10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek Into Darkness
6. Dumb Silent, Dumb Deep
When I first saw the colossal Kelvin timeline Enterprise rising from the sea it brought to mind Kirk’s reaction to the refit ship from Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek — The Motion Picture: “Kirk searched for some phrase, some description that expressed what he was feeling. Was she like a lovely woman? No; at this moment she was more than that to him. A fable? A myth come alive? Yes, that was it! She was as Aphrodite must have been when Zeus first raised her up from the sea, naked and shockingly beautiful.”
Starship p0rn indeed.
Clumsy Rodden-writing aside, it makes no sense for the Enterprise to park underwater. How long has it been down there? Did the shuttle launch from under the sea like the Seaview’s FS-1 Flying Sub? Hey, if starships are submersible the next TV series could be Voyager To Bottom of the Sea!
If the ship needed to be nearby but unseen, why didn’t they just phaser a side of the volcano and blow a lot of dust in the air to obscure the ship? A dozen reasons could have been invented to rationalize the starship playing Red October, like it could have been using phasers at point-blank range to drill holes into the volcano’s undersea root to vent lava into the sea to relieve pressure, buying time for Spock to forge his solution. But, no.
As happens too often in these films the Enterprise is underwater just because it looks cool.