...The interesting thing here is why Edison went mad, as opposed to just flying home.
It's a timeline question, fundamentally. Edison gets aboard the Franklin, hits a wormhole and lands (rather softly, it seems) on Altamid, a planet too far to allow contact with the Federation and supposedly a prison because of two things:
1) The Franklin might be damaged (but as we see, she's not fatally damaged).
2) Altamid is surrounded by an impenetrable rubble nebula.
But there are resources on Altamid that would allow Edison to fly home in defiance of both the above points. An ancient culture has assets down on the planet, and those assets could be used for repairing the Franklin or directly for flying home. We see Edison do the latter in the movie.
Now, when exactly did Edison find out about the assets? He dictates his final, "I'm already crazy" log aboard his ship, but we later see he has abandoned that ship and lives with the Ancients. Since the Franklin remains partially buried in rock at the time, we know Edison has made no effort to repair her and fly her against that rubble nebula in search of a way out. But we also know the ships of the Ancients can fly out of the nebula on their own.
What makes the nebula less than impenetrable all of a sudden? The wussy Starfleet thinks only Kirk's ship can go in there. But one of the Magellan probes did get through all the way to where it could be grabbed by Edison. It's through Magellan that Edison can make contact with the Federation, and perhaps chart his way out of the nebula for the first time, too. But he doesn't use Magellan that way - so he must have become crazy/Krall at that point already.
So, what's the timeline? Does Edison sit in his ship until all but three are dead, go mad, then dictate his log, wander down the mountains, and meet his means of survival? Or does he wander down first, realize that Ancient tech allows him to survive by eating his own crew alive, and use that means of survival, driving himself mad in the process (but not yet becoming visibly Krall so that he can dictate his last angry log in human form)?
The latter sounds a bit likelier. Why would a sane Edison fail to walk down the mountains and meet the Ancients? His crashed ship still has sensors - our heroes use those later on, and I doubt Jaylah's efforts were crucial in making the sensors work "again". And the Ancients aren't difficult to find or far away. Also, how would Edison survive with that Ancient tech if he had nobody left to eat alive? It doesn't seem as if the Ancient drones themselves can provide the life-prolonging nutrition; Edison needs "real" humanoids, and he didn't eat his two remaining pals.
So at the end of this tirade, where do we stand? At the edge of the conclusion that the alien mind-sucking technology may well have been the one crucial item dictating that Edison go insane. His previous personality and career might well be completely irrelevant to the argument.
Timo Saloniemi
). How does that happen? Is Yorktown just outside some other star system? And if so, why does Krall emerge from the rubble surrounding that system when attacking the station? Why not fly around, along the putative less densely obstructed routes?
