Star Trek: Beyond Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Idris Elba Yes, I am aware that it has been a while since I did the last movie in this series. I have been more focused on the MCU lately (both for recaps and fanfiction), but now I need a break from superhero shit again, so...here we are. Chrissy: Honestly, I kind of thought you did the first two movies just because you wanted to do the one with Benedict. Diandra: Why would...sigh. No. I started these for pretty much the same reason I started recapping the MCU and RDJs Sherlock Holmes movies. I knew there was more coming and I wasn't going to remember shit unless I did some recapping I could use for reference. Chrissy: So since they announced there would be a season two of The Night Manager... Diandra: [groan] Here we go again. Chrissy: I'm just saying. Diandra: Can't we talk about this later? Why do you always have to bring these things up when we're recapping to try to pressure me into it? Emilio: The same reason she brings up plot bunnies? It works? Diandra: Ugh. For anyone just joining the series - or who forgot what happened in the years between “Into Darkness” and this - we begin with Kirk introducing himself with full name and title to...somebody. He says he's a neutral representative of "the Fibonan Republic", here to speak to the "Teenaxi Delegation" and present them with a gift. He opens a metal contraption and there's a silence while we look at it like we're waiting for something. One of the troll creatures he's apparently talking to asks what's wrong with it. "Why don't they want it anymore?" Kirk says uh...it's a symbolic gesture. A piece of an ancient weapon given as a sort of peace offering. Because in the Fibonan culture, this is a way of signaling a truce. The troll asks how they got the weapon in the first place. Probably stole it, right? Kirk starts spluttering like 'okay, this is NOT going well, obviously...' He tries to continue, but the troll is ranting about how the Fibonans are all lying thieves who would kill and eat them. Kirk is like 'they what now?' The troll jumps down to the platform he's standing on and we get a comedic moment of realization that what looked like a terrifyingly large monster turns out to be a tiny gremlin before it leaps on Kirk. The rest of the Teenaxi delegation rush to join him and Kirk yelps at Scotty to beam him the hell out of here. Scotty says sure, but there's a lot of "surface interference" and he's having trouble getting a signal... He finally gets a ragged looking Kirk beamed onto the ship, along with a couple Teenaxi some red shirts have to pry off him. "How'd it go," Scotty asks as Kirk storms past him. Spock and Bones meet him in the hall outside and Spock asks if he got the treaty. "Let's just say I came up short," he smart asses. Bones scans him with his device, but then just shrugs and notes that he looks "like crap" and has a vein popping out of his temple again. Kirk just says he's fine and it's "just another day in the fleet." We pan over the hull of the ship so he can voiceover his captain's log. It is star date who the fuck cares, the 996th day of their five year mission, so they're about halfway through or so. Sad music accompanies his ramble about how all the days are starting to blend together and starting to maybe wear on them. Particularly the ones who left people behind. Like, we're just now revealing, Sulu, who has a picture of a little girl at his work station. Some engineers chase stray Teenaxi down the cooridors while Kirk talks about this mission to make diplomatic ties to "new life forms". Then he gets to the part about interpersonal dynamics on a traveling office/apartment building and we get snapshots of couples hooking up and one guy getting thrown out of a green lady's bunk. On the bridge, Kirk is sitting in his chair while he notes that his life has begun to feel "episodic" and he's starting to wonder just what they are trying to accomplish here because the universe is supposedly endless, so where does their mission stop? Chrissy: When the network pulls the plug. Diandra: But every few years it will be resurrected in some form or another again until you die and are replaced. Emilio: All this has happened before and will happen again. Diandra: So say we all. Why are we bringing another sci- fi franchise into this? Emilio: Because it applies. Spock puts that rejected artifact in archives somewhere while Kirk talks about how the ship is scheduled for a provision restocking stop at the starbase "Yorktown" soon, so maybe a change of scenery will help. The computer screen Spock was using to log the artifact in wobbles a bit like it's being hacked in some obvious foreshadowing. Bar. Not ten forward. That's about a hundred years in the future. Bones finds Kirk drinking what he THINKS is Saurian brandy out of an...unfortunately shaped bottle and asks if he's trying to go blind. Chrissy: Oh, that's just a lie the church promoted. Emilio: That was mostly about masturbation. Diandra: Yeah, sucking juice from a phallic object warranted an entirely different punishment. Chrissy: You talk like I'm drinking it DIRECTLY from the bottle. What sort of alcoholic do you take me for? Diandra [muttering]: Yeah, we got the role playing assignments right, didn’t we? Chrissy: What was that? Diandra: Nothing. Anyway. I guess it's the space equivalent of moonshine or bathtub gin or something because Bones says it's "illegal" and shoves it aside in favor of a bottle he found in Chekov's locker. He wants to properly "celebrate" Kirk's birthday with it. Kirk grumbles and Bones exposits that he doesn't care about celebrating his birthday because it's the anniversary of his father's death. Except he phrases it as the day "your pa bit the dust" and then follows it up with the excuse that he's "being sensitive" here. Kirk sarcastically asks if they teach this sort of bedside manner in medical school. Chrissy: Nope. Just my sparkling personality and charm. Diandra: Were you Bones too? Chrissy: God, you've already forgotten everything we did in the first two recaps, haven't you? Emilio: I don’t think we decided anything beyond Kirk and Spock. We just went with whatever came naturally. Bones pours three glasses and they toast the one that is obviously meant to be for a fallen comrade before drinking. Given the time this movie came out, I remember having a moment of 'oh my god, they managed to work in a thing to Anton Yelchin?' But no. I had forgotten that Leonard Nimoy had also died before this movie came out. It almost works as a tribute to both of them though. Until you realize that Chekov is still in this movie because they had finished filming it before the accident. Bones asks if Kirk is planning to call his mom on his birthday, establishing that she is still alive. Emilio: Might even have stopped aging depending on how long she was stuck in Storybrooke. Diandra: Ah yes. There's the nerd reference we somehow missed before. Chrissy: We were busy with the fact that his dad is Thor. Apparently Kirk is feeling particularly mopey on this birthday/anniversary because he is now officially older than his dad was when he died. "He joined Starfleet because he believed in it. I joined on a dare." Bones corrects that he joined so he could try to live up to his dad. Chrissy: Of course it turns out HE was trying to live up to HIS dad, which is difficult as he is the god of everything and Anthony fucking Hopkins. Diandra: Okay, we can stop with the crossovers now. Bones says he should stop trying to be George and just be Jim for a change. Then he toasts "to perfect eyesight and a full head of hair." They are called to the bridge as they approach Yorktown, which is a planet sized bubble in space, apparently. Bones grumbles about it being a "monstrosity" and why couldn't they have put the base on an actual planet? Spock recites the argument that the Federation couldn't show "geographical favoritism" to any planet in particular. Bones snarls that it looks like a snow globe. Emilio: [opens mouth] Diandra: If the next sentence out of your mouth includes the name Tommy Westphall, so help me. Emilio: [hesitates, mouth open] Well, the Star Trek universe is already part of his extended universe thanks to “Deep Space Nine”, I think, so there's that. Diandra: Ugh. Of course it is. We pan inside with them while the ship docks to show that looks like several Elysium rings with cityscapes and various forms of transportation. They dock at what totally looks like an airport. Uhura flags down Spock as he's exiting the gate to give him back a necklace that belonged to his mother. Spock says it isn't Vulcan custom to accept gifts that were originally given as a gift. AKA no backsies. She kisses his cheek and walks away still wearing the necklace. Bones comes up to fill in some exposition, asking if they broke up. Spock just stares at him. "What'd you do," Bones asks. Spock snots that that is a "typically reductive" question. Chrissy: So you were your usually charming self then. Kay. Bones cites the Earth rule that if a woman says it isn't his fault, it is DEFINITELY his fault, pats him on the arm and walks away. Spock gets all of three feet before being sidelined by some elder Vulcans for reasons we aren’t told yet. Now for the controversy. Sulu comes off the ship and makes a beeline for the little girl from the picture, picking her up and walking away arm in arm with what is obviously her other father. Yep. They made Sulu gay. Now, this isn’t all that surprising a change for literally anyone who has heard of George Takei, but George himself felt uncomfortable with it. Because while he was definitely gay at the time he was playing Sulu, he was not out. And Sulu, as he was written and played at the time, was straight. Instead of creating a new character (which...granted, is difficult with this particular series that’s just a reboot), they rewrote one and claimed they were doing it in honor of the actor. It probably didn’t help that Simon Pegg posited some ridiculous space-time multiverse theory to explain how it was possible for Sulu to have a different sexuality in this universe. But it’s still subtle enough to have completely flown past the censors in countries where homosexuality is illegal, so. It turns out that what the Vulcans wanted was to inform Spock of was his OG counterpart’s death. He looks at a pad that shows a picture of Leonard Nimoy with the stardates 2230.06 – 2263.02. Chrissy: Seriously, how do those damn dates work anyway? Diandra: Nobody knows. Meanwhile, somewhere, a federation space station where Greg Grunberg works because JJ had to get him in there somewhere picks up an alien vessel barreling toward them. A female alien clearly in distress screams a message in an unrecognized language when they hail it. On the Enterprise, the woman is put in some sort universal translator that figures out what she’s speaking and translates that she is a scientist and her team needs their help with a mission in a nebula that they were on when they suffered catastrophic failure and crashed into a planet. A woman with one of the most instantly recognizable voices in the film industry (Hey, It’s That Iranian Lady) tells Kirk that they found her ship. She agrees with him that the Enterprise is the only ship with navigation advanced enough to help. So this is their new assignment. But also, she notes that Kirk applied for a vice admiral position. He says yes and if accepted he would recommend Spock replace him as captain of the ship. But she just rambles about how it isn’t that weird that a captain of a ship would want to be promoted out because space is LONELY and terrifying and “it’s easier than you think to get lost.” Anyway, they’ll talk about it when he gets back from the mission. Back on the Enterprise, Kirk and Spock meet in the elevator and both try to talk at once before agreeing that they need to have a talk about important stuff after the mission. Chrissy: Awful lot of foreshadowing going on here. Once the ship takes off, Kirk tells the whole ship via intercom what the mission is: rescue a crew stranded on a planet in uncharted space. So, straightforward, but dangerous and requires traveling through a nebula that will definitely fuck up their communications. They fly through what looks like an asteroid field and arrive at a planet not unlike Earth, like...luckily they crashed on a planet that can support life. Spock scans it and announces there is major subterranean development, but little to no life forms. And then another “ship” approaches them, shifting and changing shape in a way that couldn’t look anything but threatening. Kirk orders shields up and it bursts into thousands of smaller vessels. They try to fire at it, but Chekov yelps that the damage they are inflicting seems minimal and they can’t lock torpedoes on it. Several of them fly into an engine and whatever system operates the shield, then whatever operates the warp drive as they try to retreat. The blasters (or as Scotty identifies them: nacells) are ripped right off. Everyone goes to battle stations and the enemy ships start embedding themselves right in the hull. Chekov announces which levels the breaches are on and because this is JJ Abrams, I’m just going to list the numbers in case it proves important somehow later: 12-15, 6, 9, 31 and 21. The mini ships cough out a bunch of humanoid creatures, one of which IMMEDIATELY mows down an entire row of redshirts. Chrissy: Yes, ha ha. We get the in joke. Diandra: The thing is...they’re in engineering. They ALL have red shirts down there. Emilio: It’s also the part of the ship where very few major characters are stationed. Diandra: Yeah, hence why it became a thing. I’m sure we talked about this during one of the other recaps, but nerds have taken tallies and determined that only SLIGHTLY more red shirts than any other color shirts died during the course of the original series. But Kirk killed more crew than any other captain too, so I guess it’s more noticeable when you have people dropping like flies on the reg. Chrissy: And he’s remembered as the greatest captain? Diandra: Is he? I think there’s arguments about who the best captain was, but one thing that is indisputable, I think: he’s the only one who died twice. Chrissy: Seriously? Diandra: Yeah, if you really hate William Shatner and want a little catharsis, watch “Generations”. One of the aliens announces to “Krall” that the coast is clear and a slightly larger ship punctures the hull and Idris Elba falls out. Although you can be forgiven for not realizing it’s him immediately under all that makeup. Chrissy: So was there some sort of requirement that the major villains of all three movies have British accents then? Diandra: Eric Bana is Australian. Chrissy: Meh, close enough for an American audience. Diandra: ............yeah, I suppose that’s fair. Spock is creeping around hallways with a phaser searching for intruders when he stumbles on Krall giving orders about securing the ship in some alien language. He calls Kirk to tell him the intruder has taken the artifact from the Teenax mission (which Krall identified as the Abronath, but it’s not clear Spock caught that). The line goes dead and Kirk gives command of the ship to Sulu while he goes running through the halls. Bones finds one of their crew dying of something the aliens did and gulps in horror at his diagnostic tablet. Kirk tries to take on Krall and the whole group of guys around him, taking pretty much all of the others out improbably before Krall gets him in a stranglehold. And then hesitates because he recognizes him. Which gives Scotty enough time to get the ship back up to speed again, jolting them around the hallway and breaking Krall’s grip. One of Krall’s men tells him the Enterprise is getting away and he orders the drones to attack the ship so that repeated hull piercings cause the saucer section to separate completely from the rest of the ship. Federation and aliens alike are killed or sucked into space. Spock and Bones get in an escape pod. Kirk is running around on the walls like he’s in Inception. He calls the bridge for status and is told the ship is failing. He orders Sulu to abandon ship and try to draw fire while the escape pods are launching. Sulu says they can’t until the saucer is separated, which is a thing we only learned was possible in “Next Generation”, I believe. Drones attack escaping pods. Somehow they seem to miss the one Scotty gets in, which sails directly toward the Earth like planet. Krall finds Kirk trying to separate the ship and continues the fight. Uhura fights her way toward them when she figures out why it’s taking him so long. She continues the process of separation while he fights Krall and somehow gets trapped WITH Krall when the ship starts sectioning off and coming apart. Kirk goes back to the bridge and is informed that a) no crew was left in the saucer when it separated, b) the enemies are “taking” the escaping crew and c) they are now entering the planet’s gravitational pull and are crashing. Kirk orders them to their own escape pods and sad music accompanies scenes of pods launching and drones chasing the ship until they start burning up and crashing themselves. We follow Kirk into his pod last and he watches the burning ship glide into a bunch of rocky outcropings and then mow down a good chunk of forest. Then we switch to Scotty, who barely escapes his pod before it falls off a cliff. Ladies and gentlemen: the one red shirt who cannot die. Kirk and Chekov emerge from their pods and Kirk rounds on the alien woman, who he accuses of knowing this attack would happen. She admits that yes, her ship was also attacked by Krall, who “took” her crew like he just did Kirk’s. Diandra: [robotic voice] They will be assimilated. Chrissy: You know...I don’t know if the fact that I actually understood that reference means some Trek things are just general knowledge or if I’ve just been around you too long. Emilio: It can be both, but The Borg are probably the most recognizable villains. Also, they are very similar to Cybermen, which were in stuff you recapped. Chrissy: Yeah, that’s right. What is the difference between Borg and Cybermen anyway? Besides the obvious one is British and one is American? Diandra: Borg are more organic, I think. Cybermen seem to just be human brains in totally metal bodies. The Borg hijack the brain, but other than bits and pieces of tech the bodies are still intact. But yeah, this is why I describe Doctor Who and Star Trek as being television twins separated by an ocean. Lots of similarities. Anyway. Krall promised her that if she helped him snag the Enterprise, he would “free” her crew. Because the reason they keep using the word “take” is that Krall is basically holding them hostage. We go to whatever holding place they’ve taken the Enterprise crew (including Sulu and Uhura). Krall asks Uhura’s name in halting English and she hisses that he has committed a war crime against the Federation. He says the Federation itself is an act of war. He notes that she sacrificed herself to save the “cap- i-tan” and asks why. She says he would have done the same for her. Emilio: Which probably is only true because this is the parallel universe where he took the radiation poisoning that killed Spock in the prime universe. Chrissy: So the version of Spock played by Leonard Nimoy in this universe was removed from that one before that then? Diandra: Uh.........no. He...was only dead for one movie. Emilio: Less. Diandra: Long bullshit story. She vows that he will come for his crew if he made it off the ship before it crashed. Krall snarls that he’s counting on that. Bones and Spock crawl out of their escape shuttle [ETA: actually one of Krall’s men’s ships that they stumbled into by accident in the chaos apparently] and realize Spock has a big hunk of metal sticking from his abdomen. Bones gets him to lay down and says he’ll be okay. Spock says the “forced optimism” in his voice suggests otherwise. But he starts trying to get up, forcing Bones to yelp about it puncturing his “iliac region” and he can’t just take it out without Spock bleeding to death. Spock stops moving and Bones starts searching for something while rambling about how Vulcans have their hearts where humans have their livers, which is about an inch to the left of where that shrapnel is. He pries a piece of ship that’s pointy, sterilizes it with his laser thingy and gets it red hot before kneeling beside Spock and asking what his favorite color is. While Spock is distracting asking how the HELL that’s relevant right now, he rips out the shrapnel and cauterizes the wound. Once Spock stops screaming he explains that it’s supposed to hurt less if you aren’t expecting it. Spock says that, in words Bones would understand, is horseshit. Scotty finds his broken up pod at the bottom of the cliff and tries to use his communicator. It’s broken. Some aliens show up and approach him menacingly. Then a woman shows up and speaks to them in unsubtitled alien before launching into a fight where she creates some sort of clones of herself to make it an even match. Once they retreat, she turns on Scotty, points a knife at his Starfleet badge and asks where he got it. He’s surprised she speaks English. She gets him to explain that he’s a Starfleet engineering officer. He asks if she’s with “those bastards that killed my ship.” She spits on the ground by way of answer. Then she exposits that Krall and his “bees” “search the stars for a death machine.” Apparently everybody on this planet has crashed like they just did because of him. He says okay, uh...well, speaking of that. He needs to find the others he was with. She says she’ll help if he’ll help her fix...whatever she has she needs fixed. He shrugs, acknowledges that he doesn’t have a whole lot of options at the moment, and agrees. She finally introduces herself as Jaylah and recalls that he tried to introduce himself to those other guys as Montgomery Scott. He says it’s Scotty, actually, so she corrects to “Montgomery Scotty”. So now we have three groups bumbling around the planet. We briefly check in with Kirk, Chekov and the other alien woman, who find what’s left of the Enterprise so they can use the communications, before going back to Spock and Bones, who find a cave with what looks like an altar. Spock notes the symbols carved in the walls are the same as the ones on the artifact Krall took, so it probably came from here. Then he collapses because he’s probably still bleeding internally or something. Chrissy: Meh, he’ll be fine. Jaylah takes Scotty into what looks like a cave, but has security and booby traps. She calls it her house. He says it looks like a ship. She says yeah, that’s what he needs to help her fix so she can get off this planet. He asks if this is her ship and she shines a flashlight on a wall as she says it’s HIS, actually. The wall has a plaque that says “U.S.S Franklin”. Uhura and Sulu break out of their cell and explore, finding what Sulu identifies as a “Magellan probe” the federation used to explore the nebula. They follow the cables connected to it out to a tent where Uhura discovers that Krall has been “piggybacking the subspace links between the probes.” Sulu asks if they can send a distress signal from here. While she’s doing that, he turns to another screen and announces that Krall has accessed the database for the Yorktown station. Which means he can find ANY Starfleet ship. Having successfully completed their expository purpose, they are immediately captured. Back on the Enterprise, the alien woman follows Kirk to the place where he hid the artifact. Once there, she knees him in the face and points a weapon at him, calling to “Krall” to announce that she found it. Except Kirk isn’t QUITE as stupid as she thought as it turns out the safe he led her to is empty and Chekov shows up behind her with an armed phaser. Because they knew she would do something like that and just wanted to get a trace on where she was calling to. Which they’ve done. Kirk asks what Krall wants this device for. She says he’s trying to save them from themselves. Emilio: Freedom is just a burden. They want to be led. Diandra: Are you...Loki? Chrissy: I mean...it seems appropriate and that’s what we’re inevitably going back to, so... Backup arrives for the traitor so we can have some more chase scenes around a ruined ship with cockeyed hallways. Kirk orders Chekov to engage the thrusters when they get to...I’m gonna say the engine room. Chekov can’t, but is sure to explain to the audience that they are basically standing on top of a large bomb as Kirk aims at the “combustion compressor” with his phaser. He hits...something that makes a jet turn on and also creates an explosion that they narrowly dodge before going back to running through hallways. They get to the bridge and Kirk shoots out the main windshield, jumping out and sliding down the hull. The bad guys follow and they shoot at each other the whole time. Oh, and the thrusters are all engaged now, so the ship is moving. Chrissy: Did somebody think the problem with the last two movies was there wasn’t enough fight scenes? Diandra: Obviously. Except specifically what the ship is doing is rolling over, so Kirk and Chekov somehow have to get clear before it crushes the bad guys, including the alien woman. Sulu and Uhura have gotten a private audience with Krall, who rambles in that this-is-not-my-first-language halting fashion about sacrifice and how the federation has taught them “conflict should not exist.” Emilio: The Federation or Gene Roddenberry? Diandra: That. Yes. I’m sure whole books have been written about the frustrations writers in the franchise had of trying to work around his edict that the main characters could not be in conflict with each other. He further drives home that comparison by saying that without struggle, they can’t possibly know who they really are. By the way, he intercepted their distress signal and changed the coordinates so their rescuers will just get stuck in the nebula. Crying shame that will leave their base all vulnerable. Sulu concludes from this completely unsubtle statement that they are attacking Yorktown. Krall is like ‘giant station full of federation people from multiple planets? Of course that’s the target.’ Oh, by the way, he is something like a vampire who feeds on people’s life forces or some bullshit. He reveals this by grabbing a couple officers being held captive and morphing physically while they scream. Diandra: Yeah, I think I know why I forgot more of this movie than the other two despite seeing it just as many times and more recently. Chrissy: The others make more sense? Diandra: Something like that. Back with Team Snarky. Spock is stable again and slumped against a cave wall with Bones. Since there’s a lull here, he figures now is a good time to talk about that thing with Uhura he witnessed earlier. When Vulcan was destroyed, he figured he owed a “debt” to his species, as he phrases it, which Bones translates as him figuring he needs to find a fellow Vulcan mate to continue the lineage. And before they could sit and talk about it, he got the news about OG Spock. He sniffles a little and says fear of death is illogical. Bones argues it’s “what keeps us alive.” Anyway. Spock has decided his purpose is now to continue the work OG Spock was doing on New Vulcan. Which would mean quitting Starfleet. Bones asks what Kirk said about that because “I don’t know what he’d do without you.” Meanwhile, Kirk and Chekov [ETA: Chrissy thinks if I called Bones and Spock Team Snarky, I should have called these guys Team Pretty Boys] are walking to the coordinates identified by that call they tricked the traitor into making. Chekov asks when Kirk began to suspect she was a plant. He says not soon enough, but he has a “good nose for danger”. This of course is the cue for him to set off a trap. As smoke pours from somewhere, Kirk yells at Chekov to run. Of course, this is one of Jaylah’s. She and Scotty are interrupted in the middle of bantering about the loud metal music she’s playing while she tinkers because she likes the “beats” and “shouting” to respond to the alarm, finding the boys encased in some sort of amber something or other, which she shatters after Scotty identifies them as members of his crew. Kirk gets Scotty up to speed: the Enterprise was attacked for that Teenax artifact, which he didn’t have time to secure properly and just threw in a shuttle. Sort of. They go back to Jaylah’s crashed ship house, which Scotty identifies as the first federation ship to crack warp 4 before going missing in the 2160s. Kirk says yeah, they learned about that in the academy. The captain was Balthazar Edison. Diandra: Why are you looking at me? Chrissy: This is usually the part where you add whatever knowledge you managed to hang on to from watching everything in the franchise. Diandra: That only applies to things that are references to original canon, which this is not. Hence why they’re giving such clunky backstory here. And even though this ship and it’s history is original to the franchise, the theories Scotty throws out now about what happened when it disappeared are not. Captured by Romulans or a “giant green space hand” (yes, that was a thing), but it’s looking like wormhole displacement was the winner. They get the ship powered up and Jaylah sprawls in the captain’s chair pointedly, right in front of Kirk. Emilio: Don’t even try. Hers is bigger. Kirk tells Chekov to try to get the navigation running and follows Jaylah and Scotty into another room where a computer screen is trying to load a video. It turns out to be some random video of the Franklin crew, which Scotty notes would all be dead by now since that was a hundred years ago. Kirk wanders away from the video, distracted briefly by a motorcycle kept in the room for some reason. Diandra: So is it obvious there was something important in that video that he’s not paying attention to because I remember that part or just because it’s obvious that exposition wasn’t random? Emilio: Both? Chrissy: Yeah, the writing in this movie seems especially clunky, so if it isn’t some Trekkie reference to something that happened a couple decades ago in some corner of the franchise, it MUST just be important to this particular plot. Kirk refocuses and asks how nobody has noticed this ship being here all this time. To answer, Jaylah takes them out the roof hatch while she checks on the “image refractors” she rigged all around that cloak the ship. The camera pans away to show that from a distance they appear only from the waist up (where the refractors are), hovering in mid air. Chekov comes out to announce that he picked up a Starfleet signal. Scotty has an idea for how to reach wherever the signal is coming from, but wants official permission from Kirk in case it goes wrong so it isn’t only his fault. Meanwhile, Bones is unable to contact anyone from the ship and Spock is pointing out that if he just left him behind he could increase his own odds of surviving. Chrissy: We don’t leave people behind. Wait...wrong franchise. Emilio: It was probably in this one too. You’re good. Spock adds that he should be finding the others. Bones snarks that he was beginning to think Spock cared about him specifically. Some stray “bees” circle in the distance as Spock says “of course I care, Leonard. I always assumed my respect for you was clear. The dialogue we’ve had across the years has always...” Bones cuts him off before he can get as sappy as a Vulcan is capable of. “You don’t have to say it.” Chrissy: I love you too, man. Bones turns to face an oncoming ship, his back to Spock and mutters that at least he won’t be dying alone. At which point, Spock is suddenly beamed up somewhere. He mutters something along the lines of ‘son of a BITCH’ and puts his fists up like he’s gonna punch the ships now hovering all around. Before they can mow him down, he is also beamed away. Because it turns out that was the signal Chekov found and Scotty had to modify cargo transporters to work on people. He apologizes for the precaution of beaming them one at a time, but he was afraid the transporter might Tuvix them. Chrissy: There’s that reference again. Emilio: Totally appropriate this time. Chrissy: I know. I started watching “Lower Decks” and was surprised to completely get the reference to something because of something Dee said in a recap. Diandra: Bwahahahaha. Welcome to the granddaddy of all fandoms. If you want to go further, I can give you the list of only the episodes you actually need to watch in any given series. Chrissy: Will one of them explain why that one guy talks in cryptic metaphors? Diandra: YES! “Darmok” is one of the best episodes of TNG. Possibly a close second to “The Inner Light”. Chrissy: I’m kind of frightened by the way your eyes just lit up there. Emilio: That’s the real welcome to fandom. Trekkies can be a lot, but they’re harmless. Mostly. And yes, Diandra, “The Inner Light” is considered the best episode by EVERYBODY, but...Shaka when the walls fell and THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. Diandra: [happy squealing] [high fives Emilio] Chrissy: Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Diandra: I’ll explain later. Or I’ll just send you those episodes to watch because if that doesn’t convince you to keep going, nothing will. Kirk asks if Bones is okay. He says yes, but Spock isn’t. Spock says he is “functioning adequately” and tells Kirk the artifact seems to have been stolen from this planet before starting to fall on his face. Bones asks if there’s any medical equipment on this museum piece and works on getting one of those medical doohickeys working while Kirk and Spock do that thing where the heroes talk about how very screwed they are with very little hope of making it out of this. Spock says they will just have to “find hope in the impossible.” Emilio: Didn’t you already eliminate that so all you would have left is the improbable? Diandra: I applaud that call back, but please shut up. Krall is combing through Kirk’s ship log when one of his men reports that they can’t find the artifact in the wreckage, so he must have hidden it somewhere else. Krall goes into the holding pen with the Enterprise’s crew to just demand they tell him where that is. When they don’t immediately do that, he grabs Sulu and starts draining his life force or whatever it is he does. An alien named Syl says she’ll give him whatever he wants if he stops doing that. The ribcage like bone structures on top of her head part to reveal the artifact nested inside. Really? Chrissy: Well that explains his explanation that he “sort of” hid it in a shuttle. One of the men hands the artifact to Krall, who tells Uhura that unity is, in fact, their biggest weakness. He goes back to his lair or command post or whatever and places the artifact in a receptacle that whirs and disappears into a pool of water. After a few seconds it comes back out looking all red and ominous. Back on the Franklin, the assembled group is arguing about their next step. Kirk wants to go rushing the coordinates for Krall’s base RIGHT NOW, which is very in keeping with his character. Scotty argues that they don’t know Krall OR their crew is where he was when they traced the call. Spock asks Chekov if he can configure search parameters based on this formula and starts typing on a screen. Chekov asks what the formula is. He says it’s for a mineral only found on Vulcan and in the necklace Uhura still has. Or as Bones so eloquently puts it: “you gave your girlfriend a tracking device.” Spock hesitates and everyone looks uncomfortable. He says he didn’t INTEND to use it that way. The computer beeps and shows a location of the necklace that Chekov verifies is a match to the coordinates. Kirk asks if they can just beam the crew out. As that would be too easy, Chekov says no, there’s “geological interference.” Jaylah pipes up suddenly that they can’t go there because everyone who goes into Krall’s lair dies. Kirk realizes she knows where it is. Scotty asks why she didn’t say something earlier. She says because she knew they would ask her to bring them there. “If your friends are there, then they will die. Just like my family.” Scotty points out that she escaped the place once, obviously, so she would know the way in AND the way out. She says no, she will NOT go back there. Ever. They are on their own with that bullshit plan. She storms off and Scotty follows her to some sort of weapons locker or something. He says these are their FRIENDS and they can’t just leave them behind and they really need her help on this. She sniffs that she can still hear the screams of the people Krall dragged away, never to be seen again. Her father tried to escape, but someone named Manas intercepted and her father died fighting him so she, at least, could get free. She says what they want to do is impossible. Scotty argues it might not be by invoking his “wee granny”, who used to say “ya cannae break a stick in a bundle.” Somehow, she seems to understand this. He says being part of a crew means being part of something bigger and they don’t give up on each other. She calls out Kirk, who has been listening in, and he agrees that their odds would be a whole lot better if she helped them. So she makes a map of the base and points to the tunnel she escaped through. Kirk thinks that is the best way in. Chekov says they can’t get a signal INSIDE to beam their crew out though. Scotty rambles about pulse beams and pattern enhancers. But the Franklin can only transport 20 at a time. Kirk orders him to work on it while the rest of them (except Spock) form an “away team”. Spock argues that Chekov would be more valuable to them HERE helping Scotty and it would be logical for him to go instead. Kirk doesn’t think an injured man going on an away mission is that “logical”. “Lieutenant Uhura is in that facility, Jim,” he says. “Understood.” Jaylah says Krall’s men are everywhere and asks how they will get anywhere unseen. Spock says they need a “diversion”. Kirk, being good at that kind of thing, smirks that he has an idea. Of course his idea involves riding the motorcycle. Meanwhile, Krall has decided to do his bad guy soliloquy with an audience of the Federation crew. The artifact – Abronath – was once “used by the Ancient Ones as a weapon”. Except they couldn’t control it and deemed it too dangerous, so they split it in two and shot the halves into space. Chrissy: As you do. He says he’s spent “lifetimes” searching for it and here these dummies found it for him. He takes Uhura and Syl to another room as he continues that he was born into a very different world than Uhura. “We knew pain. We knew terror. Struggle made us strong. Not peace. Not unity. These are the myths the Federation would have you believe.” Chrissy: Why does this sound like every person who starts a rant with “back in MY day...”? Emilio: Basically. They keep walking until a door slams shut behind them, trapping Syl in a room that starts making an alarming noise while a podium at the center spins and the lights flash. Uhura screams while Krall plugs the red artifact into a slot in the door and black tendrils shoot into the room. They strip Syl, screaming, down to nothing and stream back into the artifact. And because we need one of the good guys to bear witness to the bad guy’s madness, he continues dragging Uhura along while he rambles about the Federation pushing the frontier for years and the frontier is finally pushing back. Of course this is exactly when Kirk rides in, Jaylah jumping off the back of the bike and activating some sort of transport thing that beams Spock and Bones behind her. Krall shoots at Kirk, but it turns out he’s also using Jaylah’s tech to replicate himself, so the duplicate just disappears. About a dozen Kirks bike in circles around Krall and his men while Jaylah and the other guys creep inside. Bones admits this is a “hell of a distraction”. Chrissy: Hmm, yes. He looks good with something vibrating between his legs, doesn’t he? Emilio: Ah, who is she playing now? Diandra: Herself, I think. Chrissy: [distracted] What? Did you say something? Diandra: Nope. You need to go get the underwear out of your purse or... Chrissy: I knew I would regret telling you about that. The guy with Krall, who is apparently that Manas Jaylah was talking about, tells him to go ahead and finish the mission while he takes care of these annoying creatures. Jaylah gets into sharpshooter position and starts picking off all the goons while they try to work out which clone is the real Kirk. Bones and Spock break out their crew and Sulu tells them Krall took Uhura. Spock lets Bones handle the rest of their people while he goes after her. Bones takes them to a platform so they can beam to the Franklin twenty at a time. “Let’s hope this doesn’t get messy,” Scotty says as they start the transport beams. Chrissy: You know, you don’t have to know much about Star Trek to get how morbid that is. I saw “Galaxy Quest.” Manas finds Jaylah and knocks her from her perch. They fight. Spock is blindsided by a couple of Krall’s men, who take him down pretty easy on account of he is injured. And then Uhura shows up and flips the whole damsel in distress thing on its ear. She asks what the hell he’s doing here. He says he’s here to rescue her, obviously. Chrissy: Yeah, and how’s that going? Diandra: Technically I believe it can be considered a successful outcome. Chrissy: Yeah, that would be one way to spin it. Manas and Jaylah pause fighting long enough for Manas to sneer that she will die just like her father did. Krall hops inside his ship and takes off, dozens of mini versions of the ship trailing behind. Scotty says the transporter is ready again and Bones tells him to wait for the signal because “damnit, we’re not leaving without ‘em!” Spock and Uhura come running up and they all pile onto the platform. The real Kirk does a flashy bike maneuver up to them and forms a wall of Jaylah’s dust amber stuff between them and the bad guys while they beam out. He asks Scotty if they have everyone now. Scotty says all but him and Jaylah, so just grab her and turn on the beacon. We focus on said beacon on top of another platform Jaylah is climbing onto. Manas gets there first and grabs it, snarling that they’re going to leave her here. He throws it and it lands several yards in front of Kirk. Kirk and Jaylah make eye contact and she launches back into the fight while he circles the platform base. He clicks the trigger on the beacon and yells “now” to her when the energy beam starts circling him. She leaps off the platform, knocking Manas along with her and Kirk jumps from his motorcycle. They grab hands midair just before he totally disappears and they both materialize in the Franklin transporter. “Let’s never do that again,” Kirk groans before they attempt to peel themselves from the floor. Emilio: You know you love it. Sulu and Uhura run up to tell Kirk about the device Krall is planning to use to destroy Yorktown. Jaylah says they must make her “house” fly. Except Scotty isn’t sure he can get it in flying order because these older models were built right in space where they didn’t need to break free of an atmosphere. “They’re called starships for a reason.” Chrissy: I would have assumed the fact that they travel among the stars was the reason. Diandra: Yeah, because that makes sense. But it does sort of make sense that they wouldn’t be designed to do things that weren’t necessary. Kirk tells him to make it happen anyway and to drive home the urgency, they notice the swarm of ships Krall is leading departing in the distance. Spock wonders if he will stop at attacking Yorktown or if he will use the base’s weaponry to attack more federation planets. Scotty is like ‘okay, but it’s not like we can just JUMPSTART an ancient starship’. Kirk turns on him like ‘you sure about that?’ They all take their posts and Chekov exposits that they need to achieve terminal velocity if they’re going to take off and does Sulu think this “drop” is high enough for that? Sulu shrugs like ‘we have other options? No? Let’s try it.’ They get it fired up and nudge it to the edge of the cliff it’s been perched on for a century, violently breaking free of rock and trees. It hovers for a second, then tips and dives straight down the cliff, forcing everyone to hang in their harnesses. And of course seconds before they smash into the ground, Sulu decides the numbers on the monitor are close enough and fires the engine so the ship drops below the trees before rising triumphantly in a sequence everyone has probably seen some version of at least once. They smash a bunch of rocks and trees and there’s a lot of grunting and yelping before the ship clears the landscape and flies vertically right off the planet. Jaylah watches the planet spin away in the window on the hatch and sighs in relief. Apparently that space station where Greg Grunberg works IS Yorktown and they get the warning signal about Krall’s cloud of ships headed right for them just as the satellites in orbit start getting ripped to shreds. In his lead ship, Krall purrs “look how far they’ve come,” which is probably a clue in hindsight. Alarms start blaring in Yorktown and everyone starts fleeing to the “safety zones” like that will do anything. The camera makes sure to catch Sulu’s family in the chaos in case you missed the fact that there are characters the heroes care about specifically in there. In the Franklin, Uhura announces that she’s picking up distress signals from Yorktown, which means Krall must have already started the attack. Kirk asks what weapons they have. Jaylah says it doesn’t matter because “you cannot defeat the bees.” Spock perks up while Kirk brainstorms ways of drawing them away from Yorktown to buy the people time. He jumps up and tells Kirk that bee flight patterns are “determined by individual decisions. Krall’s swarm formations are too complex not to rely on some form of unified cyberpathic coordination.” Kirk orders him to get to the point. Uhura cuts in, seeing where he’s going, and says if they disorient the swarm they can “kick its ass”. Spock is like ‘yeah, sure. That works.’ Kirk asks if Scotty can beam him aboard one of the swarm ships. Scotty asks if he’s insane. Chrissy: How long have you worked with me and you still ask that question? Spock argues that he is more qualified to do whatever Kirk is planning too. Uhura points out that he’s still INJURED. Spock suggests sending him with someone who is both familiar with the ships (at least as much as he is) AND his injuries. “He’s gonna love this,” Kirk mutters. Because of course, he is describing Bones, who we cut to as he’s yelping “you want me to do WHAT?!” They are already in the transporter chamber. Kirk basically shoves them onto the pad with some equipment. Scotty assures them he’ll beam them right back if it goes sideways and they beam away as Bones is yelling “damnit Jim, I’m a doctor, not...!” They beam into the bee ship and eject its surprised pilot into space. Bones climbs into the driver seat while grumbling that the last time they were in one of these they crashed. Spock pulls up a monitor and calls the Franklin to verify that the ships are all linked cyberpathically and patch them in. Uhura hears the electronic buzzing and concludes that it wasn’t an attempt to jam their signal she heard before. It was just them talking to each other. Kirk concludes they need to get them to stop talking to each other. Spock suggests some sort of disruptive signal. Chekov adds that it would have to be at a frequency they can’t anticipate. Scotty says a closed network could be susceptible to high frequencies. Kirk has a lightbulb moment and says they could use VHF. Broadcast something “loud and distracting” by radio that will drown out their frequency. Scotty is like ‘loud and distracting you say?’ and starts plugging Jaylah’s music player into the podium Uhura is using. Uhura says the sound won’t travel very far, so they have to get closer. Sulu flies the ship INTO the swarm and Krall lets out another clue by looking at it from his ship and murmuring “my old friend.” He cranks his wheel and Chekov yelps that the ships are all doubling back to attack them. Kirk orders everyone into position and, as the swarm starts wrapping around them, growls “let’s make some noise.” Jaylah hits play and the Beastie Boys start screeching about sabotage, which Kirk praises as wildly appropriate. Emilio: I’m impressed that you recognized that. Diandra: Huh? [closes out of IMDb] Did you say something? Emilio: Nope. Never mind. Ships just...explode right and left. Except the one Bones and Spock are in, of course, where Bones identifies the music as “classical”. Oof. Emilio: I mean, it is the equivalent of us listening to music from the 1700s. Diandra: Yeah, I already feel old when I hear all those boy bands we listened to in high school playing on oldies stations, thanks. Kirk has Uhura send the signal to Yorktown so they can blast it too and destroy whatever ships are almost breaching the station. Krall growls and forces his way through an opening with only two other ships trailing. Spock points this out to Kirk, who orders them to follow and “do whatever it takes to stop him from using that weapon.” And then they follow close behind, smashing the opening that is much too small for that ship. Chrissy: Should have switched to some Luther Vandross. Diandra: And there it is. Krall shoots up out of a lake to evade some police ships sent to respond. Team Snark follows. The Franklin just continues flying beneath the water. They have a brief aerial battle before Spock determines that they can’t possibly subdue all three ships. Kirk orders somebody to get the schematics of Yorktown on the screen and Sulu has Chekov do a scan of Central Plaza. Chekov says they’re clearing it. Kirk tells Bones to make sure Krall goes that way and DON’T ASK QUESTIONS WE DON’T HAVE TIME. The Franklin finally wobbles to the surface right between the town square and Krall’s trio. He smashes right into it and is held underwater when it settles on the surface. Chekov announces which parts of the ship they are embedded in now and Kirk orders him and Sulu to check two of them while he handles the third. He says they need to confirm the weapon is neutralized and Krall is dead. Chrissy: I mean...given that there’s still, like, twenty minutes of movie, obviously not. And no, the first indication that he’s still kicking is the dead redshirt Kirk and Uhura find in engineering. Uhura identifies what was done to the body as Krall’s work: some sort of “energy transference” that “physically changes him.” Chrissy: You can say vampire, right? Why aren’t we just saying that? Diandra: Because it would be ridiculous? Emilio: He definitely is though. Chrissy: So if vampires are cannon in this universe and Khan is still out there somewhere after that last movie... Diandra: NO! Jesus, we are NOT doing this again. Put the plot bunnies back in their cage! Kirk orders Sulu to lock down the ship and they push to the next room, which is where that video is still playing. This time Uhura stops cold as she hears something and goes over to rewind the video. She calls Kirk over and does it a couple more times until she identifies the exact source of the voice. “Push the frontier,” the black man with his head turned says in the video before turning to the camera to show that yes, it’s Idris. Looking like his normal sexiest man alive self. She says that’s him. Kirk immediately realizes what she means and calls Scotty to pull up the Franklin’s database to figure out everything he can about the captain. Scotty repeats that he’d be long dead, so... Kirk says he isn’t. “I don’t know how, but Edison IS Krall.” Outside, Krall is staggering into the square with the weapon. We don’t see his face, but his skin is a more normal color now and all the ridges in his head seem to be gone. Scotty has the file up and mutters that it goes back to before the Federation was a thing and he was a major in “United Earth Military Assault Command Operation”. He was a good soldier with lots of experience in space combat. Until MACO was dissolved because it was no longer needed once Starfleet was established. At which point Starfleet gave him the Franklin to Captain. They pull up his Captain’s log recordings. Kirk tells Scotty to skip right to the last one, where he looks ragged and talks about distress calls unanswered and being down to his last three crew members. “I won’t allow it,” he shrieks. The recording jolts and he’s calm again as he says the indigenous species abandoned this planet a long time ago, but left behind their mining equipment and drones to work it. “They have some sort of technology that prolongs life.” He says the federation no longer care about them, so it’s up to him to take care of what’s left of his crew. Jaylah asks why he hasn’t used the weapon yet up there. Kirk realizes he’s trying to inflict maximum damage, so he’s not going to use it just ANYWHERE. He, Uhura and Scotty brainstorm where there would be some sort of circulation system in the space station and Scotty locates the “atmospheric regulator” right in the center. Uhura goes to call somebody to shut it down while they find the access tunnel that goes to it. Scotty and Jaylah go to talk to Greg Grunberg about shutting it down. He says that’s impossible, but Scotty takes over his computer to try it anyway, radioing back to Kirk that there are a LOT of safety protocols on it seeing as it’s basically the life support system for the whole interplanetary space station. Kirk is on his way to fight Krall and Scotty exposits for the benefit of the audience that gravity is gonna go really wonky the closer he gets to the core of the station. Chrissy: Why do I get the feeling they bought some sort of barrel set rotator for this movie and were determined to use it as many times as they could possibly find ways to work it into the script? Emilio: Because they probably did. Diandra: Sort of like how X-Files was always filmed in the dark because they bought really expensive flashlights? Yeah, they tend to do shit like that in Hollywood. Kirk finds Krall going into an access tunnel and shoots at him. Krall yelps at him to stop and we finally see what he looks like now: mostly normal but hairless and sort of bluish. “What happened to you out there, Edison,” Kirk asks. Krall chuckles at the name and rambles about how he sort of misses being himself, but they gained a “purpose” once they lost everything about themselves that used to be human. He says they’re resetting the galaxy “back to the struggle that made humanity strong.” Kirk thinks that’s an awfully dim view of humanity and Krall raves about all the people he lost in the Xindi and Romulan wars. Chrissy: I’m really afraid to ask... Diandra: Not sure about the Romulans, but the Xindi makes sense since that was around the time of “Enterprise”. But most of the crew of the original series and all its current spinoffs talks about the Klingon wars. Emilio: Klingons and Romulans share genetics and the Romulan Wars were at the same time as the Xindi wars. One hundred years before the original series. Diandra: Okay, cool. Didn’t remember that. Chrissy: You forgot something? Oh my god, what a totally out of character thing for you to do! Diandra: Sarcasm noted. He gets worked up and starts spitting as he talks about the Federation making him a captain and expecting him to make nice with those enemies. Kirk thinks that’s how diplomacy works. “We change. We have to. Or we spend the rest of our lives fighting the same battles.” An alarm goes off and Krall smacks the gun out of a distracted Kirk’s hand before climbing to another part of the tunnels where gravity stops working. Kirk follows and they float to another part where the ceiling becomes the floor. Kirk smashes them right out of the tunnel and they fly through the air until they hit the outside of a walkway. Kirk yells at him to give up because there’s no way he can get back to that chamber now. “Give up!” “What, like you did?” Krall screams that he read Kirk’s captain’s log and “AT LEAST I KNOW WHAT I AM.” Kirk argues that he won the war and brought peace to humanity. But Krall came too far to turn back now. He sees the way the broken glass is being pulled on an air current and leaps in that direction. Scotty explains for the audience benefit that he’s using the “gravitational slipstream” to get back to the core. Kirk is like ‘okay, fine’ and jumps after him. So after pinballing around for a while, Kirk arrives at the center just as Krall activates the device and throws it into the vent. They fight some more and Krall uses a pause to taunt that it’s too late and Kirk is going to die. Kirk thinks it’s better to die saving lives than “live with taking them.” Scotty directs him to a sealed “construction hatch” where he can direct the weapon and vent it into space. Kirk is like ‘so press the big button?’ Scotty says it’s a lever under a panel, actually. Or four levers under four panels. Chrissy: Pffffftttt. Button. What do you think, we’re amateurs? He says pull them and get out quick before he’s sucked into space too. Or, if the hatch doesn’t open, he’ll get sucked into a giant fan. Either way, he will be very dead, but the second way would take the device as well and kill everybody, so...try not to do that. Bones, still apparently trying to figure out how to park that ship he and Spock are on, is not optimistic about Kirk’s chances of making it out. An alarm goes off. Jaylah yells at Kirk to get out of there. Kirk yells back that he can’t get the last hatch open. Krall revives and floats up behind Kirk, catching sight of his reflection in a shard of glass and seeming for a second like he’s having some sort of revelation. Then he just grabs the shard and tries to stab Kirk with it. The bees from the device swarm him and Kirk gets the hatch open, sucking them into space. He struggles to hang on and fails and this is apparently why it was important that Bones still be flying around like an idiot because the ship gets between him and the space vent and Spock pulls him inside. In space, the “bees” consume Krall/Edison before he asphyxiates, leaving behind his Starfleet badge. In the station, Hey It’s That Iranian Lady With The Smoky Voice closes the case file on Edison’s whole crew, noting that they always thought he was a hero. “I guess time will judge us all.” Kirk thinks he just lost his way. She thanks him officially for saving the base and he says he shares that credit with his crew. She says well, the Vice Admiral job is his if he wants it. He thinks about it and notes that Vice Admirals don’t do any flying, so...”no offense, ma’am, but...where’s the fun in that?” Chrissy: There’s just SO many [makes exaggerated air quotes] “alien cultures” out there to explore! I can’t be stuck behind a desk all day! Diandra: You’ve really gotten his character pegged, haven’t you? Assuming of course that by “alien cultures” and “explore” you mean “green skinned women to bang” of course. Emilio: That IS why she’s roleplaying him, right? Chrissy: Watch yourself there. Somewhere, sometime later, Spock opens the box of OG Spock’s belongings. He pulls out a device that pops a picture of the whole “crew” from the original series. Bones is upset with Kirk for not getting their “time out here reduced.” Kirk doesn’t see why he would now that they know how to get through the nebula. Just imagine what else they could find out there! Emilio: You could start a war with shapeshifting beings from a whole other dimension. Or get stuck in the Delta quadrant. Diandra: Where you can encounter a completely different liquid life form in a plot that is right out of a horror movie. Ooo...I should send Chrissy “Course: Oblivion” to watch too. Chrissy: What now? Emilio: That requires the demon planet episode one year earlier to really understand. Diandra: Yeah, I’ll add that to the list. Chrissy: Oh god, you’re both giving me homework now? Diandra: No, just betting that those Next Gen episodes we discussed earlier will interest you in seeing more. At which point we can talk about these two and “Tuvix” from Voyager and “Far Beyond the Stars” and whatever episode it was from season one with the space Nazi from Deep Space Nine. Emilio: That describes several episodes. [ETA: I was thinking specifically of “Duet”] Chrissy: [groan] You are going to make me regret talking you into recapping these movies, aren’t you? Diandra: No, we’re going to make a Trekkie out of you because these episodes all play like a greatest hits collection of sci-fi concepts. It’s unfortunate that “Far Beyond the Stars” was stuck in the Star Trek franchise because it would have been a baller finale of a stand alone sci fi show that I would probably have declared the best of all time. Anyway. Good lord, that was a long tangent. Sorry. Bones also is seeing the more pessimistic possibilities, muttering about murderous alien despots and deadly space diseases and cosmic anomalies because space really REALLY wants to kill you. Kirk isn’t really hearing him though and just repeats that it’s going to be fun. Bones walks Kirk right into a surprise birthday party for him and Scotty hands them drinks. After a brief toast to the Enterprise and “absent friends” we focus on Spock and Uhura. She notes that he’s blowing off his mission report for this. He says yes he “thought it would be more pleasing to engage with you socially.” Chrissy: And speaking of roleplaying we chose right... Diandra: I am NOT that bad. I’m just introverted and socially awkward. Scotty finds Jaylah sitting in front of a good dozen empty glasses and asks if she really drank that much. She says somebody told her it would take her “edge” off, but it isn’t working. He shrugs and shows her his little palm pilot thing showing a message that she has been accepted to Starfleet Academy. Kirk wanders over to add that they will have a lot of rules for her, but she shouldn’t listen to them all. Emilio: Of course you would say that. Diandra: Well, hey, it’s not like he gets more crew members killed than any other captain in Starfl...um... Jaylah’s only concern is that she will have to wear that ugly uniform. Kirk wanders over to Spock and offers condolences on the OG Spock thing he heard about recently. Is that what he wanted to talk about however many days ago that was? Spock is like ‘yeah, sure. Let’s go with that.’ All the major cast wander over to join them, watching the Enterprise being rebuilt on the other side of the window. The shot pushes in on this and speeds through the rebuild. Once it is recognizable again, the OG theme starts playing and everybody does a recreation of the “Space, the final frontier” monologue, taking turns reciting a few words at a time. The ship powers up and warps into space while the credits roll. And after the main part of the credits accompanied by cheerful fanfare is done, the screen goes black and the words “in loving memory of Leonard Nimoy” appear, followed by “for Anton.” Chrissy: And if they never did another one, that would be a totally fitting ending. Diandra: Yeah. I know that’s not how it works, but it would be a high note. Chrissy: So back to what we should do next and keeping in mind that your goal is to refresh your memory in anticipation of future releases... Diandra: I think I’m ready to do the second season of “Loki” now. Chrissy: Or we could do that. Sure. See you next time, Trekkies. Maybe.