Justin Lin’s 2016 film Star Trek Beyond came at a strange time in Star Trek history. Paramount had two hugely successful Star Trek films in 2009 and 2013, both of which took the normally talky and thoughtful franchise in a faster, more violent and action-packed direction. Audiences flocked to these films, directed by JJ Abrams, and enjoyed the fact that Star Trek now looked more like Star Wars. However, a year before the release of “Beyond,” Disney-backed Lucasfilm released “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the first “Star Wars” feature film since 2008. “The Force Awakens” was a firmly Success, and the public’s urge for space action was now satisfactorily satisfied. It was also directed by JJ Abrams.
With real Star Wars back in the public eye, viewers no longer needed the supposed fake Star Wars action that the new Trek films offered. As a result, “Beyond” was not as big a success as its predecessors, and Paramount decided against further entries. Note: We may still get a fourth Star Trek movie in the Kelvin continuity, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
In all three Kelvin films, the story revolves around a passionately evil villain bent on revenge. In “Beyond,” the villain was Krall (Idris Elba), a strange alien monster with access to millions of destructive space drones and a device that allows him to “vampire” people’s life energy. He landed on the planet Altamid a century ago and spent the following time rescuing ancient Altamid technology and plotting against the Federation.
Krall’s “DNA vampire” powers aren’t explained well in Beyond, so co-writer Doug Jung spoke to Trek Core in 2016 to clarify a few things.
Balthasar Edison
Late in the film, it is revealed that Krall was actually once a human named Balthazar Edison, a Starfleet officer who served aboard a starship called the USS Franklin. Edison was able to stay alive on Altamid thanks to DNA vampire technology, which extended his life but also caused him to mutate. Edison has lived long enough to remember the days before the Federation’s founding – his ship and uniform are from the era of “Star Trek: Enterprise” – and he resented the Federation making peace with previously violent enemies like the Xindi had closed. For years he has been searching for a destructive relic that he could use as a biological weapon to kill millions and wipe out the Federation.
When Krall uses his vampire technology to drain the lives of captured Starfleet officers, his mutations begin to correct themselves. As the film progresses he appears more and more human. Jung said that the “Beyond” makeup team had to carefully plan the reversal of the mutation so as not to reveal to the audience too early that Krall was actually human. He said:
“We had many different versions. At one point we hinted at it much more. It’s a complex idea when you really think about what he had to do and how he had to get there. […] [T]There was actually another phase here that we removed in which Krall looked too human and the context would have been understood a little better.”
No one, Jung said, could have guessed that Krall and the crashed NX spacecraft were connected. He was proud of that.
Krall’s timeline
The film explains that the local technology on Altamid has physically transformed Balthazar Edison into a non-human species, but why does he use the name Krall and why doesn’t he speak human languages when the audience first sees him? To do this, you have to do a little digging into the timeline of events in the larger Star Trek chronology. Recall that Edison commanded a ship similar to the Enterprise from Star Trek: Enterprise, and his uniform also matched that series, making his life contemporary with Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula).
Enterprise is set in the 2150s, and according to Trek history, the Federation was founded in 2161, after the Xindi War that destroyed the state of Florida and killed millions of people. This means that after the Xindi conflict, the USS Franklin flew through a wormhole and crashed on Altamid in the mid-2160s. By the way, “Star Trek Beyond” takes place in the year 2263.
When Edison crashed, Altamid was uninhabited and inhabited only by abandoned technology. Edison and two surviving crew members lured passing alien ships to their planet, towed them to the surface with killer drones, and used a hellish machine to absorb the survivors’ DNA. Edison hated the gentle humanity of the Federation so much that he consciously gave up being human. He turned into an alien, changed his name and consciously stopped using human language.
Krall lived like a vampire for 100 years before attacking the new USS Enterprise, captained by James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). Since Kirk’s Enterprise was populated by many humans, Krall imported the vampire’s human DNA back into his system and began changing again.
All of the above exposition is given in Star Trek Beyond, although in a non-explicit manner. Krall is still a revenge villain, but his backstory is good for a Kelvin film.