The final weeks of filming on STAR TREK BEYOND started up in Dubai on Friday morning, with an aerial show that brought high-rise residents to their balconies in the city’s downtown region.

The longest road in the United Arab Emirates, Highway E 11 — known as Sheikh Zayed Road as it passes through Dubai — is the central passage through the city, delivering travelers to some of the biggest skyscrapers in town. As wide as eight lanes in many areas, a portion of this vast roadway was completely shut down to allow STAR TREK BEYOND to film aerial photography via helicopter this morning.

An advisory notice posted by The H Dubai hotel, located along Sheikh Zayed Road.

The airborne activity certainly didn’t go unnoticed by the residents of Dubai’s downtown towers, as the 6AM (local time) flyby brought a loud wakeup call to the skies.

We don’t know as of yet what this flyby filming will be used for in the upcoming film, but it’s likely to be heavily augmented with digital graphics to mask the reality of the 21st Century city.

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In addition, the first set construction photos from STAR TREK BEYOND have also begun appearing on social media out of Dubai. What began as a collection of angular pieces of construction material…

https://www.instagram.com/p/8SjqUwoWW2/

…has now taken the shape of what can only be the leading edge of a Federation starship’s saucer section.

https://www.instagram.com/p/8YDbqHoWdK/

Photo by Tehsin Sheriff.

While the first inclination seems to connect this downed vessel with the massive ‘crashed starship’ set from back in Vancouver, remember that that seemed to be set in more of a wooded area, aligning with the first location shoot in the Squamish forest.

This build certainly seems to be set in a metropolitan location, a far cry from the woods of British Columbia — and let’s not forget that last time around, the Vengeance crashed into downtown San Francisco.

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Finally, as has been widely reported, TMZ has gotten a few last-minute set photos from the STAR TREK BEYOND shoot in Vancouver this week, including some final glimpses of the location set at the Pitt River Quarries outside of the city — which we first brought you over a month ago, thank you very much.

While this may be old news to regular TrekCore readers, one interesting thing visible here is the strange honeycomb-like feature showcased in the second photo. This is the same structural design of a set piece shown in our exclusive photos of the ‘crashed starship’ set from back in August:

Which means we may have finally gotten confirmation that the two sets are definitely related. Additionally, though most of the equipment shown are portable greenscreens — with the green removed — there does appear to be several transmitter-like equipment connected to the honeycomb structure: perhaps some sort of forcefield generators or other high-energy technology?

We’ll find out next July.

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