I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the Star Trek sequel. I liked the first movie, but didn’t love it. No matter how much JJ Abrams tried to hide it, I knew who the villain would be (and that fed into my reluctance to see it). But, in the end, I went and saw it. While there were some good parts, overall I wasn’t thrilled with it. Warning, there will be spoilers below as I talk about the issues I had with Star Trek: Into Darkness.

God damn it. Abrams did Khan and he did it badly. Now, he hired the right person as Khan. Benedict Cumberbatch was an awesome Khan. He was perfect for the role. Too bad there were too many plot holes and idiotic call backs to The Wrath of Khan, that I couldn’t enjoy it. Let’s start a the beginning, with Kirk hiding the Enterprise under water so he could drop Spock into a volcano to save a planet without the natives knowing that they exist. Kirk tries to hide the details of the mission from Starfleet, because he broke the Prime Directive multiple different ways, but Spock rats him out. So we have a Captain lying on official reports and his First Officer going over the Captain’s head with his report. And these two are supposed to be such great friends by the end of the movie. This leads to Admiral Pike taking back the Enterprise and Kirk being demoted back down to First Officer (with Spock being moved to another ship).

Benedict Cumberbatch offers to cure a Starfleet officer’s dying daughter in exchange for the unnamed officer to blow up himself and a secret Starfleet research center. Starfleet brass then meets with the Captains and First Officers of all the close by ships in a secret meeting room 30 floors up with windows and a view to the outside. This makes it easy for Benedict Cumberbatch (who now has a name of James Harrison) to grab a small ship and shoot the living hell out of the room, killing Admiral Pike and others. Fortunately Kirk was the only one who figured out that the meeting location was a really bad idea (and what kind of organization has a specific, unsecured meeting room in their organization rules). Harrison is able to use a portable transporter to transport himself directly to the Klingon homeworld, Qo’noS. In related news, it’s surprising (in the 23rd Century) how easy it is for a Starfleet Engineer to remove and analyze crime scene evidence.

Kirk is given the Enterprise back and authorized by Admiral Marcus to hang out by the Neutral Zone and fire these brand new secret missiles at Harrison (since they’ve someone determined that the area he’s at on Qo’noS is not populated. Scotty leaves because he’s reluctant to bring on these new secret missiles since he has no clue what they are and what effect they’ll have on the ship. The crew is joined on the Enterprise by a surprise new Science Officer, Carol Wallace. Spock quickly determines that she’s really Carol Marcus, Admiral Marcus’ daughter, but doesn’t actually tell anyone that the new science officer forged her orders, is using a pseudonym and is playing around with the brand new missiles.The crew shames Kirk into ignoring orders and instead going to capture Harrison (which is really just a chance to show Harrison single-handedly destroying a group of Klingons. It turns out that someone sabotaged the Enterprise. Then Bones and Carol solve the missile mystery, Harrison has put his crew (who are in hibernation) into them, since he is…Khan. And of course, the super genius Khan realizes that the best way to protect his crew is to put them into an explosive missile and then leave them with his enemies. Which, of course, brings up the question of how do you fit a 6 foot tall person into a 6 foot long missile and while leaving in explosives and fuel and navigation systems, not to mention how stupid were Khan’s co-workers that they couldn’t figure out what they were building with the missiles.

Kirk has Scotty (still on Earth) go to a secret location given to him by Khan, where he finds a secret dreadnaught that Admiral Marcus will be using to attack Kirk. The Enterprise to escape after the dreadnaught attack, but the new ship is able to catch up and attack the Enterprise while in warp. Scotty turns off the dreadnaught, allowing the Enterprise to breathe. Kirk’s plan is to take Khan and the two of them with jet through space to enter a small escape hatch (the existence of which makes no sense) and sneak up on the Admiral. Kirk is surprised when Khan doublecrosses him, but Spock isn’t because he talks to old Spock (original Spock?) who tells him that Khan is dangerous. The rest of the movie is Kirk taking Spock’s role in dying from the end of Wrath in Khan (with Spock getting the iconic “Khaaaaannnnnnnnn” scream) and a silly action sequence of Spock and Khan fighting on top of moving ships in Earth’s atmosphere (with Uhura helping out since sending your communications officer over to help out against a genetically engineered super being is always a better idea than a sending a security officer). Bones is able to save Kirk (who was dead for 10, maybe 20 minutes tops) with a sample of Khan’s blood (which was previously used to resuscitate a dead tribble, since what else do you do with a blood sample of a genetically engineered super being).

The biggest issue I had with the movie, was the friendship between Kirk and Spock. Until they mentioned they were friends, I had no reason to believe them. The friendship seemed to exist only for plot reasons and was so thinly drawn that it waters down the impact of Kirk’s death scene . Abrams seems to want it both ways. He wants to create a brand new mythology with these existing characters, but also wants to use the old mythology to help propel their story. Star Trek fans know Kirk and Spock are friends from the 40+ years of their history. Viewers who know nothing about the series will only know they are friends because the script tells them. Overall, it was a decent action movie with characters that I like. I just wished it was a better movie. Mildly Recommended.