Today, Paramount Pictures released the newest official Star Trek: Into Darkness movie trailer. Your brain may start to explode once you reach the 1:17 mark.
What is that ship? To me, it looks like an Abrams-fied version of the Enterprise-D. It could even be an Abrams-fied version of Ambassador class — Enterprise-C — or the Sovereign class — Enterprise-E.
You can download the official trailer — labelled Trailer 2 — from Apple’s website.
How did the villain currently known as Harrison — played by Benedict Cumberbatch — acquire a ship that is significantly bigger than what is supposed to be the flagship of Starfleet? From where did this ship come? Has Harrison found a way to go into the future and steal a future incarnation of the Enterprise — if we are to assume that is indeed another incarnation of the flagship? Did Harrison find a way to hop on over into a mirror universe? Did Harrison expose a ship to gamma radiation, enabling the ship to grow in size when in battle? Or less complicated, did Harrison steal a secret prototype of the next incarnation of the Enterprise?
Okay, the gamma radiation question is completely ridiculous, but my brain is now exploding with all the question! The time travel theory, mirror universe theory, and stolen prototype are perfectly reasonable.
Whatever the answer is, this is the first time I’ve experienced any sort of anticipation for this movie since it was confirmed that Cumberbatch will not be Khan.
What do you think is going on here? What are your theories? There is a good chance we are all wrong. But, it is fun to reasonably speculate until we learn the answers to our questions.
Have you found the Easter egg that I’m assuming is hidden in this trailer?
Star Trek: Into Darkness is set for release in the UK on May 9, 2013, and in North America on May 17, 2013. You can find a complete list of release dates here.
Wow! I’m speechless. I’m going to guess, and I might add that it’s not a bad guess that he got it from the future. Time travel is a very common theme with Star Trek, in fact it’s an important theme with Star Trek. But it looks radically different, not just bigger. The size comparison reminds me of the NCC-1701 refit compared to NCC-1701D. Huge!
Yes, it is radically different, but so is alternate Enterprise compared to Prime Enterprise. So, if it is time travel, it would have to be within the alternate timeline.
Well here’s the thing. You don’t know what ships they have because this movie exists in an alternate time stream from the Trek we are all used to. The first movie made sure of that. They may have that ship design in the alternate timeline which is the timeline that the new movie franchise exists in. I think I just repeated myself. But anyway we will just have to wait and see , it looks like a heck of a ride to me. I can’t wait.
Yes, I don’t know what other ships they have. But the Enterprise is still the flagship of Starfleet. Abrams’ version of Enterprise is also significantly larger than Prime Enterprise. So, while I do not know what other ships Abrams’ universe has, I’m going on the assumption that because Enterprise is still the flagship, it will also be the current largest known class of starship.
For quite a while, I was convinced that the villain was Sybok – thought I saw pointed ears, figured an emotional Vulcan might be a bit miffed about his planet being destroyed. So much for that idea! *LOL*
My new guess is, he’s from the Mirror Universe. Maybe he’s George Samuel Kirk, Jim’s brother who doesn’t exist in this new timeline; there’s nothing that says that a Mirror Universe George Kirk Sr. couldn’t have somehow managed to survive the Romulan encounter!
Sam Kirk (as we was referred to in TOS) died in Operation – Annihilate! But in the reboot comic version of Operation – Annihilate! (which are canon) he is still alive, using the name George, instead of Sam like in TOS. George and Kirk mend their broken past from when George ran away when they were children. George was to appear in Star Trek: 2009, but they deleted those scenes. Later, they included those deleted scenes in the comic and expanded on their story. Now, while they did mend their broken past in the comics, there is no reason to think their relationship didn’t break again (though, IIRC, George is a civilian in the comics).
All this being said, maybe they found away to put him the newest movie, despite giving an entire comic to their story. As I said, it is a lot of fun to reasonably speculate 🙂
My guess is that it could be a mirror universe version of the Enterprise C as it looks very close to an Ambasidor class starship, the fact we know the Klingons are heavily involved in this movie and we know the Enterprise C was involving in a temporal incursion in the original universe. Furthermore we see “the bad guy” with a platoon of starfleet officers wearing a more modern outfit similar to that being worn by the original captain of the enterprise C found here http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Rachel_Garrett
Indeed. My brain keeps going back and forth between C and D, or a prototype of the Dreadnaught class of ships.
Not a D. Looks more like a JJ Abrams vision of combining his version of Constitution class with a C and an E.
Hopefully we won’t have a repeat of the first movie with giant ship and time travel. Sound familiar? The first Abram’s Start Trek was ok, but I wasn’t that impressed with “magical” red matter, giant ships, standard revenge theme and some over the top action. It was more of just another action movie, rather than Star Trek where you actually explore the human condition and moral dilemmas. I do like action, but only if it is done tastefully and in the context of the story and characters. So I will look to the next Star Trek movie with gaurded optimism.
I’m in the same boat as you are. A lot of what you expressed, I also expressed in a post I linked in this post: http://www.wired.com/geekmom/2012/12/star-trek-villain-harrison/
So here is something I just considered. Given that the timeline has been rebooted, if time travel or mirror universe travel were the origin of the ship, then we would have to consider ANY villain in the star Trek Universe to be Cumberbatch.
Cumberbatch could be a villain from any pre-reboot movie or series because with the timeline fractured by the first JJ movie, anyone could still be alive. He could be Lore. He could be Gary Mitchell. He could be a Founder. Hell, he could be a Borg! (in this timeline, the borg look like us, perhaps). Is it likely that JJ would reach that far for his villain? I’m guessing no, but you never know.
My gut is telling me that the similarity between the ship in the trailer and the more recent Enterprises is a careful placed coincidence. He wants us guessing and wants to drum up speculation. So maybe he thought dropping a little nugget like a very similar ship would do just that.
Yes, there are a number of possibilities. Though, Mitchell is not one of them as they already killed him off in the comics. While I’m open to a number of possibilities, I’m still holding on to my theory that Harrison is actually a “enhanced” version of the Harrison from Prime timeline. I like the idea of what would be a redshirt in Prime, having center stage in the alternate timeline. It is new, unlike rebooting an already existing villain. But, that is just personal preference and a strong want for fresh stories. If done well, then I can see myself being okay with rebooting yet another already established character.
LOVE the new trailer — my entire family cannot wait till it comes out next month! This might be worth a midnight trip…
My husband and I have been discussing the alternate universe/time travel storyline with the reboots and we’re fascinated with it. The writers have the liberty to make the characters anything they want them to be — hence Harrison being rebranded into a much bigger villain. Fun fun fun.
I can’t wait for this to come out. It looks like it will be good (crossing fingers the trailer clips aren’t the only good parts!). This one will show the direction the series set will take.
I think ambassador spock helped starfleet design a starship from the future and this was their best attempt at replicating a sovereign class starship
I knew he wasn’t Khan from day 1……geesh, any idiot who even suspected that knows absolutely nothing about Star Trek.
has no one speculated it is the excelsior ? god its not going to be a future enterprise if anything its either the excelsior or the yorktown… they will not dive into next gen technology as this is not next gen canon
Into Darkness possible backstory and premise: Star Fleet, not necessarily Kirk, finds the Botany Bay ship. They decide to exterminate the crew because they are considered criminals and dangerous, knowing all about Khan and his followers from history. But at some point before this, Botany Bay crew member John Harrison and maybe others are awaken from cryosleep. He vows revenge and infiltrates star fleet as a agent and eventually turns on them to bring it down.