Headscratchers / Star Trek Beyond

New entries on the bottom. Beware spoilers!

Why was Bones in Chekov’s locker?

• I assumed the Bones and Kirk drinking scene was added or modified to be a tribute to Anton Yelchin, who had died shortly before release. It’s a “missing man” drinking scene, ostensibly regarding Kirk’s father, but could be read as a tribute considering there was no reason to bring up the name Chekov and less reason to steal from him. But the entire scene was complete and unaltered from before Anton’s death—- to me, that sure looks like some real world foreshadowing.

The primitive USS Franklin

• The NX-01 Enterprise, launch date 2151, Starfleet's first warp 5 engine. The USS Franklin, launch date 2160s, stated to be the Federation's first warp 4 engine. Both predate Nero's incursion. Did Scotty just make a mistake when he was giving that briefing or what? Especially since effort was actually made (glass viewscreen aside) to make this ship look similar to the NX-01, and talk is made of phase cannons, spatial torpedoes and polarised hull plating, which are all Enterprise terms.
  • The warp scale might have been recalibrated as well, which IIRC has happened at least once between TOS and TNG, so Warp 5 in Archer's time might not be the same as Warp 5 in Scotty's time.
  • Did he actually say the Franklin was launched in the 2160s? I thought he said that it was lost in the 2160s. My theory is that the Franklin-type ships were an intermediate design between the NX-Alpha/Beta/Delta prototypes (from "First Flight") and the NX-class.
  • An interview with one of the movie's designers stated that the Franklin was originally built in the 2140s, before the NX-01 Enterprise, and was given a new designation number when the Federation Starfleet was founded. The intent was to have the ship be similar to Edison, in that they were from a time before the Federation, in a galaxy that had passed them by. The fact that the ship he was given was, by all standards, outdated, might also have added to Edison's resentment.
  • Especially since they didn't even bother to upgrade it with things like photon torpedoes and shields, which were clearly available by the time the Federation was formed.
• But retrofitting older ships was not a major priority for Starfleet, which was a much smaller organization at that time. It would have taken some years to integrate newer and alien technologies into standardized designs. From a pure resources standpoint it would have been more practical to focus on designing and building new starships rather than trying to refit old ones that were still good enough to perform their basic functions while next-gen designs were being assembled in the shipyards. Just look at the TNG timeframe. How many captains were still commanding century-old Miranda and Excelsior class ships, even though Starfleet was much larger by then and could build things like the Galaxy and Nebula classes? Riker turned down numerous commands because the Galaxy class was cooler than what he was being offered.

Unseen episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise

• Edison, in his mad speech at the end of the film, claims that he fought the Xindi as a MACO. Does this mean that he was on board the NX-01 during season 3 as that was the only ship directly involved in that conflict? And as he also mentions fighting in the Romulan Wars, and that the formation of the Federation disbanded the MACO, then does that also mean that the wars predate These Are The Voyages as that would again mean that the NX-01 fought in it. I don't recall ever having an official on-screen date for the conflict.
  • The Xindi War was from 2153-2154, the Romulan War was from 2156-2160, and These Are The Voyages depicts events that took place in 2161. So yes to both questions; The Xindi and Romulan wars predate ''These Are The Voyages', and Edison must have been a MACO aboard the NX-01.
    • As a point of interest, this would mean that he's a mustang officer with one hell of a career arc. Before the major in command of Enterprise's MACO detachment died, he gave command of the unit to Corporal McKenzie. That implies that if Edison was attached to NX-01 at that time, he was most likely already subordinate to McKenzie. Edison went form an enlisted grunt, to commander of a Federation starship holding the rank of captain.
  • Archer's mission to the expanse only stopped the deployment of the Xindi super weapon. While the aquatic, primate and arboreal Xindi came over firmly to Archer's side, the insectoid and reptilian Xindi didn't. Even though the bugs turned on the reptiles, their hat was supposedly Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, so they could've turned back in favor of the reptiles. More ships might have been sent into the region of space that used to be the Expanse to "mop up" the remaining pockets of reptiles and bugs who still wanted to wage war on humans and primates. Edison may have been on one of them.

Minions

• Where did the rest of Krall's minions come from? It is never explained who they are, if they are human like him, or why they are willing to go on suicide attacks for him. They seem to be in the hundreds of thousands based on all his swarm ships. On that note, how did he build hundreds of thousands of identical, high tech swarm ships on a deserted planet with presumably scrap metal from crashed ships.
  • These are addressed in passing: Edison's log mentions that the planet's original inhabitants abandoned it a long time ago, but left behind their "drone workforce", which presumably made up the vast majority of minions in his army as well as the pilots of the Bees.
  • Further: Edison's log also mentions that only three members of his crew remain. With his two living allies being a male and a female, it is implied that they were the last two members of Franklin's crew shown getting their cases closed along with Edison's during the denouement, also briefly seen in the video recording.
  • Or worse: He's been harvesting ships that are unlucky to end up in the nebula for centuries. Yeah, he'll use most of the unlucky survivors for "food," but a few might prove worthy enough to join his army and feast on their former allies.

Hiding the Franklin

• Why did Jaylah's invisibility cloak on the Franklin work? It was Krall's ship, so he of all people should know where it crashed. Did he never think people might get inside and mess with it? Or think to look for survivors there?
  • Perhaps it slipped his mind? The Dark Side Will Make You Forget is a trope for a reason after all. And without Jaylah spending years repairing it, it would just be a useless hunk of junk by now.
  • I think it's more likely that he tried to forget it ever existed-nothing but bad memories in that ship, far as he knew, and thus he deliberately avoided it.
  • It should also be noted that Krall has no real interest in Jaylah; as far as he's concerned, she's just a single bite of food that fell through the cracks... he might not even know about her as an individual at all. The cloaking around the Franklin are meant to hide Jaylah's hideout from the other survivors on the planet, who might steal her supplies or sell her out to Krall.
  • It's also been a long time since the Franklin crashed and Krall abandoned its wreck in favor of the mining outpost. And a planet is a big place. A hundred years is plenty of time to forget exactly where you crashed your starship, especially if you're not in any position to see it or any of the landmarks near its crash site.
    • There were other scavengers on the planet besides Jaylah, who'd either escaped Krall's base too or weren't caught with the rest of their ships. Jaylah's invisibility cloak would keep the Franklin safe from them, but not Krall. The cloaking device came from the technology left by the original inhabitants or from one of the crashed ships, but Krall would know about it one way or the other.
    • Jaylah was stranded by Krall, then watched other prisoners taken by him never to be seen again, then saw her father killed by Manas, it's not unlikely she's (rightfully) paranoid about Krall and convinced he'll be looking for her, whereas from what we've seen, Krall only cares about the prisoners he can capture and doesn't expend the energy needed to find all the scavengers on Altamid.
  • Perhaps Krall just didn't *care*. His crew was long dead and the ship was, in the words of Sulu, horse and buggy compared to the swarm ships he now had in his possession. And that's when the ship is functional, which it was not when he abandoned it. Jaylah's cloaking devices hid the ship from other castaways, and Krall himself simply had no reason to ever go back to it.

Technology and construction

• Is the Franklin from before or after the NX01? It's loaded up with what Enterprise had at the start of it's explorations, and has a slower warp core. But it also participated in the Romulan War, which takes place after Season 4 of Enterprise.
  • It certainly was built before the Enterprise NX-01, seeing as it's described as a ship that tested out the Warp 4 barrier and the Enterprise was Warp-5-capable. The Xindi War might just have been skirmishes that weren't shown on Enterprise, late in the run (maybe a small spearhead of Reptilian ships in a system adjacent to Sol, that might be easily retconned). Then the Franklin would simply already have been an older ship when Krall became its captain after the Romulan War. Which makes perfect sense — not only was his main occupation, warfare, taken from him, but the ship he commands also isn't really one of the glamorous explorers (one can assume the Warp-7-project ships were already flying at this point and the Enterprise and Columbia were likely active along with more sister ships) — he'd have been in the third row, doing boring things in an older ship before some freak occurrence got them into that nebula.
  • The only issue with the Franklin being older than the NX-01 is its registry number (NX-326), but you could Hand Wave that by saying that the number was changed after the Federation was founded and it went from Earth Starfleet to Federation Starfleet.
  • It's a fair possibility. The dedication plaque on the Franklin has "United Federation of Planets" written on it (in addition to the ship having a USS prefix). I think between this and the warp factor mention it was intended that the ship was meant to be pre-Federation, but, like Edison himself, was transferred into UFP Starfleet after the Federation was founded.
  • The registry number is a Shout-Out to Leonard Nimoy - March 26th is his birthday.
  • It's also possible Edison was stationed on the NX-01 during the Xindi crisis (there were dozens of MACOs on board). He likely would've been an enlisted man (IIRC, Hayes was the only officer), and then became an officer after they returned to Earth; they would've wanted combat veterans as officers during the Romulan War, after all.
  • It's very possible that the Franklin was built after the Enterprise, considering that the standards for Warp speeds may have changed over many years that passed. What Warp 4 meant in the Enterprise series may be different from what everybody in the film considers it to be.
  • One suggestion going around is that Franklin was originally a MACO ship herself, perhaps competing with United Earth Starfleet. MACO could have been running their own projects, thus why Franklin didn't come up with Archer and how Franklin could have been the first ship to Warp 4. When MACO disbanded, Franklin was recommissioned in UFP Starfleet, much like Edison himself was. Tangentially, it would be supreme irony if so, as Franklin ultimately plays a huge part in protecting the Federation from Edison.
  • The MACOs appear to be the Earth Starfleet equivalent to modern-day Navy SEALs, meaning that if the Franklin was a MACO ship, it would probably be the 22nd Century equivalent to the modern American Cyclone-class patrol ship, which are built to support SEAL operations.
  • The Expanded Universe novels talked about during the Romulan War that the NX class were still a super-prototype. They could build 2-3 of other design ships for the cost of another Enterprise or Columbia. It's likely that the Franklin at intentionally built at Warp 4 would still be the right mix of advanced enough to fight in the war, but cheap enough to produce in large numbers.
  • Either that or, more simply, Starfleet was just throwing everything they had into the war effort, even quasi-obsolescent ships like the Franklin and Intrepid (and in the novel 'verse, the Daedalus-class). The Franklin and its sister ships (if any) may have been as scarce as the NX-class, but however survivable (or not) they proved to be during the war, Starfleet probably just repurposed them for exploration when the war was over instead of waiting for new ships to come out of the fleet yards.
  • One thing I wanted to note about the NX-01's revolutionary warp 5 engine was that it was in fact borderline false advertising as it was terrible at holding that speed safely. How often did we see the Enterprise begin to shake and spark whenever it went beyond warp 4.8? In fact, throughout the entire series, we actually do not see the Enterprise go at warp 5 all that often - probably half a dozen times if that. The rest of the time the stated speed is around warp 4. And this is a recurring theme in Star Trek as Voyager's warp 9.975 engine was exactly the same with the ship barely if ever going beyond warp 8 or 9. It seems that in Star Trek maximum velocity means exactly that: if you hit this speed, then pray to whatever God that you believe in to spare you from death. With all of this in mind, I wonder just how good the Franklin's warp 4 engine actually was? Because it would only require a light twisting of Scotty's words to go from first warp 4 engine to first warp 4 engine that actually worked as intended. Under this theory, the Franklin could indeed have been launched after the NX-01 with an engine that is technically slower, but in every way more efficient.
    • Well, Voyager's Warp 9.975 was stated as her sustained cruising speed, meaning the max speed she can hold for a long time. Given how far away Voyager was from supplies and adequate repair facilities, it makes sense that Janeway might play it a little safe and habitually run her well under top speed. That said, how many times have captains ordered "maximum warp?" If memory serves, about as often as they order a specific warp factor.

The Picture

• When Spock is going through Spock Prime's effects, he finds a group photo of the crew from the original timeline (specifically a cast photo from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). There's no reason for Spock Prime to have been carrying it with him in the first place when he was flying the Jellyfish before getting blown back in time in Star Trek (2009).
  • Which makes it a combination of CMoH and Tear Jerker. It's possible that Spock Prime carried that photo on him at all times, possibly because, by that point, he might well have been the last of the Enterprise crew still alive.
  • Carrying a picture of loved ones and family is a common enough trope (though strangely enough I can't find it on here). People carry them in wallets or into battle all the time, or stick them on dashboards (like Sulu does with Demora's photo). I'd wager that Spock Prime simply always carried it with him in his robes and simply chose to entrust it to Kelvin Spock figuring he would appreciate it most.
    • That usually results in the Fatal Family Photo trope.
  • Who says he had to be carrying a physical copy of the photo? Even today, many people have dozens or even hundreds of personal photos stored digitally on devices they carry in their pockets every day, and modern printers capable of producing near-professional quality prints are commonplace. Spock probably had the photo stored on a PADD or a tricorder he happened to be carrying aboard the Jellyfish, and just decided to make a physical copy he could hang on his wall at some point.

Krall's Name

• Why did Edison specifically choose "Krall" as his new name?
  • Maybe he was trying to distance himself from his human heritage, or his old name was too much of a mouthful. And operating under pseudonyms when you're periodically accessing Yorktown's records is a good idea. Maybe it was his old DeviantArt nick. Who knows?
  • Because he commands a swarm of 'bees'. Usually that's the job of a queen, but Krall is male. "Kral" means "king" in a number of Slavic languages. Now we just need someone to figure out what the other two Franklin crew members' pseudonyms mean.

The motorcycle

• That motorcycle Kirk finds on the Franklin is in amazing working order for a vehicle that has been parked for something like a century. No problems with decayed fuel, dried/cracked tubes or seals, corroded bits, etc. Granted, Jalah was probably fixing the bike up along with everything else to pass the time, and even an antique from Captain Archer's time could very well have been designed with materials/energy sources that wouldn't have fared so badly over the years.
  • It was from the 2160s so it might have been purely electrical, but made to sound like a two-stroke engine because that's cooler than the whine of an electric motor.
    • Cars from the very early 20th century are still road-worthy today, and perhaps Edison or another survivor did maintenance on it whilst waiting for Starfleet to rescue them.

Lax Yorktown security

• After Krall found himself smashing into the Franklin, he made his way out and escaped into the crowd. Even though Kirk had Sulu lock down the ship and contact Yorktown security, this is still feasible — lots of crewmembers were pouring out of the Franklin by that time, and the city's security team was still trying to get a handle of the situation. However, when Krall-as-Edison went into the command center, he made it all the way up to the ventilation controls in the blink of an eye and seemingly without so much as a passkey. Even if you had a starship crash outside your front door and wreak chaos, wouldn't you have at least one or two armed guards preventing random passersby from getting into vital life support systems, let alone have multiple, high-clearance security gates? In fact, wouldn't the fact that the invading ships were headed for that very building reinforce security protocols? Scotty himself had trouble getting past the digital security — a wounded, unarmed soldier who has spent the last hundreds of years using someone else's ancient tech shouldn't have had such an easy time getting all the way up to the controls of a state-of-the-art facility.
  • It was shown earlier in the movie that Krall had infiltrated Yorktown's systems rather extensively. Deploying the bioweapon into the air system was likely always his plan, and he'd come up with ways past those security systems. Mind you, they could have used a Red Shirt or two to show he was getting past more physical security as well.
  • Let's also not forget that Krall used to be a MACO, who were certified badasses in their time. He would have definitely had the skills to elude both simple and complex security measures.
  • And let's face it, security there is run by the literal, legendary, tropenaming red shirts themselves.
  • Yorktown is specifically stated to be in space so as not to cause a row between planets over favoritism, such a security presence- or, plan for security presence in times of emergency- was deemed by the Federation to imply things to the planets they wanted to make alliances with.

Leaderless army just standing around

• Let me get this straight: Did the original inhabitants of this planet build a giant army complete with a fleet of fighter ships that can utterly curbstomp the Enterprise...and then they just left? They just walked away and left the giant army standing around? Why would they do that? And then apparently this army will take orders from anybody, because Edison has no connection to the original inhabitants but he still takes command of the army somehow. How does that work?
  • We don't know if they ever left. Perhaps they were a dying race which created the drones to maintain their infrastructure but didn't bother destroying them or giving them intelligence of their own before they went extinct, and the drones were easy to reprogram.
  • Also, the swarm may be an awesome superweapon to us, but to the original inhabitants it might very well be just a bunch of second-rate tools which were cheaper to simply abandon than to ship off to another world.
  • The swarm was also dangerous primarily because it fought in a way that modern weapons were not designed to counter. The Enterprise and Yorktown both typically fought very large battleships with occasional light fighter support, not infinite swarms of suicide ships. If Krall tried to use them to conquer the Federation, the Federation would have come up with a counter quickly. Hell, five people managed to come up with a counter by the second battle. Krall wanted Yorktown intact for its war materiel and shipbuilding capabilities. That means he didn't trust his swarm to fight the entire Federation.
  • The swarm were manned by mining drones from an underground complex, suggesting nothing used besides the dismantled biological weapon that was scattered across the galaxy were intended for combat. You may recognize this as the exact same plot thread from the first Kelvin era movie, where an advanced mining vessel catches more primitive star craft off guard and wastes them. It's the combination of superior technology and the unknown. If warships of comparable technological level had been deployed the mining craft would have taken more damage and the primitive federation vessels, not even primarily for war so much as patrol, research and peace keeping efforts, still won with time to analyze the mining craft from a distance and discern a weakness.
  • And as noted below, Krall had 150 years to have the drones build more drones and more ships. There may have only been a handful of working drones left around initially.

Krall does nothing for 150 years

• What has Krall been doing for 150 years? He hates Starfleet. He's got a giant army that was built by the planet's previous inhabitants. Why not just use the army to go kick the crap out of Starfleet? It would have been easier back then too, because Starfleet had weaker ships back then. But apparently he's so focused on this one damn superweapon that he refuses to actually hurt the people that he hates, until he can find this one specific superweapon. What's up with that?
  • The bioweapon could potentially wipe out planets and starbases quickly and cleanly, giving Krall those resources to add to his war effort. While the Bee ships were effective in the initial fight against the Enterprise, some of that was due to the unusual tactics they used. We don't know how quickly Krall could replace destroyed ships, or how they'd do against a fleet of ships that knew how the Bees fought and had prepared appropriate tactics.
  • He might have been building up his forces in that time. We don't know how the drones and their ships are built or maintained, and he might have found it easier to capture and study technology from passing ships he disabled to bolster his fleet. Also, read "Why Didn't Edison Go Home?"
  • The Franklin was stranded in the 2160s, that puts them on Altamid 100 years, not 150. Krall's superweapon wasn't the same as the technology he used to drink the life of the aliens he lured there, perhaps he only learnt about the Abnorath years after being stranded.
    • The Federation has only recently gotten to the nebula. Krall would have been luring aliens to their deaths in order to survive, and when he found a species that knew of the Federation, probably started looking for a way to get his revenge and happened on the second part of the Abnorath.

Why didn't Edison go home?

• Edison has two reasons to turn evil: First, he's upset about how the Federation became more peaceful. And second, he's upset about getting stranded in the Nebula and he blames the Federation for not trying hard enough to rescue him. But as to that second point: He had a fleet of starships! All those "bee" ships were built by the planet's previous inhabitants; he didn't build them himself. And apparently he can just give them commands for some reason. So why not get on one of those ships and fly back to Federation space?
  • When he was giving Kirk a tour of the Franklin, Scotty theorized that the ship had encountered a wormhole that had thrown it deep into unexplored space. It took the Federation nearly a hundred years to get that far out and establish Yorktown. It's possible that either the 'Bees' don't have the range and endurance to travel that far, or that Krall honestly had no idea which way he would have to go to get home. For that matter, he might not even have realized at first there was no way for the Federation to find him. And by the time there was an official Federation presence in the area, between isolation, the piracy, and the murders to sustain his life, he wasn't exactly a rational man anymore.
    • Is it ever mentioned how long Edison, Le and Woolf are stranded on Altamid before Edison makes his final log? Edison had been sending messages to Starfleet and holding out for rescue before beginning to explore, there's no mention of what happened in-between or how they came to explore the planet, it's not unlikely that he and his remaining crew all suffered a sanity slippage and focused their disillusionment with the Federation into anger for motivation to live. Add in the Xindi and Romulan wars and their effects on mental health and it's not inconceivable that by the time they worked out how to utilise the drones, they were unable to think logically enough to return to Earth.
    • Also, in time Edison did acquire the means to extend communications through the nebula, as demonstrated by his ability to hack into Starfleet from Altamid. But by then Immortality Immorality had kicked in and he was basically a vampire living by murdering other people. It's very likely that he stopped caring that much about going home once he realized that the alien technology within his reach would enable him to cause as much bloodshed as he liked. It's not actually clear that he was ever really "good" just because he was a war hero. He might always have been a sociopath and the wars with the Xindi and the Romulans could have simply served as an outlet for his violent impulses. This would explain why he found peacetime to be so frustrating — as he could no longer legally kill people.
  • According to Star Trek Beyond The Collectors Edition, it took two years before the remaining crew began to use the technology to extend their lives. Two years believing the Federation has abandoned his crew as he watches all but two of them die is enough to send anyone off the deep-end.
    • The Franklin appears to only have a skeleton crew, and this was for three years before they crashed. If the chief engineer died early on, then by the time only Edison, Le, and Woolf remain the Franklin would've been useless for getting them home and they'd need a century to fully work out how to use the drone ships left behind.

The Franklin's home video

• What was going on in that green-tinted video they found on board the Franklin? It looked like the Franklin crew were being rescued by some shuttlecraft. Those were shuttlecraft landing, right? And everyone was excited, because they were being rescued? But of course they weren't rescued, because it's a major plot point that the Franklin just went missing and nobody ever knew what happened to it. So what was going on in that video?
  • It wasn't clearly established how long the Franklin was missing before being given up as lost, and it's unlikely it journeyed that far out into the nebula on its very first mission. That video could be a video of the crew just meeting another ship or docking somewhere early on. In the 16th-19th centuries, ships meeting other ships or docking was treated as a big celebratory deal, so it could be the space version of that.
  • Edison said on the video that they were going to expand the frontier, and with everyone celebrating, perhaps it was the crew of the Franklin preparing to leave Earth at the start of the mission.

Bizarre physics during the Franklin's liftoff sequence

• We're specifically told that the Franklin is not meant to fly in atmosphere. Also, it's a rusty bucket of bolts. So in order to get it flying again, they decide to thrust it off the edge of a very tall cliff and let the thing fall. How the hell is this supposed to work? It's not like the ship is suspended from a giant pendulum, so that falling makes you rise again. If the ship had wings I could understand: Maybe you want the ship to fall in order to get airflow over the wings, which generates lift. But it has no wings, and again, it's specifically not built to operate in atmosphere. So what on earth is the advantage of falling? If you give yourself a lot of downward velocity, it just means the engines will have to work even harder to create upward velocity. You'd be better off if you just tried rising straight off the ground.
  • They did a similar thing in TNG; Picard had a scared teenager point the shuttlecraft (who's engine was stalling) straight at a planet, build up speed, then pull up hard and essentially 'bounce' off the planet's atmosphere at the right moment - it worked, with the same basic principle here. And yes, the Franklin is older, ravaged by time, but it's also been gradually fixed by Kaylah for a long time, and if it's anything like the ENT-era ships, it's outfitted with hull plating that would give it extra durability... so despite its state, it's still tough enough to survive a stunt like that. In effect, it's like taking a tight 180-degree turn at high speeds; you can do it if done right, by turning all that previous momentum into the new direction... harder in this case due to gravity, but starship thrusters/impulse engines are quite powerful.
  • The Franklin can't be bouncing off the atmosphere; it's already in the atmosphere! And the question isn't whether it's tough enough to survive the stunt; the question is why they're doing the stunt in the first place. You say they're gonna get some downward momentum and then turn it into upward momentum? How? If the ship was made of rubber and it physically bounced off the ground that might kinda work, but that's not what happens onscreen. If the ship had wings, they might be able to use the aerodynamics to translate the momentum somehow, but the ship doesn't have wings. All that should happen is that the ship falls and then they use thrusters to spin it around...at which point the ship will be facing the right direction, but it'll have a lot of useless downward momentum and the engines will have to work really hard to counteract that momentum. It would be easier to just lift off from a standing start.
  • Except the shuttle example was also in the atmosphere, seeing as the shuttle was going through the beginnings of burn-up - they called it bouncing as a generalization. Plus, the Franklin's engines were much like the other systems; not at full capacity, so they probably didn't have enough power to dead-lift a several-hundreds-of-thousands-of-tons starship, period or achieve escape velocity under a planet's gravity. They needed that downward momentum just to get that fast, and yes the resistance made it harder, but they likely didn't have any other choice - plus if the ship held up (as it did), a downward slope into an upward direction can still be done with enough power, even under gravity. And in addition... the Franklin was literally half-buried in rock; they couldn't lift the ship straight-up even if they wanted to, and going without the downward boost, there's still the chance they might not have lifted the ship enough, period or escape velocity.
  • The Franklin can't bounce off the atmosphere any more than you can skip across the surface of a lake by running at it really fast; the physics of it simply don't work out. The point the original Headscratcher makes is that there is no apparent physical mechanism for the Franklin to transform its downward momentum into upward (or even horizontal) momentum without expending more energy than it would by lifting off directly. If it can't lift itself straight up from a dead stop then it definitely can't start moving up if it's falling down. It has no wings (which it could use to react against the air), nor is its structure elastic ("bouncy" so that it could react against the ground). All it appears to have are its thrusters, which can't take any advantage of the fall; quite the opposite in fact.
  • I rewatched the scene in question, and the only hint I could find to what was happening were these quotes:
    Chekov: Mr. Sulu, we have to achieve terminal velocity in order for the stabilizers to provide lift.

  And later:

  Sulu: Mr. Chekov, be ready to hit the forward stabilizers full on my mark, one-quarter impulse.

  It would thus appear that the ship's stabilizers can provide lift. What are these mysterious "stabilizers"? What is their role in normal spaceflight? Why would they only work at terminal velocity? How does any of this make sense when "terminal velocity" is a concept only applicable in atmosphere, which the Franklin was never designed for? Hush now, be thankful for the Hand Wave instead of a burst of Techno Babble, and just relax.

  • Presumably the stabilizers are an equivalent to the small jets that we saw on the Enterprise when it was falling into atmosphere in the last movie. Only meant to provide stabilization while the impulse engines or other modes of thrust were providing power. The reason they can only use the stabilizers to provide the necessary lift to escape atmosphere while at terminal velocity is that they are using them to redirect the movement of the ship upward. In this way they can use the momentum of falling toward the planet at an angle to move up and outward after the turn faster allowing them to barely escape the atmosphere. Just like throwing a baseball underhand when you hit the turning point where the drop starts to turn into a rise, assuming you have some force to act on the moving object to change its orientation, the forward thrust can be applied to continue moving forward on a different direction within the turning ark.
  • As stated above, redirecting downward momentum into upward or even horizontal momentum would take more power than simply lifting off from a dead stop.
    • All engines have a point where trying to add more power only causes it to drown in its own fuel, VTOL may have required a higher fuel-rate than the stabilizers can consume.

Aerodynamic

• This whole thing does lead to a second question: starships in the prime universe are built in space, starships in this timeline are built on the ground as we see in the first Kelvin timeline film, and can enter atmosphere to the point of submerging as we see in the second. OK, so why is the Enterprise in this continuity so un-aerodynamic for such a multipurpose craft? It made sense for a ship that never enters atmosphere to be a flying saucer on top of a cylinder, but this ship is designed to be capable of atmospheric flight. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a pointier design with wings? The Klingon Bird of Prey is a good example of this with its variable wing design. Or the USS Voyager with its teaspoon-shaped design.
  • Enterprise was built on the ground and can enter the atmosphere (or even water), but it still spends most of its time in space. Making it more aerodynamic would have made it more capable in atmosphere, but is an unnecessary expense - it can already do fine in atmosphere when it needs to.
  • In the shows they handwaved the odd shape of the ships to being the most efficient way of creating a "warp field". Of course this doesn't then explain why so many other species have ships so different in design.
  • Chalk that one up to a mistake and a bit of Insane Troll Logic from the writers. They state in the commentary for Into Darkness that if ships like the Klingon Bird-of-Prey and Voyager can land on planets, then starships in general can land on planets. Never mind that the BoP was positively tiny compared to Enterprise and clearly designed for atmospheric operations, or that Voyager's landing capability was an unusual feature and so crazy difficult (in and out of universe) it was only used twice. As for the delicate designs of most ships, the reasoning in-universe is pretty much what the original designer of Enterprise for TOS thought: if you've got the engines powerful enough to tell Einstein to get bent, they'd be chock full of crazy dangerous stuff you don't want anywhere near where your crew lives and works. Hence, Starfleet (and most Klingon and Romulans) ships mounting warp engines in secondary hulls well away from the main body of the ship. Others are less concerned with such safety issues, so mount warp engines dangerously close to or within the main hull.

Just teleport Edison

• Near the end, Edison is on foot and heading to the air circulation room in Yorktown. The people in charge of Yorktown are completely aware of who he is and what he plans to do (because the Enterprise crew informed them.) It was previously established that Yorktown has transporters (you can see a guy use one quite casually during the Yorktown intro sequence.) So hey, just lock on to Edison and transport him to the brig! Why does nobody think of this?
  • The transporters in Yorktown look more like transport booths - something used to transport people from one transport pad to another. Perhaps Yorktown wasn't yet equipped with one that could transport from any arbitrary place on the station.
  • Being informed about Edison is no guarantee that the transporters could lock onto him from anywhere on the station, particularly if they haven't made them that widespread yet. Not to mention, barring anyone who recognized him close-up, monitoring computer systems wouldn't ID him as a threat just by walking, and they'd need a face-match/tech-match before they identified him as such. It seems at the least, Edison was keeping his head down just long enough to get to his destination, more-or-less.
  • To transport survivors onto the Franklin, there needed to be a homing beacon to detect their bio-signs, presumably everyone enters Yorktown through a device that registers them and Krall effectively bypassed that and couldn't be detected by the transporter.
  • While it's possible that the Yorktown didn't have good enough sensors to detect Krall on street level, still questionable but still; it's pretty baffling when there are only two life forms floating about in the center of the space-station. The reason they needed a homing beacon on the planet was the outdated tech and the interference of the rock in the mining camp.

The Orion's Lover?

• During Kirk's voiceover at the start of the film, he mentions relationships working and failing. During the latter, an Orion woman is seen kicking a young crewmember out of her quarters. Was that Chekov? He's not seen from the front, but the hair matches and he does hit on a variety of aliens in the film.
  • Yes, it was Chekov. He turns around as the camera is passing, and you can see his face.
  • The real question is. . . what did Chekov do for an Orion to kick him out of bed?

What Happened to Prime Krall?

• Edison must have existed in the Prime timeline and yet by all evidence he failed miserably compared to his Kelvin timeline counterpart. What changed?
  • Likely he was either dealt with by someone else off-screen, or the pieces of the superweapon never ended up resurfacing in the Prime timeline and Krall continued to sit around biding his time.
  • Starfleet hadn't made it this far out this early in the Prime timeline. Edison may have died before they were ever close enough to attack.
  • Possibly the time travelers who instigated the Xindi attack on Earth didn't appear in the Prime timeline, meaning Earth only dealt with 1-2 hostile alien species on a regular bases rather than 5-8, making him slightly less concerned about demilitarization.
    • Small problem: The Kelvin timeline separated from Prime well AFTER the Xindi. This is basically Prime Krall, but he was able to get the MacGuffin, whereas in prime he's probably not gotten it yet.
    • Well, if Nero's arrival changed things enough that the Temporal Cold War now never happens in the future, and thus doesn't influence the events of Enterprise in the past...

Explosive Minions

• During the climax, the crew of the Enterprise get the idea to disrupt the communications between the ships in Krall's fleet by transmitting a jamming signal. The logical assumption is that the signal would simply cause the swarm to lose its cohesion, but instead, it causes the affected ships to explode immediately. Were the original creators paranoid about losing control of the fleet or something?
  • They did lose cohesion - while running a very tight and frenetic formation. They were close enough together and moving fast enough that each collision blew up a couple of bees and set off a chain reaction of secondary collisions, like dominos. Compounding this is the debris of each explosion which would create additional damage moving at such a high velocity. The Franklin and Yorktown created interference that disrupted the coordination of thousands of Bees at a time. thus making them appear as if they self-destructed.
  • To put the above answer in simple terms, when the jamming signal was broadcast, the drones stopped communicating their positions and movement plans to one another properly. The result was ships ramming into one another, exploding, explosions push other ships off course, they crash into others which makes them exploded, rinse and repeat.

Translators

• So Karala at least pretends like she needs a translator to speak English, and has one that speaks a running translation for her throughout the film. Pretty cool, but it also raises a few questions. Were the short aliens at the beginning speaking English, since there is no sign of a translator being in use there? Were Nero and his crew from the 2009 Star Trek really speaking English, since they didn't use translators like Karala's either?
  • This translator is a straight-up, grade-A plot hole. Why? Because this is easily the most realistic UT in the history of the franchise, which conversely, also makes it the most primitive UT in the history of the franchise. This wouldn't be a problem if we hadn't already seen season 4 of Enterprise develop the normal one with the borderline-TARDIS get's-inside-your-head-and-translates powers (which is frankly the only logical way that the normal one could possibly work) - and really, there is no hand waving this fact considering the very premise of the film relies on Star Trek Enterprise being canon to this timeline. Why would they ever use this bulky, antiquated piece of tech over the far more advanced one that clips onto a jacket is anyone's guess.
  • The short aliens might have had translator tech of their own, as did the Romulans. Given that the other species are likely ones whose languages are well-documented, this translator is likely an interim one more suited for learning and translating obscure or new languages but more bulky.
  • Another explanation might be the timeline divergence itself. Yes, ENT developed said translator technology... but with the Narada's entry, and Starfleet's shift to a more military approach, who's to say the tech was handled the same way as the prime timeline? A whole lot of things could've changed, and the result is that people potentially preferred something different, something like the tech used on Kalara.
  • I got the impression that the language she was speaking was not in their database at all, and had had to be analyzed by the Yorktown and her fitted with a custom translation system since the standard units weren't programmed for it.

How do Chekov and Kirk survive falls

• Kirk and Chekov fall down the face of the saucer without smashing any of their bones. How do they emerge unharmed? Later, when they get trapped in Jaylah's futuristic resin and released, they fall from a distance about twice the size of their body heights. They also land on a rock.
  • Kirk and Chekov are wearing Starfleet survival gear, which is different than their usual attire. Perhaps this gear offers superior protection against friction and fall damage, since it's made for emergencies.

McCoy and 100 Year Old Medical Equipment

• When aboard the USS Franklin, McCoy is attempting to treat Spock after being impaled by a piece of drone ship, but he only had antiquated equipment to work with. Fine so far, but McCoy didn't seem to know what any of the stuff "from the Dark Ages" actually did. It seems odd that McCoy didn't know what something was or what it did, even if it was over 100 years old. For example, take a smartphone and take a mobile phone from 30 years ago - it doesn't take a rocket scientist (or a doctor, for that matter) to recognize the technology in the older phone to know what it does. So why then does McCoy seem to have trouble knowing what the antiques he had to work with did?
  • Lets see you try to call your friends on a 1916 telephone (think about it - do you even know their numbers, or do just push the button near their picture?). Or start and drive a 1916 Ford Model T. McCoy complained about it, but he did find the right tool and use it correctly.
  • He does more than just complain about it, he openly wonders if the tool he is using is the correct one before using it: "Is this a [medical tool]?" That he guessed right is sheer dumb luck on his part.
  • There wasn't any luck involved; he knew full well what he was doing before he tried it on Spock. McCoy simply likes to grumble about his current situation, working conditions, equipment, distracting behavior from crew members (including the patient), alien anatomy he has to deal with, etc., and he tends to exaggerate for effect. "I don't even know if this is the anabolic protoplaser, this is all dark ages equipment!" is pretty typical, really.

Attacking areas with torpedoes, not targets

• Why didn't they just start detonating torpedoes in the swarm instead of trying to home in and hit particular targets? Attacking targets instead of areas is a classic noob mistake with rocket launchers in shooter games.
  • Because the Enterprise crew are noobs when it comes to fighting this sort of enemy. And understandably so, swarms of tiny ships like this are pretty much unheard of in the Star Trek universe. And for good reason; without whatever exotic technology makes them impervious to Deflector Shields, Krall's "bees" would be of very limited use against any advanced species' ships.
  • It's also pretty clear that the bees are a lot faster than your average starship, meaning they can go around any attack that they come across.
  • That's one of the points of area effect attacks: it's much harder to dodge an attacked area than a point. Considering the sheer number of drones at Krall's disposal, this might ultimately just be delaying the inevitable...
  • An explosion in atmosphere is devastating because of the overpressure wave. There's no overpressure to take advantage of in space.

Unity

• Why is Krall always scoffing at the idea of unity being a source of strength, when his entire battle strategy is reliant on thousands of tiny ships operating in perfect unison?
  • Two possibilities:
    1. He doesn't see them as people, and they aren't; they're drones. Does Kirk feel unity with his phaser pistol?
    2. The irony is lost on him. He's not thinking rationally anymore.
  • Additional, he may be talking about interplanetary unity; humans first before all others (which he and his two living followers technically are).
  • He outright says the strength of others is the only reason he is alive. He scoffs at equality and believes in domination and control, as he dominates others and controls his swarm drones. To say he cannot use others to support him is missing the point.
  • His support network seems to be solely Manas and Kalara, his former human crew, he doesn't value the drones because they're a) machines b) alien machines. Krall's goal is to make HUMANITY strong again. Jonathan Archer (and seemingly many Starfleet admirals at the time) didn't trust Vulcans, and they were the humans' main allies. It's not a stretch to reason that Krall's resentment is of other species who could attack Earth and so wants humans to explore the universe by themselves, without deliberately seeking out alliances that could drag humanity into conflict.

Enterprise crew statistics/casualties

• Exactly how many crewmen were aboard the Enterprise, and how many survived? Entire portions of the ship were pulverized and dozens more crewmembers died in the combat and subsequent crash. It's amazing that anyone made it off the ship; after Krall wasted the shuttles, the only means of evacuation were a handful of one-person pods, yet it looks like there are almost hundreds being led around in the prison later.
  • About 3-4 groups went through on screen, so probably around 100 people altogether survived.
  • There is initially a huge lineup of surviving crewmembers shown in Krall's camp, but between the "twenty at a time" method Scotty was employing during the rescue mission plus the need to recharge the transporter between groups, "around 100" seems to be about all that were left leaving Altamid. The missing dozens or hundreds were most likely life-drained by Krall and possibly Manas in the meantime, and a few more fell victim as soon as the Franklin crash-landed in Yorktown and Krall escaped into the starbase, draining a few more and possibly even at least one Yorktown officer, judging by the captain's uniform he pilfered. A figure of somewhere about a hundred survivors is also backed up by the visibly small crowd at Kirk's birthday party thereafter, assuming there aren't others undergoing medical treatment elsewhere in Yorktown.
  • Of course, that just leads to a bunch of Fridge Horror when you consider all the "interpersonal dynamics" going on at the start of the film — how many friendships and relationships got brutally torn apart thanks to Krall's attack on the ship?
  • Is that really Fridge Horror when . . . It's is outright explicit? The ship was smashed to pieces. We see people blown into space and shot. To say people died in the big action scene is Fridge Horror is simply pointing out the obvious.
  • The Fridge Horror is not that people died, but realizing how many friendships and relationships were affected. They didn't really show everyone's reaction to losing friends and loved ones (apart from the memorial service), so it seems fair game for Fridge Horror.
  • According to this image◊, the Franklin is minute compared to the Enterprise. Even if the former were packed to the brim with survivors, it would still be a minuscule fraction of the Enterprise's regular crew complement, implying very heavy losses from the start of Krall's attack to the Franklin's takeoff.
  • Supposing the Franklin is the same size as the NX-01, there was probably no more than 150 survivors excluding the bridge crew. The NX-01 struggled with 120 personnel after the MACOs came aboard, though I suppose if 30-50 people could fit in the Franklin's sickbay, 100 people could bunker down in the crew's quarters.
• If it helps, NX-class ships have pretty big cargo bays, so just imagine a couple hundred cranky crewmen taking up ten square feet each for the trip home.

Saucer separation

• In TNG, the saucer separation feature was intended for leaving the crew's families in a safe zone before going into combat. The new Enterprise doesn't carry families; why would the designers add this function? It only seems to mean leaving half the firepower behind.
  • From an emergency standpoint, leaving the nacelles and warp core behind has its advantages, given all the times in Star Trek that the warp core can't be shut down and the ejection systems don't work. And there can be times when such things happen in deep space instead of close to a habitable planet, making escape pods impractical.
  • Given the ridiculous number of events Starfleet suffered in this timeline (well, the ones that can't be ignored), I wouldn't be too surprised that they added tons of new safety protocols into their ships.
  • Since it can't be performed automatically, only (it appears) by manually disengaging the connections, one would assume that it's an emergency procedure used either if the saucer section is rendered uninhabitable for some reason, or to use the saucer as a "lifeboat" in case of something like a warp core breech.
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture implies another scenario where this might be useful when Kirk orders Scotty to prepare to implement Starfleet Order 2005, intentionally collapsing the electromagnetic fields around a ship's antimatter storage pods to turn it into a gigantic bomb, as a last-ditch contingency plan to disable V'Ger. Since the antimatter is stored in the engineering section, if the order were ever actually carried out, the ability to separate could enable the crew to leave that section behind as they try to flee the ridiculously powerful resulting explosion in the ship's saucer.
• The idea the saucer section of the Enterprise can separate from the secondary hull long pre-dates TNG. It was identified in the writer's guide for The Original Series as something the ship could do, sketches were made for an abandoned project in 1975 showing the ship separating, and there was a scene storyboarded for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which obviously wasn't used) that had the same thing happening, and a separation line as well as four panels on the underside of the saucer that were meant as covers for landing gear were designed and built into the model. In fact, the storyboarded sequence was echoed by the slow port roll of the ruined neck section as it dropped away from the saucer in Star Trek Beyond.
  • Precisely. It just wasn't until TNG that the budget and effects technology were available to actually do it (and even then, far less often than originally intended). Compared to the Galaxy-class, yes, the Constitution-class gains nothing in the way of combat capability by separating, but the intention is more, as stated above, for one section to be a super lifeboat if the other is irreparably damaged. Less "attack the Borg from two angles" and more "escape the warp core breach."
• Also, it’s simply good modular design, for in dry dock it could allow simply swapping out the engineering section for a new one. The neck connection kind of implies this, for similar reasons why the engines are nacelles (the nacelles aren't the engines - they only contain the warp coils).

Ramming always works

• Why did Kirk and crew just punch their way through Yorktown's space doors right after the bees were destroyed? Why not try to hail the base to open the doors for them (I know they were probably too badly damaged; doesn't stop them from trying though), or at least use the Franklin's phase cannons to (further) weaken the doors and make the punching easier? I know time was of the essence, but they had a few seconds left before entering. Just slamming the ship through was a very risky maneuver (and most likely outright killed several of Enterprise's surviving crew members stationed in Franklin's forward saucer section), and firing weapons beforehand wouldn't have even slowed them down...
  • IIRC the phase cannons were never used at all. It's possible they weren't online due to decades of disuse, and in any case, they would have been far too sluggish to track any of the Bees, so their repairs would have taken a back seat to augmenting the comms. The only thing that would leave is spatial torpedoes, which take time to load and might have been unreliable as well. The Franklin, however, was built before shields were used by Earth Starfleet, and probably before polarized hull plating was very impressive. It was probably built to tank more damage, like battleships did before the focus was put on shooting down missiles and aircraft rather than reinforcing ships. Hence, ramming was probably a more sound strategy in the time they had to work with.
  • The phase cannons were used to lure the bees away from Yorktown, just before Krall's "My old friend" line. Scotty also mentioned them as part of Franklin's armament. I doubt he would have if they had been unusable.
  • Perhaps the phase cannons just didn't carry enough oomf for the job. Phase cannons seem to be powerful but focused (forgive me if I'm missing something; I'm just now re-watching Enterprise). These ones haven't been updated in a century, and before the Narada altered the timeline and made the Federation more militarized. The Franklin might have been able to cut through the doors of the state-of-the-art Yorktown station, but this would likely have taken time that they didn't have when Krall was on the run.
  • If it makes anyone feel better, according to the Franklin schematics, the forward section contains mostly the mess hall and rec room, meaning that they wouldn't need to be manned at all times. Even with possible space limitations on the Franklin, I could see Kirk keeping the rec rooms empty in preparation for something like this.

Kelvin timeline Romulan War

Spock (TOS: Balance of Terror): As you may recall from your histories, this conflict was fought, by our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels, which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication.

• Was the Romulan War in the Kelvin timeline very different from the original? Much is made of Edison's role as a MACO. But in TOS it was clearly indicated that the Romulan War consisted entirely of fleet engagements. Troop combat was virtually non-existent, to the extent that the Federation did not even know what the Romulans looked like! So how much action did Edison really see? Or was MACO already attached to Starfleet at that point and most of his service was aboard ship, rather than on the ground? Was this the reason that the Federation decided to fold MACO into Starfleet permanently? Or did the war involve more ground combat in the new timeline?
  • This is very WMG, but in my opinion the Kelvin timeline did not start with Nero's incursion; it started either in 1986 (Star Trek The Voyage Home) or in 2063 (Star Trek First Contact) because in both cases, the past was radically altered due to future incursions by Prime Kirk and Prime Picard that will no longer happen in this timeline. To list a few obvious changes: the episode Regeneration would no longer occur, the Phoenix would have launched with its original pilots from an undamaged and fully manned launch pad, plexiglass wouldn't have been invented when it was, Dr Gillian Taylor would have remained in the 1980s and may have had children etc. This also very neatly accounts for all of the changes that one starship being destroyed couldn't possibly account for. According to my version of events, the Kelvin timeline Federation being noticeably more technologically advanced than the Prime timeline would have been able to wage a far more direct conflict against the Romulans, probably in a similar vein to the Dominion or Cardassian War. And if to further cement my theory, note how completely unimpressed the crew of the Kelvin were when they meet Nero for the first time; discovering that the Romulans look exactly like Vulcans brought Prime!Kirk's whole bridge to a standstill back in Balance of Terror, coming as a complete surprise. Here it barely warrants a raised eyebrow that they are apparently being attacked by a ship full of Vulcans - the only possible explanation being that the information as to what Romulans look like is already common knowledge.
  • One could even argue that the timeline split as far back as the 1930s with the events of "The City on the Edge of Forever." Who knows how that man vaporizing himself with McCoy's phaser rippled across time.
    • Star Trek Beyond The Collector's Edition states that the effects of the Narada and Spock Prime crossing to the Kelvin Universe ripple all the way back to the Big Bang.
    • I don't like idea as it goes completely against how we have seen time travel work in this franchise up until this point. What's the difference between this and the Enterprise 1701 and the Bounty using time warp to go back to the twentieth century? You could argue the relative difference in power of a 23rd century warp drive and a 24th century red matter powered black hole, but that just seems full of holes to me (pardon the pun), especially as we then start getting into the issue of those dedicated time machines that Starfleet is using come the 29th century.
    • Nero's incursion rippling backward in time as well as forward is basically confirmed in the first scene of the first film. The Kelvin is obviously intended to be a smaller class of ship than Enterprise, yet has a crew of over 800, based on Pike's line that Kirk's father saved 800 lives while in command. Enterprise in TOS is repeatedly stated to have a crew complement of 436. Basically, Nero's incursion alters the future so radically it alters the past, too. How many time travel adventures of how many different Starfleet crews now happen differently or not at all, and how many new time travel adventures, each with their own ripples, might now occur which didn't before?
    • There is nothing in the films that indicates the Kelvin is supposed to be a smaller class of ship than the Enterprise. There is no reason to think it couldn't have existed essentially the same in the Prime timeline as well.
  • It could be that the Romulans fought ground battles using Reman troops as cannon fodder.
  • Or marines. Given how Romulans love stealing secrets, the MAC Os may have been used to bolster ship security to repel boarders.

The Franklin's crew

• What killed them? Altamid was class M and the surface conditions were actually very hospitable to humanoid life. There were no signs of large predators or diseases that targeted humans. The Franklin itself was mostly intact, it's only problem being that it was not designed for takeoff from a planetary surface rather than being irreparably damaged. There was also a vast stockpile of advanced alien technology just laying around. In a normal Star Trek episode this is the kind of situation where the captain and crew would have figured out a way off the planet by the end of that same episode! Was Edison just incredibly incompetent? How did he lose all of his crew except for Wolfe and Le?
  • Edison made it to Starfleet Captain and he was a Major before that, he wasn't incompetent. If we suppose the Franklin had approximately 80 crew members, like the NX-01 did, then it wouldn't take much to kill all but three.
    • They were stranded on an alien planet. What's the first thing a captain would do in those situations? Send the weakest members of the crew in a shuttlepod to try and escape. That's 20 gone, then if the Franklin had two shuttle pods like NX-01, that's another 20 and only half the crew remain.
    • Is it ever said how long the crew's stranded before they die? Maybe some went to explore, and brought back a virus or something. There were no bodies on the ship, and Jaylah didn't mention anything about having to bury dead people who looked like Montgomery Scotty. It's probably safe to assume the crew slowly succumbed to some sort of virus, and Edison, Le and Woolf as the strongest ones left went to explore the rest of Altamid to try and find something or someone to help.
    • Except that, if the Franklin was like the NX-01, then the shuttle bays were on the bottom of the ship and no shuttles would have been able to get out of it while it was on the ground. Also, even if the crew were dying from disease, unless Edison had already abandoned all human sensibilities the Franklin should have had some kind of graveyard around it. Unless they had all already relocated to the alien mining camp by that point, which raises other questions.
  • The pictures of the Franklin indicate escape pods near the bridge, they could have tried to escape in them. In Star Trek: Enterprise, multiple people could fit in one pod, presuming the Franklins are similar.
    • Looking at the scene where the crew members have their cases closed, there doesn't seem to be as many as you'd expect, especially compared to the NX-01. Closer inspection of what little you can see of the Franklin's logs show around 20-40 people. It wouldn't have taken very much for only 35 people to die.
    • Especially if they went in groups of between 3-7 people to explore Altamid.
  • As for the Franklin, it's important to remember that Jaylah has been working on it for years. Presumably, it was in much worse condition when they first arrived. And even if Edison's crew could have fixed it, then what? Kirk and co. only had to fly it the relatively short distance to the Yorktown, but that didn't exist in Edison's time, nor did any other Federation bases anywhere nearby. They could have had a decades, even centuries long journey back to Earth, assuming they even knew how to get to Earth from Altamid. So realistically, their options might have just been either spend the rest of their lives on Altamid or in space on the Franklin, and they saw the former as the lesser of two evils.

Drained Crewman on the Enterprise

• When the Enterprise is being boarded, McCoy comes across a desiccated crewman (who we later found out was drained of his life by Krall) who dies as Bones examines him. Thing is, how can that be? We know draining humans restores Krall's appearance towards being more human-like. And Krall looks the same when we see him board the Enterprise as when he does when he leaves. So does Manas. So who drained the crewman?
  • It was only one crewman, maybe to change their appearance they need to drain more. Or the process changes people's internal structure first, or changed something under his armor we couldn't see.
    • The crewman was still alive when McCoy finds him, perhaps draining humans only changes Krall's appearance when he kills them, and all he needed from this person was a gruesome energy boost.

Who Drained the Crew?

• Although the Big Reveal kind of hinges upon Krall draining enough humans that he looks like Edison again, why didn't Manas look any different? We quite clearly see Krall physically changing throughout the movie, but not Manas. Why was Krall the only one draining the crew when presumably all three of the antagonists planned upon destroying Yorktown?
  • It seems like none of them necessarily need to feed, except to get younger. Krall just does it because he's cruel.

The bad guys' language

• Since the bad guys are really humans, and English is their shared language (as evidenced by the videos the Enterprise crew finds in the Franklin archives), why do they speak some weird alien tongue, even when it's just them and no one else is around to hear? Such as in the scene where Manas asks Krall to let him fight Kirk so that Krall can launch their attack on the Federation?
  • Maybe they are, and it's just the Federation is speaking Standard and so we hear them speaking English as Kirk and Co hear it?
    • Whenever Krall speaks in English to Uhura, it seems to be a struggle with his alien physiology, so all three bad guys speak some alien language simply because it's easier.
• It's probably safe to say that none of them are entirely sane, anymore, and they all hate the Federation and resent the rest of humanity. Perhaps they stopped speaking English to distance themselves from their human counterparts.

Did Manas die?

• The last we see of Manas, he's falling down from the top of structure where he and Jaylah fought. It's a pretty long fall, but it looks like something he could survive, especially given his enhanced alien physique... Not to mention that Kirk and Chekov survived similarly hard falls earlier in the movie, as mentioned in the Headscratcher above. It's weird that movie doesn't bother to spend a couple of extra seconds to show him after he hit the ground, just so the viewer would know he really died.
  • That, my friend, is called a Sequel Hook.

Sulu's Gay Now?

• Ok, please don't burn me at the stake for this, but why was this decision made? Yes, I'm one of the fans that agrees that it was just unnecessary for multiple reasons and I'm not anti-gay. The main reason I bring this up is because in the original timeline, Sulu was straight and George Takei always played him as such, because even though he's gay, Sulu wasn't Sulu even had been shown to have attractions to female coworkers in the original series and never had been played or written as such in other instances. Even in this timeline, he's never shown these tendencies until this film. So, why was this done? If it was really to honor Takei, he's said that he hates the idea and is disappointed that they did it. For that matter, is he the typical Straight Gay, or bisexual? This Sulu doesn't seem too different from the original in personality, so this is just weird to have been changed. I can deal with Spock and Uhura dating, forced as it has been, but this seems to be something that was done just because it was 2015/2016 and George Takei is gay.
  • It was certainly done purposely to provide representation for gay/bisexual viewers, and a way of showing a tolerant, inclusive future. To increase the effect, it was decided to give this role to a main cast member. The character of Sulu was the most logical choice for a main character to be shown in a same-sex relationship. He was the only character confirmed in-canon to have a child (and thus implicitly to have a partner, and a "successful" relationship). The fact that George Takei is gay is a meta-level bonus. Finally, there's no way to tell whether Sulu is gay or bi, and in my humble opinion, revealing that would weaken the point. A same-sex couple is deserving of the same acceptance and respect and an opposite-sex one; that's the lesson to take and the future to strive for. Meanwhile, an individual's sexual preferences are not generally anyone's business, and demanding to know all about them just because one sees an unusual pairing is not proper.
  • The only character confirmed to have a child in-canon do you mean Generations? Because that IS NOT canon to the Abramsverse. There is also no evidence at all that Demora Sulu in that film was a result of a loving relationship besides Kirk's bewildered when did Sulu find time for a family? They had been close friends for decades by this point, so it's very unlikely that Sulu was married as Kirk would have been invited to the wedding. And yeah, you don't need to be wed to have a child, but we see several times in Star Trek that it is still the yardstick that most people use for defining a successful relationship. Sorry, but there was no afterthought concerning George Takei being a gay rights activist for choosing to out Kelvin Sulu; they did it as a tribute - which by all accounts went down like a lead balloon.
  • "When did Sulu find time for a family?" doesn't mean Kirk wasn't invited to the wedding. Chekov (who is a closer friend to Sulu than Kirk is) makes it clear that Kirk had met Demora before, when she was much much younger. Kirk is merely surprised that she's already a fully-trained bridge officer.
  • Bottom line: The Kelvin Timeline is not the Prime Timeline, and this Sulu is not the same character as George Takei's Sulu. It's Adaptational Sexuality, plain and simple. These films can make any changes they like. Khan is much stronger than his Prime counterpart (and lighter-skinned). Spock is dating Uhura. Kirk (pre-Beyond) had Daddy Issues. Christopher Pike was killed off. The whole point of creating a new universe with alternate versions of TOS characters was to make it possible to make any changes to the characters the filmmakers felt like, while still taking advantage of the vague familiarity general audiences have with TOS. We could debate how good or bad a decision this was, but changing Sulu's sexuality isn't particularly different from any of the many other drastic changes made by this film series.
  • It's entirely possible that a large percentage of the main cast are at least somewhat bisexual. Sexual-orientation is not such a huge deal in the 23rd century. It's never confirmed in-universe that Sulu is gay, he just happens to have a male husband and a daughter. While there was no indication in the original series that he was strictly straight (no reason to...it was the 60s). It would have raised absolutely no eyebrows if a random member member of the crew had been LGBTQ, but because it was a main character, some people get upset.
  • There is very little elaboration on Sulu's home life in general on TOS or the films. Mostly we know we was a bit of a workaholic and eventually had a daughter.
• We don't know enough, just based on what's shown onscreen. Arguably— despite the fact that we know prime Sulu has a daughter— Sulu could be meeting up with a good friend and offering to carry his kid for a bit. (Yes, this is a WMG, but it shows how much we know, ignoring promotional materials.)
  • I think ultimately this is the key to the entire debate because there is nothing on-screen that states that this man is Sulu's husband/boyfriend or that this girl is Sulu's daughter. He could be a friend, or a relative, or even a colleague. All we know is that Sulu knows a guy who has a daughter that is living on this station. And the scene is probably designed this way for a reason. A simple kiss would clear up all ambiguity if they wanted to establish his sexuality - now Sulu is whatever you want him to be. It is up to personal preference how much one appreciates this approach.
    • Promotional material did state that that was his husband, though it's not mentioned in the film itself.

Spock and Uhura's relationship trouble

• Spock mentions that his and Uhura's relationship is on the rocks because he feels that he should return to his people and help them repopulate by making some "little Spocks". Why? Does in vitro fertilization not exist in this world? It's the future, shouldn't Spock just be able to contribute with plastic cup? Hell, Spock's mother was human, so logic would suggest that Humans are compatible enough with Vulcans to act as surrogate mothers. Or just create some artificial wombs. Logical species my ass.
  • We've never had a conclusive answer as to whether a Vulcan can reproduce when not on heat so conventional methods may not actually work. Artificial wombs has merit but that may be a cultural thing.
    • That's an interesting point. If Vulcans can only reproduce every 7 years—and you're right, I can't find any solid canonical evidence either way; all we know for sure is that they must mate during their pon farr—then the Vulcan population is in for a very slow recovery. Even for a long-lived species, 14 years to reach replacement rate, and at least 21 years for net growth is pretty problematic. Depending on however many Vulcans are left, they might even have genetic diversity issues to worry about. If conventional methods don't work for them, they're going to have to set any cultural hang-ups aside and focus on the healthy propagation of the species for the next several generations.
    • The Romulans could always offer to contribute, or be asked to do so. They are technically the same species after all. Although Romulans don't appear to have to wait for ponn farr to roll around to get it on - probably because they don't repress their urges until biology demands that they do something about them. It has come up repeatedly that Vulcans can be Lawful Stupid about their cultural rules to the point where it is downright illogical!
    • Yeah, if the Vulcans were so conservative, they wouldn't accept Spock's help anyway as he's half human himself. However, I'm gonna play devil's advocate (of the writers) a bit here and remind that the line about Vulcan babies was something only McCoy said and they might have meant it as just the doctor making light of the moment, or him being an unreliable narrator who was oversimplifying the situation, again, missing the point Spock was trying to make (him sharing the news about his decision to leave). The more rational reason (of the relationship troubles) was Spock thinking he needed to leave to help the Vulcans; he maybe had felt conflicted about this for a while, and she didn't want to hold him back. Spock seems to hint his decision wasn't truly set (e.g., his intent to discuss about it more with her), until he heard about the death of his counterpart (and felt the pressure of helping the other Vulcans all the more).

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