I like that they're continuing to develop the relevant to the present day political issues carried over from
STID (drone strikes, preemptive war, assassinations, etc.), this time essentially focusing on the spaceborne equivalent of guerrilla warfare, which is something we've never seen in a Trek film before. The closest TV equivalents would be the Vaadwaur, Swarm, and Kazon from Voyager, and the Maquis and occasionally the Jem'Hadar from DS9, but even this is a fairly unique take on the swarming and ramming attacks.
It starts with the attack on the Enterprise that you see in the trailer. This reflects part of what Lin is trying to say with this film.
Star Trek has a very 1960s sensibility - who has the bigger ships wins. But if you look at the attack, these ships are 40 feet long but there are 40,000 of them. I think even in the way they’re being encountered… What makes Star Trek scifi great is that you can acknowledge what’s happening today. The way we are as a country and the way we engage in conflict, in this Star Trek you see that it’s different [from the 60s].
It's a real post-9/11 view of conflict (although it's also post-Vietnam, it's just that the Cold War overshadowed the lessons there) in that it's about asymmetrical warfare. The little guy can take down the more advanced big guy by attacking in ways that are both surprising and overwhelming. Yes, the Enterprise could blow up any one of those ships, but there are 40,000 ramming into the hull. Yes, we can take out terrorists with drone strikes, but there are always hundreds more.
You might destroy half their force, but if they have a committed enough populace ready to die for their beliefs, and their ships are cheap and easy to mass produce, they can just keep feeding them into the grinder until they wear down their enemies will to fight.
It has a lot in common with suicide bombers in cars, or gunboats taking on Navy ships in swarms.
Interesting.
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