'Star Trek Beyond' Spoilers: New Soundtrack Titles Provide Insight Into Krall's Plot Against The Federation

Composer Michael Giacchino has begun scoring Star Trek Beyond, and his various social media postings make oblique nods to possible plot points for the upcoming sequel.

Giacchino, who also did the score for the previous two Star Trek movies and the rebooted Planet of the Apes series, posted a number of pictures and videos from the Fox scoring stage.

The best has to be this video of the orchestra reprising the original Star Trek fanfare:

In addition to his Twitter postings, Giacchino threw up several photos on his Instagram account of the booklets for various orchestrations from the Star Trek Beyond soundtrack.

Giacchino is known for using puns in his title tracks and Star Trek Beyond is no exception. Four sheet music titles have been revealed so far:

“A Swarm Reception”

“Thank Your Lucky Star Date”

“Motorcycles of Belief”

“Trick or Treaty”

The first obviously refers to the attack that destroys the Enterprise, featured heavily in Star Trek Beyond marketing, including the new character posters. “Star Date” is too vague to reveal much and “Motorcycles of Belief” would seem to reference that motorcycle Star Trek pessimists are up in arms about.

But “Trick or Treaty,” there might be some real juice there. So far not much is known about the villain of Star Trek Beyond: Idris Elba’s Krall. He has only three lines over two Beyond trailers:

• “This is where it begins, Captain. This is where the frontier pushes back.”
• “I am counting on it.”
• “Unity is not your strength, it is a weakness.”

His plan seems to be no more complicated than “blow up ships, kidnap the crewmembers, kill ‘em.” But that music track, “Trick or Treaty,” suggests a bit more. After two movies with genocidal maniacs, could we finally be getting a political monster in Star Trek Beyond. Is it possible that Krall is not motivated to capture people just to kill them, but hopes to have enough Federation hostages to sue for peace, forcing concessions from a political body too soft to allow mass casualties?

From director Justin Lin to writers Doug Jung and Simon Pegg, we’ve been promised, over and over, that Star Trek Beyond will capture more of the Star Trek spirit than previous entry, Star Trek Into Darkness. While the Trek series has had its shares of villains and monstrosities, it’s more often known for its ethical and political complexity, eschewing Star Wars good vs. evil. “Trick or Treaty” is our first hint at an alien enemy that’s more than a monster, one who may leverage powers other than violence to get what he wants.