Five Best Moments in Star Trek Beyond First Trailer

The first teaser trailer for Star Trek Beyond has arrived. It’s an action-packed trailer, as expected from director Jeremy Lin, with a rockin’ soundtrack, explosions, stunts, and fights.

While it’s not what many die-hard Trek fans expected or wanted out of the franchise, famous for its scientific acumen and political savvy in its original TV forms, taken as a film franchise flowing form the last two movies, the trailer has a lot to offer. Since it will be flanked by a new Star Trek series on CBS’s digital platform in 2017, perhaps we can get the best of both worlds.

Here are five moments from the trailer that we quite enjoyed and got us thinking.

Listen All Y’all That’s a Callback Song

The soundtrack of this teaser trailer is, of course, “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys – a band that JJ Abrams (director of the first two, producer of this one) has repeatedly professed his love for.

Of course, it’s also a callback to the first film, when we were introduced to James T. Kirk using the same song.

Humor!

It’s nice to see the other cast members of the Enterprise’s crew get some solid screentime in this trailer, making sure it’s not just the Captain Kirk show. While the action, like Scottie’s big moment, is fun, the humor is much more important. It’s just a little bit here and there, but it breaks up the otherwise fairly non-stop action, and adds a different flavor to the clip.

Strange New Worlds

Part of the Enterprise’s mission is supposed to be exploring “Strange New Worlds.” There hasn’t been a lot of that in the previous films, so seeing what looks like the grand majority of this story taking place on one of those is enticing.

New Civilizations

Of course the other half of that is the new civilizations, and there are plenty of crazy looking aliens in this trailer. The shots of Idris Elba and Sofia Boutella, as unrecognizable as they may be, are pretty freaking fun. Boutella’s alien badass may be filling what’s an ever-increasing trope, but dangit if she doesn’t look cool and steal the scene.

Is that the Annihilation Wave?

Well, we don’t really know much about the movie’s plot, but a significant amount of screentime is used to show the swarm-like alien crafts or robots that attack the Enterprise, destroy it, and hold the crew hostage.

It reminds us here at ComicBook.com of the Annihilation Wave, the giant insect-like swarm that Annihilus led out of the negative zone in what became the relaunch of Marvel Comics’ cosmic line that birthed Guardians of the Galaxy. In fact, much of the trailer seems to be taking cues from Marvel Studios’ space-faring hit, which shouldn’t be a surprise after its success.