The Narada is hovering over earth. Spock-junior steals the Jellyfish. He blows out of the Narada. Nero fires, and Spock goes to warp. Nero goes to warp to follow. So what tactical reason is there for Spock to stop? He's in, to quote old Spock, "our fastest ship". Highly likely that its faster than the Narada, which has been damaged and repaired over 25 years. By stopping, he allows Nero to "fire everything" rather than just running him around the galaxy... say to the Laurentian system where the fleet is. "Fire everything" certainly looked like it would wipe out the Jellyfish without the intervention of the "E". SO what's the tactical advantage of stopping?
The ability to ram the Narada with red matter? I mean, that's a surefire way to destroy the enemy, whilst pitting him against a fleet of starships might result in a destroyed fleet of starships. It already did, once. Also, stopping, turning and ramming allows Spock to kill Nero. That's better from Spock's point of view than allowing some stranger to kill Nero, definitely. Timo Saloniemi
That of course assumes the fleet is sitting around doing nothing in the Laurentian system. Maybe they are already in some sort of engagement. It would not be cool at all to drop a massive Romulan ship (that has pwned multiple Klingon and Federation ships on various occasions and other planetary defenses) from the future on an already busy, unsuspecting fleet. And of course Spock doesn't know much about Narada's speed, how long it can sustain it, how many torpedoes or other unseen weapons it has left, how long Nero will keep chasing him before he gives up and goes on to attack other ships or planets etc etc It kind of seems logical to lure the Narada in an empty region of space and attempt what Spock did. The Jellyfish was small enough and could probably outmaneuver the torpedoes. And if it couldn't and was destroyed before ramming, the Red Matter ball would still ignite creating a black hole close enough to suck in or break up the Narada.
Also consider that even though the Jellyfish and probably Narada are really fast, Spock probably didn't want to get too far away from the only other backup it had, i.e. the Enterprise.
This is what I assumed was the reason; he wanted to get away from fighting in Earth orbit, and he just made a bee line for where he knew the Enterprise to be waiting.
Exactly. I thought it was a brilliant sequence too....he lures them away and the Enterprise swoops in to those beautiful words, "Captain, i've picked up another ship". If that's not a fist pumping YES! moment, i don't know what is!
I understand the dramatic reason for him to stop, not the tactical. First, stealing the Jellyfish so that the Narada is a drilling machine, not a doomsday weapon, eliminates the short term problem which is 'don't lose earth'. At that point, the Narada is one badarse ship but ... George Kirk and the Klingons figured out how to capture it 25 years prior. Can be done again and the tactics are known. Second, once you have the jellyfish, why not spend just a little time and shoot up the Narada from the inside? Heck, go find the engines and blow them. I'd like to see if the Narada can 'fire everything' into its own docking bay and gizzards. Third, assuming you decide to leave the area (primarily to get the red matter away from earth) and then to stop and ram... wouldn't you want more than one ship there to support you, not just the Enterprise? Finally, ramming with the jellyfish is high risk. Narada's weapons could easily have taken out the ship, AND possibly left the red matter container... and the Narada could have taken down the Enterprise without trouble. These guys are asteroid miners, salvage in space should be their stock in trade. I know, just a movie, but not the 'logical' tactics i would have assumed.
First of all, George Kirk didn't capture anything. He rammed the Narada with a big ass ship. And the Klingons didn't even sweat it, since the Narada was too damaged to resist after the ramming by George Kirk and the Kelvin. So, I'm not sure what exactly you are proposing they should have done here. Because if you start blowing stuff up inside the Narada and without knowing anything about what is where, you risk creating explosions and huge destruction that could even cause the Jelyfish to be damaged and destroyed too. Therefore the Red Matter ignites next to Earth and it's bye bye blue planet. Not really. Ramming the Narada is the surest way to destroy it when you carry all the Red Matter. Failing to ram and being destroyed yourself, the Red Matter still ignites close enough for the emerging huge black hole to capture or destroy the Narada. In either case why risk dooming more starships and lives when you can do it yourself? Even if Nero somehow managed to just disable the Jellyfish, Spock could just as easily use a self destruct or find another way to ignite the Red Matter and still win.
The tactic here, I believe, was to keep Nero away from anything important or substantive. If Spock had not stopped, Nero may have decided to let Spock go and return to destroy the Earth. By stopping at a point away from the Earth, Spock could keep Nero and the Narada occupied until the Enterprise could arrive to beam them all off. It also means that should things go awry, the Black Hole created by ignighting the Red Matter would be contained in a known location away from Earth or other vital areas of the Federation. - Containment - Control - Distraction
Well from what I gather, he was originally going to distance himself from earth so it didn't get sucked into another black hole like Vulcan.... Nero's ship couldn't dig into the surface anymore and all his red matter was stolen by Spock.... that and it was Spock, so he was of course going to chase after him, he had no choice. But then he turned around and went for a collision course, that then freaked out Nero as he yelled to fire everything...... even if the Enterprise wasn't close enough to save him, destroying the ship and killing spock wouldn't do anything in the long run, because Nero's ship would still have been too close to the black hole that would have been created regardless..... so if Spock was going to die and if he wanted to end all of this, thus stop Nero, that was the most logical course of action.
It also had the advantage of removing the two universe-contaminating future ships from existence at once.