ChaosTrek Counts Down the 12 Biggest Mistakes in Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek 2009 brought this franchise back from the dead, gave us a great new cast, and created an entire alternate timeline where anything could happen. Then Star Trek Into Darkness took all that freedom and used it to remake a movie we had already seen. I'm counting down the 12 biggest mistakes in Star Trek Into Darkness, a sequel to the 12 biggest mistakes list I did from Star Trek 2009. I'm starting with smaller problems and working toward the decision that dragged the entire movie down with it.

12. Hiding the Enterprise underwater on Nibiru defeats its own purpose

I understand why the filmmakers did it. Watching a massive starship rise out of the ocean looks cool, and this movie loves doing things because they look cool. But the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. The crew is trying to avoid being seen by the primitive inhabitants of Nibiru, so they hide one of the largest ships in Starfleet beneath the ocean, apparently because orbit was unavailable that day. The Enterprise can transport people from space, launch shuttles, and communicate across ridiculous distances, but for this mission it had to land in the water close enough for the locals to watch it rise out of the ocean.

That is exactly what happens. Kirk saves Spock, exposes the Enterprise to the entire civilization, and violates the Prime Directive in spectacular fashion. The mistake isn't Kirk saving his friend, it's creating a plan where the only way to remain hidden is to put the Enterprise in the one place where everybody can eventually see it. It's a perfect preview of the movie ahead: visually impressive, moving incredibly fast, and kind of hoping nobody stops long enough to ask why it's happening.

11. Turning an illegal Klingon mission into relationship therapy

Kirk, Spock, and Uhura are flying directly into Klingon territory on an illegal mission that could start a war. So naturally this is when Uhura decides they need to discuss their relationship with Spock. There are Klingon patrols everywhere, they're carrying weapons Starfleet officially doesn't even know exist, and one mistake could trigger a conflict between two galactic powers. But before any of that, they need to settle why Spock didn't consider Uhura's feelings when he was preparing to die inside a volcano.

The underlying argument isn't completely invalid. Spock's willingness to sacrifice himself without acknowledging what that would do to Uhura is worth exploring. The problem is timing. It makes three intelligent officers sound like they forgot they were flying into enemy territory and accidentally wandered into couples counseling. Worse, it reduces Uhura, an elite communications officer about to negotiate face to face with the Klingons, to a frustrated girlfriend trying to get her emotionally unavailable boyfriend to talk. There was room for that relationship conflict. The middle of a classified suicide mission probably wasn't it.

10. The Klingons get wasted after all that setup

Into Darkness finally takes us to the Klingon home world and then does nothing with it. The 2009 movie established that Nero had destroyed 47 Klingon ships, that the Federation and the Klingon Empire were already drifting toward war, and that Admiral Marcus was actively trying to push them over the edge. That should have been the perfect opportunity to make the Klingons feel like the next enormous threat hanging over the timeline.

Instead, Kirk's team lands, gets surrounded by a patrol, and watches Khan wipe out nearly every Klingon by himself. They exist mostly to demonstrate that Khan is extremely good at killing people, while the audience barely learns anything about this version of the Empire. Their redesigned appearance is hidden under helmets for most of the sequence, they have no meaningful leader, and the consequences of Starfleet officers shooting up their territory disappear immediately. The movie keeps warning us that war with the Klingons could destroy the Federation, then treats them like disposable henchmen in somebody else's action scene.

9. Carol Marcus gets wasted too, reduced to an underwear scene

This is the alternate timeline version of one of the most important people in Kirk's life in the original universe. Carol was a brilliant scientist, the mother of Kirk's son, and one of the people responsible for the Genesis device. Bringing her onto the Enterprise should have opened the door to a major character who could grow alongside Kirk and eventually reshape the timeline. Alice Eve gives Carol intelligence, confidence, and enough personality to stand out immediately. She sneaks aboard under a false identity, identifies the danger inside the torpedoes, and openly defies her own father.

There's a much better movie sitting inside that character, but Into Darkness mainly uses her to explain the plot, scream when her father dies, and take part in one completely unnecessary underwear shot that became more memorable than anything she actually contributed. Then the franchise basically forgot she exists. She doesn't return for Beyond, her connection with Kirk goes nowhere, and one of the Kelvin timeline's most promising additions becomes another piece of the series that was never properly used.

8. Scotty solves the plot by accident

The entire crew survives because Scotty happens to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Scotty resigns after refusing to approve the mysterious torpedoes, and honestly he's valid, since Kirk is loading 72 classified weapons onto the Enterprise without knowing what's inside them or whether they could destroy the ship. Scotty's apparently the only person aboard who remembers engineering rules still exist.

Then Kirk sends him coordinates connected to the mission. Scotty investigates, discovers a secret shipyard near Jupiter, and watches the USS Vengeance prepare to launch. He sneaks aboard the top secret Section 31 warship, reaches the bridge area, and sabotages it the exact moment the Enterprise needs him to. There's no breadcrumb trail, no clever investigation uncovering Marcus's conspiracy. He's given a set of coordinates, flies over, and the whole plot is waiting for him behind Jupiter. It's entertaining because Simon Pegg is great, but when your heroes escape certain death because the engineer who quit the movie accidentally found the villain's secret superweapon, the screenplay may be doing some really heavy lifting.

7. Kirk has to learn the same captaincy lesson all over again

Kirk spends another movie proving he's not ready to be captain before becoming captain again. The 2009 film told a clear story: Kirk begins as a reckless kid who thinks instinct can replace discipline, gets humbled, learns to trust his crew, and earns command of the Enterprise. It happens extremely quickly, but the emotional arc works because we watch him grow into the responsibility.

Into Darkness opens by showing that Kirk is still lying in official reports, ignoring regulations, violating the Prime Directive, and treating the captain's chair like he won it in a bar fight. Pike loses the Enterprise because he vouched for him, and Kirk is stripped of command again. There could have been a meaningful consequence. Instead, Pike dies, Kirk gets the ship right back, ignores orders again, and spends the rest of the movie learning that revenge and reckless decisions are dangerous. So what did he learn the first time? This version of Kirk didn't need to become perfect overnight, but a sequel should have moved his development forward instead of resetting him to replay the same arc before getting promoted again at the end. At this rate, Starfleet should have installed a revolving door outside the captain's quarters.

6. Admiral Marcus has the worst secret plan in Starfleet

Marcus believes war with the Klingons is inevitable. He secretly builds the Vengeance, militarizes Starfleet through Section 31, and uses Khan to develop weapons. When Khan turns against him, Marcus sends Kirk to the planet with 72 experimental torpedoes and orders him to fire them into Federation space. The apparent plan is that Kirk kills Khan, the Klingons discover the attack, war begins, and Marcus gets the conflict he wanted.

But this plan depends on everybody doing exactly what Marcus expects. Kirk cannot arrest Khan, Scotty cannot question the torpedoes, Spock cannot object to an execution without trial, Carol cannot reveal who she is, nobody can open a torpedo, and Khan cannot explain the conspiracy. The Enterprise has to survive long enough to fire but stay damaged enough not to escape. If Kirk had simply followed the order and launched all 72, he would have killed Khan's frozen crew and removed the leverage Marcus needed against him. Khan himself may have survived anyway, since the torpedoes were aimed at an uninhabited region where the crew only believed he was hiding. Marcus built the most advanced ship in Starfleet, yet his master plan relies on dozens of people never asking a single follow-up question.

5. Khan's own torpedo plan makes even less sense

Khan says he smuggled his 72 genetically engineered followers into the weapons because Admiral Marcus was holding them hostage. But how exactly was that supposed to work? These were prototype long range torpedoes stored inside a secure Section 31 facility. Khan replaces their fuel compartments with cryogenic tubes and somehow expects to gain control of all 72 weapons, transport them somewhere safe, and revive his people without anyone inspecting them. When his plan is discovered, he escapes to the planet and leaves every person he cares about behind.

Marcus then places those same torpedoes on the Enterprise and sends them to be fired directly at Khan, which is an incredible coincidence. Khan had no way of knowing Kirk would receive the weapons, no way of knowing the Enterprise crew would open one, and no reason to believe Marcus would simply destroy them. He eventually surrenders after learning the torpedoes are on board, but that only happens because his failed escape and Marcus's ridiculous war plan collide at the exact same moment. The reveal that Khan's crew is hidden inside the weapons works the first time you see it. After that, it feels like the screenplay put 72 people into 72 mystery boxes and hoped the audience wouldn't open either of them.

4. Crashing the Vengeance into San Francisco just for spectacle

Khan crashes the USS Vengeance directly into San Francisco, killing what had to be thousands of people, and the movie barely stops to acknowledge it. The sequence looks enormous. The Vengeance tears through buildings, destroys entire city blocks, and turns Starfleet headquarters into the finish line for an action scene. Visually it gives the movie the massive final disaster every summer blockbuster apparently needed at that time. Emotionally it meant nothing.

We don't stay with the destruction, we don't see Kirk or Spock process the number of civilians who were just killed, and there's no real aftermath, no moment when Khan's attack changes how the characters understand what happened, and no serious discussion of how Starfleet's secret warship just fell out of the sky onto one of Earth's largest cities. The movie immediately moves into Spock chasing Khan through the streets and fighting him on top of a flying garbage truck. San Francisco becomes background damage while the heroes settle a personal score. If you're going to destroy that much of Earth, it should carry some weight.

3. The Khan reveal means nothing to the characters who hear it

John Harrison announces his real name is Khan, and the movie pauses like everybody in the theater is supposed to fall out of their chair. The problem is that the name means absolutely nothing to Kirk, Spock, or anyone else standing there. In the original timeline, Khan and Kirk had history: Kirk discovered Khan's identity, fought him, and stranded him on Ceti Alpha, before eventually facing the consequences in Wrath of Khan. This Kirk has never heard of him. Khan says his name dramatically, Kirk stares at him, and the audience is expected to supply all the importance from a different continuity.

Even the marketing spent months insisting that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing a new character named John Harrison, so fans guessed the truth almost immediately. The secrecy created expectations the movie couldn't satisfy, and when the reveal finally happened it wasn't a twist, it was confirmation of what we already knew. Casting Cumberbatch created another issue too: Khan Noonien Singh has always been presented as a man of South Asian ancestry, yet the Kelvin timeline suddenly gave us the most British Khan imaginable without ever explaining why he looks different. Khan could have simply stayed John Harrison, a new augmented enemy created by Section 31, and the story wouldn't have changed. The character might have belonged to this crew instead of borrowing importance from somebody else's villain.

2. Khan's magic blood removes death from Star Trek

Khan's blood is treated as a cure. Early in the movie we see that it can save a terminally ill child. Later, Bones injects it into a dead tribble and brings it back to life. Conveniently, this discovery happens just in time for Kirk to sacrifice himself, die from radiation poisoning, and be resurrected with a Khan blood transfusion. This should have been one of the most important medical discoveries in the history of the Federation, and Khan isn't the only augment available either. There are 72 more genetically engineered people sitting in cryogenic storage, and if their blood has the same regenerative abilities, Starfleet potentially has access to cures for terminal diseases and catastrophic injuries.

But after Kirk wakes up, the franchise basically acts like this never happened. The blood exists because the writers needed Kirk to die without actually having Kirk die, and it solves the immediate problem while creating a thousand larger ones. From this point forward, every time somebody dies, the audience can reasonably ask why Bones doesn't just keep a few emergency vials of augment blood in sick bay. Death in Star Trek should matter, and Into Darkness turned it into something you fix by chasing down Benedict and borrowing a cup of his blood.

1. Turning the movie into Wrath of Khan again is the biggest mistake

The entire point of destroying Vulcan and creating the Kelvin timeline was to free these characters from the history we knew. The filmmakers could keep the names, the chemistry, and the basic spirit of Trek while sending this crew into completely new stories. Instead, in the second movie in, they go back to Khan. And it didn't stop at reusing the villain. The final act lifts some of the most iconic moments from Wrath of Khan, reversing Kirk and Spock's positions and expecting recognition for the emotional work.

Kirk enters the radiation chamber to save the Enterprise. Spock watches from the other side of the glass. They press their hands together. Kirk dies. Then Spock looks toward the sky and screams. The original scene worked because Kirk and Spock had shared decades of friendship, Spock made a permanent sacrifice, and Kirk was forced to confront a loss he could not outsmart or undo. It was quietly devastating and it was earned. In Into Darkness, Kirk and Spock have known each other maybe a year or two, and Kirk's death lasts only long enough for Bones to remember the dead tribble on his desk. The movie copies the appearance of the original sacrifice without understanding why it hurt. That's the real problem with Into Darkness. It had a good cast, a massive budget, a new universe, a big ship, and permission to go anywhere. Instead of trusting those strengths, it kept turning around to make sure we recognized something from an older, better movie. I think the Kelvin crew deserved its own defining villain, its own impossible choices, its own tragedy, its own classic story. Instead it got magic blood.

Was reusing Khan the biggest mistake, or was the magic blood even worse, and is Into Darkness actually a bad movie or did it just make the mistake of copying one of the greatest Star Trek movies?