Star Trek fills our minds with useless (but fun) trivia. This new film is no exception, and it probably has more references and tributes than the previous 10 put together.
(disclaimer: I’ve only seen the film once, let me know if I got anything wrong)
Massive spoilers! (watch the film first! It’s really good fun!)
Written in the order they occurred to me (i.e. in no way chronological)
George Kirk’s father’s name was Tiberius – a nod to the aborted Star Trek: The Beginning film where Jim Kirk’s granddad Tiberius Chase fights the Romulan War all by himself.
George Kirk was a lieutenant, the same rank he holds in the novels Final Frontier and Best Destiny. I guess those novels fill in what was ‘supposed’ to happen before Nero messed things up.
Anyone else spot Vinnie Jones as a Romulan near the start? Or am I seeing (and hearing!) things?
Young Kirk’s car is equipped with a Nokia phone (just be glad the Enterprise didn’t have “Intel inside” stamped on the hull)
Delta Vega (now an ice planet full of cool monsters) is seemingly in the Vulcan system (and Vulcan is visible to the naked eye from the surface). I know of at least two people who are going to be furious at that ;-)
The Klingon ships from the Kobayashi Maru scene were old-school Klingon battle cruisers.
The scene where schoolboy Spock is bullied by the other kids is a remake of a scene from The Animated Series – but the film version ends with Spock beating the crap out of his tormentors.
The Vulcan schooling bit was a nod to Spock’s re-education at the start of Star Trek IV.
The main bridge viewscreens are actually windows this time.
The Vulcan Katric arks mentioned by Spock are from the many Vulcan Trek novels over the years (starting with Spock’s World) and also the Enterprise Vulcan trilogy (where Captain Archer ends up with Surak’s Katra downloaded into his brain for a while).
Kirk went straight from space cadet to Enterprise captain. I’m sure a couple of die-hards were absolutely furious. Fine by me ;-)
Kirk made Enterprise captain at 25. In TOS he was 29 when he became captain. In 40-something years we’ve learned to do things slightly faster.
As mentioned by others before the film was even released, the bit where Kirk, Sulu and Mr. Redshirt-Marked-For-Death go skydiving to the drilling platform is a sort-of nod to the deleted scene at the start of Generations, where retired old Kirk is reliving past glories (you can find the scene on YouTube).
Scotty is left to rot on Delta Vega by Admiral Archer because he lost Porthos in a transporter experiment. That would make Archer about 140 and Porthos 130. That may sound silly (it’s very probably Porthos XXIV or something), but Star Trek people fall into time-warps more often than they don’t. Or there’s always stasis pods, or relativity, or a million other possibilities.
Cardassians (or at least their drinks) are already known to the space cadets (you just wait for the DS9 remake starring Will Smith as Sisko).
The crew already knew that Romulans were offshoots of Vulcans, probably from the Kelvin survivors (TOS didn’t find out until “Balance of Terror”). Uhura could speak all 3 of their language dialects.
At no point during Spock’s growing up did we see Sybok.
Nyota Uhura. At long last.
Before you all freak at Scotty’s Transwarp Beaming thing that he hasn’t invented yet, remember that Scotty lives on in TNG, and he could have invented it just before Spock Classic goes back in time.
They ejected the warp core! I thought only Captain Janeway was allowed to do that;-)
Actually, no - Picard did it too: They do almost exactly the same thing in Insurrection – eject the warp core to blow up the black hole threatening the Enterprise.
On Delta Vega, Scotty kept a Tribble in a bird cage.
Spock Classic’s mind-meld flashback scene with Kirk was the short version of the Star Trek Countdown comic. It would have been cool to see Patrick Stewart and co. in the background briefly (but you can’t have everything).
Spock Classic’s ship is called The Jellyfish. According to ST Countdown, it was built by retired Geordi from TNG. It’s a very cool ship.
The bit where we see the Nerada and the Jellyfish fall into the black hole seconds apart, but emerge in the past 25 years apart, is a nod to Voyager: “Future’s End”, where exactly the same thing happened with the Voyager and the Timeship Aeon.
We never did find out what those barcode scanners on the bridge were for!
Anything else?
(disclaimer: I’ve only seen the film once, let me know if I got anything wrong)
Massive spoilers! (watch the film first! It’s really good fun!)
Written in the order they occurred to me (i.e. in no way chronological)
George Kirk’s father’s name was Tiberius – a nod to the aborted Star Trek: The Beginning film where Jim Kirk’s granddad Tiberius Chase fights the Romulan War all by himself.
George Kirk was a lieutenant, the same rank he holds in the novels Final Frontier and Best Destiny. I guess those novels fill in what was ‘supposed’ to happen before Nero messed things up.
Anyone else spot Vinnie Jones as a Romulan near the start? Or am I seeing (and hearing!) things?
Young Kirk’s car is equipped with a Nokia phone (just be glad the Enterprise didn’t have “Intel inside” stamped on the hull)
Delta Vega (now an ice planet full of cool monsters) is seemingly in the Vulcan system (and Vulcan is visible to the naked eye from the surface). I know of at least two people who are going to be furious at that ;-)
The Klingon ships from the Kobayashi Maru scene were old-school Klingon battle cruisers.
The scene where schoolboy Spock is bullied by the other kids is a remake of a scene from The Animated Series – but the film version ends with Spock beating the crap out of his tormentors.
The Vulcan schooling bit was a nod to Spock’s re-education at the start of Star Trek IV.
The main bridge viewscreens are actually windows this time.
The Vulcan Katric arks mentioned by Spock are from the many Vulcan Trek novels over the years (starting with Spock’s World) and also the Enterprise Vulcan trilogy (where Captain Archer ends up with Surak’s Katra downloaded into his brain for a while).
Kirk went straight from space cadet to Enterprise captain. I’m sure a couple of die-hards were absolutely furious. Fine by me ;-)
Kirk made Enterprise captain at 25. In TOS he was 29 when he became captain. In 40-something years we’ve learned to do things slightly faster.
As mentioned by others before the film was even released, the bit where Kirk, Sulu and Mr. Redshirt-Marked-For-Death go skydiving to the drilling platform is a sort-of nod to the deleted scene at the start of Generations, where retired old Kirk is reliving past glories (you can find the scene on YouTube).
Scotty is left to rot on Delta Vega by Admiral Archer because he lost Porthos in a transporter experiment. That would make Archer about 140 and Porthos 130. That may sound silly (it’s very probably Porthos XXIV or something), but Star Trek people fall into time-warps more often than they don’t. Or there’s always stasis pods, or relativity, or a million other possibilities.
Cardassians (or at least their drinks) are already known to the space cadets (you just wait for the DS9 remake starring Will Smith as Sisko).
The crew already knew that Romulans were offshoots of Vulcans, probably from the Kelvin survivors (TOS didn’t find out until “Balance of Terror”). Uhura could speak all 3 of their language dialects.
At no point during Spock’s growing up did we see Sybok.
Nyota Uhura. At long last.
Before you all freak at Scotty’s Transwarp Beaming thing that he hasn’t invented yet, remember that Scotty lives on in TNG, and he could have invented it just before Spock Classic goes back in time.
They ejected the warp core! I thought only Captain Janeway was allowed to do that;-)
Actually, no - Picard did it too: They do almost exactly the same thing in Insurrection – eject the warp core to blow up the black hole threatening the Enterprise.
On Delta Vega, Scotty kept a Tribble in a bird cage.
Spock Classic’s mind-meld flashback scene with Kirk was the short version of the Star Trek Countdown comic. It would have been cool to see Patrick Stewart and co. in the background briefly (but you can’t have everything).
Spock Classic’s ship is called The Jellyfish. According to ST Countdown, it was built by retired Geordi from TNG. It’s a very cool ship.
The bit where we see the Nerada and the Jellyfish fall into the black hole seconds apart, but emerge in the past 25 years apart, is a nod to Voyager: “Future’s End”, where exactly the same thing happened with the Voyager and the Timeship Aeon.
We never did find out what those barcode scanners on the bridge were for!
Anything else?
