The Viewer's Commentary

Oooooo… Aside from the now-cliche “BWAAAAAHM”-like sounds, a la Inception, this first teaser trailer for the new Star Trek movie, Star Trek Into Darkness, looks quite awesome (as all teaser trailers aim to be, ’cause they don’t show much plot).

What can we tell about the new movie from this trailer? Well, how about the fact that it looks to be very earthbound — or, at the very least, a planet with a large humanoid population… but most likely Earth. More evidence to this fact is that we also see what is most likely the Enterprise rising up from a large body of water. How crazy is that?!

The still-unnamed villain, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is obviously holding a grudge against someone, though whether it’s Starfleet in general, someone on the Enterprise crew, or some combination of the two is obviously not revealed in this brief trailer. And, frankly, I hope it’s the first one, at least initially, ’cause if it’s too much of a personal grudge, at least initially, too many parallels could possibly be drawn between this film and Wrath of Khan.

Speaking of which, we also get to see Kirk fighting someone who possibly has some sort of superhuman strength, based on the fact that he’s leaping through the air and swinging around a very large, heavy-looking weapon. Could Cumberbatch and/or his henchmen be genetically enhanced, like Khan? Or has he encountered some anomaly that has caused these enhancements, like Gary Mitchell in the original series episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before”? I hope it’s someone original, but I wouldn’t mind a few nods and references to either character, either. Gary Mitchell already featured in the comic tie-in series to J.J. Abrams’ films, and so that would be kind of redundant anyway and would suck for the comic creators, being written out of canon so fast and so definitively.

And, finally, who’s the blonde girl being played by Alice Eve who we only see fleeting glimpses of? A few possibilities exist in some original characters that haven’t yet been introduced to the Abrams films: Yeoman Janice Rand is one possibility. Given the blue uniform, however, my guess is that it’s Nurse Christine Chapel, a character originally played by Gene Roddenbarry’s wife, Majel Barrett and mentioned off screen in the first film.

Of course, we’ll probably get no official answers until the movie comes out, as it should be. But it’s fun to speculate, all the same! And in case you didn’t get enough of the trailer, why not watch this Japanese version, which has an extra bit of nostalgia at the end that will be familiar to many Trek fans: