WMG / Star Trek Beyond

Demora is not adopted

• Considering there is already research being done today on the possibility it's not far-fetched to believe that by the 23rd century science has gone far enough to allow same-sex couples to have biological children together. In Demora's case, most likely through a Uterine Replicator.
  • Real-life epigenetics complicate that, as the interplay of genes from the mother and father have been discovered to be responsible for a balance in embryonic and fetal growth. Two sets from males would likely result in malformations.
  • The above may apply in real life, but in a movie universe where Spock is a Human-Vulcan hybrid, you can imagine Sulu and his husband making a baby if you like.

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  • I just assumed they used a Surrogate, besides who knows what'll be possible 200 years from now.

New characters?

• The Romulan commander from the original series (Mark Lenard's) character will appear and become a friend of Kirk.
  • Jossed. There are no Romulans in the film.

Further parallels to the original movies?

• Since the Enterprise apparently gets wrecked according to the trailer, will the main characters take over a small, rickety alien starship to make their way back to Earth? And will said return trip then involve time travel?
  • Jossed. The ship they use to return home is Starfleet, and no time travel is involved. It is rickety, however.

The Enterprise-A will make an appearance by the end of the film

• Considering what happens to the Enterprise in the trailer, it should be expected.
  • Confirmed.

Kirk-Prime will appear

• Jossed, unless you count showing up in a photograph.

The NX-Class in the 2nd trailer is the Columbia

• Expanded Universe materials detail that the ship crashed somewhere in the Gamma Quadrant; perhaps a version of this story will be used for film, but with the ship crashing on the planet where the film takes place instead.
  • Jossed: It's the USS Franklin.

The naming of the USS Franklin is significant

• If it is or was a ship of exploration like the NX-class, then it would probably have been named not for inventor Benjamin Franklin but for explorer John Franklin (who led the lost Arctic expedition in search of the Northwest Passage). The ships of the Franklin expedition (HMS Erebus and HMS Terror) were abandoned in the remote Arctic and presumed destroyed for over 150 years until the wreck of the Erebus was rediscovered in Canada in 2014. By all indications, the USS Franklin is an old but serviceable ship that has been abandoned on the same planet where the wreck of the USS Enterprise crashes until it is located by Kirk and the crew and reactivated to make their escape.
  • It's not stated one way or the other what the ship's name is a reference to in-universe. In the real world however, the ship's name is actually a reference to Justin Lin's father.

Kirk and Chekov will break into the crashed Enterprise saucer to set off the auto-destruct sequence

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• Since the trailers show the two jumping through the bridge's viewscreen window, sliding down the saucer and then having to high-tail it away from a big explosion, they likely board the remnants of the ship in order to destroy it and prevent the Swarm from being able to use it for their own ends (and thereby paying tribute to both the Enterprise and Enterprise-D destructions in one go).
  • Somewhat confirmed. They do break into the Enterprise, but they don't use the auto-destruct. Instead, Kirk activates the ship's stabilizer thrusters to try to flip it, which also has the side effect of blowing it up.

Jim and Carol did get together between Into Darkness and Beyond...

• Resulting in David Marcus being born and Carol deciding to raise the child alone much like the original timeline, explaining her lack of presence during the events of Beyond.
  • So that would be In Spite of a Nail?
  • Accidentally knocking up a subordinate crew member and having the relationship with her go sour could also explain why he isn't even sizing up Jaylah or Kalara (at least not overtly): he's been burned on all that.

Enterprise will have a Dying Moment of Awesome

• Despite how the trailers depict the ship's destruction as a Curbstomp Battle, the film itself will show the Enterprise and her crew putting a very impressive fight before going down, as the ship is a well armed and advanced vessel after all. At best, it'll be a Curb-Stomp Cushion, which will help explain how the much older USS Franklin can hold up much better.
  • Jossed, sadly; the Enterprise is totally ripped apart in a matter of minutes and causes no meaningful casualties whatsoever to the Swarm, other than a few ships that get taken out early on, and then a slightly larger number which get incinerated on re-entry trying to chase down the saucer as it falls from orbit. The Franklin only fares better by figuring out the Swarm's Achilles' Heel. If the Enterprise does get a Dying Moment of Awesome then it's a little later, when Kirk and Chekov cause the wrecked saucer to flip over and crush Kalara and several Swarm troopers.

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Chekov's future

• In June 2016, Anton Yelchin died in an auto accident, which leaves the future of Yelchin's Chekov uncertain. If another sequel is made, perhaps they could say Chekov has since accepted a new assignment, e.g. aboard the USS Reliant.
  • This was left undecided, as filming and most of post-production had completed at the time of the accident. JJ Abrams has stated that the character will not be recast. Leonard Nimoy's death was treated as the death of Spock Prime, so the same may apply here.

The MacGuffin that Krall is after

• The film's Big Bad, Krall, is reportedly after some sort of small but powerful MacGuffin, which is his motivation for serially bringing down starships straying into his forces' territory and killing or enslaving their crews. What might it be? Could it be something that has been seen or mentioned in Star Trek before?
  • The Tox Uthat, which was said to be capable of destroying stars and was hidden in the 22nd Century.
    • Jossed
  • An Omega molecule, though it would seem likely to have destabilized and devastated Krall's planet by now.
    • Jossed
  • All Jossed. He's after a biological super-weapon made by the same species he salvaged his life-draining tech from, which by all appearances its creators regarded as a deterrent and hid it away precisely from people like him.

Krall eventually got killed by a later series Captain in the original timeline.

• Because Kirk's career wasn't nearly as chaotic in the original as Into Darkness or the original reboot made it, he lurked in the fringes to build up his forces until eventually someone found his swarm and killed them. Mostly because I'd be tickled pink for a more speech-prone captain like Picard or Sisko to epically chew him out for betraying the Federation for what was essentially not satiating his bloodthirst and throw his philosophy of war's superiority to peace back in his face.
• A possible story arc for Star Trek Online?

Krall was better adjusted in the original-original timeline.

• The Xindi War (a contributing factor to his current worldview) was started by time travelers. Without Future Guy and his opposition making Starfleet's genesis more bloodsoaked, he never degenerated into the warlord we see here.

Alexander Marcus either knew Krall or was his fan.

In fact, Krall is most likely the reason for Marcus' militant mindset. Krall was a soldier who was reduced to captain of an exploration crew, while Marcus wanted to militarize the Federation believing war to be inevitable. Marcus may have served under Krall. He believed Krall had it right and tried to follow in his footsteps, with disastrous results.

TOS Kirk defeated Krall.

They said at the beginning they're three years into their 5 Year Mission. We only saw 3 years in the original show. Things have been playing out In Spite of a Nail, and Krall was dealt with at the beginning of the fourth year...and yes, this does mean that at some point off-screen Chris Pine had to dress up like a Chicago Gangster and demand "a piece of the action."

• If Kirk Prime indeed did encounter and fight Krall, he apparently didn't lose his ship in the process. But perhaps the Enterprise got severely damaged, and that's why she got that extensive refit between TOS and the Movie Era...
• And if so, it could have been those events that lead to Kirk Prime accepting promotion to Admiral whereas Nu Kirk declines it. Possibly even for the same reasons; whereas Nu Kirk learned from Krall not to become something he's not (i.e. not to become a desk jockey), Kirk Prime took from that experience that it was time to give up the chair lest what happened to Krall happen to him (and considering how many mad captains and admirals he encountered during TOS didn't feel able to write Krall off as an anomaly and/or product of his time).

Krall's forces were repurposed Borg Drones

The nebula has the effect of cutting off most communications. Some time in the past, a Borg mining expedition got lost in the nebula, and got cut off from the rest of the collective. Without any orders, the Drones eventually shut down, until Krall found them, and reprogrammed them to follow him instead. Looking at their general black metal green lit atheistic, highly advanced nanotechnology, and swarm like behavior, (they are even referred to as bees) there is no clearer origin for the drones.

• Also possible considering that Krall absorbs physical characteristics from his victims – a one-man Collective, perhaps?

Krall's life-extension tech was a Halo Device.

• The Halo Device grants an effectively infinite lifespan, but at the cost of warping the user's body and mind and requiring the user to feed off of sentient life to survive. In addition, it also grants enhanced strength and speed (which Krall seems to have). Finally, while the Halo Device normally resurrects its user upon death, it can't restore someone whose body has been completely destroyed, as the Argonath device does. For that matter, the device may well have been built that way specifically to enable it to kill Halo users.

Jaylah is an alternate-universe version of Commandant Steele.

Barring the difference in facial markings (most likely a result of the Star Trek universe's lack of Sirens) and hairstyle, the two look nearly identical.

Whatever happens to him between Beyond and the next movie, Chekov will be replaced at navigation by Janice Rand.

Sulu isn't gay, he's bisexual. And so was Sulu-Prime.

There wasn't any change in Hikaru Sulu's sexuality between the two timelines. It's just that in this timeline he fell in love with a man, and in the original timeline he didn't. Perhaps Sulu and his husband only met as a result of whatever butterfly-effect ripples resulted from Nero's time travel, and thus their Prime-universe counterparts ended up with different (if any) spouses.

• Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing in the shows and films set in the Prime timeline to indicate Sulu didn't marry a man, so he may have done so there aswell.
• According to his Memory Alpha profile (which details Star Trek canon), Sulu Prime did have an interest in women. He was said to have been infatuated with the Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and also conjured up an "imaginary hot girlfriend" in an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series. That's not to say though he was strictly heterosexual. It's certainly possible he liked men as well, it just wasn't shown or blatantly mentioned on-screen.

The I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder rant cut short in the transporter beam is...

"I'm a doctor, not a fighter pilot!" Considering what he's been drafted into doing in that moment, it is appropriate.

Franklin was a refit older ship.

The Franklin has a bit of a Series Continuity Error around its registry and feat of warp speed; It seems to have broken the Warp 4 speed limit before the NX-01, yet has a NX registry much further along in index than the NX Enterprise and her sister ships. The Franklin overall looks more primitive than the NX class. The Franklin could have possibly achieved this feat of warp speed on a warp drive that really was not built to handle it (unlike the NX class that could cruise safely at those speeds with its Warp 5 Engine), and was later refitted with technologies from the NX class in the post-war period where the Federation was nascent. Through some Starfleet bureaucracy rules, this warranted a NX designation.

• The Warp Factor scale is very steep, rather than incremental. Warp 5 is a lot faster than Warp 4. The Franklin might have been very fast for its time, but the Enterprise was a great deal faster. Humanity was developing faster warp drives at an extremely rapid pace during the 22nd Century. As for registry, "NX" is not really a class of ship, it is an indicator that the ship is experimental. That early in Starfleet's history, most of their ships probably were since they were constantly innovating and trying out new technologies. Production model starships would not have become the norm until later, when the technology was sufficiently standardized as to make the manufacture of entire lines of starship classes viable.

The Enterprise-A contains re-smelted metal from her predecessor.

There is a fan theory that the saucer was salvaged to become the Enterprise-A's new saucer. However, this is highly implausible, because of the sheer catastrophic damage that the saucer sustained. Its entire structure would be permanently damaged by shock damage from the magnitude of the impacts it sustained on the crash (without a powered Structural Integrity Field at that). If Starfleet send salvage teams to scrap it and use the re-smelted metal in constructing the Enterprise-A, that would work in carrying the "spirit". However, the saucer as it is looks to be totaled, especially after Kirk and Checkov flip it over after the fact. Starfleet would not want to build their brand new pride and joy with a major hull section so structurally compromised to begin with.

• This is of course, arguable. First, the saucer section of starships have been known to take severe beatings and still remain structurally composed, far more so than would otherwise expect. The prime universe Enterprise-A is a good example of this; she took a torpedo hit that blew a hole into her saucer from bottom to top, yet the saucer not only remained structurally intact, but the ship was able to continue fighting. That's a prime universe starship mind you; one would think the significantly more advanced Kelvin universe's starships would be even more durable. Second, as Star Trek takes place a couple hundred years into the future, one would also think salvage/repair technology and techniques would be considerably more advanced than what we have/perceive now, such that problems such as "permanent" shock damage that would otherwise cripple a modern day Arleigh Burke would be easily fixable in the 23rd century. Third, there's the fact that the Enterprise's saucer took a similar beating from the Vengeance in the last film, yet was still repaired and refitted for a five year expedition. Overall, the way Star Trek works, the ship in question may only be mostly intact (or in this case, even a segment of it) and the Starfleet dockyards will not only be able to salvage it, but put it back into flight in no time at all. At least, so long as the ship's destruction isn't relevant to the plot (as the Enterprise-D's was...).
• Additionally, re-smelting metal to a new hull to carry on the "spirit" of the original structure isn't anything out of the ordinary. For example, the real life USS New York (LPD-21) is composed of metal from the World Trade Center as a symbolic gesture.

Alternatively, the secondary hull is what was salvaged from the NCC-1701.

Noted above, the "salvaged saucer" theory is highly unlikely from the extreme structural damage suffered before, during and after the crash-landing — not to mention the difficulty of getting it off of a planet again, at least in one piece. But what about the engineering section? The last seen of the secondary hull, it was still drifting in space above Altamid, with the nacelle pylons and connecting dorsal sheared apart by the attack, but still intact overall as the drones ignored it in favour of pursuing the saucer section down into Altamid's atmosphere.

Granted, the secondary hull could easily have suffered a loss of warp core and/or antimatter storage containment somewhere along the line, but its last known momentum was taking it away from the planet and towards the nebula, and it presumably still had working maneuvering thrusters like the primary hull. At the end of the movie, when we see the time-lapse construction of the Enterprise-A, it's notably being built from the engineering hull upwards and the saucer is added later in the process.

Additionally, if the secondary hull survived the attack and was kept intact by crewmembers stuck on board, it would provide something of an Offscreen Moment of Awesome for those involved. Maybe that's what Hendorff was doing that kept him out of the movie ...

The Orion Enterprise crewmember is Lolani from Star Trek Continues.

Or rather her counterpart from the Kelvin Timeline. She is played by the same actress after all! This would essentially make her a Ascended Fanon Canon Immigrant.

Krall is an ancestor of Benjamin Sisko.

That way, we can still have Idris Elba play Ben Sisko in a future movie.

Edison and his two compatriots murdered the rest of their crew

Altamid didn't seem like a very hostile planet. Quite the opposite, the environment was actually very pleasant, there was plenty of plant life but seemingly no aggressive animals. The Franklin was still mostly intact, ruling out that they suffered from a crippling loss of technology to help them stay alive. Plus the planet was loaded with leftover Imported Alien Phlebotinum. This is about as far as you can get from a typical Robinsonade situation. So what killed the crew of the Franklin? It seems likely that Edison and his two co-conspirators worked together to murder the rest after they discovered the alien life draining technology. They apparently had to "feed" fairly frequently, and may have even done so out of addiction to the sensation rather than any urgent problem with aging. Edison seems rather unhinged in his log entries. Which is odd given that he was neither alone nor stranded on a particularly hostile planet. He might have taken to murdering the rest of the crew and all the complaints of unanswered distress calls were just him trying to transfer the sense of blame away from himself and onto the Federation. Like a serial killer who lapses into denial between killings.

The alien Life Drinker technology was also a Devolution Device

Edison/Krall and his partners developed alien appearances due to years of feeding off of alien lifeforms. Krall also exhibited superhuman strength in his initial fight with Kirk. However, once he began to feed off the human crew of the Enterprise, he rapidly reverted to human form and he did not exhibit much of a strength advantage over Kirk when they fought again in Yorktown. This implies a sort of "You Are What You Eat" effect is in-play on those who use the technology. Altamid is oddly lacking in large animal life. Perhaps the aliens that developed the technology didn't want to feed off of sapient beings, and instead used animals. But over time this caused them to gradually devolve into a more primitive state where they could no longer understand their own technology and reverse their own deterioration. They might have become violent and killed themselves off in barbaric fighting. The rest of their technology was untouched because they had devolved so far that they simply regarded it as part of their environment, no different than trees of rocks. Thus fallen, they died off. It would be an interesting parallel to Forbidden Planet.

The film is secretly a crossover with Stargate Atlantis and Magic: The Gathering

The Life Drinker tech that Krall was using has no precedent in all of Trek. In fact, the only major sci-fi series with it are the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis. Furthermore, Jaylah is clearly a Kor from Zendikar, with the pale skin, facical tatoos, and affinity for technology. The Phyrexians explicitly had demention-jumping tehcnology in their early days when Yawgmoth was still in charge. Clearly the Krall found a long abandoned Wraith facility and took their Life Drinker and robotics tech. Meanwhile, Jaylah and her father found a phyrexian planar portal on Zendikar and activated it, bringing them to the ex-Wraith planet and set against Krall.

Star Trek Beyond will unify the two timelines

• They'll find a way to rectify the timeline in a way that saves both Vulcan and Romulus, keeps all the previous series in canon without alienating the reboot movies, and avoid the potential Continuity Snarl from having to set the next TV series in one timeline or the other.
  • Jossed.

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