I figured you were referring to TOS, but I wanted to clarify that, as television got heavier over the decades, Star Trek did mostly keep up. It's hard to orient the rebooted movies in this progression, sometimes they seem part of it and sometimes they seem like a right-angle turn from it.
Also, "spoon heads" is definitely an in-universe slur against Cardassians in DS9, so your father was more prescient than you even thought!
Spoon-heads is perhaps my favorite Star Trek slur. They are slightly above cone-heads, in intellifence.
A swarm of drones acting in concert is not a cerebral conceit, but it does tie into the themes of the movie, particularly since the way they defeat them is by destroying their...unity.
I think Lin managed to make a thematically coherent movie, even if he's dipping back in to the Fast and Furious Family well. It's not particualrly thought provoking, but it *works*, which is more than can be said for the garbage fire that was Into Darkness.
There's an episode of TOS where the crew are menaced by people who can move so fast that nobody can even see them. By the end of the episode, Spock has developed a serum that can accelerate people on to the same timescale so he can punch them or whatever. This serum is never mentioned again, even though it seems like it would be really useful every time the Klingons are boarding their ship or Kirk gets into a fistfight with a genetically engineered superman.
Basically it's worth remembering that Star Trek was always pretty dumb about half the time.
The movies just up that ratio a bit. "Hey, apparently we now have a transporter that can beam people to distant star systems. Why are we still using space ships?" "Shut up. Space ships are cool."
It does kind of draw attention to the fact that Kraal's motivations don't make much sense. "Unity is your weakness and I'm going to prove it by killing people!" Um... isn't unity exactly what you're using to accomplish your evil plan? Like, your allies are really loyal and willing to sacrifice themselves for you, and your drone army (which seems much cooler and more dangerous than the actual MacGuffin superweapon, and maybe you could have just used that to attack the big glass bubble in the first place) is a weapon that completely relies upon unity to work?
Yeah, Kraal is myopic and full of shit and his weapons underline that.
Sure! It's not perfect, and I think it's okay to occasionally overlook these things, but I feel like these movies overlook everything!
It would have been nice if there was a little explanation, something like "oh, speeding people up stressed our metabolisms and was very dangerous." I don't think that's quite the same scale subspace distance transporting, red matter, or seemingly indestructible metal, but I'd even be okay with them using sciency words to handwave these technologies away.
The larger issue I have is no one even seems to acknowledge these wondrous advances for more time than it takes to mention that it exists in expository dialogue. A simple explanation like "the superdense metal construction of these drones don't scale up to a ship the size of the Enterprise, because it's a very resource and can't be replicated" would at least show me that the scriptwriters cared enough to actually think about and acknowledge the incredulity of it all.
Apologies, I might misunderstand you or maybe the movie.
It sounds like you're saying they chose to give weapons that seem to contradict or conflict with Kraal's philosophy on purpose?
I like this idea, and I would like to believe it is true, but I feel like it might just be conjecture or coincidence. I will have to watch the movie a few more times to look for additional clues for this motif.
This Tom guy is a jerk. Everything I know about the importance of family I learned from Dominic Toretto.
"I don't have friends; I got family."
I see it as an ironic counterpoint to the villains stated goals, underlining the movie's theme of us being stronger when we work together. I mean, Kraal is a soldier, he must understand the value of people working as a unit to accomplish a goal. He got lost in space and lets the pain of his own history blind him to the value of banding together to accomplish more abstract goals. (Dingus' quip about Daddy isues Kurtz is fairly on point.)
I think it's all there, but about a draft away from really landing. If the production hadn't been a disaster, Beyond probably could've been an all timer, but for my money it's still the best of the Nu-Trek ones. It's basically the only one that hangs together on a thematic, character and plot level. (The first one just about manages character, Into Darkness fails on all levels.)
THATWASN'THISCHOICETOMAKE
Typically a "cold open" is just starting a tv show or movie by jumping right into it without showing an intro, title, or credits first.