The 11 Biggest Mistakes Star Trek Beyond Made, From Scotty's Mystery Makeover to the Franklin's Time Traveling Computer

We already went through the biggest mistakes in Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness, so it's time to finish the trilogy with Star Trek Beyond. There's enough mistakes to fill an entire Starship from this movie, and here are the 11 biggest ones, counting down from 11 to 1.

11. Scotty completely changes his appearance at Kirk's birthday party

During Kirk's birthday party at the end of the movie, Scotty's hair suddenly has a different style and color. He also has noticeably more facial hair than he had during the battle with Krall. This party appears to happen only a few days later, so Scotty apparently repaired a hundred year old starship, saved Yorktown, and found enough time to receive a full makeover.

The obvious explanation is that Simon Pegg's real appearance had changed by the time they filmed the scene, but nobody bothered matching him to the rest of the movie. "I know it's a small mistake, but once you see it, you can't unsee it," as I put it. Everybody else attended Kirk's birthday party in the same timeline. Scotty looked like he arrived from six months into the future.

10. Kirk and Chekov swap clothes inside their escape pods

When Krall's swarm destroys the Enterprise, Kirk and Chekov enter separate escape pods wearing their normal yellow command uniforms. When they climb out on Altamid, both men are suddenly wearing the blue survival jackets and alternate away team uniforms seen throughout the rest of the movie. Those escape pods are tiny, and we watch Kirk enter his pod during an emergency without bringing a bag, visiting a closet, or telling the computer to pack a jacket.

Somewhere between being launched from a disintegrating Enterprise and crashing onto an alien planet, Kirk and Chekov both apparently decided they needed a wardrobe change. Kelvin escape pods, it seems, don't just save your life, they also include complimentary wardrobe service.

9. Spock Prime gets demoted on his own service record

When the Vulcans notify young Spock that Ambassador Spock has died, they give him a tablet containing information about his older counterpart. Look closely and the tablet lists Spock Prime as second officer on the USS Enterprise. Spock was actually Kirk's first officer and science officer, commanded the ship whenever Kirk wasn't available, and eventually became a captain himself.

Calling him second officer on his official service record is a real mistake, especially in a scene built to honor Leonard Nimoy and the history of the character. The movie pauses for one of its most emotional moments, and Starfleet apparently cannot even get Spock's job title right.

8. The Franklin's computer somehow knows the current date

The Franklin disappeared roughly 90 years before Kirk and his crew discover it on Altamid. It's been crashed, isolated, and completely disconnected from Starfleet for 90 years, which I noted is about how long Hugh Jackman is going to be playing Wolverine. But when Scotty activates the ship systems, the computer displays the current year, 2263.

The Franklin had no communication with the Federation, never visited a star base, and never received an update or synchronized with Starfleet's network. A computer could theoretically keep tracking elapsed time on its own for decades, but even if its internal clock survived a crash and a century of abandonment, it should only know how much time passed, not whether Starfleet changed its calendar or how the outside galaxy currently records the year. The Franklin cannot send a distress signal, but its automatic date and time settings apparently work just fine.

7. The Franklin has two different registry numbers

The ship itself is clearly identified as the USS Franklin NX-326. However, when Scotty accesses Captain Edison's service history, the computer screen reportedly displays a completely different registry for the Franklin, NCC-7317. Those aren't slightly different numbers, that's an entirely different designation from a completely different period of Starfleet history.

NX-326 was intentionally chosen as a tribute to Leonard Nimoy's birthday, March 26, which is a great detail. But somebody designing the computer graphics gave the ship another registry number anyway. The Franklin survived the Xindi conflict, the Romulan war, and nearly a century on Altamid, but it apparently couldn't survive the graphics department.

6. Krall somehow forgot where he parked his own ship

Jaylah takes Scotty to the Franklin, which she has turned into her home, using holographic technology to hide it from Krall's forces. That would explain why Krall cannot currently see the ship. It doesn't explain how he lost it. Krall is Captain Balthazar Edison, and the Franklin was his ship. He was commanding it when it disappeared and crashed on the planet, so it wasn't a random wreck he never knew existed, it's the entire reason he got stranded there.

Even with Jaylah's holographic camouflage hiding it, Krall should still remember the general location where his own starship crashed. He also controls thousands of small vessels and has spent decades living on this planet. Captain Edison didn't lose a set of keys, he lost a 450 foot starship, and somehow never checked on the only Starfleet vessel capable of exposing his identity, contacting the Federation, or getting off the planet.

5. Kirk makes himself the only hologram that can actually die

Kirk uses Jaylah's holographic projectors to create dozens of copies of himself riding a motorcycle through Krall's camp. The holograms split up, move independently, and adapt to the surrounding terrain, so Krall's soldiers can't immediately tell which Kirk is real, creating the distraction needed to rescue the Enterprise crew. It's a clever plan, except for the part where the real Kirk joins the holograms.

If Jaylah's technology can generate moving motorcycles and riders and activate the holograms remotely, the real Kirk could have stayed somewhere safe while the enemy shot at every fake motorcycle without hurting anybody. Instead, Kirk rides into the middle of them and becomes the only target capable of being killed. He took an invincible diversion and found a way to risk his actual life with it anyway. It's the most Captain Kirk decision imaginable, but it still doesn't make sense.

4. Starfleet sends the Enterprise blindly into an obvious trap

Kalara arrives at Yorktown claiming her crew is stranded on Altamid, which lies beyond a dangerous and unexplored nebula that blocks communication, interferes with navigation, and prevents Starfleet from seeing what's waiting on the other side. Starfleet responds by sending one ship directly through it, with no reconnaissance probe, no escort, and no backup vessel waiting at the entrance. Nobody verifies her story or asks why her tiny escape pod somehow survived a journey through an environment dangerous enough to threaten the Enterprise.

The moment Kirk reaches the planet, Krall's swarm attacks, which is a development that could have been foreseen by literally everybody. Starfleet should absolutely respond to a distress call, but that doesn't mean throwing hundreds of people into an unknown nebula because a stranger appeared and said to trust her.

3. The Enterprise loses its defenses almost immediately

The Enterprise is one of Starfleet's most advanced vessels, with sensors, shields, phasers, photon torpedoes, and an experienced crew that already survived Nero. Krall's swarm approaches in one giant visible formation, and the Enterprise barely manages to respond before the drones slice through it. The swarm ships punch straight through the shields, tear apart the hull, disable the engines, and separate the saucer with essentially no resistance.

Later in the movie we discover that disrupting the swarm's communication frequency causes these same vessels to slam into each other and explode. So why couldn't the Enterprise detect that network in the first place, or identify the signal connecting thousands of synchronized ships, or use its deflector, tractor beams, or phasers to disrupt their formation? The Enterprise had enough advanced technology to explore deep space, but apparently nobody installed a way to scan the giant swarm attacking it.

2. A song by the Beastie Boys defeats the movie's most dangerous weapon

Scotty realizes Krall's swarm communicates using a specific frequency. The Franklin broadcasts "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys, jams the signal, and causes thousands of enemy vessels to crash into each other. Krall's unstoppable fleet is defeated by a song Kirk listened to while stealing a car. "I love this scene. It's completely ridiculous, over the top, but I love it," is how I feel about it.

Why doesn't the swarm have a backup frequency? Why does losing synchronization cause every pilot to immediately fly into the vessel beside them? Why can an ancient Starfleet ship overpower the entire communication network? These ships destroyed the Enterprise in minutes and nearly wiped out Yorktown, then the Franklin turns on the radio and they become, as I put it, the galaxy's deadliest bumper cars. Phasers couldn't stop them, photon torpedoes couldn't stop them, but three men from Brooklyn wrecked them.

1. The Franklin goes from abandoned wreck to fully operational starship in hours

When Scotty finds the Franklin, it's been sitting on the planet for almost a century, crashed, powerless, and exposed to the environment for decades. Jaylah has restored parts of it, but the Franklin is nowhere close to being flight ready. Within what appears to be a few hours, Scotty restores power, repairs the transporters, gets the engines working, and prepares the ship to launch essentially by himself.

Except the Franklin can't lift off under its own power, so Kirk pushes it over a cliff. The ship falls toward the ground, starts its engine at the last second, travels through the dangerous nebula, reaches Yorktown, destroys Krall's swarm, and survives another crash inside the station. The modern Enterprise gets ripped apart during its first encounter with Krall, yet a hundred year old wreck wakes up from what I'd call a dirt nap and completes the entire final act. Scotty is an engineering genius, but this wasn't engineering, this was necromancy. The Franklin doesn't run on antimatter, it runs on Beastie Boys nostalgia and the strongest plot armor in the entire Kelvin timeline.

Beyond is still my favorite of the three Kelvin movies because it finally understands the crew and feels more like an actual Trek adventure, though I'll admit I go back and forth on that and wonder sometimes if 2009 is actually my favorite instead.

Was using "Sabotage" to save the Federation completely stupid, completely perfect, or somehow both?