Each trailer for Star Trek Beyond looks better and better (we especially like this TV spot), but it’s a bit disconcerting how little we know about the plot. Will the next Trek just be a vehicle for explosions, fistfights and siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick motorcycle stunts? The August issue of Empire includes an interview with Sofia Boutella, who plays Jaylah (that white alien with black stripes) in Beyond. The interview provides a lot of details about Jaylah and what she might mean for the plot of Star Trek Beyond.
If it wasn’t obvious from the trailer (above), Star Trek Beyond opens with the destruction of the Enterprise and forces the scattered crew members to work in pairs to survive and find a way off a hostile planet. Jaylah is first paired up with Scotty (Simon Pegg), who learns her origin story. Jaylah “was stranded on Krall’s deadly planet as a child, after an earlier attack by the villain.”
So Jaylah is not a native, nor is she part of Krall’s entourage. Instead, she’s like the Enterprise crew, a prisoner on this planet, which we know to be called Altamid.
But since Jaylah has been stranded on Altamid for way longer than Kirk, Bones and Spock, she’s developed a number of ways to survive. According to Empire, “She speaks in a broken English that Pegg wrote for Boutella’s accent, and fights with balletic grace, at one point alongside two holographic projections of herself.”
While we’ve seen a bit of this “balletic grace” in the Beyond trailers, her regular deployment of holographic projections is a new detail that gives us some insight into the first Star Trek Beyond trailer’s most notorious moment.
Remember when Kirk takes a motorcycle off a ramp? The stunt has been widely mocked by Star Trek fans, who see it as more evidence that the Abramsverse Star Trek reboot series is more interested in action than thoughtful, political Star Trek adventurin’. But while the motorcycle is decidedly old school, Star Trek Beyond Trailer #2 reveals that it depends upon a holographic ruse, a second, virtual motorcycle taking fire as Kirk prepares for his X Games moment.
That’s right, he learned it from Jaylah. Apparently Krall’s troops have yet to find an effective counter for holographic deception.
While the new Empire interview sheds some light on Jaylah, we still don’t really know why the Ferenginar Krall wants to hold all these aliens hostage. We’ll have all the answers when Star Trek Beyond hits theaters on July 22.
