The Identity of the Antagonist (specifically Benedict Cumberbatch)
- Khan Noonien Singh, evidenced by visual references to "Wrath of Khan" in the trailers, the villain being described as a "one person weapon of mass destruction", has a couple of super soldiers under his command and waxes on about "vengeance". Confirmed.
- Gary Mitchell, fits the profile of "a threat from within Starfleet" as well as "one person weapon of mass destruction". Alice Eve's character could easily fit the role of Dr. Elizabeth Dehner.
- Sybok, who abandoned the love portion of his cult after the destruction of his home world and is now a Dark Messiah who seeks vengeance on the federation for allowing his people to become homeless. Jossed.
- A small minority of fans on the internet think it's a Mirror-Universe Jean-Luc Picard because Benedict Cumberbatch's voice sounds a tad bit like Patrick Stewart.
- Garth of Izar, also from inside Starfleet, also with unusual powers, higher rank than Mitchell and probably smarter as well. His insanity also fits with statements that are completely ludicrous in view of the destruction of Vulcan.
- An original character, but one who blends elements of some of the above (i.e. Mitchell's Starfleet history and special powers, Khan's thirst for revenge, etc).
- It seems this is the most likely explanation for now. The character is apparently called "John Harrison". Jossed
- Q, with a strange new bone to pick.Jossed
- Gul Dukat. Yes, THAT Gul Dukat. In this universe, he was born at a much earlier timepoint, and has already started working for the Pah'Wraiths. Either that, or he is the Gul Dukat from the main timeline who somehow ended up in the Mirror-Universe when he tries to escape his prison. As for why he looks human, he just did the same thing he did in the seventh season of DS9 to make himself look Bajoran.Jossed
- New character, but genetically engineered like Khan. That whole offer in the opening preview to save the comatose girl reminded me heavily of Julian Bashir's backstory from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine being cured of his childhood mental disability by his parents paying for illegal genetic engineering to treat him.
- Peter Weller, thanks to all the publicity misdirection surrounding Cumberbatch, will turn out to be a surprise Bigger Bad, possibly even forcing an Enemy Mine between the crew and "Harrison". Furthermore, Weller's previous Trek role featured him as a follower of Colonel Green, a near-contemporary of Khan's who was obsessed with genetic purity. The connection is murky, but there may yet be one. Confirmed, though he's not necessarily a bigger bad than Harrison.
- "John Harrison" is either the pseudonym of John Arrik Soong, son of the ancestor of Data's creator Noonien Soong, or John Harrison is an alternate-reality-accelerated prototype Soong-type android built by a Soong. Arrik Soong's background in genetic engineering would explain why Harrison claims to be able to help the ailing little girl, while his apparently superhuman abilities can be explained by his being either an android or an Augment as seen in Enterprise.
- Peter Weller is Khan; "John Harrison" is his son. The name John means "graced by God" - not much of a stretch to think that a genetically engineered being thinks of himself (and his offspring) as gods. And the name "Harrison" is a clue because it means "son of Harris (or Harry)."
- John Harrison is Harrison, TOS Starfleet officer. Whatever gave him his superhuman abilities in this timeline drove him mad, and may have physically altered him towards the Caucasian (it's not entirely clear the references to Harrison refer to the character on screen when the name was spoken).
- Nomad, angry at the man he believes to be his creator for programming him to feel pain.
- Porthos, transformed by Scotty's exprimental transporter and bent on revenge.
- 200 tribbles in a man suit.
- Of course, Sherlock Holmes. With Moriarty dead, and Watson went playing with dwarves, he got bored and decided to time travel, steal a spaceship and blow up London.
- John Harrison is...John Harrison. Nero was an original villain in the first reboot film, and the sequel will follow suit.
- Harrison is Khan, Mitchell and Garth. Explained here: http://movies.yahoo.com/news/debate-over-john-harrison-star-trek-darkness-consolidation-185100256.html
- Harrison is the robot son of Harry Mudd,who found the planet Mudd earlier in the new timeline. Detailed here: http://popculturezoo.com/2013/03/exclusive-major-spoilers-for-star-trek-into-darkness/
So Harrison is in fact
Khan Noonien Singh. Good job people who guessed it.
- He did the voice of the Excelsior's computer in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which was supposed to be the Enterprise's successor. Majel Barrett (bless her soul) won't be able to do it.
A Major Character Will Die
- Chekov. He's wearing a Red Shirt in the trailer. 'Nuff said. Jossed.
- Kirk. In a twist, Jim will be the one to sacrifice himself for the many. Confirmed. Kind of. He got better.
- Pike. Confirmed.
- Probably too obvious, but Spock. Jossed
Assuming that the new villain is an Augment, in this universe, the Klingons will be the ones who discover the Botany Bay
- In the most recent trailer, one can see what at first appear to be coffins. But if you look closely, the glass is fogged on them, so perhaps they are cryo-pods. Also, the Klingons seem to be playing a heavy role in the movie. So perhaps instead of the Federation discovering them, the Klingons happen to run into the ship. John Harrison's one-man war against Earth is all part of an elaborate plan to save them from the clutches of the Klingons, after all, "Is there anything you would not do for your family?"
John Harrison will become Khan by the end of the film
Although the main bad guy appears to be a new character at this point, and not a returning bad guy from the original series, it's possible that he may become Khan at some point during the movie, possibly at the end.
After accomplishing his vengeance, or being defeated and fleeing into deep space, Harrison decides to adopt a new name for himself, one that will strike terror and fear into all systems, and models himself after the historical Genghis Khan, one of the greatest conquerors who ever lived. But instead of seeking to conquer a continent, Harrison seeks to conquer entire planets. Thus, he takes the name of Khan, and sets off to terrorize the galaxy.
- Zig-Zagged. Harrison won't become Khan, Harrison is Khan Noonien Singh. Although how he became John Harrison will be left up to the film.
Brent Spiner will be in this movie
Not as Data or B4 but a Soong, I doubt Arik is still alive but that family runs on
Identical Grandson.
The
Big Bad is a former member of Section 33.1
- What's section 33.1?
- Assuming you meant Section 31, confirmed.
The plot will take cues from
DS9 episodes "For The Uniform"
And in the end Kirk will be forced to play the villain to get John Harrison to willingly surrender.
- Jossed. Spock and Uhura just beat the crap out of Harrison. Subdue him. Whatever.
Spock is going to save Kirk from certain death at some point
The part of the film shown in IMAX showings of
The Hobbit ends with McCoy telling Kirk that if Kirk was the one facing certain death in the volcano, Spock would let him die. It seems reasonable that this is foreshadowing for a later event.
Pike's "There's greatness in you..." speech from the trailer isn't meant for Kirk, it's for Benedict's character
Just a random guess.
The preview trailers shown so far have a clip of Cumberbatch's villain looking smug in what seems to be a command chair. What if, at some point, the villain (being a Starfleet officer) hijacks a starship as Khan did with the
Reliant and goes after Kirk and the
Enterprise? Hard to believe there wouldn't be a
space battle in a Star Trek film — and it's not an alien threat but a human one — and such a situation could easily lead to the foreshadowed
Heroic Sacrifice.
- There's no particular need for the villain to be Gary Mitchell, but his A God Am I personality and antagonistic attitude do fit the (apparent) bill. It doesn't make sense to create a total Expy in "John Harrison" when they have the freedom to use the real character in the rebooted/alternate timeline.
"Is there anything you would do for your family" refers to Khan's fellow genetically engineered supermen
In the theatrical trailer, the above line comes from a moment where Khan (assuming Mr. Harrison is/will become Khan) explains his actions to Kirk...he's comitting all his acts of terror so as to save his fellow genetically engineered humans from being killed/put away forever. To him, they are the future of the human race, and, in a sense, his family, and he's not going to give them up without a fight.
- Harrison is already Khan. Although how and why Khan became Harrison are still up in the air.
If they have to get John Harrison from a "war-zone world", you know that there's going to be one of these moments happening. And for extra
awesome, the fight music that has played in many a
Star Trek: The Original Series episode will be heard.
Garth of Izar is the threat within Starfleet,Mitchell is the Person of Mass destruction...and is on Kirk's side.
Garth takes over(using his weird powers), does crazy stuff, Kirk and crew go to where-ever they stashed Gary Mitchell to get him to help against Garth.
Names may be changed for licensing reasons etc.
- Jossed. Harrison is both the threat and the One-Man Army, and is most definitely not on Kirk's side.
Kirk's memory has been tampered with.
Thus explaining why he doesn't recongnize Gary Mitchell, and comments about stuff being "an illusion."
And Kirk isn't the only one:Everyone in the Federation has had their memories of Vulcan and what happened to it erased!
"John Harrison" is Gary Mitchell, has returned to free the Feddies from this Mind Control, and is actually the good guy.
- Jossed, Kirk's memory is just fine, it's his attitude that needs an adjustment.
Khan will appear in this movie
As a sequel hook, setting him up as the Villain of #3
- Jossed. Khan is Harrison, making him the Big Bad of this film.
John Harrison is an agent of Section 31 and they screwed him over
It's been already established in their various appearances (
DS 9 Seasons 6 and 7, ENT Season 4 and the Section 31 novels, to name a few) that Section 31 is willing to cross whatever moral and ethical boundaries it needs to in order to achieve their goals. Since Harrison is portrayed as being superhuman (and we've already seen that the organization has no problem with genetically-engineered operatives), he'd fit right in, especially since it's been revealed he's Starfleet's "top agent".
And what would happen if they finally crossed a line he couldn't? What if he snapped and vowed revenge not just on the Federation, but on the organization that carries out their dirtiest work? An organization officially condemned and unofficially condoned? Push aside what kind of physical damage and casualties Harrison could do. If the public knew about Section 31's activities, even in this alternate reality the public outrage would be
enormous.
- Harrison's line from the first trailer can be viewed as supporting this: "You think your world is safe? It is an illusion. A comforting lie told to protect you."' Meaning that the world is only safe because men like Harrison are out at night doing bad things to bad people. He's justifying his actions by basically saying "You need me on that wall!"
- Confirmed. Section 31 actually has a sizable presence in the film with Peter Weller's Admiral Marcus being a high-ranking member of the organization, Khan (aka John Harrison) is employed as a field agent with the crew of the Botany Bay seemingly being held as incentive to cooperate and they have their own Dreadnought-class warship under development. Hell, Section 31's actions end up driving a decent amount of the plot of Into Darkness.
The large starship shown in the 3rd Trailer is a Sovereign Class Starship from the "future" timeline.
May or may not even be the Enterprise E.
- If you look at the profile, it's too tall, and even the Enterprise-E wasn't that dark on the hull. It could just as easily be the alternate-reality edition of an Excelsior-class starship, or something entirely new or custom-built.
- Jossed. It's a prototype Dreadnought-class warship made by section 31.
- It couldn't be a Sovereign-class. The Alternate Reality's Constitution-class, alone, is the size of the Sovereign from the Prime timeline due to the immense shift in priority for Starfleet after the destruction of the K Elvin.
The starship mentioned above is from the evil universe from "Mirror, Mirror".
- After all, it's big, black, and kind of intimidating. Not to mention the title of the movie is "Into Darkness". Which implies that at least one of the heroes will probably go Into the Dark dimension.
Harrison isn't the real villain. Robert April is.
We know Admiral April, the canonical first captain of the Enterprise, is going to be in the movie, and the tie-in comic
Countdown Into Darkness has him get into some very morally shady actions to promote Federation interests over those of the Klingon Empire. Harrison was one of April's "best agents" until he failed or got burned in some way, and a boatload of his crew died in the same way that Pike warns Kirk could happen to him if he doesn't learn humility. Now Harrison wants revenge on the admiralty. April, meanwhile, wants to use Kirk as his pawn to kill Harrison and cover up Starfleet's crimes before the public learns the truth.
- Wait — where is it "known" that Robert April is in the movie? I mean, speculation is all well and good, but what source says that? (Not that I would put such things past Abrams and his posse, but still.)
This film will effectively flip the entire structure of Wrath of Khan.
Instead of Khan obsessively pursuing Kirk, it's Kirk seeking out Harrison
(Khan), despite repeated warnings. Instead of Khan imprisoning Kirk before Kirk comes howling back for a rematch, Kirk will imprison Harrison before Harrison gets a hold of the super-ship we see him using. Harrison will use Kirk's arrogance against him instead of the other way around, and last but not least, Kirk will be the one trapped in a room about to die while Spock stands in safety.
- Confirmed. Kirk pursues Khan for causing Pike's death, Khan allows himself to be imprisoned to manipulate Kirk into getting him to the Vengeance, and then Kirk sacrifices himself to repair the reactor with Spock watching on. Though of course, Kirk gets better.
Admiral Marcus is the grandson of John Fredrick Paxton.
Both are played by Peter Weller, and
both seem to share the same Well-Intentioned Extremist attitude and methods.
- While actors have played multiple roles through the Trek franchise (due to it being such a Long Runner), doing so has usually involved large amounts of facial prosthetics. The franchise is also very fond of the Identical Grandson trope, i.e. the Soong family and Colonel Worf.
By the end of the Film Khan will be exiled to Ceti Alpha V.
If the Universe demands Khan and Kirk be forever foes, then it could also demand Khan and the Botany Bay always live on Ceti Alpha V. Hopefully, if the Genesis Project still gets developed, they remember the damn star system this time around.
- You'd think Spock Prime would remind someone not to do that after he reminds someone not to let Romulus blow up this time.
- Jossed. At the end of the movie he is put back into cryogenic suspension, along with the other 72 members of his crew.
Harrison will return for another film.
Not to say that he'll return straight away, but they've left the option open.
"Khan" in this movie is NOT Khan Noonien Singh
- Think about it. When "Khan" reveals his name to Kirk he literally says "My name is Khan". He never gives any other names, just his first name. The ONLY character to refer to him as "Khan Noonien Singh" is Spock Prime, and this is only when Quinto!Spock asks him if he ever met a man named Khan. This would explain a couple of things, most importantly why Khan is white in this movie, and not Indian, and possibly why he is more willing to work with Starfleet than the Khan Prime ever would have been. My personal theory is that Cumberbatch Khan is in fact one of Khan Prime's followers, with John Harrison perhaps being his "real" name. He worshipped Khan Prime as a God, and became his most devout follower, the change of name from John Harrison to Khan being indicative of this. Cumberbatch Khan describes his Harrison persona as "an illusion" because he sees his Khan persona to be his "true" self, only discovered through worship of the original Khan Noonien Singh. Quite what happened to Khan Noonien Singh is anybody's guess.... possibly he will be the Big Bad of the third movie?
- This could explain the differences between the Prime version and this movie's version of the character. There's also the chance that Khan is an honorific, meant to designate whoever is woken up first. Maybe the guy Mc Coy thawed out was the real Noonien Singh?
The fuel for the torpedoes wasn't the only thing that was classified. The torpedoes were Genesis Devices.
- It would explain why Dr Marcus has such an unhealthy interest in them. Spock, in the heat of the moment of the battle with the USS Vengeance, just emptied the torpedoes and put in conventional antimatter warheads. Which means there are 72 Weapons of Mass Destruction stuffed into a storage locker somewhere on the Enterprise. It's a good thing it didn't finish crashing into Earth.
- By the end of the film, Khan ends up frozen in with them, bringing the total of WMD's in the site up to 73.
- This also explains how Admiral Marcus would get his war. A sneak attack on Qo'nos with a torpedo, being a conventional weapon, could conceivably be passed off as the actions of a rogue agent in the eyes of the cleverer men on the Klingon High Council who see it as a provocation for war they're not yet ready for. There's absolutely NO WAY they can do that if the torpedo annihilated the Klingon homeworld and terraformed it into a planet perfect for humans.
- Finally, this perfectly explains why Khan put his crew members into the torpedoes in the first place. A genesis device isn't a warhead, it causes many complex biochemical reactions that terraform a planet... and has the interesting side effect of bringing recently dead matter back to life. It suits Mr Harrison's plans perfectly too... imagine a verdant, unpopulated world for you and your 72 superhumans to colonise while your two biggest enemies engage in a genocidal war because of the forced terraforming of a planet they assume is now completely devoid of life. It would have been one of the most epic Gambit Pileups in history, which was perfectly planned in advance by Mr Harrison... and would have occurred if James Tiberius Kirk didn't have a conscience.
Section 31 did a surgical Race Lift on Khan so that nobody (like history experts, for example) would suspect he was anyone but "John Harrison"
- Seems like a logical way to avoid a Series Continuity Error.
- In other words, he had plastic surgery?
- ayup.
- Nobody like history experts? Try Spock Prime.
- He's probably the reason they gave him plastic surgery.
The reason most Klingons wear helmets, and the ones that don't wear them look rather different from their appearance in the main Trek universe, is because the ones we see are still suffering from the Augment disease (from Enterprise).
- The Klingons look different because they've had cranial reconstructive surgery done on them. The ones who haven't had the surgery wear helmets to conceal their human-like faces.
- Jossed, sorta. The one Klingon whose face we see, when he removes his helmet to talk with Uhura, has a classically Klingon-looking countenance, complete with piercings in his head ridge.
- Shrugged, maybe? The Klingon's face looks (to me) suitably ambiguous so that it could easily be either natural, or ritualistic scarification, thus ignoring the annoying issue altogether.
Scotty is involved with Section 31 and/or Khan
- A minor thing, but throughout the film, he is prominently wearing a Starfleet Academy ring, of the same design that Khan had Mickey use to blow up the Kelvin Center in the beginning of the film. And he would have been well-placed to sabotage the engines, prior to forcing an incident with Kirk which forced him to resign his post.
John isn't actually who he says he is.
John Harrison isn't
Khan, but rather one of his followers. He claimed to be him either to protect his leader, or he had
ambitions to take over.
- Given that description, he could've really been Joaquim. Remember him from II?
- I doubt it; Joaquim always seemed totally loyal to Khan - he was supposed to be the Starbuck to Khan's Captain Ahab.
- If that's the case, then he's doing the former (adopting his identity to protect him and the others), rather than the latter (take over).
John Harrison/Khan let Kirk smack him around on Qo'noS.
I saw
Bullying a Dragon on the page, but I don't think Harrison was too offended by Kirk punching on him after his capture. He knew a normal Human couldn't hurt him, and had probably already planned to
Kill 'em All regardless. So I suspect he just allowed Kirk to vent on him.
- I think this one is implied, especially with Khan's bored "Do you want to keep punching me over and over until your arm tires?" line in the brig.
The next movie will involve Spock's pon farr.
Since we seem to be heading a year into the future with each new movie, the next movie will be in 2261 - 7 years before "Amok Time" (pon farr occurs every seven years). I'm not sure if it will be enough to carry an entire movie, but it'll probably be at least the secondary plot.
Earth is more multi-cultural because Vulcan was destroyed.
As seen in
Star Trek: Enterprise, Vulcan was putting enormous cultural pressure on Earth. In order to compete; a more "blended" political/cultural identity was adopted in the original timeline. (Other cultures weren't fully surpressed; rather, they were encouraged to be "social only.") However, with the planet being destroyed, their culture no longer has the same influence. With this; Earth society is entering into Star Fleet at its own pace; and there's more of a balance between "Federal" powers of the Federation/Star Fleet Earth; and State Powers (individual countries.)
