The premise: Through a 24th-Century looking glass
Our movie opens in familiar territory for the Kelvin crew. The USS Enterprise, still under the command of Captain Kirk (Pine), is dispatched to investigate an anomalous energy reading at the far edge of Federation space, a roiling, violet rift that behaves like both a wormhole and a quantum echo.
Spock (Zachary Quinto) identifies temporal and interdimensional signatures that don’t match any known phenomenon, while Scotty (Simon Pegg) mutters about “half the laws of physics throwing up their hands and going to lunch.”
What the Kelvin crew doesn’t know is that this anomaly is being pulled open from the other side. In the Mirror Universe’s 24th century, the resurgent Terran Empire has discovered remnants of trans-dimensional technology and is attempting to access other realities to strip-mine them for ships, weapons, and advanced science.
Their flagship: a heavily militarized ISS Enterprise-D, a Galaxy-class dreadnought commanded by a ruthless goateed Mirror Picard.
When Kirk attempts to stabilize the rift to gather data, Imperial scientists on the other side seize the opportunity and drag the Kelvin Enterprise through, yanking it into a twisted reflection of the Federation’s future.
Suddenly, Pine’s crew finds itself staring down the barrel of the most intimidating starship they’ve ever seen, the Enterprise-D, but built for conquest.