Why did Nero care so much about the Defense codes?

Has everyone forgotten that Nero was going to blow the Enterprise out of space before realising that it was the ship NuSpock would be on? If he had thought the defence codes were that important why didn’t he destroy all but one of the original seven(?) ships and get the codes from its captain? Clearly they were an afterthought at best. And of course a plot device to ensure Kirk and co. had to save Pike rather than just beaming a few anti-matter bombs aboard, which would have seemed a little easy I guess.

 

I don't know why the defense codes were important at all. Surely Enterprise and Co. could've rang up Starfleet after Pike had been captured and said, 'Yo dawgs, change your defense codes, or at least ignore their use by any giant evil squid ship that come a-knockin...'

 

Doh - that's so obvious and, one would have thought, standard practice although I'm not completely sure that long range comms weren't damaged on the ship after the fight.

This is another reason why I think Spock's decision to maroon Kirk seems so stupid. It would have been far more sensible to beam Kirk to the outpost with a security escort and get the outpost to send a message to all ships in the area and/or Earth.

 

^ But Spock wasn't being sensible. Spock was being PISSED. "Emotionally compromised" I think is the term.

 

Seem to remember the Kelvin leaving a fair sized dent.

 

The Kelvin was a "mighty little ship"

Nero may have cracked the Vulcan codes.

Also Nero would have to have Earth codes to get there.

I hate him, he hurted my Chris!!! :sob:

 

^He still fared better in this timeline than the other one.

 

*Beep*

 

My question is, why didn't anyone just turn the defenses back on? These codes sound more like a "friend/Foe" sort of thing which wouldn't amount to crap if it was an unknown alien ship shooting a big laser into the planet. Were there absolutely no countermeasures created to ensure that incase an enemy did have the codes that Earth could still defend itself? If the codes really function as a "Turn off all defenses permanently", than I have to wonder if Earth would more or less survive an invasion of cockroaches, let alone a gawddang simple mining ship.

 

That's too much! But yeah he did better in AU!

 

Well considering in the Prime Universe of 13 years in the future V'ger did something similar and they couldn't turn the defenses back on then....

 

V'ger didn't just turn off Earths defenses, it neutralized them like it did the starbase and the Klingon warships.
As for Nero and his ship, according to the novel and the comics the Kelvin damaged his ship enough that the Klingon fleet could capture his ship and take Nero and his crew captive so if one starship ramming his ship can disable it a large fleet should be able to destroy it.

 

Except the Narada destroyed 47 Klingon ships, 7 Federation starships and whatever the Vulcans had on-site during the attack on Vulcan in the span of a few hours.

Needing the defense codes seemed to come 'out of left field', because he was going to destroy the Enterprise until he saw the name on the hull. This was a film that definitely needed another re-write or two.

 

I can't argue with that. But yes, the movie's plot is pretty close to the surface at times. Getting the codes from Pike was just an excuse to give Kirk and Spock someone to save instead of being able to beam explosives into the Narada's engineering area etc.

Given the fact they couldn't beam anything on to the Narada when the drill started, you would think that, with the Earth at stake, the safest option would be to just lob over the explosives first anyway. Tough on Pike, but that's why he gets paid the big "bucks". For all the Enterprise knew he was dead anyway. Actually why was he still alive?

 

The Narada could've simply had shields up prior to the drilling preventing any beaming.

 

True. They were in enemy territory. It makes little sense to have them down unless they were way too confident.

 

So Nero could enjoy telling him his Federation and his Home were destroyed, along with all he loved, "Just like Romulus, and just like the Vulcans."

He may have planned on more of a battle, then saw the name "Enterprise" on the hull, and a lightbulb went off: Why not grab Pike, cripple the Enterprise, and watch young Spock suffer as he did?

At least, that's how I read it.

 

Assuming this civilian mining vessel had shields that would make a difference.

The only time the shields of the Narada are mentioned at all is when the ship is being sucked into the final black hole and losing power. This is apparently a new development; the shields appear to have been up previously, but that didn't stop Spock from ramming the ship, or Scotty from beaming up Pike and Kirk. The shields may have been up when Kirk and Spock infiltrated the ship as it passed Titan, too; it's not unknown in Trek for strong transporters to get through weak shields.

The big question mark is how the drilling head, which was so demonstrably vulnerable to conventional attack both over Vulcan and over Earth, survived for so long. We can assume that Nero had the defense codes for both Vulcan and Earth to keep the big guns at bay - but any hotshot cropduster pilot or sharpshooting ancient artillery enthusiast could have done what Spock did and blasted the drill to bits, either over Vulcan or over Earth.

What kept the defenders from doing that? On Vulcan, we may argue that Nero had space superiority over the drilling spot and prevented Vulcans from approaching by any means. But the Sarek residence was almost directly below the beam and supposedly was accompanied by various vehicles and technologies that could have destroyed the drill. Why did Amanda live to see the drilling start? What good would Nero's defenses be if they allowed the threat of the Sarek villa to continue existing?

On Earth, the beam hit in the middle of San Francisco. There must have been tens of thousands of threat vehicles within range, yet none approached the drill within the minutes we saw, and none appeared to be deterred from doing so by (missile?) fire from Nero's ship.

Should we attribute the lack of resistance completely to Nero's highly effective jamming, which would leave the defenders totally confused and unable to comprehend the threat?

Timo Saloniemi