Star Trek Into Darkness: 10 Things That Make No Sense
10. Under The Sea
Arguably the best part of the 2009 Star Trek movie was the opening sequence. As Nero crippled the USS Kelvin, Kirk was born within the carnage and his father crashed the Kelvin into Neros vessel so the rest of the crew could escape. It was dramatic, full of emotion and a great way to start a film.
Star Trek: Into Darkness begins with another action packed opener. We see the Enterprise crew in the middle of a mission to save a planet and its inhabitants from an erupting volcano. Kirk and McCoy distract the locals while Spock is lowered into the volcano to set off a device that will cool the angry eruption. The scene is well paced and fun. It has the spirit of the Original Series even if it lacks the punch of the opener in 2009. However, there are some elements that make no sense.
This scene was part of the preview attached to the beginning of The Hobbit. Watching it at the time, one bit bugged me and it continues to do so. Kirk hides the Enterprise under water so that the primitive locals dont see it and in turn contravene the Prime directive, the Starfleet rule that forbids interference in the natural evolution of a species. So to avoid that happening, Kirk orders the Enterprise to be concealed underwater while they go about saving the planet.
The thing I don't understand is why would he go to the trouble of hiding the ship underwater? The inhabitants of the planet are at the stage where they would worship a firework if it went off in front of them, so why not leave it in orbit? It makes zero sense to take the ship down and then go to all the trouble of concealing it under the ocean. When I saw the preview, I was hoping that in the final cut of the film, there will be a logical reason for why the Enterprise was underwater but sadly no.
The image of it rising out of the water did look amazing; like all the special effects in this movie, that was impressive and full credit to ILM for putting it together, but it seems aesthetics is the only reason for putting the Enterprise underwater. You can imagine that the idea of the Enterprise rising from the depths of the ocean was mentioned during a script meeting and they ran with it. No reason given, its underwater.
First time I watched this sequence, it did leave me worried about the rest of the film, the 2009 movie was full of illogical inconsistencies and the worry was that this film would too. Enterprise underwater aside, Im happy to say Into Darkness had less dumb shit than its predecessor but the focus of creating great looking effects and action sequences at the expense of a logical structure in the script was clearly evident. They didnt expect the average cinema-goer to question why the Enterprise is underwater because they think the average popcorn muncher is a moron who isnt worried about small details like this. But this being Star Trek, a franchise that used to pride itself on creating a believable vision of the future, Kirk ordering the Enterprise to be hidden underwater sticks out like a sore thumb and will undoubtedly confuse and annoy long term trekkies.