tuvok, I violated the most sacred trust between a physician and his patient. I told Mister Neelix about the cutaneous eruption you developed on your... that was indiscreet. I hope you can forgive me. Ensign, at your recital last month, I told Lieutenant Torres that your saxophone playing reminded me of a wounded targ. I should've put it more delicately. I'm sorry. Seven.
Seven: You should remain still.
Doctor: You have no idea how difficult it's been, hiding my true feelings all these years, averting my eyes during your regular maintenance exams. I know you could never have the same feelings for me but I want you to know the truth. I love you, Seven.
Seven: Your cognitive algorithms are malfunctioning.
Doctor: Goodbye, my friends. Speak well of me.
[The EMH disappears.]
Janeway: Is he...?
Torres: No, I've got him.
[The Doctor reappears.]
Doctor: What happened?
Torres: I deleted the extraneous subroutines.
Doctor: I'm not going to decompile?
Janeway: You'll probably outlive us all.
Paris: Doc, anything else you'd like to confess?
Janeway: Now, when you're on the holodeck with the captain, there are two rules you have to follow.
Doctor: I understand.
Janeway: First, leave your rank at the door.
Doctor: Not a problem. The second?
Janeway: No opera.
Neelix and Naomi Wildman have put together a First Contact Day party in the mess. Janeway notes that when she was a kid, all First Contact Day meant was another school holiday, but the two of them have gone full out on celebrating Zefram Cochrane by eating his favorite snack (cheese pierogis) and dancing to classic rock on a jukebox. Neelix gets Tuvok to recite the first words Vulcans ever said to humans, "Live long and prosper," but Tuvok is too annoyed to further indulge Neelix by joining him on the dance floor. Chakotay interrupts the festivities with some intriguing news for Neelix. They've detected Talaxian lifesigns just a few light years away.
They track the lifesigns down to an asteroid field but they aren't responding to hails. Neelix, Paris and Tuvok take the Delta Flyer into the belt to see if they can make contact directly, but they find themselves in the field of fire of some mining ships that are breaking apart smaller asteroids, and are forced to crash-land on the Talaxian asteroid. Neelix awakens inside the asteroid being tended to by a Talaxian woman named Dexa, but she's standoffish and only answers his questions with short replies. When he tries to get out of bed to check on Tom and Tuvok, she erects a force field around his chamber. These Talaxians do not trust outsiders and don't understand why he's traveling with aliens.
Neelix has a brief interaction with Dexa's son Brax before Dexa returns with the colony leader Oxilon. He frees Neelix and welcomes him to visit, but Tom and Tuvok will have to leave. Neelix says if his friends aren't welcome, then he isn't either. Dexa gives him a brief tour of the colony built on the inside of the asteroid. There are 500 Talaxians here and they build the colony using parts from some of their spaceships. She takes him to the Delta Flyer, where Tom and Tuvok are making repairs. Tuvok tells Neelix he's sorry the visit wasn't friendlier, but Neelix was just happy to see his people again, noting this is probably the last time that will ever happen.
As they restore power to the Flyer, an intruder alert sounds, and Neelix finds that Brax has stowed away because Neelix said he'd let him see Voyager. Neelix takes him to his mother and finds Nocona arguing with Oxilon, demanding that the Talaxians vacate the asteroid within 3 days so they can begin mining it. Dexa yells at them that they have no right to kick them out of their homes and Nocona shoves her away. Brax gets angry and throws a rock at Nocona, who demands the kid be brought to him. Neelix warns him to stay away from the kid, and Nocona starts a fight with Neelix instead, which ends with Neelix grabbing Nocona's gun and demanding the miners leave the asteroid at once.
Oxilon thanks Neelix for his help but doesn't think it's going to make a difference. Neelix suggests they have Janeway mediate a negotiation between the two parties and takes Oxilon, Dexa, and Brax to Voyager. Neelix gives Dexa and Brax a tour of the ship, where the bridge crew play up his many roles on the ship, and Seven is able to show them a picture of Talax from the Astrometrics database. Brax wants to know why they can't live on Talax, but Dexa says the reason they left was because the Haakonians control the planet now. That night, Neelix shares a bottle he'd been saving for fifteen years with Dexa as she tells him stories of their struggle to find a place where they aren't oppressed or forced out, including the time her husband was killed for farming outside the small plot of land designated for them. Neelix realizes things are starting to get a little intimate and quickly excuses himself.
The negotiations the next day don't go very well, but they manage to negotiate enough time to pack everything up to evacuate, and Voyager will help take them to the nearest habitable world. Neelix doesn't think it was enough, and asks Tuvok for assistance in devising defenses for them because the planet they've selected is near many warp-capable species. Tuvok points out that they'd be vulnerable anywhere and don't seem particularly inclined to defend themselves anyway. He suggests their asteroid is as defensible a position as they could get so long as they erect shielding, but they'd need strong leadership willing to mount the defense. Tuvok gives him a "hypothetical" pep-talk convincing him to take charge and lead the defense.
Neelix is ready to take out his shuttle, which alerts Janeway's suspicions and she asks why he doesn't simply have Tom take him over. He points out that since he's not Starfleet, he's not bound to the Prime Directive, and he doesn't want to get them involved. He concocts a plan where he and Oxilon will orbit the asteroid with their ships, dropping shield emitters along the surface that will tap into the asteroid's geothermal energy for an effectively permanent power source. Once they begin, the miners will surely recognize what they're doing and attack, so they'll have to work quickly and deflect any charges fired at the asteroid. As Neelix prepares to leave for his shuttle, Dexa kisses him.
As predicted, once they start laying down emitters, the miners attack. Neelix is able to shoot down several charges but a blast disables his weapons systems. He's about to sacrifice his shuttle by moving in front of another charge, but the Delta Flyer shows up, Janeway rationalizing the Prime Directive violation that she's just helping a friend in distress. With Voyager's aid, the shield is erected, and the mining charges explode harmlessly on its surface. Neelix joins the Talaxians in the celebration, but has to return to Voyager despite Brax begging him to stay.
Going back to his duties on Voyager, the thought nags at him. He pays Naomi a visit and realizes she's all grown up now. She doesn't need him to tuck her in bed or read her stories. He joins Janeway for a cup of coffee late that night in the mess and she discusses with him a proposal she has to run by Starfleet for establishing a permanent Federation ambassador in the Delta Quadrant. Since they have permanent communications set up, it would need to be someone who can stay in frequent contact with Starfleet, and it makes sense to appoint a native. She asks Neelix if he'd be interested in the job.
As Neelix packs his things and prepares to leave the ship he's called home for seven years, he finds the crew lining the corridors to say farewell to him. Tuvok, in one of his most endearing displays of affection to Neelix, sticks out a leg and shakes it back and forth, fulfilling Neelix's mission of getting him to dance. Neelix arrives back at the asteroid and embraces Brax and Dexa, his new family. And I'm not crying, you're crying, shut up.
NITPICKS
The Delta Flyer kicks up dust clouds when crash-landing on the asteroid, but absent an atmosphere, any debris would simply arc away. There would be no gaseous medium for it to be suspended in. I know this because I've read accounts from Apollo astronauts who noted how weird it seemed that the regolith didn't cloud up underfoot. This is, of course, a common VFX error of showing things in space behaving as if in atmosphere: fireballs, visible energy beams (without an atmosphere to scatter the beam, you should only see its start and end points), etc.
FAVORITE QUOTES
Tuvok: Vulcans do not dance.
Neelix: But it's tradition.
Tuvok: There is no tradition, Mister Neelix. This ceremony is entirely your invention.
Janeway: This is an official ship function, Commander. Don't make me order you to dance.
Neelix: This is an Engineering station, and over there is Tactical, and down there is the helm. And this is the Captain's chair.
Brax: Which station is yours?
Neelix: Well, actually, I don't have a specific, er, I'm more of a...
Kim: Neelix does too many things to have just one station. He's our Ambassador, morale officer...
Chakotay: Trade negotiator. Without a doubt, he's the most versatile member of our crew.
Brax: Why don't we just go back to Talax? We could live there.
Dexa: It's still controlled by the Haakonians. They don't treat Talaxians very well. That's why we left.
Brax: Maybe Neelix could go with us, and we could fight them. Take the planet back.
Neelix: If tomorrow's negotiations go well, you won't have to go anywhere.
Naomi: And once, there was a transporter accident. Neelix and Commander Tuvok got combined to make a completely different person.
Brax: Really?
Naomi: You don't think I could make up a story like that, do you?
Chakotay and Seven are flying a shuttlecraft to survey a jungle. Seven doesn't see why they needed to come all the way down here when a sensor scan would suffice, but Chakotay wanted to take in the beauty of it. That doesn't last long when they skim the surface of a previously undetected force field (which Seven notes resembles technology used by Species 312, a helpful hint for later) and the damage to the shuttle is forcing them down. Seven is able to punch a hole through the force field so they can make an emergency landing, but a feedback pulse destroys the shuttle as it passes through the hole. Seven and Chakotay make an emergency beam-out, and are forced to hunt down the shuttle debris in order to piece together an emergency beacon.
Compounding that issue is that Chakotay has a nasty gash and hairline fracture on his calf which is limiting his mobility, and they appear to have landed in an anthropological reserve populated by stone-age humanoids who communicate in sign language. Seven has to leave him behind while she searches for the salvage she needs, and Chakotay tries to hide, but is discovered by the local tribe, who smash his badge out of fear when they hear Seven's voice chirping through it. She has to track him back down, where they've tended to his leg with a salve and splint and he's resting in a cave.
Seven seems to be more concerned with preserving the Prime Directive than Chakotay at this point, as he starts to learn their sign language so he can get a lay of the land to better orient themselves and locate all the scattered pieces of their shuttle. He suggests she have one of the tribespeople accompany her as they know the area better, but she wants to limit their exposure to their technology and believes she can find her way on her own. Of course, as soon as she leaves the village, she trips and drops her tricorder down a crevasse and quickly finds herself wandering in circles. A native finds her lost in the jungle by herself that night and covers her in a blanket, then helps her navigate. But first, she has to show off Seven a shitty CGI waterfall, and Seven has to pretend to be impressed by the early 2000s TV visual effects budget.
Back at the village, Chakotay is realizing the impact his and Seven's presences are having, as the locals are starting to paint their faces to match his tattoo, or attaching shuttle scraps to their faces to resemble Seven's implants. He knows they're going to have to leave sooner than later, and asks them to take him to where Seven is so he can help expedite the process. Seven has found the shuttle deflector and can configure it to create a beacon but a nearby magnetic field is interfering. Chakotay suggests they get the locals to help haul it to a better area. At this point, they realize that the sooner they leave, the less prolonged their interference will be.
Voyager has noted Chakotay's absence and discovered Seven never checked in at the conference, so they begin searching for the shuttle and discover a shuttle wing resting atop the force field surrounding the jungle. They contact the Ledosians, the local people, who explain it's a force field around a primitive species called the Ventu, and it's not something they can take down because it was erected by aliens a long time ago while the Ventu and the Ledosians were warring. They quickly come to the same technique Seven used by studying the Borg archives and learning about Species 312, but they too get a feedback pulse from firing the phaser. Their shields hold, but they'll have to come up with an alternate way to punch that hole. Tuvok begins modifying a photon torpedo for the task. (At this point, wouldn't they have run out of torpedoes?)
However, they don't need to fire one, as Seven's modified deflector takes down the force field. Unfortunately, one of the Ventu girls touches the deflector as it turns on and receives an electric shock. She's able to contact Voyager and has them beam up Chakotay and beam down a medkit so she can treat the girl. As she says her goodbyes to the girl after tending to her wounds, she receives a blanket as a gift from the girl, and then encounters a Ledosian expedition. It looks like they've been waiting for this barrier to come down for a long time so they can move in, colonial British-style.
Seven and Chakotay worry what impact the Ledosians could have on the Ventu, who are a very self-reliant and intuitive species (the Doctor didn't even need to treat Chakotay's leg after their care), and Janeway agrees they need to take back the deflector to bring the force field back up. The Ledosians don't agree and fire on Voyager's transporter systems. Janeway calls Tom Paris to the rescue, who is in the middle of his flight exam, and he ditches the course to head over to the Ventu area, beaming aboard the Ledosian expedition and firing on the deflector, which restores the barrier. His instructor fails him on the exam.
NITPICKS
Janeway is a massive hypocrite when she says she doesn't find weapons fire of any kind "restraint." It's the kind of restraint she's shown constantly when she knocks out the weapons systems of other ships.
FAVORITE QUOTES
Paris: Piloting lessons?
Janeway: Apparently, the standard penalty for your infraction is a three day course in flight safety, followed by a test.
Paris: Why should I be held responsible for the ship's design flaws?
Kleg: According to the maintenance records, you were this vessel's chief designer. I make it a point of professional pride to research every case I'm assigned to. Are you familiar with that term, Lieutenant? Professional pride?
Paris: You know, I don't want to seem impatient again, but is there any way you'd let me take that test now?
Kleg: I thought I'd made myself clear about that. All my students complete the entire course.
Paris: I understand, sir, but two of my friends are missing, and I'd like to help find them.
Kleg: Well, that's an admirable sentiment. But if I give you special treatment it wouldn't be fair to the others who have to take this course. Besides, why stop now? You're getting very close to becoming an adequate pilot.
Kleg: I am sorry to inform you, Mister Paris, but you have failed this examination. You will no longer be allowed to operate a vessel within Ledosian space.
Paris: Something tells me that's not going to be a problem.
