Star Trek turns 60 next week — and Peacock just dropped all 3 reboot movies: the one fans still argue about is worth a rewatch

As of today, September 1, Peacock has all three Kelvin-timeline movies in one place: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016). A week before the big birthday. Nobody at Peacock is subtle.

And yes, I know which one you're already mad about. We'll get there.

A quick refresher for people who forgot what "Kelvin timeline" means

• A Romulan ship from the future (Eric Bana, very angry, extensive facial tattoos) travels back in time and blows up the USS Kelvin on the day James T. Kirk is born.
• Kirk's dad dies. The timeline splits. Everything after this happens in a parallel universe, so the writers can do whatever they want and technically not break canon.
• Leonard Nimoy shows up as old Spock, meets young Spock (Zachary Quinto), and the two of them share the screen in a way that made grown adults weep in 2009.
• Nimoy died in 2015. Beyond quietly acknowledges it. Bring tissues for that scene, honestly.

Also worth saying: Anton Yelchin, the reboot's Chekov, died in 2016, shortly before Beyond came out. The movie is dedicated to him and to Nimoy. That's your emotional briefing.

The one everyone argues about

Into Darkness. Of course it's Into Darkness.

Here is what happened in 2013: the studio cast Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain, insisted his character was a guy named "John Harrison," and kept insisting even after the entire internet worked out he was playing Khan. Then the movie turned around and restaged famous scenes from The Wrath of Khan with the roles swapped. Longtime fans experienced this the way you'd experience someone redecorating your childhood bedroom while you watched.

The people who made it have since admitted as much. Damon Lindelof, who co-wrote it, later said the secrecy backfired because the audience was like, "We know he's playing Khan." J.J. Abrams conceded around the same time that there were "too many nods" to the 1982 film.

The movie's biggest problem was that it kept a secret from people who already knew the secret. That's not a twist. That's a group project where one person didn't read the chat.

So why am I telling you to watch it again

Because, with the benefit of thirteen years and zero expectations, Into Darkness is a very good action movie wearing a very bad marketing campaign.

• It made $467 million, the most of the three, and it's not hard to see why once you stop keeping score against 1982.
• Cumberbatch is having a wonderful time. He does a monologue in a glass cell that should be taught in acting classes under the heading "menace, sustained."
• The conspiracy-thriller structure — Starfleet is rotten from the inside — actually holds up better now than it did then, for reasons I will not get into because this is a fun post.
• Karl Urban's McCoy remains the single best piece of casting in the reboot trilogy and I will take questions at the end.

If you are a purist, watch it as a movie called Space Conspiracy With a Hot Villain and see how you feel.

Rewatching Into Darkness in 2026 is like running into an ex who has clearly been to therapy. Still flawed. Weirdly charming. You don't have to marry it.

The other two, briefly

Star Trek (2009) is the one that made the crew feel like a crew. Fast, funny, lens flares you could read by, Chris Pine doing a cocky-kid thing that somehow doesn't get old. If you only have one night, start here.

Beyond is the one that got the least attention and probably deserved more. Justin Lin directed, the crew gets stranded on a planet with Idris Elba growling under prosthetics, and Sofia Boutella's Jaylah walks off with the whole thing. It underperformed at the box office, which is why we have not had a fourth Kelvin movie in a decade of announcements.

All three on Peacock, all at once, a week before the show turns sixty. Argue in the comments. That's what the franchise is for.