How did the Nero, his crew and ship escape Rura Penthe?

Countdown and the novelization. This is also implied by the film due to the apparent relative proximity to Romulus, in conjunction with the fact that no Federation worlds were said to be destroyed in the same timeframe as Romulus. For example, we know from Unification that Vulcan is also a "short hop" from the RNZ.

Star Trek Online, in addition to the above sources.

They can indicate writer intent. For example: Trespassing vessel: you have entered the jurisdiction of the Klingon Empire. This is another reference which indicates that the border the writers had in mind for the Kelvin incident was the Klingon-Federation border.

Statements by Orci & Kurtzman appear to say otherwise.

 

Neither of which are canon.

Isn't canon either.

 

Which is really a positive thing. The idea of a star exploding in supernova and destroying a planet, then being neutralized as a threat by creating a black hole, is physically and dramatically extremely challenging, and it's clear the writers (of the movie or the comic) never paid much thought to how it would work out. The more ambiguity we have, the less of this half-hearted "intent" we have to take into account, the more chance there is of dreaming up something that would be even halfway plausible, physically and dramatically.

The one thing that is useful for all models of explanation and apology is placing all the action in the smallest possible volume of space. This helps with making the supernova destructive despite the destruction supposedly moving at a slow pace; it helps with Spock being in a hurry despite flying a fast ship; it helps with Nero being a threat despite flying a slow ship; and it helps with our heroes being the only ones capable of responding in time despite them flying ships that are not faster than the Starfleet average.

This is the main incentive for putting the Klingons in or near the RNZ, both in the teaser and just after Nero meets with Spock. If they were at any significant distance, Nero wouldn't get to Vulcan in time, not in a ship that fails to get from Vulcan to Earth before our heroes despite the heroes making detours and being limited to warp four.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Rumour has it that Rura Penthe will feature in Star Trek Into Darkness, and that part of the story will overlap events from Star Trek. Perhaps Nero's jailbreak will be seen there, and be what allows Big Bad 2 (Khan, maybe?) free to wreak havok on the galaxy.

You never know...

 

In fact, nothing could be less clear. It works out fine on its own wihout rewrites.

What makes it "half-hearted"? The ST canon policy? The aversion of fans? There is nothing half-hearted about it. It simply is what it is. The three relevant locations are intended to be three separate locations, not one location: 1) in Romulan space; 2) at the edge of Federation space near the Klingon border; 3) in the RNZ.

That is only "useful" in the sense of self-fulfilling circular logic. This is not a story where all the action is assumed to take place in a small volume of space. Because of warp drives it is not required to be. Red matter black hole time travel involves travel in spatial location as well as in time, as depicted in the film.

That requires no "help" in the form of locations being rewritten; the supernova destruction is not a problem if we assume it to originate near Romulus. As I said, Romulus appears to be the only notable system destroyed by the supernova. Comparable Federation losses, which we might expect if the Hobus location were moved to a border, are conspicuously never mentioned.

Actually, Spock would then have to cover a shorter distance than what was alleged in, say, the novel. That aside, Spock being in a hurry is another thing that does not need to be helped. Spock would be in a hurry if he's going from Vulcan to Romulan space.

This really makes no sense. Given the timeframe of the film Nero has plenty of time to get to Vulcan sometime the next day.

This is a misstatement of the film. The Narada does get from Vulcan to Earth before our heroes; we see that in the film.

 

The story as written does not hold together at all: the travel time references are massively self-contradictory. Thankfully, the movie execution is vague enough that this does not necessarily result in an internally impossible fictional chain of events.

We really have to assume it to originate at Romulus to meet two simultaneous conditions: Spock stops the supernova at a location where Nero meets him (that is, right when he sets for home in a fast ship, so it can't be a location different from where the supernova was stopped), and Nero witnesses the destruction of Romulus firsthand, at visual range. If Spock stopped the supernova at the putative Hobus, Nero would not be there to intercept him.

...And never mind how Spock could reach a location appreciably deeper into the spherically expanding wave of supernova destruction than Romulus is, considering the wave rips planets apart and Spock has but a fragile little ship.

The one out from this is to say that an explosion at Hobus can be neutralized by creating a black hole at a distant Romulus. Which is very difficult to accept or explain, especially considering your next point and the symmetry concerns inherent in it.

...Indeed, the closer we move things, the more understandable this becomes. If Spock stops the supernova "at the bud", within an extremely confined area of space, not only does it become more plausible that this is accomplished by a single black hole, but it follows that the destruction never reaches any of the rest of the galaxy regardless of the symmetry concerns of the situation.

Indeed. And since distances can always be fought with high speed, the only good reason Spock could be late is if he is fighting reaction time issues and travel time is not a concern. Shorter distance is a more plausible explanation for failure to reach Romulus in time: if a long distance were involved, Spock would be able to calculate things to perfection and would be there in time (or would realize he's going to fail and would not go to Romulus at all), yet if he is late as seen, he must have been surprised by the events, which is likelier to happen during or before a short, desperate trip.

An explosion at a distance, countered by a long trip that takes too long, results in a host of problems. Chiefly, Spock looks like an idiot for traveling to Romulus for nothing, because stopping the explosion with a black hole away from the core of the explosion would now be better done in the direction of some other vulnerable system.

A local explosion, countered by a short hop from Vulcan (but too late, because the explosion happened sooner than Spock thought - remember, most folks didn't even believe in an explosion, highlighting the uncertainties involved), would wholly remove the problem and be fully consistent with the idea that Romulus lies close to Vulcan. (Also, it would allow the fastest ship of whomever Spock considers to be "us" not to be all that fast after all, by general standards - making it more plausible that Nero would give chase to it in his own lumbering juggernaut. Although we can easily attribute that to Nero being crazy as a cuckoo at that point, too.)

But this is a contradiction of internal logic. Starfleet took a certain if unestablished time (from San Francisco morning to less than the next San Francisco 22 hours, apparently) to get from Earth to Vulcan. Yet Nero fails to outrun our heroes in the opposite direction, despite Spock giving him lead time by making the detour to Delta Vega. Getting from Spock Prime's point of emergence to Vulcan between the timestorm of 22 hours and the "soon thereafter" when Starfleet got a distress call from Vulcan is not gonna happen if Spock Prime's point of emergence is farther from Vulcan than Earth is. So we either have to accept Klingon space as being closer to Vulcan than Earth is, or Klingons being in Romulan or Federation space. (Unless we wish to discount the rumors of Klingons being massacred altogether - Nero would be a likely culprit for launching such rumors, as he must engineer Starfleet's departure from Earth and Vulcan for Laurentius somehow. But that's just another possible apology we could create to remove the inherent contradictions of the movie, rather than something we need to build on.)

The Narada starts lowering the drill into Earth while our heroes are still underway. But Nero hasn't activated the drill when our heroes beam aboard from their ambush positions in Titan's clouds. So the best we can say in Nero's favor is that Nero reached Sol at the same time with our heroes, who were limited to warp four and gave the villain lead time by making the detour.

(Actually, the editing must be confusing the issue; the arrival of our heroes at Titan must be concurrent with Nero's drill-lowering antics, not coming after it. Otherwise the time gap between the drill being lowered and being activated would make no sense. But that's just icing on the cake.)

(Really, this is probably an editing error: our heroes originally spoke of ambushing Nero as he passes Saturn, so showing him at Earth before our heroes are at ambush positions runs contrary to the dialogue. Plus it establishes our heroes using extremely long range transporters, which Kirk already had bad experiences about. But it's probably more difficult to negate an outright editing error than to point out that two things shown happening subsequently are just as likely to happen concurrently. Although of course there is no overall need to argue that scenes in a movie would take place in the order they are shown.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

Ah, excellent point.

Spock and Nero would still be at one and the same location when the supernova was tamed, but your argument makes it possible that this location might be something sensible like the center of the supernova explosion.

Then again, the mind meld visuals suggest red matter deployment from outside the roaring wall of flame that was seen consuming Romulus. Are there perhaps multiple concentric walls of flame, and Spock strikes at the innermost one? That particular wall does show noticeable curvature - and a natural supernova would feature concentric waves of destruction, possibly with the outer ones being less harmful (that is, gonna kill Romulus but only cause faint aurorae at Vulcan and not be felt at Earth at all) but the inner ones being something Spock must absolutely stop.

Timo Saloniemi

 

None of this requires things to be moved, though. Spock stopping the supernova "at the bud" ( or close to it ) does not depend on any moving of the locations of the emergence points. Spock can still do this regardless of where the emergence points are.

For one thing, some have theorized that the report was faked by Nero himself. That aside, why should we assume that Spock's emergence point is farther from Vulcan than Earth is?

There's a problem here: you're collapsing the timeframe far too much. The Klingon incident is first mentioned during the night preceding a day which included both the Kobayashi Maru and Kirk's hearing. During Kirk's hearing we are notified of the Vulcan distress call. By your argument, most of this span of time cannot exist. If we take this duration into account there is sufficient time for Nero to go wherever he needs to be.

Bad experiences? You mean when he and Scotty ended up in Engineering and Scotty ended up in a water tank? They still made it onto the ship. We see similar results when Kirk and Spock beam onto the Narada, but apparently not the part Scotty intended. It's another application of transwarp beaming.