Star Trek Into Darkness Synopsis

Man a few days off, a lot of things happening and The Hobbit coming nearer and nearer… but before we go to Middle-Earth let’s visit the near future and what Paramount had to say about the story of the newest Star Trek movie Star Trek Into Darkness.

In Summer 2013, pioneering director J.J. Abrams
will deliver an explosive action thriller that takes Star Trek Into Darkness.

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home,
they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis.

With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt
to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.

As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged,
friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left:
his crew.

So both the title and synopsis pretty much point to this dark direction that the sequel is headed. I am personally not very familiar with the storylines of the original Star Trek series so I can’t comment on the rumors about how this synopsis again hints at a certain Gary Mitchell… head over to trekmovie.com for indepth fan-discussions.

Still the synopsis lets me hope that my personal speculations about the theme of the sequel might come true:
For me the sequel needs to establish the tone of the universe and bring the ideas of Star Trek back into the consciousness of moviegoers.

Part 1 (or XI) had to re-introduce the characters to us and to the audience who had never heard of them – so it got away with the fact that it didn’t really explore the ideas and optimism of Gene Roddenberry. So to me it seemed a logical step that after presenting the protagonists one has to present the universe.

And the plot synopsis is pretty much a speculation I had: turn the federation into something that is no longer Star Trek esque and have the Enterprise remain the one glimmer of hope. Threaten everything the Federation stands for so that Kirk and his Crew can defend it and (for a new generation) prove why the values of Roddenberry are still a powerful utopian vision of a better world we all would love to live in.