The 1:11 long Star Trek Into Darkness teaser trailer released on You Tube today starts like a lamb and ends like a lion. Scenes of what must certainly be the 23rd century San Francisco skyline (yes, a modernized version of the Transamerica Pyramid and Bank of America monolith are there) dazzle the eye, then the camera pans to a ceremony held outside of what must be Starfleet Academy. Four airborne vehicles quickly streak overhead, while Benedict Cumberbatch provides a minacious narrative warning us that, essentially, we aren’t in Kansas any more. Suddenly, order becomes mayhem, while Cumberbatch builds to a climax during which he regales us with his pernicious intentions.
The sights and scenes fly by at warp speed, beginning with a surprised Kirk, then fading to a scene of Kirk and Sulu running through semi-dense, autumn-colored foliage and jumping off a high precipice to blue water far below. Are they running from something, or are they in pursuit of someone? The scene then cuts to Cumberbatch, armed with an enormous weapon, leaping from a ledge in the bombed-out ruins of a domed building. He cuts down his enemies as he lands on the lower level – a jump that would surely kill a mortal man – while a bedraggled and astonished-looking Kirk and Uhura watch on.
More flashing scenes of disaster and destruction tantalize: a large structure of some sort (perhaps a starship) burning in a pool of fire, reminiscent of the fiery environs on Mustafar, where Obi-Wan Kenobi thrashed Darth Vader; a pair of Starfleet warp drive nacelles emerging from the water, attached to an unknown type of craft; total inertial dampener failure on a starship, with crew members flying through the air like rag dolls; explosions, and what looks like a Constitution-class class starship crashing into the drink. And that is only the beginning.
In one scene of the trailer, the Cumberbatch character declares, “I have returned…to have my vengeance!” I can just imagine Shatner’s Admiral Kirk tilting his head and asking, “The vengeance of Khan?” Now, the Cumberbatch character appears to be dressed in a dark-colored Starfleet uniform without insignia. Could that mean he is or was a cadet? Is he someone who tangled with Kirk before, as the official Paramount synopsis suggests? Maybe he is an alternative Gary Mitchell, who ran into a wholly different kind of barrier. Or perhaps he is Khan, recently awakened from his sleep aboard the DY-100 he stole. Remember that in the TOS episode “Space Seed,” Khan was issued a Starfleet uniform, becoming one of the few guest red-shirts that did not end up dead.
Does Cumberbatch’s character have superhuman strength or a pair of uber gravity boots that let him leap tall houses in a single bound? Whatever his abilities, the STID baddie manages to wreak havoc on Starfleet ships and buildings, sending hordes of people running and screaming in all directions. He is an angry man that is determined to punish apparently everyone in his path. However, his identity still remains undetermined and the subject of great speculation.
Whoever he is, it seems the movie must include a sequence of flashbacks or explanatory conversations explaining Kirk’s prior run-in with the bad guy, whether he is Gary Mitchell, Ben Finney or, for that matter, the reincarnation of his father George Kirk’s evil fraternal twin. My money is still on Khan, because he has returned to have his vengeance, and when he fled Earth two centuries earlier, he was not a happy camper. If anyone has motive to destroy, it is Khan Noonien Singh. Moreover, he is exceptionally smart, incredibly strong and capable of great wrath. Whatever his identity, I just hope there’s enough left of Starfleet to keep Kirk and Company from being relegated to escorting shipments of quadrotriticale.
