Mythology Gag / Star Trek Beyond

• Mostly to the Original Series:
  • Kirk gets in a fight with some aliens and returns to the ship mostly unscathed, except for a ripped shirt. Several other characters note this is a regular occurrence, which it was in the original series (it happened roughly 1 in 5 episodes).
  • Kirk mentions in his captain's log at the beginning of the film that after three years into their five year mission, things are starting to feel "episodic".
  • As well, the crew has hit year three of the five-year mission and Kirk feels like he should take up a cozy desk job as an admiral. Star Trek: The Original Series only lasted three years and when we see Kirk next in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, he's an admiral.
  • He also says it's the 966th day of of their mission, referring to TOS's original premiere in September 1966, or 9/66.
  • The film's plot detail about an advanced and deadly technology that was left behind by an unknown civilization that either departed or went extinct was a staple of The Original Series.
  • In an early scene, Kirk and McCoy have birthday drinks, mention illegal liquor and bad eyesight, and discuss Kirk's future in Starfleet, a la Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. A subplot in the film concerns Kirk wrestling with the decision to accept a promotion to admiral, which mirrors Kirk's own discomfort with the rank of admiral in Khan.
    • The scene is also reminiscent of the ship's surgeon counseling a morose Pike over drinks in "The Cage."
    • Kirk mentions picking up Saurian Brandy at their stop at Thasus.
    • In the same scene, Kirk laments about being one year older than the age as his father was when he died and the struggle of living up to his legacy. During production of Beyond, Chris Pine was the same age that William Shatner was during filming of Star Trek: The Original Series' first season. McCoy comments that at least he has a full head of hair.
  • The Enterprise is destroyed in the third film set in the Kelvin timeline, just as the "prime" Enterprise was destroyed in the third film in that timeline. As a direct result of that, Kirk is made Captain of the Enterprise-A, despite wanting to be or being an Admiral at the start of the third film.
  • One poster for the film is styled so it looks almost exactly like the poster for the very first theatrical Trek film. Another poster is very similar to the main poster for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which was the farewell to the original Star Trek cast.
  • The name of Starbase Yorktown harkens back to Gene Roddenberry's original proposal to NBC for Star Trek, where it was the name of the vessel that would eventually be called the USS Enterprise. Additionally, the USS Yorktown was one of the starships crippled by the Probe in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which Roddenberry theorized was rechristened USS Enterprise-A.
  • When Krall sees Kirk & co coming after him in the U.S.S. Franklin, he whispers "my old friend", reminiscent of Khan's Terms of Endangerment from The Wrath of Khan. Only it turns out he's not referring to Kirk, but rather the Franklin, his old ship.
  • At the film's end the crew take command of the Enterprise-A, and it has many of the aesthetic refinements of the original refit Enterprise.
  • One of the legends as to why the U.S.S. Franklin was lost was that it was engulfed by a green energy hand. The giant green hand of Apollo even appears during the ending credits scroll as one of the various planets and space phenomena the Enterprise-A passes by.
  • At the end, we hear Chekov telling a party guest that "Scotch was inwented by a little old lady in Russia".
  • The TOS crew portrait in the late Ambassador Spock's possessions is from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
  • The USS Franklin's registry number is NX-326. Leonard Nimoy's birthday was March 26, or 3/26.
  • Spock and McCoy apparently being cornered by a enemy craft before being beamed aboard to find their shipmates is similar to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, when Kirk was apparently cornered by a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, before being beamed aboard to find Spock in command.
  • Sulu replying to a query on whether he can fly a ship with "Are you kidding me?" is straight out of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
  • Bones referring to old medicine as being from the Dark Ages, just like in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  • After being marooned on an uncharted alien world, Krall takes possession of a vast legion of hive-minded humanoid worker robots left behind by some unknown alien precursors who had previously had colony there. The same thing happened to Original Series villain Harry Mudd prior to his second appearance, and though their tactics differ considerably, both use their new armies to render the entire crew of the Enterprise similarly marooned as the first part of a short-sighted revenge plot.
  • The uniforms worn by Commodore Paris and Captain Kirk near the end suggest strongly the much-hated gray sweatsuits of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  • Kirk catches on to the fact that Kalara is manipulating him much in the same way Martia was trying to manipulate Kirk In Undiscovered Country and in both films Kirk is able to out-maneuver both.
  • We see on the dedication plaque of the USS Franklin that it is Starship - class. This was also a designation in early TOS for what became known as the Constitution class.
  • The Starfleet uniforms worn by the Enterprise crew have been redesigned to be closer to the TOS, with plain fabric rather than the textured look of the previous two Kelvin films.
• To Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • The saucer section of the Enterprise separates and crash-lands on a planet, which happened to the future prime-universe Enterprise-D in Star Trek: Generations.
  • The isn't the first time the crew of an Enterprise hacks a cybernetic network to stop an invasion. Scotty even suggests using a transporter; in "The Best of Both Worlds," the Borg hive mind was said to be similar to transporter technology.
  • The movie's plot (a thought-dead 22nd century Starfleet captain lures the Enterprise to the planet he's trapped on for revenge) is a somewhat inverted form of the TNG season 5 episode "Power Play." In TNG, it turned out the alleged Starfleet crew were actually alien criminals, whereas here the supposed aliens were really a heavily mutated Starfleet crew.
  • Krall wants to unleash a devastating mutagenic weapon against the Federation, which was also Shinzon's plan in Star Trek: Nemesis. And like the Remans in that film, he Looks Like Orlok. And Shinzon and Krall were both humans imprisoned/marooned to hellish existences on alien worlds for most of their entire lives, and ceased to see themselves as belonging to the human race.
    • His backstory resembles Captain Maxwell's from "The Wounded." Both were highly capable, well-respected Starfleet war heroes who tragically could not adapt to a peace time existence after the end of their respective conflicts.
  • At the end, the crew recites a modified Captain's Oath — Captain Jean-Luc Picard's opening narration from the titles of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • Kirk and Paris wonder whether Krall was always evil or lost his sense of right and wrong as Edison over the years, much like how "The Drumhead" ended with Picard and Worf wondering whether Admiral Norah Satie was always evil or lost her better judgement over the years.
• To Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • The ring-architecture of the Yorktown starbase is at least externally reminiscent of Deep Space Nine (and its replacement in the Star Trek Novel 'Verse).
  • The treacherous nebula nearby that hides Altamid is also quite similar to The Badlands, which were situated near DS9 and wherein Voyager was swept into the Delta Quadrant.
  • By the climax of the movie, Krall has reverted mostly to human form by absorbing the life-force of numerous Enterprise crew members, and then he dons a Starfleet uniform as disguise, giving him a disturbing resemblance to Captain Benjamin Sisko in his TOS-era uniform from "Trials and Tribble-ations".
• To Star Trek: Voyager:
  • Starfleet Commodore Paris is a minor character in the movie. (Given that Voyager's Tom Paris was suggested to be the latest in a long line of Parises to serve in Starfleet, this may be more than a coincidence in-universe as well.)
  • Scotty is concerned that the Franklin's transporters might accidentally merge a Vulcan and a highly emotional person who gets on his nerves. It's been known to happen.
  • Krall's life-draining Touch of Death weapon shrivels and mummifies his targets in the process, much like the wrathful nucleogenic beings that were once encountered by the crews of the USS Equinox and USS Voyager. Life-draining technology was also used to convert the bodies of said nucleogenic beings into fuel to speed the travel of the Equinox back towards Earth.
  • In Star Trek: Voyager, season 3, episode 4 "The Swarm", the crew deal with a very similar swarm of xenophobic aliens all flying individual vessels.
• To Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • The Xindi conflict and the Romulan War are mentioned by Krall once his backstory comes to light.
  • In a similar vein, as Balthazar Edison, Krall was once a MACO officer.
  • The design of the USS Franklin, and the uniform from the ship that Spock wears after being treated for his injury, are both heavily based on the titular ship and uniforms of Star Trek: Enterprise instead of the aesthetics of the new film series. It makes sense as the ship dates from the period between that series and the new movies.
  • Since the Franklin technically is a ship from *before* the NX class (albeit presumably upgraded as time went on), there are also references to some of the technologies the NX-01 surpassed or abandoned during the series, such as transporters that aren't human-safe and spatial torpedoes (which the *Enterprise* in the series discarded very early on for more advanced photonic torpedo weaponry).
• To the Star Trek novels and comics:
  • Balthazar Edison came to believe that the Federation deliberately abandoned him and his crew, just as Nero in Star Trek (2009) (or, at least as shown in the film's prequel comic-book, Countdown) believed that the Federation deliberately allowed Romulus to be destroyed, which fueled both of their revenge obsessions. Also, both Krall and Nero, along with their followers, might have genuinely believed that destroying the Federation would save their respective peoples, except Krall/Edison was originally a human.
  • The story of the Franklin bears some similarities to what happened to the NX-02 Columbia in the Star Trek Novel 'Verse: the ship was lost during the mid-22nd century and then found generations later, crash-landed and deserted on a remote planet.