Saturday, May 18, 2013

Star Trek Into Darkness Easter Eggs [SPOILERS]

Here are the ones I noticed; feel free to mention any I missed in the comments.

* The uniforms worn by Admiral Marcus and the other admirals at Starfleet HQ evoke Kirk's Admiral's uniform from the opening minutes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

* Kirk sleeps with two Caitians; this cat-like race also produced one of the members of the bridge crew on Star Trek: The Animated Series.

* Sulu briefly takes command and ponders a possible future as a captain in Starfleet, saying, "Captain has a nice ring to it." In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (and a Voyager episode with a flashback to that same time period), Sulu was captain of the USS Excelsior.

* Section 31 is responsible for reviving and manipulating Khan. Section 31 is the same super-secret Starfleet black ops division that recruited and manipulated Dr. Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

* The Kelvin Archive, target of the first terror attack and secretly a base for Section 31, refers to the USS Kelvin, the ship briefly captained by George Kirk in the previous film. It's likely called The Kelvin Archive because Nero's attack on the Kelvin prompted Starfleet's move to a more militaristic stance.

* Kirk craves, and is eventually granted, a five-year mission. He later references this in his "Captain's Oath," which is nearly word-for-word Shatner's opening dialogue from The Original Series, except with the Next Generation modification of "...where no one has gone before," instead of "...where no man has gone before."

* Among Admiral Marcus's collection of model spaceships is Zephram Cochrane's warp-capable breakthrough and a Vulcan starship from Enterprise, as well as the previously-mentioned USS Kelvin.

* When Chekov takes over engineering and has to wear a red shirt, he looks distinctly uncomfortable. Red-shirted crew members are notoriously disposable.

* Security Officer Cupcake, from the 2009 film and the IDW comics, appears.

* The Mudd incident from the IDW comics is mentioned, and her ship is used in Kirk's covert op on the Klingon homeworld. (That's right, her ship. You are reading IDW's in-canon Abramsverse Trek comics, right?)

* The Klingon mining facility on Praxis appears to have exploded decades earlier than in the original timeline (as seen in The Undiscovered Country).

* McCoy uses his "I'm a doctor, not a..." line.

* Leonard Nimoy cameos as Spock asks his older, more experienced self about Khan when the ship and every life on it as threatened.

* Chris Doohan, son of Scotty Prime actor James Doohan, appears again (he was in the '09 film) as a transporter operator.

* Carol Marcus mentions Christine Chapel, who in this universe apparently felt the need to head to deep space after a fling with James T. Kirk. In the original series, Nurse Chapel was  key member of Dr. McCoy's medical staff, and played by Majel Barrett, wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

* Chris Hemsworth and Jennifer Morrison are listed in the credits, and apparently their voices are among those Kirk hears (or imagines hearing) when he wakes up from being, um, dead. They played Kirk's parents George and Winona in the 2009 movie. (From MTV.com.)

* In the film's final scene, Kirk welcomes Carol Marcus to the Enterprise family, and Marcus responds that "It's nice to have a family." In the original timeline, the two have a son together, David Marcus. (From MTV.com.)

* The Daystrom Institute is mentioned. Richard Daystrom was a scientist on the original series.

* Jonathan Archer's USS Enterprise (NX-01) is visible among Marcus's model ships. (From the comments to this post.)

5 comments:

  1. Among the spaceships Marcus has on display is the Enterprise NX-01.

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  2. Thanks, Mark! I've added that to the list.

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  3. I believe you also see the XCV 330 Enterprise first displayed along with the pictures of other historical Enterprises in ST:TMP.

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  4. here's some more:
    1. scotty disabling the enemy ship
    2. the furry thing on bones' laboratory that he is experimenting on
    3. Uhura speaking klingon

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  5. I liked how Admiral Marcus had a model of his top secret ship sitting on his desk where he held staff meetings! And how Carol said it was "Nice to have a family" right after her father's head was crushed by Khan.

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