Actually, I’m somewhat bummed that Nimoy got it. With all the press about how they wanted to give Shatner a role, but they were unable to work it into the story, it would have been so nice to hear Shatner doing the voiceover.
Anyway, back to the OP… Here’s an in-joke that I expected but they did not include:
Pike: … I dare you to do better.
Kirk: You want me to boldly go all over the galaxy?
Pike: You’ll go there boldly. And you’ll learn some grammar, too.
Quinto’s Spock does the bit ascribed to Sherlock Holmes (did Doyle ever have Holmes actually say that – I forget) – “Once you eliminate the impossible…” that Nimoy’s Spock did in TUC.
Sir Rhosis
Morn! That was it. I kept wanting to say ‘Gorn’ but I am enough of a nerd to know that that wasn’t right.
He says it in The Sign of the Four
Another possible throwback that I have been unable to check thus far: I think that the series of questions being asked at the beginning of the scene where young Spock attacks another Vulcan child were all taken from the testing scene at the beginning of Star Trek IV where Spock is answering question from three different computer terminals.
Whether or not they were the same questions I think it is pretty clear that the whole testing situation was meant to be analogous.
Arvus (or a creature that looked identical to him) was at the helm of the ship captained by Kirk Sr., and promptly destroyed by Nero in the beginning of the film.
There was a brief glimpse of a black Vulcan among the refugees from the planet’s destruction. I’m probably just reading into it, but I like to think that somehow that’s meant to imply that Tuvok’s ancestors escaped the destruction of the planet. (The idea that there would be racial differences between Vulcans similar to human differentiation was one of the few interesting ideas that “Voyager” had; too bad they bothered to explore the idea any further.)
As for the nod to ‘Morn’ from DS9, I think an interesting tidbit is that Morn is an anagram from ‘Norm’, the archetypal bar regular from ‘Cheers.’ That’s right - the longfaced stoolie in Abrams’ “Trek” is a shout-out to a character who is a shout-out to another character.
I’m a bigger Holmes fan than I am a Trek fan (by a lot), and this was the part that made me go “Woohoo!” Y’know, in a soft geekly little girl undertone, while quietly clapping my hands.
ETA: And in the other Trek thread they’re talking about how the red-shirt guy in the parachuting scene was “obvious,” a shortcoming in the film, in that red shirts never survive. I thought it was an intentionally obvious an in-joke, and it was pretty funny. As soon as they showed the three people loading into the shuttle and the camera focused on Red Shirt, the guy in front of me said “Oh, that guy’s a goner.”
Sulu? Gay?
No way.
Also mentioned in the novel based on the screenplay of ST:TMP (which was written by Roddenberry, so it should be considered at least deutero-canonical).
When Pike was in the wheelchair at the end, he was wearing a ST:TMP admiral’s uniform.
The rank insignia (sleeve stripes) are consistent with TOS, but in the style of the two pilot episodes.
When Spock beams down to Vulcan, he arrives at the same rocky hills in southern California that TOS used for most of their “alien worlds”.
See post #15
I think it would be a nice tribute to George Takei, that was my point. Having Sulu be gay would be another barrier that Star Trek breaks. OK, homosexuality was briefly included in STNG and DS9 episodes, but no major gay characters yet.
OTOH, I would be the first one to turn my head and think “Ew” at the first guy-on-guy kiss in Star Trek (I am that straight, and that old-fashioned). I don’t know how a plot element like Sulu being gay would fit in a fast-moving action/adventure story without being a huge distraction. A lot of what I liked about Star Trek 2009 is that it kept moving along. As the Onion parody points out, there were no scenes around a conference table discussing (fictional) inter-stellar politics.
By the way, now that Vulcan has been destroyed in the Star Trek universe, does Spock’s story parallel Kal-El’s a little? Just throwing that out there.
Just saw this yesterday and loved it. I caught a lot of the in-jokes, but I didn’t see the tribble? When did it show up?
The tribble was on Delta Vega, when they find Scotty. It’s in a little cage right next to Scotty when he’s sitting in his chair.
Ah, thanks!
Remind me what Delta Vega is?
Also, my kids and I both swear we saw Wil Wheaton in a cameo. Very brief, enough for someone to say, “Is that who I think it is?”
I like the reference to Admiral Archer’s prized beagle.
I could be misremembering, but I thought Delta Vega was the name of the planet where Kirk and Spock Prime were marooned, and then met up with Scottie.
Did you think you saw Wil in a cameo at the beginning of the movie? Because there was a guy on the bridge of the Kelvin that made me think, “Wait, is that Wil?”
Delta Vega is the ice planet that Kirk was marooned on.
It’s also the planet that Kirk kills Mitchell on in the other continuity.
Yes! It was early in the movie. I haven’t seen anything on imdb about it, and since it was just a cameo, I doubt he’d be listed in the credits.
Thanks, Aesiron…I knew it meant something.
I never saw the animated series, never read any novelizations – the only Kirk-related things I’ve seen were TOS and the movies – and I already knew that Kirk’s middle name was Tiberius. I would almost swear that we learned that at some point in the series, that it was not new information when it popped up in the movies. Obvs I could be wrong, but … to me it’s pretty common knowledge.
Olsen’s actually an interesting case, as Redshirts go.
Trek, outside of the TOS-era movies, denotes which section a Starfleet recruit is by colour.
Redshirts die by the buttload because Red is the colour of security in TOS*.
It’s also the colour of engineering.
Olsen was in a red shirt, because he was the engineer. Didn’t save his ass because he was apparently also a thrill seeker who opened his chute too late.
I’ve never figured out why security and engineering were given the same colour.