Dumb Things In Star Trek Beyond Everyone Just Ignored

Say what you will about the new-look Star Trek franchise, but it's found a lot of fans and makes for some largely entertaining sci-fi fare. The latest sequel, Star Trek Beyond, was arguably the best entry of the trilogy. Not perfect, but still pretty good. That said, there are still a few things that irked us about Capt. Kirk's latest mission.

The latest sequel traded director J.J. Abrams for Fast and Furious alum Justin Lin, and his action chops certainly show. This is Star Trek through a popcorn-friendly action lens, and it makes for an interesting combination. But just like your typical silly action movie, it does include a few head-scratchers. Look, we really liked Star Trek Beyond—but here are a few of the dumb things you have to ignore to love it.

Pretty much all of Krall's plan hinges on luring the Enterprise out to the nebula and attacking it to steal the artifact, but it takes one heck of a logic leap to put all these dangling threads together. First of all, the artifact is only on the Enterprise at all due to happenstance in regards to an unrelated (and wholly irrelevant) diplomatic mission that opens the film. The ship returns to the Yorktown station after that mission, and absolutely could've dropped the artifact off there.

We later learn the artifact was taken from the planet Krall was on hundreds of yeas ago and dumped into space. So how it ended up used for a diplomatic mission hundreds of years later is a mystery unto itself, not to mention how anyone even knew what it was. Also, in this giant, sprawling galaxy, how convenient is it that the Enterprise winds up at Yorktown Station (which is extremely close to Krall's planet) carrying the exact artifact they need? Space is huge, and that's just a mountain of conveniences required to get the plot started.

When everyone takes the escape pods and head for Krall's planet, Scotty drops out late and navigates his pod down to the surface. When he gets there, he realizes he's landed it on the edge of a very big cliff, and finds himself in a classic Fast and Furious-style action scene where he has to run up the falling pod and grab hold of a tiny ledge hanging off the cliff. Then we cut away, and the next time we see Scotty, he's wandering around the alien planet.

So how did he get off the cliff? We can only assume he pulled himself up with his fingertips and made his way off...but Scotty isn't exactly the most athletic member of the team. If they were going to leave this scene as-is, fine, but at least give us a glimpse of Scotty getting an edge up on the ledge. As it stands, you just keep waiting for them to cut back to learn who on Earth is going to help keep him from plummeting to his death.

Krall already has a drone army when the film begins, but he's apparently holding off on his master plan until he gets the artifact to create the bio-weapon. We're led to believe he's been waiting a long time to get his hands on this thing, and only acquired it thanks to the pure luck that it wound up on the Enterprise.

But if Krall already had access to this seemingly unstoppable drone army capable of taking down Starfleet's most advanced ships, why not just attack with it? Had they not figured out the hack to shut them down, Krall could've easily used his drones to take out Yorktown. The artifact had no control over those. He figured them out all on his own, and had them the whole time. So why on Earth (or any other planet) would he wait?

Jaylah has conveniently been living in the U.S.S. Franklin for years, and used a fancy bit of cloaking tech to keep the ship hidden from Krall and his minions. But once Krall is revealed to be the long-lost captain of the Franklin, it begs the question: How did he not already know where his ship landed? Jaylah hides the ship, but it stands to reason Krall would've almost certainly known where it was.

The only potential explanation is that he may have forgotten where it was after extending his life, but that still seems thin. Krall sets up shop not far from the ship's crash site, and if Jaylah and Scotty could get this downed starship up and running in a matter of hours, you're telling us the ship's captain and whatever crew members survived the crash couldn't get a few systems online in the span of a century? Instead of living in the small village where he stationed his crew, why not live in the ship immediately after the crash? Yes, Krall's identity made for a nice reveal, but it created more questions than answers.

The teleportation technology Jaylah uses to beat off Krall's baddies, and loans to Kirk for the assault on Krall's base, is awesome. Scotty and the gang are impressed by it, but we never really learn where she got it. Is it developed by her civilization? Did she scavenge it? Considering this technology plays a critical role in the plot, you'd think we'd at least get a nod to reveal exactly where it came from.

This is just mind-boggling. Yes, it's a key plot point and they obviously need a ship, but the fact that Scotty can get this ship up and running in a matter of hours is hard to fathom. The ship—which was never designed to fly in the atmosphere—crashed into the planet 100 years ago. We saw how hard the Enterprise, with all its more modern tech, took that crash landing. So we're to believe the U.S.S. Franklin just settled in nicely and is fully functional?

Forgetting the damage it would've almost certainly sustained during a crash, how did Scotty get it running in the span of just a few hours? Obviously, yes, Jaylah has been working on the ship getting systems online in her time there, but her understanding of the technology would be limited. Also, she's just seen getting some systems up, not actually repairing what you would imagine is substantial damage to the structure of the ship itself.

So, once Scotty gets the U.S.S. Franklin back online, the bright idea to get it back in the air is to literally "kickstart it" by sliding it off a mountain? Huh? Wired tackled the physics as a homework assignment, and yeah, there are some flaws. The most obvious is the fact that we're told the U.S.S. Franklin was never designed to fly in the atmosphere.

These ships were built in space, and not designed to launch from within a planet's gravity (and we're to assume this planet has comparable gravity to Earth, since no one can Mario super-jump). So Scotty fixes this dilapidated, crashed, 100-year-old ship in a matter of hours, throws it off a mountain, and manages to fly it in an atmosphere it was never designed to function in. There's dispelling disbelief, and pure silliness. This is closer to the far end of that spectrum.

This has been a running gag through much of the modern-day Star Trek franchise, dating back to when young Kirk jammed some Beastie Boys in the car he stole as a kid. And here they are again, popping up in the data banks of the U.S.S. Franklin and serving as the loud counter-frequency to fry the alien swarm and save the day in the climactic battle scene. But realistically, the odds this band would still be relevant (even as classical music, as we're told) is unfathomable.

Music evolves at a rapid clip, and it's getting faster every day. Hundreds of years in the future, the Beastie Boys will almost certainly be less than a footnote in history, right? Can you name a few songs from more than 200 years ago? This is the future, right? If you wan to introduce a peek into the popular culture of the era, then you can't just have one 250-year-old band at the center of it.

We get a peek at the crew footage midway through the film, though Kirk and everyone else turns away before Idris Elba can be seen in the frame. But Uhura circles back to the footage late in the film, gets a look at Idris Elba's long-lost captain, and immediately deduces that the captain is actually Krall. How? He doesn't really look much like his old self, and though he apparently starts transforming into a more human appearance after absorbing the life force of more humans, none of them have really seen him make that change at that point.

It's a major leap, which seems to mostly happen because the plot demands it. Sure, fans were probably surprised when Elba's face was revealed as the captain (because Elba's role as Krall was widely publicized), but it doesn't really explain why Uhura immediately knew.

The genesis of Krall's unstoppable swarm of ships is later revealed to be some leftover mining equipment that was abandoned by the planet's former occupants, and Krall somehow manages to turn them into these ultra-powerful weapons. But... how? This technology is apparently very old (and developed by mystery aliens who didn't even care enough to take it with them), yet it's somehow virtually unstoppable when pitted against the most advanced ships in the Federation.

Previous films saw the Enterprise taking on future technology, which it makes sense would be able to cut through modern-day ships like paper, but how can these centuries-old mining drones do it? About the only thing that really makes sense is that they would possess an easily exploited flaw, since, you know, this tech is crazy old.

We learn Krall is actually a former Starfleet captain who was a military leader before the Federation was created. He's essentially bitter about the Federation being formed and moving away from a militaristic approach to space exploration. Which, sure, that makes some sense. But what exactly is he hoping to accomplish by attacking the Yorktown station? He's mad the Federation established peace, so he's going to kill a bunch of innocent people on a space station? It never really outlines his actual endgame in attacking the station. Does he think a terrorist attack will somehow start a new war? His bitterness is understandable, but his approach is straight out of the Generic Villain 101 textbook.

Jaylah gives Kirk and Scotty a tour of her "home," a.k.a. the crashed U.S.S. Franklin. While they're strolling through, Kirk runs across an old motorcycle (which is apparently parked in the mess hall?) and uses it for one of the film's biggest set pieces, in which he uses the motorcycle and Jaylah's teleportation tech during the assault on Krall's base of operations.

But this motorcycle is obviously over 100 years old (if not older), so how is it still running in perfect condition? Along with the fact that a motorcycle would've obviously broken down mechanically at this point, what is it running on? Hate to tell you, but gasoline doesn't last that long (it typically can store for around a year, max, not a century). Also, why is this motorcycle even on the ship in the first place?

Scotty gets the old teleporter in the U.S.S. Franklin back online to save Spock and Bones, and teleports the duo one at a time, for fear of scrambling their DNA. But when it comes time to rescue the crew from Krall's base, he brings back the survivors 20-plus at a time. He mentions something vague about upping the power, but c'mon, isn't that extremely negligent? If he was worried to take two people, how did he know he wouldn't create a 20-headed monster by pulling the crew out of the base? It's basically teleporter ex machina, capable of doing whatever they need when the plot demands.

When Krall makes his move and attacks Yorktown, pretty much the only people around to help stop the baddie from unleashing his virus are Kirk and the members of his team. But this is supposed to be a fully-manned, top of the line space station, so why are there no security personnel? The base is obviously aware of the attack, and we see Kirk's crew in contact with the security forces at Yorktown. But it takes Kirk chasing down Krall himself to stop the assault, and the Enterprise crew (piloting the U.S.S. Franklin) has to fly the ship up to stop the remaining drones.

How is there not better security on this base? Sure, it makes sense they'd want Kirk to get the final face-off with Krall, but you could at least have some security there backing him up, right? Weirdly enough, once the whole ordeal is over, we see a ton of Starfleet personnel come barreling out to help. Where the heck were they five minutes earlier?

Much of Krall's plan is built on the fact that he's able to hack into Starfleet and figure out where the artifact is to stage his attack on the Enterprise. He's also aware of Yorktown, and has apparently remained plugged in to follow the Federation's success. But if he figures out a way to contact civilization through the nebula, why not at least try to call for help (years or decades ago, when he figured this out)?

Also, how is Krall able to hack into Starfleet at all? He's stranded on a planet with limited technology, including extremely old mining drones and a 100-year-old crashed ship (which he apparently didn't even bother to salvage). We see him using a satellite drone to help with the hacking, but how exactly does he have the know-how to pull all this off? Before he became Krall, he was a soldier. Does the Federation not have firewalls? There's no indication he has the technical know-how to hack into Starfleet.