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. 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 an 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.

RDE 27/VII/16, slightly expanded 8Sep21