STAR TREK BEYOND
STAR TREK BEYOND. Justin Lin, dir. Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, credited script (see IMDb for uncredited writers).[1] Thomas E. Sanders, production design. USA: Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot et al. (prod.) / Paramount Pictures (US dist.), 2016. See IMDb for additional production and distribution information.[2]
What H. Bruce Franklin called The Wonder City of the Future appears in a huge space habitat, the thoroughly Modern(e) Yorktown (discussed by Gary Westfahl near the end of his review in Locus on line).[3] Visually and narratively opposed to the Yorktown are retro/Industrial postmodern places and weapons of the enemy. Aside from a super weapon that becomes important for the climax of the film, the main enemy weapon, however, is of the swarm variety — explicitly associated with bees (and spikes) — with the individuals of the swarm coordinated through a "cyberpathic" link. Interestingly, if perhaps not significantly, the link is broken when "Kirk’s team broadcasts aggressive vintage rock by VHF" radio[4] in what becomes eventually a near-literalization of, and punning on, the expression "wall of sound."[5]
In a somewhat earlier sequence, Kirk creates a diversion/distraction by riding, let's say, an improbable 20th-c. appearing motorcycle through the enemy camp,[6] with the image of cycle and rider mirrored and multiplied by some device never really explained.
If these visual and aural tropes have any thematic significance, it was missed by the initial author of this wiki entry.
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Most enemy troops appear robotic or like soldiers in fighting suits: cf. and contrast mobile infantry powered armor in Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers and Haldeman's The Forever War et seq.; also cf. and contrast Imperial Storm Troopers for much of the STAR WARS saga.
Especially at Yorktown, note hexagons and some octagons;[7] and on the old Federation starship Franklin, note the technological breakthrough of shoulder harnesses at seats, a technology apparently lost or forgotten in later years in the universe/galaxy of the series (our tone here is ironic, making reference to early Star Trek shows when The Enterprise would go into rough space, so to speak — or battle — without the bridge crew's buckling up or even having seatbelts to buckle).
Discussed well and usefully by Emad El-Din Aysha, SFRA Review #319 (Winter 2017): pp. 20-22; for the theme of this wiki, see especially p. 20 for a reference to BEYOND'S antagonist's "invincible army of mindless drones" compared to "swarms of bees."[8][9]
RDE 27/VII/16; slightly expanded 8Sep21, 3Oct21; 14Mar23