Star Trek Into Darkness: 10 Great Things (And 10 Not So Great Things)

By Jeffrey Stewart / May 21, 2013

8. Military Industrial Complex In The 23rd Century

Mirroring the debates amongst the most ardent fans, when the movies and spin-off series began to greatly militarize Star Trek. In this case, the opposing sides are with Admiral Robocop's escalation of arms, culminating with the USS Vengeance to fight the Klingon threat, vs. the original mandate of the Federation of peaceful exploration. Roddenberry's vision of a wagon train to the stars did not include being loaded for bear; however, implementing the hierarchy of naval service made it a question of how far will the federation go to protect ever present. That question was pushed further and further with threats like the Borg and Dominion constantly engaging the federation in the later series, and with Section 31 which was referenced right in this movie. So it is great to see the conflict presented in this rebooted series.

7. Easter Eggs A Plenty

Let's make a list shall we, of all the Star Trek Tropes we have all come to known over the years? The Prime Directive as stated previously, "The Needs of the many outweigh the few", Kronos as the Klingon Home-world, Vulcan Mind-Meld with Pike's dying thoughts, Section 31 as a top-secret autonomous covert unit of Starfleet, Chekov's Redshirt moment, Dr. Carol Marcus, Uhura speaking Klingon, Khan, "I'm a Doctor Jim, not a...", Nurse Chapel, Augmented Humans, Power-hungry Admiral, Scotty disables an advanced Starfleet ship, Leonard Nimoy, main character sacrifices to save the ship, "Khaaaan!", Tribbles, character resurrection, the original 'To Bodley Go Speech', and the Star Trek musical cue 'the horns'... did I miss any?