The full-spoiler 'Star Trek' discussion thread.

Nero didn't have the red matter yet.

Spock had the red matter. Nero got it from him when he captured Spock. Which makes you wonder WTF Spock was doing in letting himself be captured? Nero couldn't have been that great of a captain (otherwise he'd be in charge of something other than a mining ship), so Spock, having spent a number of years serving under one of the finest captains in history, would have huge amounts of experience to draw upon, and should have been able to easily bitch slap Nero into the middle of the 40th Century.

Maybe they got the jump on Spock when he stopped off at an interplanetary reststop for a quickie with Larry Craig in the bathroom or something.

Forgot about the red matter being on Spock's ship.

As for why he was so easily captured, you have to wonder how well that little ship withstood the 200 year ride through a black hole. Maybe he was busy resetting all of the circuit breakers when he was tractored in.

Looked like Romulans to me...

He lost his world and his wife. That's grounds for being a little upset.

Passage through a black hole. Even the original series ("Return to Yesterday") had an episode with inadvertant time travel (from venturing too closely to a "black star").

24th Century heavy mining vessel.

What does it matter? Did you worry about "proto-matter" in STIII? Or "tri-lithium" in STGen? Or "thalaron radiation" in STNem?

Perhaps a plot hole, perhaps to ENSURE that any generated black hole would swallow the planet and not be flung away by gravitational forces. Does that really bother you so much?

Hit by supernova.

Because he failed to save Romulus.

A good question, though I understand there was a subplot that explained it which was edited out of the finished film.

Was he?

Because the things he said made sense.

That part was a little convenient, I admit. But many movies have similar unlikelihoods. (My favorite: In Spider-Man 3, how unlikely is it that Gwen Stacy is (1) Peter Parker's lab partner, (2) Eddie Brock's (fantasy) girlfriend, (3) the only person in New York City threatened by a runaway crane, and (4) the Police Chief's daughter? VERY.)

Not a water park. And while I, too, didn't much care for the "Scotty-trapped-in-a-pipe" sequence, it did help sustain the action of the film.

Not teenagers. Other than Chekov and Kirk, most of the other officers are at least 30.

A bit contrived, true, but, within the logic of the film, it worked. Pike trusted Kirk enough to make him Second Officer, Kirk used Spock Prime's knowledge to seize command at the right time.

Don't you people ever watch Stargate, where Carter explained 27 times how the gravity from a black hole causes time dilation?

The prequel comic explained that it started as a dinky ship, but after Romulus was blown up, a top secret (now pointless to keep top secret with Romulan civilization destroyed) Romulan military outpost upgraded it with stolen Borg technology, thus giving it the power to eat ships, and grow.

By the time Spock made the red matter blackhole to the past, the Narada had absorbed a fleet of Klingon fighters, and some Starfleet medical freighters.
Probably a few meteors for pure mass too, who knows...

(EDIT- Heh, come to think of it, that kinda makes the Narada a non-sentient Unicron)

You know, that doesn't really make a lot of sense. Spock in the film showed up in time to witness Romulus getting wiped out, and then used the red matter to make the black hole, right then. At which point Nero attacked him, they both got sucked into the black hole and wound up in the past.

It makes more sense to me for the Romulan ship to be armed from the beginning (even if I've misremembered when Spock made his black hole), if you ask me. The Romulans aren't exactly a peaceful people, and ISTR that killing your superior was an acceptable way to move up in rank. IAC, if the mining ship is a mobile ore processing plant (not an unreasonable assumption, I don't think), then by its nature its going to have to be big. Giving it lots of weapons would probably be a good idea, since the Romulans tend not to recognize property rights of non-Romulans. Even if they didn't equip it with oodles of weapons at the factory, Nero would probably want to convert much of the mining gear to weapons while they waited for Spock to show up, in case they ran into trouble, or the Federation fleet showed up while he was boring a hole to Vulcan's core.

Spocks' flashback was a truncated version of the events of the comic.

Think the openings of the second and third Evil Dead films.

Well, sure, that does all work within the confines of the film.

Just telling what happened in the comic.

No reason it couldn't be a little of both.

You know, I have a hard time believing that the guy who came up with the complex calculations needed to pilot a ship with a bunch of water and a pair of whales around the sun in such a manner as to send the ship forward in time to nearly the precise moment that they left to go to the past, could screw up the calculations for saving Romulus.

True, but the problem with that (in either form), is Nero getting captured by the Klingons while he's waiting for Spock to show up. No way a ship that powerful could get taken, and I can't see a Romulan commander getting suckered in a "Do whatever you want to me, but spare my crew" plea. I can see him saying, "If I'm captured by the enemy, kill me and get the ship out of here. Making Spock suffer and wiping out the Federation are more important than me."

He didn't,..exactly.

The impending nova was highly unstable, and hard to predict, indeed, Spock high-balled it, but the biggest factor, was the Vulcan council dragging their feet on handing over the Red Matter, because it was so dangerous.

Nero laid all the blame on Spock, but mostly because he had snapped by then.

Well..we'll have to see the deleted scenes to have that resolved...

There's a comic? This is based on a comic?

Nah, as part of the marketing runup to the release of the film, they did a comic "prequel" to the film to give folks some back story.

I'll go along with Tuckerfan on that one point - Spock has built up a reputation as being infallible. it didn't sit well with me that Spock actually made an error of that magnitude (as opposed to something unforeseeable fouling the plan)

As for the intervening 25 years, i could see Nero perhaps doing a number of things that resulted in a seriously upgraded ship but here's another twist on it -

who says the bad guy has to be SMART?

He's the captain of a mining ship fercryinoutloud.

Maybe he's "Joe the Plumber" who just happened to find a really big gun. Maybe he hasn't thought out his obsession very well, maybe he made dumb-ass choices...

It's not that inconceivable.

I can't really see the Vulcan Council hearing Spock say, "You've gotta give me the Red Matter, now!" and saying, "Wellllllllllll, we'd like to talk this over in committee, first." Spock's earned a lot of cred in all his years (let's not forget that he embarked on a mission to Romulus to bring logic to the Romulans and reunite their people), so I can't see them denying him his request.

No, its not, and with a few minor tweaks, it could have been better demonstrated.

And this is probably the reason some people will always find something to dislike, especially in an established 'universe' like Star Trek.

You can't really see the Vulcan Council doing X? How the hell would you know?

It's not a discontinuity like Spock turning out to be a serial killer, we're taking about a group of fictional characters that we've never even encountered in the films or series before. Maybe they've had a bad intake and 90% of them are assholes. Maybe something else that explains it perfectly well. JUST GO WITH IT.

Actually, since Spock failed to stop Romulus's destruction its his fault that Nero blew up nuVulcan. Ergo Spock is a genocidal maniac. That is out of character dammit!!!!!!

These didn't bother me in the slightest and I struggle to see why they would. The Romulans were perfectly Romulan and if you're going to freak about an engineering set, well...

He was a cardboard villain but I was happy that they established he was pissed off.

Time travel?!! Christ it was one of the better ones in my opinion. At least this time it was largely chaotic and didn't leave the gaping plot hole of 'why didn't you just go back in time and stop Romulus being destroyed?' Because they couldn't control it. Didn't bother me.

Red matter? A macguffin to be sure but no worse than others.

The drilling... well, granted that was clearly added so they could have a fight on a drilling platform but maybe they had discovered that it was more effective to do it like that? More certain of suiccess? Whatever, again, Star Trek was never hard sci-fi so let's not pretend it was.

Because he was tasked with stopping it?

This, I will grant, is a little unusual but I gather there is meant to be some explantation. If they were captured by the Klingons it could well have been straight after Kirk's daddy rammed them with his ship and left them vulnerable. What would be interesting is if they develop a story based on the Klingon's acquisition of advanced techology from the Romulan ship.

I liked him.

Again, this was a little bit of leap but I actually find the leap less annoying than the idea Spock would shoot him off the ship in the first place. Stick him in the brgi for the love of God, don't fire him into space!

The cadets in charge thing is hardly new, I was happy to roll with it. Kirk's promotion... well, frankly if it was a series they could have dragged it out but a film series was always going to cut straight to the good shit.

I can rationalize or ignore everything else, but the whole sequence around Delta Vega really hurts the plot, IMO. Not the name; that's easy. But I can't see young Spock marooning Kirk there, I can't see Nero marooning Spock there, I can't see Spock watching Vulcan from there, I can't see the UFP marooning Scotty there, and I definitely can't see why all three should be marooned on the same planet. All of which is directly relevant to the plot, to each character's arc, and to the on-screen dialogue in these scenes.

As regards plot holes, I think we're in danger of looking at the older Trek films through rose-tinted glasses. There are enormous plot holes in most of them, even the best.

Not to rationalize this because I agree but in the back of my mind I imagine the guy who made that call (how to carry out the instruction "get him off this ship" was the same Jerk Kirk fought in the Bar who now apparently is a security guy on Enterprise.


By the way, anyone complaining about the time travel mechanics has clearly ignored or forgotten that incredibly bad directorial decision in STIV to include that....hallucination? Whatever it was that happened during the time trip in that movie.

Maybe the nova was a bad romulan military project? Nice ties to star trek 6.

God damn, but people take this waaaay too seriously. It's a Star Trek popcorn flick. It isn't high drama. No, part of my fun in watching a movie isn't nitpicking it. I don't go in purposely looking for something to hate. This is why people make fun of fanboys; they nitpick everything to death. It's a summer flick, for God's sake. And Nero waited for 25 years because Spock didn't come out of the anomaly for 25 years.

Wow. This thread is a perfect example of one of the many reasons why I lost interest in Trek.

Too many fans overanalyzed everything.

Bunch a geeks.

As I said, Trek was never hard science fiction and shouldn't be trying to be. So if it isn't clear what 'red matter' was... BIG DEAL!

I want a FULL EXPLANATION for Red Matter! Like I got with...


...Trelayne
...The Guardian of Forever
...Q
...Proto-matter
...Vulcan katra
...The Nexus

So, there's something wrong with me because I like nitpicking every film I watch? As for people "taking this way too seriously," I've not noticed the people who disliked this movie screaming at the people who liked it, "You've got to look at this movie critically! You've got to stop saying, "Its only a movie!" You've got to just stop saying "got with it!" You, OTOH, are telling us to "lighten up" to "just go with it." You seem to be awfully bothered by the fact that there are some of us who didn't enjoy it.

Actually, that is a pretty apt description of exactly what Dayton has been doing.

​

Then MR should have quoted him and not me.

For years, Star Trek fans have been deriding fans of Star Wars and other science fiction projects as people who wanted "mindless action".

For years Star Trek fans have mocked Trek fans (like myself) who wanted "more battles" as "not understanding what Star Trek is about".

So what happens with a Trek movie that comes out with plenty of mindless action, lots of battles, and violence?

Trek fans flock to it and help make it the highest grossing Star Trek movie ever.

What happened?

For me it comes back to simply

Star Trek fans LIKE BEING POPULAR

You're overanalyzing.

For me, it was just an entertaining two hours. Nothing more, nothing less.