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Krall (Star Trek)

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Captain Balthazar M. Edison , better known as Krall , is the main antagonist of the 2016 sci-fi action film Star Trek Beyond , the third installment of the rebooted Star Trek film series.

He was a human senior officer at the MACO Organization who had been mutated into a reptilian form by alien life-extending technology after crashing upon a planet with his crew. Thereafter, Krall dedicated himself on destroying the Federation for abandoning him and his crew.

He was portrayed by Idris Elba , who also played Russell "Stringer" Bell in The Wire , William Roque in The Losers , Colin Evans in No Good Deed , The Commandant in Beasts of No Nation , Shere Khan in the 2016 The Jungle Book live-action remake, Brixton Lore in Hobbs & Shaw , Macavity in Cats and Bloodsport in The Suicide Squad .

• 1 Biography
• 2 Personality
• 3 Creation and Conception
• 6 Navigation

Biography [ ]

In the twenty-second century, Edison joined United Earth's Military Assault Command Organization (MACO), rising to the rank of Major, and fought against the Xindi and then the Romulans in the Earth-Romulan War. After the founding of the Federation, MACO was absorbed into Starfleet and Edison was given the Starfleet rank of Captain. In 2163, he was appointed a commanding officer of the USS Franklin , the first Earth ship to have reached warp four.

A year later, the Franklin disappeared. Popular speculation ranged from the ship being captured by the Romulans to the ship being caught by a giant green hand. Having crashed on the M-class planet Altamid, Edison and the other Franklin survivors felt abandoned by the Federation. Sinking into madness, the survivors came to despise the Federation for its ideals of peaceful cooperation. Transformed, Edison began calling himself "Krall" during this time. Finding a cache of weapons, ships, and technology on Altamid, Krall and his forces began plotting their revenge against the Federation for their embrace of diplomacy and tolerance that he never agreed in the first place.

Their equipment included humanoid drones and swarm ships, as well as technology that prolonged life by absorbing the life from other beings, transferring energy from the victim to the user, resulting in the said user being physically morphed and mutated into having at least some of their victim's physical characteristics. It was this technology that mutated Edison into Krall, at the cost of his already damaged mental health, causing him to lose some of his human personality, have somewhat slurred speech and usually speaking in an alien language.

Learning of an ancient bioweapon, the Abronath, Krall began reassembling the components. About one hundred years after the Franklin crashed on Altamid, Krall learned the USS Enterprise had the final component. During the Enterprise to Altamid, Krall and his forces destroyed the starship and took many of the surviving crew prisoners. Once Krall obtained the final component, he left to destroy the nearby Yorktown with the bioweapon, with Captain James T. Kirk and the remainder of the surviving Enterprise crew following in pursuit.

Krall's forces were destroyed, and Krall himself was defeated by Kirk when Kirk opened an airlock on the station. Sucked out into space, Krall was enveloped and disintegrated by the very bioweapon he planned to use on the inhabitants of Yorktown . Afterward, Kirk and Commodore Paris closed the file on Krall and the crew members of the USS Franklin .

Personality [ ]

Back when he served as a MACO officer in the 22nd century, Edison became an unemotional and hardened man who witnessed millions of Humans perish by alien hands during Xindi and Romulan conflicts. Battles that Edison endured had deteriorated his better qualities as a person in some ways, given that he deeply resented what he saw as being put out to pasture: His calling as a soldier rendered obsolete by the Federation's embrace of diplomacy and tolerance by the time of its foundation.

However, Edison's resentment twisted into hatred after he and his ship crash-landed on Altamid, with Edison himself, Anderson Le , and Jessica Wolff as the only survivors and never getting any response from the Federation when he sent out a distress call. Believing that he had been abandoned by the Federation, his resentment festered into violent hatred, and he resolved to destroy the Federation and prove that peaceful coexistence led only to weakness as in his final captain log, he declared war on the United Federation Of Planets.

When he was still human, Edison is a dark-skinned, middle-aged British man with a beard until the usage of energy transference technology to expand his lifespan deformed him into a reptilian humanoid like his fellow surviving crews. Aside from his appearance, the alteration of his physiology also resulting his voice become deeper than usual and Edison's physical strength exceeded that of his original strength, as he easily overpowered Kirk in their first confrontation. However, after he drained the energy from several of Kirk's human crew, Edison's appearance becomes closer to his original self and his voice also restored to normal. However, his physical strength also reverted to the original, as when confronted Kirk once again, Kirk now able to fight toe on toe against him.

Creation and Conception [ ]

When the role of Krall was being devised as the main antagonist, the writers of the movie wanted to differentiate him from the main antagonists in the previous two reboot films, the Romulan Nero and Khan Noonien Singh , both of whom were driven by revenge. Regarding Krall, Simon Pegg explained that his motives would be more complex and mysterious than previous main antagonists that appeared so far. Similarly, Star Trek Beyond Director Justin Lin wanted the character to have a legitimate reason for hating the Federation, which the filmmakers had decided they wanted to examine in the movie.

The costume designed for Krall was intended to seem unique and merge with the alien's body. "Justin wanted you to look at Krall and not be sure whether it's him or an armor, where the man within starts and stops," reflected Costume Designer Sanja Hays, "and he wanted you to not be sure how he changed, and what really happened with him. Justin wanted us to create something you hadn't seen in previous Star Trek movies or previous sci-fi movies."

Idris Elba on set for his role as Krall, discussing how his role would work out to Justin Lin.

As Justin Lin saw it, there was only one real contender for the role of Krall. "Idris was my top choice by far," the director said. "Because a lot of times antagonists don't really have a lot of screen time. So you need someone who can command a presence and be able to fully commit and carry that through very surgically. We had a great first conversation." During that initial discussion, Elba and Lin conversed for about an hour. "But at the very end, he paused," continued Lin. "I was like, 'Aw, shit.' He goes, 'It's gonna be four hours of make-up every morning, right?' I said, 'Yup…' It was four hours every morning, and he was awesome. He's delivering a 100% every time." Commented Simon Pegg, "Our villain is a very interesting force [....] We worked with Idris [Elba] on the fine details, which was a really productive process [....] He was really good at pitching little character details, which we were able to adapt and put in." Doug Jung said about the character, "He's got the classic Star Trek villain qualities to him." Kirk actor Chris Pine noted about Elba's performance as Krall, "He was very alive and present, and changing stuff from one take to the next." In Pine's opinion, Elba thereby "came up with this really rather an extraordinary character." Uhura actress Zoë Saldana offered, "I really liked this character, Krall. I like what he's about. He also represents a lot of individuals in the past 10 to 15 years [....] [He's] a very lethal Big Bad – and, the make-up is astounding!" Sulu actor John Cho remarked, "The composite [character design] I saw was incredibly frightening." Cho also called Krall "an interesting bad guy." McCoy actor Karl Urban agreed, "He's a worthy adversary because, like all good villains, he forces the protagonists to question themselves and to question their direction.".

In backstory that was conceived for the movie but omitted from it, Krall's takeover of the alien society and technology on Altamid would have been portrayed as having been possible because the aliens were essentially mindless, weapon-less drones.

See also [ ]

• Krall on the Memory Alpha Wiki .

Navigation [ ]

• 1 The Boiled One
• 2 Twelve Kizuki

Star Trek Beyond Had A Deeper Backstory For Krall's Army That Fans Never Got To See

"Star Trek Beyond" might be the best "Mass Effect" movie we ever get. The shiny Yorktown station, with city sprawls built along the surface of spinning, gravity-manipulating rings, is a dead ringer for the Citadel. The film's villain — Krall (Idris Elba) — leads an army of robots, "The Swarm," much like Saren Arterius employing the cyclopean robot Geth in the first "Mass Effect."

Krall's army destroys the Enterprise in the first act of "Beyond," leaving the crew stranded on planet Altamid. Though Krall made his home on this world, he isn't a native. No, he's really Balthazar Edison, once the (human) captain of the Starfleet ship the U.S.S. Franklin. After the Franklin crashed on Altamid in the 22nd century, rescue from the Federation never came and Edison became disillusioned.

He and his surviving crew found abandoned technology, including his Swarm army (originally invented as "sophisticated mining equipment," not disposable soldiers) and the life-draining devices they've sustained himself with. (Krall's alien appearance was siphoned from his victims with said tech.) When the Swarm destroys the Enterprise, they do so by ramming it repeatedly, not blasting it out of the sky with phasers. Such a physical approach makes sense if the ships were designed to mine a planet's surface.

According to "Star Trek Beyond" co-writer Doug Jung, the team originally had some "loftier ambitions" for the backstory of Krall's army.

The Swarm in Star Trek Beyond

In a 2016 interview with TrekCore , Jung elaborated on these plans while offering insight into how the Swarm functions: "Justin's idea was that [the Swarm soldiers] were sort of like drones in a way and that they don't actually have a lot conscious thought of their own. That sort of answers how Krall would be able to come in and take all this stuff." That's also why, in the film's climax, the Enterprise bridge crew disrupts the Swarm with a signal playing the Beastie Boy's "Sabotage." The Swarm has command signals, not thoughts, and is a hive mind more easily felled than the Borg.

Speaking to CinemaBlend , Jung confirmed the idea of the Swarm was "Star Trek Beyond" director Justin Lin's: "[Lin] liked that idea of like asymmetrical warfare and he kind of made sense. He's like, 'Why would you have that big ship going around? Why not just get a bunch of little ones?'"

As for how Edison took control of the Swarm and perverted them, turning them from harmless miners into vicious attack dogs, Jung explained: "[Edison] was taking his skills as an ex-soldier and applying them in a way that he probably never thought he would have to do."

This backstory is briefly alluded to in "Star Trek Beyond," where Kirk (Chris Pine) and Scotty (Simon Pegg, who also co-wrote the movie) find Edison's final captain's log aboard the Franklin, where he mentions that the "indigenous race" of Altamid "left behind sophisticated mining equipment and a drone workforce." In his TrekCore interview, Jung also refers to Altamid as an abandoned "mining colony." This helps explain why the Swarm's creators abandoned it; it was never their home.

A Star Trek to remember

This exposition is enough to put the pieces together about where the Swarm came from and how Edison/Krall became their leader, at least for attentive viewers. ( Some fans seem to have missed it , and came out of the movie questioning where Krall got an army from, or not realizing that the Swarm were the mining drones Edison mentioned in his log, not armored aliens). Any of Jung's "loftier ambitions" for the Swarm may have ended up in the 30 minutes that Lin had to cut from "Star Trek: Beyond" ( per Collider ), just like a scene expanding on Sulu's (John Cho) role.

A resounding praise for "Star Trek Beyond" is that it feels like an episode of "Star Trek: The Original Series," just two hours long and with modern effects. The backstory of Altamid is part of that. Critic Darren Mooney, reviewing episode "The Gamester of Triskelion," noted:

"The episode presents a planet that is a graveyard, occupied by ruins of an ancient civilization that collapsed in on itself long before mankind reached the stars. It recalls the eerie sense that space is a graveyard, an element of early stories like 'The Cage' or 'Charlie X' or 'The Man Trap' or 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' or even 'The Squire of Gothos.'"

An abandoned planet home to a legion of androids, seized upon by a human driven insane on the edges of space? That's classic "Star Trek."

Krall's Bizarre Vampire Powers In Star Trek Beyond Explained

Justin Lin's 2016 film "Star Trek Beyond" came at a strange juncture in "Star Trek" history. Paramount had two enormously successful "Star Trek" films in 2009 and 2013, both taking the ordinarily talky and contemplative franchise into a quicker, more violent, action-packed direction. Audiences flocked to those movies, both helmed by J.J. Abrams, enjoying the fact that "Star Trek" now more closely resembled "Star Wars." One year before "Beyond" was released, however, the Disney-backed Lucasfilm released "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the first "Star Wars" theatrical feature film since 2008. "The Force Awakens" was a massive success, and the public's itch for space action was now being satisfyingly scratched. It, too, was helmed by J.J. Abrams. 

With real "Star Wars" back in the public eye, audiences no longer needed the supposed "fake 'Star Wars'" action that the new Trek films provided. "Beyond," as a result, was not as massive a hit as its forebears, and Paramount put the kibosh on further entries. Note: we may still get a fourth "Star Trek" film in the Kelvin continuity , but I'll believe that when I see it. 

In all three of the Kelvin movies, the story revolves around a passionately evil villain who sought revenge. For "Beyond," the villain was Krall (Idris Elba), a strange alien monster with access to millions of destructive space drones, and a device that allows him to "vampire" life energy out of people. He crash-landed on the planet Altamid a century ago and spent the ensuing time salvaging ancient Altamid technology and scheming against the Federation.

Krall's "DNA vampire" powers aren't well explained in "Beyond," so co-writer Doug Jung talked to Trek Core in 2016 to clarify a few things.

Read more: Star Trek's Gene Roddenberry Always Regretted Cutting One Character From The Show

Balthazar Edison

Late in the film, it will be revealed that Krall was actually once a human named Balthazar Edison, a Starfleet officer who served on board a starship called the U.S.S. Franklin. Edison was able to stay alive on Altamid thanks to the DNA vampire technology which prolonged his life but also caused him to mutate. Edison has been alive long enough to remember the days before the Federation -- his ship and uniform are from the era of "Star Trek: Enterprise"  — and he resented that the Federation made peace with previously violent enemies like the Xindi. For years, he's been searching for a destructive relic that he could as a biological weapon to kill millions and wipe out the Federation. 

When Krall uses his vampire technology to siphon the life out of captured Starfleet officers, his mutations begin to correct themselves. Throughout the film, he looks more and more human. Jung said that the "Beyond" makeup team had to design the un-mutation carefully, so as not to reveal to audiences too soon that Krall was actually a human. He said: 

"We had a lot of different versions. We hinted at it a lot more at one point. We talked about it more at one point. And then ultimately we just sort of decided that we needed it to be part of the whole reveal package. It's a complex idea, if you really think about what he had to do and how he had to get there. [...] [T]here was actually another phase that we took out, where Krall became too human-looking, and you would have connected the dots a little more."

No one, Jung said, was able to guess Krall and the crashed NX starship were connected. He was proud of that.

Krall's Timeline

The film explains that the local technology on Altamid physically transformed Balthazar Edison into a non-human species, but why does he use the name Krall, and why doesn't he speak any human languages when audiences first see him? That will require a little delving into the timeline of events in the broader "Star Trek" chronology . Edison, recall, was commanding a ship that resembled the Enterprise from "Star Trek: Enterprise," and his uniform matched that series as well, making his life contemporary with Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula). 

"Enterprise" takes place in the 2150s, and by Trek's history, the Federation was formed in 2161, after the Xindi War that destroyed the state of Florida and killed millions. That means the U.S.S. Franklin flew through a wormhole, post-Xindi conflict, and crashed on Altamid in the mid-2160s. "Star Trek Beyond," incidentally, takes place in 2263. 

Altamid was uninhabited when Edison crashed, only occupied by abandoned technology. Edison, as well as a pair of surviving crewmates, would lure passing alien ships to their planet, drag them down to the surface with killer drones, and use an infernal machine to absorb the DNA of the survivors. Edison so hated the Federation's gentle humanity that he deliberately abandoned being human. He turned into an alien, changed his name, and deliberately stopped using human language. 

Krall sustained himself, vampire style, for 100 years before attacking the new U.S.S. Enterprise, captained by James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). Because Kirk's Enterprise was populated by many humans, Krall vampired human DNA back into his system, and he began to change back. 

All the above exposition is given in "Star Trek Beyond," however in a non-explicit fashion. Krall is still a revenge villain, but his backstory is good for a Kelvin movie.

Read the original article on SlashFilm

Entertainment

Krall Makes A Big Impact In 'Star Trek Beyond'

One look at Krall in Star Trek Beyond , it's clear that he's not someone you want to mess with. With his creepy, scale-like skin and striking bone structure, jagged teeth and intense glares, Krall is almost more monster than villain — forgive me, more alien than villain. When Krall makes his not so subtle debut in Star Trek Beyond , it's pretty obvious he's not human, at least not any kind of human the Enterprise crew has ever seen before. Appearance aside, he speaks an alien language and appears to have super human strength (i.e. he throws Captain Kirk into a wall), so it makes sense that he's been billed as a new Star Trek alien baddie. But, he's also not any kind of alien Trek fans have seen before. What kind of alien species is Krall , exactly?

After the first image of Idris Elba's Krall was released in early Star Trek Beyond trailers, fans went crazy trying to figure out what kind of alien Krall was, going through past Star Trek episodes, movies spinoffs — anything you could think of. The most popular theory: that Krall was a Gorn, a lizard-like alien species defeated by Kirk and the Enterprise crew in the original Star Trek series . Elba shut down those rumors in an interview with Entertainment Weekly , and, when asked if Krall was a brand new species, he answered clearly, "Yes." So, that's that? Wrong.

Saying that Krall is not exactly correct ( spoilers ahead ). In Star Trek Beyond , it's revealed that Krall wasn't born an alien — he's actually a human, and not just a human, a former Starfleet Captain. In the last act of the movie, it's revealed that Krall was actually Balthazar Edison, Captain of the USS Franklin , in the early years of Starfleet. Of course, by the time we meet him, Balthazar has become Krall. As Krall, his humanity is essentially lost, not unlike his human appearance, thanks, in part, to some ancient alien technology his crew stumbled upon after they were stranded on Altamid.

The alien technology changed Balthazar into Krall. The changes in his physical appearance appears to be a side-effect of the technology that helped prolong his life and gave him the ability to suck the life force out of people. (But that's a whole other story.) Technically, you could say that Krall, despite his human origins, has become the alien species that invented that technology. In that sense, Krall is a brand new Star Trek alien species, but, unfortunately for fans, that species is unnamed in the film. Referred to by Krall as "the Ancient Ones," the alien species that used to live on Altamid and supposedly created all this terrifying technology that turned Balthazar into Krall, appears to be nothing more than legend at this point in the Star Trek timeline.

It's unlikely we'll ever really know what species of alien Krall is (or became). Perhaps they left Altamid and populated another uncharted planet. Or, maybe they died out, went extinct before Balthazar and his crew crashed on their home planet. Whatever happened to the "Ancient Ones," if Krall is anything to go by, they definitely didn't disappear without a fight. Maybe not knowing exactly what species they are (or were) is for the best.

Images: Paramount Pictures; entertainmentweekly /tumblr

Characters From Star Trek Beyond With More Meaning Than You Realized

Star Trek Beyond is sort of a vacation from Star Trek . Incoming director Justin Lin has said it's supposed to be like an extended episode of the original series: a standalone story with little influence from or impact on the overarching canon. So while the characters introduced might not have longterm significance in future storylines, that doesn't make some a little more fascinating than others. Obviously, the following contains SPOILERS .

If you saw any of the trailers or posters, you couldn't miss the yellow eyes of Jaylah (Sofia Boutella). Based in part on Jennifer Lawrence , she's a scavenger living on Altamid when she rescues Scotty from a group of restless natives near her "house"—the wreckage of the long-lost USS Franklin . Not only does she prove pivotal in helping Kirk and the gang take on big Beyond baddie Krall and get back into space in one piece, she ends the movie as a new Starfleet recruit, which we're taking as a hint that we might soon see Jaylah on the deck of the Enterprise.

We only hear his first name and he's onscreen for less than a minute, but Ben is a hugely significant character in the new Star Trek universe. Played by co-writer Doug Jung, Ben is revealed as the husband of Hikaru Sulu (John Cho) and is raising a daughter with the Enterprise lieutenant, making Sulu the first openly gay main character in Star Trek history. Ben will no doubt be seen in future installments, but we're wondering whether it'll actually be their daughter who plays a bigger role down the road.

Krall (played by Idris Elba) is obviously central to the plot of Star Trek Beyond , but it's his true identity that elevates him from a typical baddie into a mythical figure in Trek lore. We learn the evil Swarm leader used to be Balthazar Edison, long-lost captain of the USS Franklin . A former military commander who had battled the Romulans and Klingons for years, he grew to resent Starfleet's mission of peace. When the Franklin became stranded on Altamid (and Starfleet didn't find them), Edison turned to alien technology to prolong his life, which transformed him into Krall. In his final Captain's log, Edison warns, "You'll probably never see me again. But if you do, be ready."

When we first meet Kalara (played by Lydia Wilson), she's an alien in distress and taken aboard the Enterprise. But after Krall attacks, we find out she's a member of his crew who's tricking Kirk and Chekov to help him get his hands on an artifact. But even with all the deception, Kalara is only half what she seems: Like Krall, she was once a crew member on the USS Franklin . Previously known as Jessica Wolff, she was mutated with the same technology that turned Krall into a super-villain.

Like Krall and Kalara, Manas (played by Joe Taslim) was once a crew member on the USS Franklin— his name was Anderson Le. But once stranded on Altamid, he morphed into Manas and became Krall's go-to henchman. He was tasked with corralling all the survivors of crashed starships on Altamid and taking them to Krall, where they were used to extend the Franklin survivors' lives. But his own synthetically extended life was cut short when a fight with Jaylah (whose family he had kidnapped) sent Manas falling to his death.

Commodore Paris

Commodore Paris (played by Shoreh Aghdashloo) doesn't have a tremendous amount to do in Star Trek Beyond , but that's what makes her so significant. She's the commander of Yorktown—Starfleet's newest and most advanced starbase on the outskirts of the universe. In fact, aside from a few commanders, she's the only Starfleet officer in the movie. While the film is set during the storied "five-year mission" to go "where no man has gone before," there's a surprising lack of Starfleet involvement in Star Trek Beyond . Kirk is basically left to his own devices when the Enterprise crew single-handedly saves Yorktown, but Paris does eventually offer him a job, which could come into play again later.

One of the Starfleet officials

It's pretty difficult to claim that a character has meaning when they don't even have a name, but in this case, it's the actor that makes the character noteworthy. You might not recognize him even without the alien makeup, but that's Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as one of the Starfleet officials in Yorktown. A big Star Trek fan, he reportedly arrived on the set "with a big entourage," and filmed a few quick scenes. He posted his transformation on Vine:

Fi'Ja and Zavanko

Bezos doesn't make the only unexpected cameo on Star Trek Beyond . Community 's Danny Pudi and pro body builder Kim Kold play Fi'Ja and Zavanko, respectively. Although neither character has much significance beyond their small parts in Star Trek Beyond , the actors did their part to keep up with all the Stormtrooper cameos in Star Wars: The Force Awakens . Kold also made an appearance in director Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 6 , and Lin held an online contest to see if fans could guess the aliens' identities .

Commander Finnegan

Commander Finnegan only makes a few brief appearances in the movie, but they're memorable if you're really into Easter eggs. The Yorktown officer is played by Greg Grunberg, an actor whose face should instantly be familiar to anyone who's familiar with the work of Star Trek Beyond producer J.J. Abrams. Grunberg and Abrams grew up together and the director has included him in nearly everything he's done, all the way back to his WB drama Felicity . Grunberg later spent five years on Alias , played the doomed pilot on Lost and even made a cameo as an X-Wing pilot in Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens .

If you're wondering why you don't remember seeing actress Melissa Roxburgh in Star Trek Beyond , it's because she's all but unrecognizable beneath the intricate costume of Enterprise crewmember Ensign Syl (the one with the secret compartment in her head). Syl first falls into the action as the Enterprise is being ripped apart by Krall's forces and Kirk asks her for a favor. It's only later that we learn he's given her the precious artifact to hide where only she can.

The timelines of the original Star Trek and J.J. Abrams reboot series are loosely tied together by the inclusion of the original Spock (Leonard Nimoy), but the rules separating both the original storyline and Abrams "Kelvin timeline" aren't all that clearly defined. Nimoy's Spock exists in a completely separate universe from the younger version (played by Zachary Quinto)—they're the exact same person, but still able to have a nice chat. To pay tribute to Nimoy after his death in 2015, the young Spock learns that "Ambassador Spock" has died, and Quinto's character finds a snapshot of the other Enterprise crew. "Kirk Prime" is the name Trekkies use for William Shatner's character, and his appearance (even in a photo) is pretty intriguing. Although it hints that we could see another crossover, Shatner has also said it probably won't happen .

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‘Star Trek Beyond’ Is A War Story In A Universe Without War

By Kelsey D. Atherton

Posted on Jul 25, 2016 11:40 PM EDT

6 minute read

“This is starting to feel a bit episodic,” bemoans Captain James T. Kirk, played by Chris Pine, early on in Star Trek: Beyond . Kirk is returning from a minor diplomatic mission, an attempt at Federation-negotiated peace between two minor civilizations. The joke is a nod to Star Trek’s long and enduring history as a staple of television. The Original Series premiered 50 years ago, and the sixth television show in the franchise, Star Trek: Discovery , is set to debut on CBS in January, 2017.

Kirk’s quip is also a nod to one of the more common complaints about the Trek universe, the seemingly small tasks of peacekeeping within a generally tame universe. The 13th film adaptation of the world and the third in this reboot, Beyond pushes beyond episodic repetition to place the Enterprise in a crisis outside peaceful space, in a dangerous frontier. It isn’t exactly a war story, but it’s very much a story about war.

So is all of Star Trek.

Other venerable science fiction franchises set their stories in the war itself. Star Wars puts the action in the title, and through seven movies of highly variable quality, tells a tale about the family at the heart of a galaxy-shattering war. Battlestar Galactica opens with renewed hostility from a war people thought was over, and then tells the tale of fighters on the run, of refugees, and hostile occupiers.

Star Trek, with a few notable exceptions, does not give most of its dramatic weight to what happens during war. War in Star Trek either took place in an imperfect past or exists as a possible threat to a future perfect. The Federation of Planets governs a mixture of races, species, and civilizations in one utopian structure, and from the start features those aliens working alongside humans.

Series creator Gene Roddenberry never imagined humans would get to this explicitly utopian future without some great calamity between the present and the 23rd century. In the movies and shows, characters refer back to the Eugenics Wars (set during the 1990s) and a World War III (set around the 2020s). In the aftermath of these devastating wars, a human engineer discovers faster-than-light travel and humanity is greeted by a benevolent, advanced civilization: the Vulcans.

It’s a fantasy, but a deliberately chosen one. When Star Trek: The Original Series first premiered in 1966, the world was entering uneasily into the third decade of the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis just four years prior risked global nuclear annihilation through brinkmanship and miscommunication. Putting forth a world where humanity, together with enlightened others, explores the stars in the name of peace is a bold statement about futures other than radioactive demise.

Utopias, even the most pleasantly conceived utopias, are boring from within, so Star Trek gave use a band of explorers and sent them to the edge of danger. If the Federation is at peace, then the final frontier is the home of war. In the Original Series , that means frequent hostile encounters with the Klingons, a galactic rival with stealthy spaceships and a shoot-first mentality.

Yet by the time of The Next Generation , the Federation and the Klingons are at peace, through negotiations painstakingly undertaken by the original Kirk and company (even after they were nearly derailed following sabotage by radical hardliners within the Federation). Picard’s crew in The Next Generation repeatedly risks it all for diplomacy, forging or maintaining peace in the face of mortal danger.

It is Deep Space Nine , set not on a ship but at a frontier outpost , that gives the Federation its greatest existential threat: the hostile Dominion. Deep Space Nine deviates sharply from the optimism of the earlier series. What is remarkable about the Dominion War arc, besides the quality of its writing, is the depths to which protagonists go to preserve the dream of Utopia. It is a dark turn that remains an outlier in the Star Trek universe, where a supposed utopia debates engineering a plague to eradicate its enemies. War is deeply messy, and the Dominion War hides none of that.

The 2009 cinematic reboot of Star Trek , as well as the two films that followed, are less about negotiating peace than they are about understanding how the closest thing a utopia has to a military responds to the threat of war.

One enduring feature of Star Trek is the limited range of weapons used by Starfleet. Phasers and Phaser rifles , with kill and stun options, remain the standard firearm. Spaceships use lasers and torpedoes, mostly limited to within visual range. Even when the crew in Beyond creates a new electromagnetic weapon, it is a minor reworking of existing technology and not a new grand innovation. Technology everywhere else advances: universal translators get better, communicators are miniaturized, and in Beyond Dr. McCoy struggles to make do with much older medical equipment than he’s used to, but the weapons stay the same. Starfleet may be armed, but it isn’t a military looking for the most effective killing devices. So long as the weapons on hand still work, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of drive to improve or replace them with newer, deadlier tools.

The Federation’s enemies are not so limited. The 2009 reboot features a weapon of planetary destruction in hostile hands. Into Darkness from 2013 features part of the Federation secretly developing long-range missiles for targeted killing and building a deadly, dangerous space Dreadnought to fight a new war. In a predictable turn of events, these new weapons are instead turned against the Federation by rogue agents, and true to form, the crew of the Enterprise defeats the danger without resorting to new weapons.

In Beyond, the Enterprise crew encounters a deadly drone swarm, and still faces it armed only with phasers, torpedoes, and their wits. There is no technological arms race, no strong emphasis on new weapons for the Federation. Our protagonists change how they fight, and not the tools they use for fighting, to face the danger.

Starfleet exists on the edge of danger, is armed for it, and responds to it with force, but does not see itself as a military. This wasn’t always the case.

WARNING: Star Trek: Beyond spoilers below.

The contrast between a military at war and a fleet maintaining peace is highlighted especially by the reveal of Beyond ‘s villain in the third act. Instead of the alien warlord he appears to be, Krall, played by Idris Elba, is in fact Balthazar Edison, a centuries-old veteran of humanity’s early wars in space. After a military career spent fighting aliens, the Federation establishes peace between several civilizations, and the old warships are instead turned into vessels for exploration. In recognition of his service, Edison is given command of the USS Franklin. Yet peace doesn’t sit right with Edison, and after crash-landing on a hostile and alien world, Edison discovers new technologies for war and prolonging his life.

“It is time the frontier pushes back,” proclaims Krall/Edison, as he sets in motion a plan to shock the Federation out of peaceful complacency. Yet when he reaches the Yorktown space station he sets out to destroy, he finds it far more technologically advanced than he could imagine. He proceeds to attack the station, but for a moment he is blinded by an uncomfortable truth for a soldier that never gave up the gun: peace accomplished far more than the wars he hoped to continue.

There are many stories about fighting war among the stars. There are few that dwell instead within the work of maintaining peace among the stars. To borrow a phrase from Lin-Manuel Miranda : winning is easy. Governing’s harder.

Star Trek, as a series, is about that governing. It’s about making sure the wars don’t happen, and showcasing the absolute tragedy that results when they do. At the end of Beyond , Kirk is over his early exhaustion with the episodic nature of diplomacy among the stars. With great enthusiasm, he leads the ship into the frontier once again, continuing the great work of peace on the edge of danger.

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10 Sci-Fi Thrillers We're Still Confused About

10 underrated westerns from the 2010s you probably haven't seen, john wick's new spinoff movie is a good sign that keanu reeves' character will stay dead.

• Despite Star Trek: Beyond leaving room for further adventures, Star Trek 4 has yet to be released after 7 years.
• Star Trek Beyond introduced the USS Enterprise-A as the new starship for Kirk and his crew.
• The delays in creating a sequel to Star Trek Beyond may be due to pay disputes and the desire to compete with Marvel blockbusters.

Despite Star Trek: Beyond 's ending leaving the doors open for the further adventures of Chris Pine's Kelvin Timeline crew, it's now seven years after the movie's release, and Star Trek 4 is yet to surface. Star Trek Beyond , the third entry in the J.J. Abrams' produced Star Trek movies, stranded the USS Enterprise crew on the planet Altamid. Discovering an abandoned Starfleet vessel from a century earlier, it's revealed that Krall and his army are the mutated crew of the USS Franklin, and Krall has been plotting his revenge against the Federation ever since crashing on Altamid decades ago.

While Kirk and Spock are considering their futures in Star Trek Beyond , there was never any indication that this was intended to be the final Kelvin Timeline movie. Captain Kirk has lost faith in his five-year mission and has applied to become Vice Admiral of the revolutionary new starbase, the Yorktown. Meanwhile, the death of Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) has forced his younger self to consider leaving Starfleet and continuing Spock's diplomatic work on New Vulcan. By the end of Star Trek Beyond , Kirk and Spock realized they belonged aboard the USS Enterprise together and prepared to continue their five-year mission. Seven years later, audiences are yet to see that mission play out on the big screen.

Star Trek Beyond's Ending & How Kirk Beat Krall Explained

Krall had been tracking the USS Enterprise since it took possession of an ancient artifact that was the final component needed to complete the construction of the Abronath, a devastating ancient bioweapon. With the Abronath in his possession, Krall and his swarm set off for the Yorktown to wipe out its inhabitants. Giving chase in the USS Franklin, Kirk, and the crew first had to weaken Krall's swarm. Spock and Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban) beamed aboard one of the swarm ships to throw off their formation, allowing the Franklin to destroy the ships by using "Sabotage" Kirk's favorite Beastie Boys song as a discordant and disruptive noise.

With the Swarm destroyed, Kirk discovered the truth about Krall, that he was actually the embittered war veteran Captain Balthazar Edison. Krall had survived the destruction of the Swarm and still intended to use the Abronath by unleashing it into Yorktown's atmospheric regulator to wipe out all life aboard the space station. Kirk and Krall fought in the central atmospheric regulator, with the Enterprise Captain attempting to prevent Krall from unleashing the weapon. With help from Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg), Kirk was able to override the regulator and eject Krall, and the Abronath into the vacuum of space.

Star Trek Beyond Launched The USS Enterprise-A

With the original USS Enterprise destroyed in the spectacular first act of Star Trek Beyond , Kirk needed a new ship after saving Yorktown. The USS Enterprise-A is teased by Commodore Paris (Shohreh Aghdashloo) when she says that the only other ship capable of navigating the nebula near Altamid isn't near completion. With the Enterprise destroyed on Altamid, this new starship was presumably hastily renamed so that the Federation could retain its flagship.

As the Enterprise crew gathered to celebrate Captain Kirk's birthday at the end of Star Trek Beyond , they looked out admiringly at their new starship - the USS Enterprise-A. The construction of the new starship appeared to signal the ongoing adventures of Kirk and the crew. However, to date, the new Enterprise hasn't been put through its paces on the big screen, as Star Trek 4 is perennially delayed by multiple behind-the-scenes issues.

Why Kirk Is Not Vice Admiral & Enterprise Crew Changes

Kirk's heroic efforts guaranteed him the position of Vice Admiral aboard the Yorktown, however, he ultimately declined it. In a callback to the advice his Prime Universe counterpart once gave Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), he decided that there's no fun in becoming a deskbound Admiral. Instead, he was revitalized by his experiences on Altamid and realized that it was an adventure and the chance to " fly" that he really wanted, not promotion. Spock, meanwhile, discovered an old photo of the Prime Universe Enterprise crew, considerably older than their Kelvin Timeline counterparts. Realizing that he had made friends for life, he decided not to leave Starfleet for New Vulcan. Touchingly, Kirk and Spock never voice their doubts to each other, an unspoken acknowledgment of their importance to each other.

Some Enterprise crew members were tragically killed during the fight with Krall, including Ensign Syl (Melissa Roxburgh) who hid the artifact for Kirk. However, Star Trek Beyond teases a potential addition to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek cast in the form of Jaylah. Kirk got her fast-tracked into Starfleet Academy, suggesting that she may have returned as Ensign Jaylah in Star Trek 4 . It's hard to tell if the production problems with Star Trek 4 will make Jaylah's return more, or less, likely.

Star Trek Beyond Lost Leonard Nimoy & Anton Yelchin

Leonard Nimoy's death in 2015 is acknowledged by the passing of Ambassador Spock in Star Trek Beyond . Even in death, Nimoy's Spock influenced the Kelvin Timeline version, as his personal effects revealed the lifelong friendships that his younger self had formed. It was a touching tribute to the legacy of Leonard Nimoy, that also acknowledged Star Trek 's 50th anniversary when Star Trek Beyond was released in 2016.

Tragically, Anton Yelchin was killed in a freak motoring accident at his home a month before Star Trek Beyond 's theatrical release. It's for this reason that the movie ends with a dedication to Anton Yelchin, and Star Trek Beyond is a wonderful tribute to his portrayal of Ensign Pavel Chekov. Yelchin gets some great action sequences and comedy moments which he always excelled at as Chekov. Another tribute to Anton Yelchin was recently made with Star Trek: Picard 's President Anton Chekov (Walter Koenig).

Why Star Trek Beyond Hasn't Had A Sequel In 7+ Years

There have been multiple attempts to realize Star Trek 4 since 2016, with one possible version set to bring back Chris Hemsworth as Lt. George Kirk in a time travel movie. Another Star Trek 4 script, co-written by Quentin Tarantino was due to be a cinematic adaptation of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action", involving a planet whose society was inspired by 1920s Chicago gangsters. For whatever reason, neither of these projects got off the ground, though it's been suggested that pay disputes put paid to the "Two Kirks" movie idea.

Chris Pine's Star Trek 4 plan hints as to why it's taken so long for a Star Trek Beyond sequel to surface. His reference to Paramount wanting Star Trek to compete with the big blockbusters of Marvel Studios is particularly telling. Although far from being a flop, Star Trek Beyond didn't perform as strongly at the box office as expected. Clearly, the various scripts drafted for Star Trek 4 haven't inspired much hope for big box office returns in the eyes of Paramount's studio heads. Ironically, the delays in getting a workable script that can compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe led to director Matt Shakman departing the project for Marvel 's Fantastic Four .

Prior to the ongoing industrial action in Hollywood, a script was being written by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with J.J. Abrams calling it the closest to 2009's Star Trek in terms of quality of story. The ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes will have delayed work on Star Trek 4 even further. While Paramount Studios long ago abandoned their plan to have Star Trek 4 released in 2023, it's no longer clear exactly when audiences can expect the movie to hit theaters.

Star Trek Beyond Influenced Star Trek On Paramount Plus

While Star Trek as a movie franchise appears to be in a state of flux, the streaming era has allowed it to make a hugely successful return to TV. However, the DNA of J.J. Abrams' Kelvin Timeline movies is shared by these new Star Trek TV shows. It's telling that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is focusing on younger versions of Spock, Uhura, and Kirk, who were arguably the main trio in the first of Abrams' Trek movies. Also, Captain Pike's Enterprise is as sleek and cinematic as the one seen in the Star Trek movies.

Similarly, the uniforms worn by the crew in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reflect the movie costumes worn by Chris Pine and the cast. While Strange New Worlds is episodic, shows like Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery have told huge movie-style stories across whole seasons. If Star Trek Beyond is truly the end for Star Trek 's Kelvin Timeline, its legacy will live on in the franchise's TV renaissance, truly made possible by the success of the movies that proved there was still an appetite for Gene Roddenberry's vision.

• Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Den of Geek

How Star Trek Beyond Redefined the Prime Timeline

Star Trek Beyond is better than you remember, and thanks to some deep-cut Trek history, it also redefined the way we look at the entire franchise.

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Four years ago, the Star Trek universe looked very, very different. At that time, there hadn’t been a new Star Trek series in five years, and the idea of three new seasons of different shows coming out in one year (as in 2020) would have seemed absurd. Way back in 2016, the year the franchise celebrated its 50th anniversary, there was only one new (filmed) Star Trek story released into the world: the movie Star Trek Beyond . 

Contrast this with the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek in the year 1991: Spock crossed over to The Next Generation in the season 5 episode “Unification,” while the classic crew kicked-ass one last time in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . Hell, during the 30th anniversary of Trek in 1996, there were two shows on the air — Voyager and Deep Space Nine — and arguably, the greatest Trek movie ever in theaters: Star Trek: First Contact . 

But, when the big five-o rolled around in 2016, it looked like Trek was coasting on impulse power. Fairly or not, Star Trek Beyond is nobody’s favorite Trek movie, and its reputation is only made trickier by the fact that, at the time, it had a lot of pressure on it to represent the whole of the franchise during such an important milestone.

And yet. Upon revisiting Beyond , there’s a lot for Trekkies to love about this flick. If it ends up becoming the last movie to feature the Kelvin Universe “reboot” crew, it’s a fitting send-off, made bittersweet by Anton Yelchin’s untimely death just before its release. Watching it now, with so much new Trek blooming everywhere, Beyond feels like a quaint love-letter sent hopefully into the future, one that tried to pack in as many references and tributes to all of Trek as quickly and artfully as possible. It doesn’t always work, and the trailers for the film did it a huge disservice, but this movie was for the fans even if the marketing made it seem like it wasn’t.

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And, on top of all the wonderful Trek aesthetics, there’s one subtle way that Star Trek Beyond radically dove into the mythology of the Prime Universe timeline. When the movie reveals its biggest twist, late in the third act, we’re given a Starfleet history lesson that basically, explains why Starfleet is so weird and duplicitous throughout the entire franchise. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , David Marcus implies Starfleet is the military, and scientists are just their “pawns.” Star Trek Beyond tackles why this perception exists, and why it’s not entirely wrong. 

The biggest revelation in Star Trek Beyond occurs towards the end of the film when we learn that, in the 22nd century, the reformation of Starfleet was partially the result of forced military integration. It turns out that a guy named Captain Balathaz Edison (Idris Elba) has mutated into the villainous alien known as Krall. When Scotty frantically looks up Edison’s service records, the crew is told Edison was a member of Military Assault Command Operations, better known as MACO in prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise .

In the context of Enterprise , MACO is an Earth-based military force that worked separately – and apart from – Starfleet (though starting in season 3 of Enterprise , several members of MACO were stationed somewhat permanently aboard the NX-01 Enterpris e ). This comes from a period of Trek history where Starfleet exists but the United Federation of Planets does not. 

Analogously, MACO soldiers working on the NX-01 Enterprise would be like active duty Marines hitching a ride on a NASA operated spacecraft. Just because your spacecraft is carrying soldiers, it does not make those soldiers defacto members of NASA. However, the interesting wrinkle in Beyond is that, after the formation of the Federation in roughly 2160, several members of MACO were apparently made into Starfleet officers. As Scotty puts it in the film: “His military service came to an end when MACO was disbanded… the Federation, Starfleet… we’re not a military agency.” 

Exploring the Biggest Missing Gap in the Star Trek Timeline

The backstory for Balthazar Edison recontextualizes almost everything we know about Starfleet history. In the series Enterprise , the formation of the Federation and the evolution of Starfleet was only briefly glimpsed. Not counting the flash-forward in the series finale (which is a holographic simulation, technically) Enterprise showed Starfleet from the years 2151 to 2155. The Federation and the “new” Starfleet doesn’t really exist until after 2160 or 2161, and Captain Edison is literally the only Trek character we’ve met who lived through this time period. 

Relative to Prime Canon, all of this counts because everything that happened in Enterprise is still the backstory for the Kelvin Universe movies — the timeline divergence doesn’t occur until nearly 70 years after the end of Enterprise , in the year 2233. This, by the way, is why Scotty makes jokes about “Admiral Archer’s prized beagle” in Trek 2009; Jonathan Archer was probably pushing 140 or so and was, in effect, the exact same character with the same experiences that he’d had in Enterprise . 

Balthazar Edison is from that era, but unlike Archer, he didn’t want to be part of Starfleet; instead, he became Starfleet out of necessity. Throughout the rest of Trek canon, we see this distinction crop up in interesting places. There are Starfleet “officers,” but there are also “enlisted” crewmembers like Chief O’Brien, or Crewman Simon Tarsus in the TNG episode “The Drumhead.” 

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Starfleet has two identities: it’s an idealistic exploration agency, but also a future version of the military, where people do jobs that are not 100 percent related to all of that idealistic stuff. And, the story of Edison helps to reveal the origins of how all that works. Scotty mentions “they made him a Captain and g[a]ve him a ship.” 

Later in the film, Edison mentions fighting the Xindi and the Romulans. This references the unseen Romulan War of the 22nd century, but also the Xindi conflicts from Enterprise Season 3. In fact, mentioning the Xindi at all must mean that Balthazar, at some point, was a MACO soldier stationed on the Enterprise NX-01 and worked with, or alongside Archer’s crew. 

The Wrath of Khan Producer Hints at New Potential Star Trek Movie

This is actually pretty cool if you think about it. Nearly everything about Enterprise Season 3 is about Archer being forced to change the mission of the ship from exploration to warfare. In the fight against the Xindi, you can see the two sides of Starfleet start to coalesce: Yes, it’s a peaceful science organization, but because they run all the spaceships, they also have to fight unfriendly aliens sometimes. 

Everything Balthazar experiences in Star Trek Beyond is an extension of this same dichotomy but from the other side. Archer was a guy forced to become more like Balthazar in season 3 of Enterprise . Balthazar, it seems, was someone who, after the Romulan War ended, had to become more like Archer. And, given the fact that we can almost certainly conclude he was actually on the first NX-01 Enterprise , it makes Idris Elba’s one and only Trek character a little more pivotal than you probably thought.

Throughout the whole canon of Star Trek , the exploration of Starfleet often wavers between its militaristic underpinnings and its aspirational ethics. Through Balthazar Edison and the story of the USS Franklin , what Beyond made clear is where that dichotomy originates. In some ways, it’s what the movie is actually about. Starfleet wasn’t just founded by a group of explorers and scientists. Turns out, some of the earliest Starfleet captains and crew were just out-of-work starship troopers looking for a steady gig.

Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Den of Geek! He is also the author of three non-fiction books: the Star Trek pop history book PHASERS…

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Star Trek Beyond

Alexa top questions.

• How long is Star Trek Beyond? 2 hours and 2 minutes
• When was Star Trek Beyond released? July 22, 2016
• What is the IMDb rating of Star Trek Beyond? 7 out of 10
• Who stars in Star Trek Beyond? Chris Pine , Zachary Quinto , and Karl Urban
• Who wrote Star Trek Beyond? Simon Pegg , Gene Roddenberry , Roberto Orci , Doug Jung , John D. Payne , and Patrick McKay
• Who directed Star Trek Beyond? Justin Lin
• Who was the composer for Star Trek Beyond? Michael Giacchino
• Who was the producer of Star Trek Beyond? J.J. Abrams , Justin Lin , Roberto Orci , and Lindsey Weber
• Who was the executive producer of Star Trek Beyond? David Ellison , Jeffrey Chernov , Dana Goldberg , and Tommy Harper
• Who was the cinematographer for Star Trek Beyond? Stephen F. Windon
• Who was the editor of Star Trek Beyond? Dylan Highsmith , Greg D'Auria , Kelly Matsumoto , and Steven Sprung
• Who are the characters in Star Trek Beyond? James T. Kirk, Spock, Leonard McCoy, Nyota Uhura, Montgomery Scott, Sulu, Pavel Chekov, Krall, Jaylah, Manas, and others
• What is the plot of Star Trek Beyond? The crew of the USS Enterprise explores the furthest reaches of uncharted space, where they encounter a new ruthless enemy, who puts them, and everything the Federation stands for, to the test.
• What was the budget for Star Trek Beyond? $185 million
• How much did Star Trek Beyond earn at the worldwide box office? $343 million
• How much did Star Trek Beyond earn at the US box office? $159 million
• What is Star Trek Beyond rated? PG-13
• What genre is Star Trek Beyond? Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, and Thriller
• How many awards has Star Trek Beyond won? 3 awards
• How many awards has Star Trek Beyond been nominated for? 32 nominations

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USS Franklin

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The USS Franklin (NX-326) was a 22nd century Federation Freedom -class starship operated by Starfleet . It was the first Earth ship capable of reaching warp factor 4. Its armaments, typical of the era , included pulsed phase cannons and spatial torpedoes . Its defenses included polarized hull plating . Auxiliary craft included a complement of shuttlepods . ( Star Trek Beyond )

• 1.1 Alternate reality
• 2 Personnel
• 3.1.1 Launch date
• 3.2 External link

History [ ]

The Franklin was launched from the San Francisco Fleet Yards sometime between 2145 and 2151 . ( ENT : " First Flight "; Star Trek Beyond , dedication plaque )

Following the Earth-Romulan War and the formation of the United Federation of Planets , the Franklin received a new dedication plaque and was placed under the command of Captain Balthazar Edison , a former MACO veteran of the Xindi and Romulan wars. After many further missions and adventures the ship vanished in 2164 while on a mission in the Gagarin Radiation Belt , an incident later taught to future Starfleet officers at Starfleet Academy . Speculation abounded about the ship's disappearance, with theories ranging from it surrendering to the Romulans to being captured by a " giant green hand ".

The USS Franklin partially camouflaged on Altamid

However, the distance traveled suggested a wormhole displacement. The ship eventually crash landed on the planet Altamid . As no sign of rescue came, Edison came to believe the Federation deliberately abandoned them. Edison discovered relics left by Altamid's native species , including numerous ships , a drone workforce, and life-sustaining technology capable of stealing the "life force" from its victims. Edison and his crew abandoned the wreck of the Franklin and turned against the Federation.

Alternate reality [ ]

The USS Franklin departs Altamid

By 2263 of the alternate reality , the Franklin had been discovered, half-buried under the surface of Altamid, by Jaylah , who placed it under a holographic cloak to use as a residence. The Franklin had functioning power reserves, serviceable engines , and intact data logs despite a century of neglect. Before her encounter with the crew of the late starship USS Enterprise , Jaylah had begun repairs on the Franklin , learning English from its on-board computer and becoming familiar with the " classical " music of 20th century Earth stored in the ship's data banks.

The Franklin defeats Krall's swarm

Marooned on Altamid, Captain James T. Kirk , Commander Spock , Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott , and Ensign Pavel Chekov further repaired the Franklin , restoring its transporter capability, and, enhancing it to transport complex lifeforms rather than simply cargo , they rescued the Enterprise crew imprisoned by Krall. Learning of Krall's plan to use his swarm ships and the super weapon known as the Abronath to attack the Federation Starbase Yorktown , Kirk and company successfully piloted the Franklin out of Altamid's atmosphere by dropping the ship off a cliff in order to reach terminal velocity . Most Federation vessels were designed with a feature that allowed the ship's forward momentum to be converted to a capability to "jump start" the engines. While Impulse Engines were available, this was only temporary; the ship needed this feature to maintain the ship's capabilities to continue using not only the Impulse Engines, but to jump-start the Warp Core. Other examples of this feature exist: for example, the use of this feature by Lt Erica Ortegas (SNW, Prime Universe) to restore atmospheric flight capabilities in a shuttle.

Encountering Krall's forces at Yorktown, Kirk and company piloted the Franklin into the swarm. Using the ship's antiquated technology, Kirk's crew disrupted the individual vessels' communications with radio signals and created a chain reaction that destroyed most of the swarm. Pursuing Krall and two remaining ships, the Enterprise crew piloted the Franklin into Yorktown's internal docking structure, using the ship itself to destroy the attacking vessels before crashing into Yorktown Central Plaza near Yorktown Headquarters . In the aftermath, Kirk and Commodore Paris officially closed the missing-in-action report on the Franklin and its crew. ( Star Trek Beyond )

Personnel [ ]

The crew of the Franklin

• See : USS Franklin personnel

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

Star Trek Beyond Director and Producer Justin Lin felt that including a pre-Federation ship in the film satisfied a goal he had – for the movie to explore and embrace everything in the Star Trek canon . He also believed the craft seemed to service the film's plot and its themes. In hindsight, he noted about the concept, " It felt pretty organic. " In fact, the creative staff loved the idea that, whereas the survivors from the Enterprise were initially under the impression that they were the first Humans on Altamid, there was some antiquated Federation technology elsewhere on the planet, proving otherwise. ("Beyond the Darkness", Star Trek Beyond (Blu-ray) / (Blu-ray 3D) / (4K Ultra HD) )

After deciding to include such a vehicle in the movie, the filmmakers next had to determine some precise details about it. Screenwriter Doug Jung explained, " We took a lot of care into making sure that we were specific about what kind of ship it was and what it could do, so that it fits in the timeline of all that stuff, which is really well established. " ("Beyond the Darkness", Star Trek Beyond (Blu-ray) / (Blu-ray 3D) / (4K Ultra HD) )

At first, the vessel was considerably different from how it turned out. Supervising Art Director Don Macaulay observed, " The Franklin had a small role in the movie when we started. " ("Exploring Strange New Worlds", Star Trek Beyond (Blu-ray) / (Blu-ray 3D) / (4K Ultra HD) ) The ship was originally to have been named the " Pioneer ", which it was called in an early screenplay for Star Trek Beyond . In the same script, the vessel was a significantly smaller scout ship that Scotty found in a desert, buried under sand. The creative personnel imagined him entering it by climbing through a hatch at the top of the ship, then getting the craft working again. Once Kirk and the rest of his team had rescued the other members of the crew, the screenplay called for them to somehow get back on board the craft. The script also made it clear that the vessel was a relatively old Starfleet ship that could withstand an extreme beating but had been lost on the planet for a long time. As the script proceeded to develop through successive drafts, the vessel's role in the story became increasingly more important. ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, pp. 7, 10, 11, 12, 13 & 14)

A concept illustration of the USS Pioneer , which later became the Franklin

The ship was designed by Sean Hargreaves , who described it as initially being "almost like a large shuttlecraft." [1] By the time he began producing concept images of the ship, it had been reconceived as a freighter. The designer produced a couple of images that showed the craft buried under the sand. In another of his earliest concept illustrations of the vessel, it bore the name "USS Pioneer " and was portrayed as launching into the planet's atmosphere, aided by external rocket packs which Scotty had attached to the vehicle's underside. Hargreaves was mindful of the fact that the ship had been fiercely pounded before crash landing on the planet's surface. ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, pp. 10, 11 & 14)

The use of the NX prefix and USS would seem to have been added after the formation of the Federation, as United Earth starships depicted in the mostly pre-Federation series Star Trek: Enterprise did not commonly use USS and the NX prefix was only used for ships in the NX-class or part of the NX Project and Warp Five program .

Unsure how Kirk and his associates would load supplies onto the ship, Sean Hargreaves devised a way for them to manually access the vessel through a ring of large cargo bay doors he positioned on the top of the vehicle. However, this sequence ultimately didn't make it into the movie, as the film's other creative personnel decided that Kirk and his cohorts would simply beam aboard the vessel instead, so Hargreaves changed the doors into prominent ridges that were meant to represent some kind of an array. ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, pp. 14-15 & 17)

At first, Sean Hargreaves intended for the craft to be capable of ascending and descending vertically. Although he even did variations of the ship with landing struts to facilitate these maneuvers, the scripted depiction of the ship and its launch sequence continued to evolve. Essentially, the vessel was now conceived as being discovered by Scotty at the top of a mountain and sliding down the side of that mountain during takeoff, so the landing struts were never shown. ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, pp. 15-16)

The dedication plaque of the USS Franklin

By the time this change was made, the craft had been renamed the " Franklin ". ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, p. 16) That name was chosen in recognition of Justin Lin's father, Frank Lin; the vessel's dedication plaque has a slightly wider gap between the letters "k" and "l" to further emphasize this tribute. The Franklin 's registry number, 326, was in honor of Leonard Nimoy 's birthday. [2]

Once Sean Hargreaves completed his version of the ship and the design had finally been approved, the craft was tweaked for its portrayal in the film by the visual effects staff at Double Negative . They were tasked with adjusting the Franklin on a shot by shot basis. After deciding which materials would be included in the vessel's construction, the VFX team added a load of debris which they imagined as having literally grown over the ship's hull during the ages it had spent grounded on Altamid. " It had been sitting there for a couple of hundred years so it had dirt and rocks and trees growing on it, " stated VFX and Associate Producer Ron Ames . " It was kind of funky when it took off. " ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, pp. 17-18) Double Negative made the vessel look appropriately battered, due to the intention of the Franklin being an old and rusty vessel. ( Cinefex , No. 138, p. 91)

The VFX group also carefully worked out the additional damage sustained by the ship while it, immediately after launching, falls over the cliff, endures a battle with the swarm ships, and finally crashes its way into Starbase Yorktown. All of that damage needed to be recorded so it could be tracked in each shot. ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, pp. 17-18) During the craft's transit, Double Negative took the ship through five stages of destruction. ( Cinefex , No. 138, p. 91) " We added scrapes when it comes off the edge of the cliff, " Ron Ames recollected, " then you had to know where it had been hit by swarm ships, so you build a history of the damage and follow that through. " ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, p. 18) CG Sequence Supervisor Rhys Salcombe explained, " At the point where it smashes through Yorktown ''s door, we entered damage state three, which was pretty mangled. As it's flying through the docking tubes, it bangs off various things and gets additional dings and scratches. After the breach, we went into stage five. The ship is broken beyond repair at this point – it's a wreck, revealing a lot of its interior structure. " ( Cinefex , No. 138, p. 91)

The creative personnel also wanted to make the Franklin appear convincing in the space battle and during its very eventful journey into the starbase, about which Ron Ames commented, " We really tried to make that as real as possible. " The battle was modified to include the craft firing in retaliation at the swarm ships, even though the Franklin had heretofore been thought of as having either no weaponry whatsoever or minimal weaponry that was no longer functional. " As the third act was rewritten when we were editing, " said Ames, " we had to add weaponry to tell the story, otherwise it would have been a sitting duck. " Making the vessel apparently tougher in this way made it seem more believable that the Franklin managed to last as long as it did while enduring so much damage. ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, pp. 18 & 19)

The bridge set of the Franklin

Ultimately, members of the film's shooting company highly approved of the Franklin . Don Macaulay remarked, " It became a very important part of the movie [....] I think it turned out to be a great-looking set. " ("Exploring Strange New Worlds", Star Trek Beyond (Blu-ray) / (Blu-ray 3D) / (4K Ultra HD) ) Ron Ames enthused, " I thought the way the Franklin behaved in the final battle and as it came into the space station was beautifully designed [....] It was very successful and pretty cool. " ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , USS Franklin Special Issue, p. 18) Kirk actor Chris Pine raved, " Every nook and cranny on the Franklin , and the detail work is extraordinary, from the painting to the electronics. It's just mind-boggling. You know, stuff that maybe no one will see, but in the moment of acting in that space, it's incalculable, the effect that it has on me. It just adds to this world that we're creating, and it's super fun. " Jaylah actress Sofia Boutella was also impressed by the set of the Franklin . ("Exploring Strange New Worlds", Star Trek Beyond (Blu-ray) / (Blu-ray 3D) / (4K Ultra HD) )

Popular Mechanics ' July 2016 cutaway depiction of the Franklin

In 2016, collectible miniatures of the ship were produced by Snapco and QMx as home video and theater concession stand premiums. Three more miniatures are slated for release by Hallmark , QMx, and Eaglemoss Collections ' Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection partwork magazine in 2017.

Launch date [ ]

Regarding the vessel's origins, Dylan Highsmith said, " If you want the official explanation on the Franklin and its warp factor: it was a MACO ship (or a United Earth Starfleet ship that housed MACO personnel at times) that predates the NX-01. When the UFP Starfleet is formed, MACO was disbanded and the ship was reclassified as a Starfleet ship [with the ' USS ' identifier]. The ship is then 'lost' in the early 2160s. It was important to everyone that the ship, like Edison, predate the Federation; that thematically, the ship mirrored an earlier time in history and served as a bridge in design between then and the NX-01. Doug and Simon may have worked up something [on an official launch date], but if they did it never made it to script or screen. Either way it predates the NX-01, and was reclassified after the UFP is formed. " [3]

The possible launch date of the Franklin as Earth's first warp 4 vessel can be narrowed down based on information from ENT : " First Flight ", which established that the warp 3 barrier was first broken by the NX-Delta in 2145 , and that the construction of Enterprise , Starfleet's first warp 5 ship, began in 2150 . Therefore, the launch of the Franklin likely occurred within that range.

External link [ ]

• USS Franklin at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Calypso (episode)

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Published Jun 6, 2024

The Infinite Diversity of Star Trek: Discovery's 32nd Century

A guide to the vibrant variety of sentient species we met during our trip through the 32nd Century!

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery.

StarTrek.com

The quest for the Progenitors ' life-changing technology came to an astonishing conclusion in Star Trek: Discovery 's series finale, " Life, Itself ," as Captain Michael Burnham decided that such power was too great for any one individual or culture to wield. Since the Progenitors had brought infinite diversity in infinite combinations to the galaxy when they seeded humanoid life throughout the stars, Captain Burnham justifiably believed that the technology's mission had already been fulfilled.

The captain's astute observation was backed up by the vibrant variety of sentient species we met during our trip through the 32nd Century. As our investigation into Discovery 's cultural tapestry begins, we'll focus on some old friends who received more time in the spotlight and the new civilizations which were introduced by the series.

A Kwejian Connection

"The Sanctuary"

Cleveland "Book" Booker's appearance at the moment Michael Burnham arrived in the distant future in "That Hope Is You, Part 1" represented our first contact with the Kwejian, an empathic species capable of communicating with other beings. This fostered a strong connection between the Kwejian and the natural world, as they found great meaning in their planet’s all-encompassing World Root and the heirlooms created from its sap.

Sadly, the Dark Matter Anomaly (DMA) destroyed the Kwejian homeworld in "Kobayashi Maru," leaving Book as one of the last living Kwejian. Despite these hardships, Book continued to cherish the Kwejian way of life by connecting with lifeforms and safeguarding a World Root cutting. The birth of Leto, the son of Book and Burnham, guaranteed that the Kwejian culture would survive into the 33rd Century.

The Betelgeusian Resurgence

"That Hope Is You, Part 1"

Our earliest 32nd encounters also allowed us to meet Cosmo Traitt, an unscrupulous Betelgeusian courier who trafficked in trance worms. First seen among a crowd of U.S.S. Enterprise crew members in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and later glimpsed in Jett Reno's triage unit aboard the U.S.S. Hiawatha in "Brother," the Betelgeusian species finally took center stage… at least until the Emerald Chain chose to vaporize him for permitting his cargo to get stolen.

In " Terra Firma, Part 1 ," we learned that Commander Yor, a Betelgeusian time soldier, had been the only individual known to have traveled forward in time and across from another dimension prior to the Terran Philippa Georgiou accomplished the same feat. Unfortunately, Yor experienced a grisly death as every molecule in his body fought to either go back in time or return to the Kelvin Timeline.

Understanding the Alshain

"Kobayashi Maru"

Ruled by Emperor Lee'U, the Alshain greeted Captain Burnham and Book with skepticism when the Federation offered to provide them with "no strings attached" dilithium in "Kobayashi Maru." With a reverence for monarchs and an apparent aversion to carnivores, the Alshain misunderstood Grudge's presence aboard Book's starship and nearly executed their friendly visitors.

Able to deploy delicate wings and utilize their planet's magnetic fields to navigate, the Alshain were forced to build satellites to help compensate for their world's shifting magnetic poles. Those artificial structures needed dilithium to operate, and Burnham's decision to reactivate the equipment played a significant role in easing tensions. The emperor opted to attend the Federation's emergency conference pertaining to the DMA, even going so far as to voice support for the diplomacy and courtesy Burnham exhibited toward his people.

The Eccentric Akoszonam

Although the Akoszonam only recently made their Star Trek debut in the Short Trek "Children of Mars," Discovery found an Akoszonam named Kanak working as one of Osyraa's Emerald Chain regulators in " There Is A Tide… ." While that individual endured an icy fate when she was launched out into the frozen void, another Akoszonam also perished in grim fashion during the events of "Kobayashi Maru."

Commander Nalas, the anxious officer who oversaw Starfleet's Deep Space Repair Beta Six, taught us the Akoszonam term "squiddled" — their word for "destroyed beyond repair" — and was impressed that President Laira Rillak knew of his homeworld's wondrous Fissure of Jorat. Panic gripped Nalas after the DMA interfered with his station, and he ultimately died in a fiery crash before he could safely reach Discovery 's shuttlebay. 

The Stately Saurian

"All is Possible"

The Saurians made their comeback in the form of Discovery 's own Linus in Season 2, but the presence of a Saurian delegate at the final sessions of the Federation's negotiations to bring Ni'Var back into the fold in " All Is Possible " confirmed that the culture, famous for its Saurian brandy and yet another species introduced via a background character in The Motion Picture , thrived within the government body during the 32nd Century.

And, as an added bonus, we were treated to more run-ins with Linus across the show's last three seasons.

Haz Mazaro's Magic

"All In"

Even though his species was never mentioned by name, the multifaceted proprietor of Haz Mazaro's Karma Barge made quite the impression in "All In." Always prepared with a clever nickname for his customers or a creatively descriptive saying, Haz Mazaro ran a gambling establishment at the front of his business and presided over illicit sales in its back room.

A friend of both Burnham and Book, his facility became a hub for galactic controversy when the captain deduced that her partner would go to Haz to obtain isolynium for Ruon Tarka's unauthorized anti-DMA weapon. Haz's personality displayed an odd blend of extroverted affection and nefarious intentions, but he seemed to genuinely consider Book and Burnham to be his friends.

An Entreaty to Species Ten-C

"Coming Home"

As the designation the Federation assigned to the culture that constructed the DMA, Unknown Species Ten-C did not reflect the highly-advanced civilization's actual name. With their planet having undergone a cataclysm, Species Ten-C relocated to another star system and fabricated an immense hyperfield to maintain their privacy.

Unaware that their DMA caused harm to other sentient life, the Ten-C unleashed it upon the galaxy to mine the boronite necessary to power the field. Captain Burnham and her crew discovered that the Ten-C communicated by emitting hydrocarbons and light patterns to express emotional inflection and context, a revelation that enabled them to convince Species Ten-C to halt the DMA and attempt to clean up the toxic mess it left behind in "Coming Home."

The Kellerun Commander

"Face the Strange"

Before reemerging in Discovery 's " Red Directive ," our sole confrontation with the Kellerun occurred in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's " Armageddon Game ." Depicted as centuries long enemies of the T'Lani who engaged in a vicious war involving biomechanical gene disruptors, the Kellerun became so dedicated to peace that they were willing to kill those familiar with how to create the infectious weapon.

By the 32nd Century, Kellerun had suffered under a harsh occupation led by Primarch Tahal of the Breen Imperium . Rayner, the Kellerun who would go on to serve as Discovery 's new Number One, resisted the Breen and witnessed his entire family die on Tahal's orders. Those traumas left unimaginable scars that fostered Rayner's ongoing disdain for the Breen.

A New Day for the Selay

"Jinaal"

If the relationship between the Kellerun and T'Lani seemed extreme, then the Selay and Anticans' violent hijinx in Star Trek: The Next Generation 's " Lonely Among Us " will shock you even more. Though both species petitioned for Federation membership prior to their voyage, the two delegations hunted each other as the U.S.S. Enterprise -D transported them to their conference. The Anticans even took quite the interest in a meal that strongly resembled a missing Selay delegate.

In " Jinaal ," a Selay's attendance at an important meeting within the halls of Federation Headquarters indicated that his government's application had been approved at some point in the previous 800 years.

An Efrosian Archivist

"Labyrinths"

While an Efrosian bridge officer served aboard the U.S.S. Saratoga when Admiral Kirk took his jaunt through time in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , the Federation president from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country stood as Star Trek 's most famous Efrosian until Discovery 's " Labyrinths ."

That installment brought us Hy'Rell, the delightfully chipper and well-read Efrosian archivist who spent her days assisting visitors to the Eternal Gallery and Archive. Eager to share her extensive knowledge and greet all those who came in peace, Hy'Rell nevertheless proved willing to raise the library's shields, threaten to sentence troublemakers to its oubliette, and revoke agitators' access to the station's invaluable collection of cultural treasures.

An Eclectic Committee

"...But to Connect"

We'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention the multitude of unnamed species present throughout Discovery 's third, fourth, and fifth seasons. Most notably, many such cultures dispatched delegates to attend the Federation's DMA conference in "...But to Connect."

From a species which lost countless probes in the DMA to another that liquidated a wealth of latinum to figure out how to get a ship inside the anomaly, this grand assembly showcased the interstellar community's bustling and diverse nature.

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Jay Stobie (he/him) is a freelance writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to StarTrek.com, Star Trek Explorer, and Star Trek Magazine, as well as to Star Wars Insider and StarWars.com. Learn more about Jay by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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55 Years Ago: Star Trek Final Episode Airs, Relationship with NASA Endures

Johnson space center.

The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show’s cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only three seasons, it generated a devoted fan base disappointed by the cancellation despite their write-in campaign to keep it on the air. But as things turned out, over the decades Star Trek evolved into a global phenomenon, first with the original episodes replayed in syndication, followed by a series of full-length motion pictures, and eventually a multitude of spin-off series. With its primary focus on space exploration, along with themes of diversity, inclusion, and innovation, the Star Trek fictional universe formed a natural association with NASA’s real life activities.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first had the idea for a science fiction television series in 1964. He presented his idea, a show set in the 23 rd century aboard a starship with a crew dedicated to exploring the galaxy, to Desilu Productions, an independent television production company headed by Lucille Ball. They produced a pilot titled “The Cage,” selling it to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) network that then bought a second pilot titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC introduced the show to its fall 1966 lineup, with the first episode “The Man Trap” airing on Sep. 8. To put that date in perspective, NASA launched Gemini XI four days later, one of the missions that helped the agency achieve the Moon landing nearly three years later. Meanwhile, Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise continued its fictional five-year mission through the galaxy to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” The makeup of the Enterprise’s crew made the show particularly attractive to late 1960s television audiences. The major characters included an African American woman communications officer, an Asian American helmsman, and a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, later joined by a Russian-born ensign. While the show enjoyed good ratings during its first two seasons, cuts to its production budget resulted in lower quality episodes during its third season leading to lower ratings and, despite a concerted letter-writing campaign from its dedicated fans, eventual cancellation.

Despite the show’s cancellation, Star Trek lived on and prospered in syndication and attracted an ever-growing fan base, turning into a worldwide sensation. Often dubbed “trekkies,” these fans held the first of many Star Trek conventions in 1972. When in 1976 NASA announced that it would name its first space shuttle orbiter Constitution, in honor of its unveiling on the anniversary of the U. S. Constitution’s ratification, trekkies engaged in a dedicated letter writing campaign to have the orbiter named Enterprise, after the starship in the television series. This time the fans’ letter writing campaign succeeded. President Gerald R. Ford agreed with the trekkies and directed NASA to rechristen the first space shuttle. When on Sept. 17, 1976 , it rolled out of its manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California, appropriately accompanied by a band playing the show’s theme song, it bore the name Enterprise. Many of the original cast members of the show as well as its creator Rodenberry participated in the rollout ceremony, hosted by NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher . Thus began a lengthy relationship between the space agency and the Star Trek brand.

During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, the need arose to recruit a new group of astronauts to fly the vehicle, deploy the satellites, and perform the science experiments. When NASA released the call for the new astronaut selection on July 8, 1976, it specifically encouraged women and minorities to apply. To encourage those applicants, NASA chose Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, to record a recruiting video and speak to audiences nationwide. She came to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1977, and accompanied by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan L. Bean , toured the center and filmed scenes for the video in Mission Control and other facilities. NASA hoped that her stature and popularity would encourage women and minorities to apply, and indeed they did. In January 1978, when NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts from more than 8,000 applicants, for the first time the astronaut class included women and minorities. All distinguished themselves as NASA astronauts and paved the way for others in subsequent astronaut selections. Nichols returned to JSC in September 2010 with the Traveling Space Museum, an organization that partners with schools to promote space studies. She toured Mission Control and the International Space Station trainer accompanied by NASA astronaut B. Alvin Drew . She also flew aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope aircraft managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, in September 2015.

Meanwhile, the Star Trek brand renewed itself in 1979 as a full-length motion picture with the original TV series cast members reprising their roles. Over the years, several sequels followed this first film. And on the small screen, a reboot of sorts occurred in 1987 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new series set in the 24 th century aboard the Enterprise-D, a next generation starship with a new crew. That series lasted seven seasons, followed by a near-bewildering array of spin-off series, all built on the Star Trek brand, that continue to this day.

James Doohan, the actor who played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, had early associations with NASA. In April 1967, Doohan visited NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, spending time with NASA test pilot Bruce A. Peterson. A month later, Peterson barely survived a horrific crash of the experimental M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. He inspired the 1970s TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man, and the show’s opening credits include film of the crash. Doohan narrated a documentary film about the space shuttle released shortly before Columbia made its first flight in April 1981. In January 1991, Doohan visited JSC and with NASA astronaut Mario Runco (who sometimes went by the nickname “Spock”) toured the shuttle trainers, Mission Control, and tried his hand at operating the shuttle’s robotic arm in the Manipulator Development Facility. In a unique tribute, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong , the first person to step on the lunar surface , spoke at Doohan’s retirement in 2004, addressing him as “one old engineer to another.”

George Takei, who played Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and his husband Brad, visited JSC in May 2012. Invited by both Asian American and LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Groups, Takei spoke of leadership and inclusiveness, including overcoming challenges while in Japanese American internment camps during World War II and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He noted that Star Trek remained ahead of its time in creating a future when all members of society could equally participate in great undertakings, at a time when the country struggled through the Civil Rights movement and the conflict in Southeast Asia. The inclusiveness that is part of NASA’s culture greatly inspired him. JSC Director Michael L. Coats presented Takei with a plaque including a U.S. flag flown aboard space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission. He also visited Mission Control and spent some time with Robonaut.

Leonard Nimoy played the science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock. The actor watched in September 2012 when space shuttle Enterprise arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the last leg of its journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it currently resides. “This is a reunion for me,” observed Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” As noted earlier, the Star Trek cast attended the first space shuttle’s rollout in 1976. Following his death in 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti paid tribute to Nimoy aboard the International Space Station by wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform, giving the Vulcan greeting, and proclaiming, “Of all the souls I have encountered … his was the most human.”

Captain James T. Kirk, played by actor William Shatner, a life-long advocate of science and space exploration, served at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. His relationship with NASA began during the original series, with references to the space agency incorporated into several story lines. In 2011, Shatner hosted and narrated a NASA documentary celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program , and gave his time and voice to other NASA documentaries. NASA recognized Shatner’s contributions in 2014 with a Distinguished Public Service Medal , the highest award NASA bestows on non-government individuals. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert “Bob” N. Jacobs presented the medal to Shatner. The award’s citation read, “For outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” In 2019, Shatner narrated the NASA video We Are Going , about NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon. He has spoken at numerous NASA-themed events and moderated panels about NASA’s future plans. On Oct. 13, 2021, at the age of 90, Shatner reached the edge of space during the NS-18 suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness.

Elements of the Star Trek universe have made their way not only into popular culture but also into NASA culture. As noted above, Star Trek fans had a hand in naming the first space shuttle Enterprise. NASA’s Earth observation facility aboard the space station that makes use of its optical quality window bears the name the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). The connection between that acronym and the name of a Klingon officer aboard the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series seemed like an opportunity not to be missed – the facility’s official patch bears its name in English and in Klingon. Several astronaut crews have embraced Star Trek themes for their unofficial photographs. The STS-54 crew dressed in the uniforms of Starship Enterprise officers from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the second full-length feature motion picture of the series. Space shuttle and space station crews created Space Flight Awareness (SFA) posters for their missions, and more than one embraced Star Trek themes. The Expedition 21 crew dressed in uniforms from the original series, while the STS-134 crew chose as their motif the 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek.

As much as Star Trek has influenced NASA, in turn the agency has left its mark on the franchise, from episodes referencing actual and future spaceflight events to NASA astronauts making cameo appearances on the show. The first-season episode “Court Martial” that aired in February 1967 featured a photograph of the December 1965 Gemini VI launch adorning a wall aboard a star base. In the second-season episode “Return to Tomorrow,” airing in February 1968, Captain Kirk in a dialogue about risk-taking remarks, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the Moon?” a prescient reference to the first Apollo mission to reach the Moon more than 10 months after the episode aired. Astronaut Mae C. Jemison , who credits Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration to become an astronaut, appeared in the 1993 episode “Second Chances” of Star Trek: The Next Generation , eight months after her actual spaceflight aboard space shuttle Endeavour. In May 2005, two other NASA astronauts, Terry W. Virts and E. Michael Fincke , appeared in “These are the Voyages…,” the final episode of the series Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the 2016 documentary “ NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space ,” host NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover states, “Science and Star Trek go hand-in-hand.” The film explores how for 50 years, Star Trek influenced scientists, engineers, and even astronauts to reach beyond their potential. While the space station doesn’t speed through the galaxy like the Starship Enterprise, much of the research conducted aboard the orbiting facility can make the fiction of Star Trek come a little closer to reality. Several of the cast members from the original TV series share their viewpoints in the documentary, along with those of NASA managers and scientists. Over the years, NASA has created several videos highlighting the relationship between the agency and the Star Trek franchise. In 2016, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden led a video tribute to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode.

In 2021, on the 100 th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, his son Rod hosted a virtual panel discussion , introduced by NASA Administrator C. William “Bill” Nelson , about diversity and inspiration, two ideals the Star Trek creator infused into the series. Panelists included Star Trek actor Takei, Tracy D. Drain, flight systems engineer for the Europa Clipper spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim , Swati Mohan, guidance and operations lead for the Mars 2020 rover at JPL, and Hortense B. Diggs, Director of the Office of Communication and Public Engagement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mutual attraction between NASA and Star Trek stems from, to paraphrase the opening voiceover from the TV series, that both seek to explore and discover new worlds, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. The diversity, inclusion, and inspiration involved in these endeavors ensure that they will live long and prosper.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' ends as an underappreciated TV pioneer

Eric Deggans

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham. Michael Gibson/Paramount+ hide caption

First, an admission: Though this column will offer a lot of discussion and defense of Star Trek: Discovery as a pivotal show, it won’t spend much time talking up the series’ current, final season or its finale episode, “Life, Itself,” dropping Thursday on Paramount+.

That’s because, for this critic, the last few seasons of Discovery have been a bit bogged down by the stuff that has always made it a tough sell as a Trek series: overly ambitious, serialized storylines that aren’t compelling; new characters and environments that don’t impress; plot twists which can be maddening in their lack of logic; big storytelling swings which can be confusing and predictable at once.

'Star Trek: Picard' soars by embracing the legacy of 'The Next Generation'

The show’s finale features the culmination of a sprawling scavenger hunt which found the crew of the starship Discovery bounding all over the place, searching for clues leading to a powerful technology pioneered by an alien race which created humanoid life throughout the galaxy. Their goal was to grab the technology before another race, ruthless and aggressive, could beat them to it, laying waste to everything.

It's no spoiler to reveal that Discovery ’s heroes avoid that nightmarish scenario, wrapping its fifth and final season with a conclusion centered on Sonequa Martin-Green’s ever-resourceful Capt. Michael Burnham and fond resolutions for a multitude of supporting characters (there’s even a space wedding!)

Still, this good-enough ending belies Discovery ’s status as a pioneering show which helped Paramount+ build a new vision for Star Trek in modern television – breaking ground that more creatively successful series like Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would follow years later.

And it all began with a singular character: Michael Burnham.

A take on Star Trek for modern TV

Discovery debuted in 2017 on CBS All Access — the streaming service which would become Paramount+ — facing a serious challenge.

As the first new Trek series in a dozen years, it had to chart a path which offered a new vision of the franchise without going too far — carving out a new corner in the universe of Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock not long after the release of Star Trek Beyond , the third feature film produced by J. J. Abrams featuring rebooted versions of those classic characters.

Producers set Discovery ’s story 10 years before the days of Kirk and Spock (originally depicted on NBC for three seasons starting way back in 1966). The new series wouldn’t be centered on a starship captain, but its second in command: Burnham, a Black woman who also happened to be the hitherto unknown adopted daughter of Vulcan ambassador Sarek, Spock’s father (she would get promoted to captain of Discovery much later).

A Black human woman who was raised among the emotionally controlling, super-intellectual Vulcans? Who Trek fans had never heard of over nearly 60 years? Before I actually saw any episodes, my own feelings ranged from cautiously intrigued to cynically pessimistic.

But then I saw the first episode, which had an amazing early scene: Martin-Green as Burnham and Michelle Yeoh as Discovery Capt. Philippa Georgiou walking across an alien planet – two women of color marking the first step forward for Star Trek on a new platform.

People once sidelined in typical science fiction stories were now centerstage — a thrilling, historic moment.

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in the very first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Jan Thijs/CBS hide caption

And it got better from there. Back in the day, Trek writers often felt hamstrung by creator Gene Roddenberry’s insistence that, in the future depicted by the show, humans were beyond social ills like greed, prejudice, sexism, war, money and personal friction. The writers chafed, wondering: How in the world do you build compelling stories on a starship where interpersonal human conflict doesn’t exist?

But Discovery found a workaround, putting Burnham in a position where logic led her to mutiny against her captain, attempting a strategy which ultimately failed — leaving humans in open combat with the legendarily warlike Klingons. Discovery also featured a long storyline which played out over an entire season, unlike many earlier Trek shows which tried to offer a new adventure every week.

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The show’s first season had plenty of action, with Harry Potter alum Jason Isaacs emerging as a compelling and unique starship captain (saying more would be a spoiler; log onto Paramount+ and check out the first season). Fans saw a new vision for Trek technology, leveraging sleek, visceral special effects and action sequences worthy of a big budget movie, with design elements cribbed from several of the franchise’s films.

Later in its run, Discovery would debut Ethan Peck as Spock and Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, classic Trek characters who eventually got their own acclaimed series in Strange New Worlds . So far, five other Trek series have emerged on Paramount+ from ideas initially incubated on Discovery – including a critically acclaimed season of Picard which reunited the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Not bad for a series one TV critic eventually called among “the worst in the [ Trek ] franchise’s history.”

Discovery’s unappreciated legacy

Unfortunately, Discovery has taken some turns which didn’t work out quite so well. At the end of Discovery ’s second season, the starship jumped ahead in time nine centuries – perhaps to remove it from Strange New World ’s timeline? – placing it in an environment only distantly connected to classic Trek .

And while Discovery initially seemed cautious about referencing classic Trek in its stories, later series like Strange New Worlds and Picard learned the value of diving into the near-60-year-old franchise’s legacy – regularly tapping the show’s longtime appeal, rather than twisting into knots to avoid it.

There are likely fans of Discovery who would disagree with this analysis. But I think it helps explain why the series has never quite gotten its due in the world of Star Trek , initially shaded by skeptical fans and later overshadowed by more beloved products.

Now is the perfect time to pay tribute to a show which actually accomplished quite a lot – helping prove that Roddenberry’s brainchild still has a lot of narrative juice left in the 21st Century.