Could the Hobus destruction of Romulus have been metaphorical?

Not at all. Very few episodes involve anything as ludicrous and totally unnecessary as the infamous Warp Speed Supernova or "sucking back" shockwaves from light years away.

It is science FICTION, not science, so a fair amount of wanking is allowed, and necessary. But the science part of scifi counts for SOMETHING. And for me, the silliness of supernovas that travel at Warp Speed falls in that area of superfluous, unnecessary wankitude.

 

You beat me to the punch. No version of Star Trek is more "real" than any other. There was the previous version, now there's a new version, and someday there will be other versions. It's as simple as that.

And, honestly, this whole argument strikes me as yet another rather strained attempt to somehow invalidate or dismiss the new movies. The phrase "grasping at straws" comes to mind.

Romulus is toast, and so is Vulcan. At least until they reboot the franchise again.

 

There is precedent for a faster than light shockwave from a planetary explosion in the appearance of Praxis exploding in Star Trek VI hitting US Excelsior across the border in Federation space.

So here he have what is later considered to be an artificially tampered with star that goes supernova that also has a faster than like shockwave. One would guess this is a subspace shockwave, but something is powering enough that it will destroy things in its path.

An note...the black hole was able to hold USS Enterprise even after she goes to warp. Thus it can suck thing going faster than light. Would that mean it could suck in a subspace shockwave? Could It do this without sucking in anything beyond many light years away, or does the red matter black hole simply cut out the center that is somehow empowering the deadly faster than light wave of destruction?

Why didn't the black hole such in the Sol system? Hopefully because it was too busy sucking in Nero and Enterprise's warp core(s) stopped it.

 

Speaking of precedent, I would have thought they would have used the trilithium warhead to destroy the Romulan star directly. An alien force did it, but simulates Starfleet radio traffic to make the Federation seem responsible. That would have been interesting.

But if you stay with the time travel idea, you could say that the wreckage of the Jellyfish and the Narada actually went somewhere. Further in the past? Potential follow up ideas there.

 

As I understand it, and I'm not a big reader or viewer of it, serious science fiction tries to play mostly within the real laws of physics, maybe stretching some of them to the limits of what may be possible. It may also allow itself one or two scientific conceits. It also tries to be consistent within the universe it created.

"Star Trek" in all its forms going back to TOS is at best science fantasy, which is a fine genre of its own. It doesn't necessarily try to stay consistent, and bends, breaks, or ignores so many laws of physics that it essentially lives by its own laws. It allows faster-than-light space travel, instantaneous communication across light years, artificial gravity, perfect universal translation, Genesis, and teleportation among other things. Trek has also always lived by one important law of its physics: when in question, do whatever the plot requires.

Of all the "wankitude" in Trek, Genesis in TWOK always took the cake for me. After that, anything is believable.

 

Yeah, Genesis was pretty incredible. Although I think when it comes to naturally occurring phenomena, like Supernovas, they should be kept consistent with physical reality as much as possible. Stars, planets, dwarf planets, comets, etc should not fly at warp speed. It may or may not be possible for ships to do that in future centuries, but planets definitely cant. Sure they could make a warp speed planet if they want to. But they don't have to.

 

I do see your point. In the case of ST09, they probably could've described the supernova as a unique phenomenon exhibiting strange properties. Perhaps pieces of it would enter nearby wormholes, emerging light years away from the source. There are always explanations.

The thing that did get me was in GEN, when Soran is on Veridian and destroys its sun. We see the results in seconds. Most movie-goers aren't thinking too much about deep space phenomena, but I think most intelligent people know it takes eight minutes for the light from the sun to reach Earth. However far that sun was from Veridian, it was "movie magic" that allowed the results of what Soran did to be seen in seconds, not minutes. But again, I doubt it bothered too many people.

When I watch Trek, I just live in their universe and let myself be entertained. Occasionally, my intelligence is insulted or I simply can't suspend disbelief, but it's seldom been to the point of ruining an episode or movie for me. As I said, Genesis is just outlandish. Impossible to even think about, let alone fantasize about. Still, I remember Siskel and Ebert on their show reviewing TWOK and saying Genesis was an example of the "big ideas" Trek deals with. They thought it was great.

 

But probably not always time or a need to give lengthy ones. As he often did during TOS, Spock may have just wanted to give the most important facts of what happened...while someone like Data may start off giving a full scientific explanation until someone tells him to get to the point.

 

The main reason we can assume that all this happened, regardless of how far out there it is on the science-fantasy ratio, is that it is Spock telling "us" about it. This is the guy we would generally trust to at least give as a semi-reasonable picture of what happened to Romulus to not only get Spock to this century, but also to why Nero is really pissed off to the point of destroying Vulcan and likely heading for Earth next.

 

We might also assume that more detail of the "supernova" explosion may have passed to Kirk via the mind meld. The narration was simply an abridged version for our benefit.

 

Yep, there's that to consider.

 

Or the missile was warp-capable.

 

Yeah. That's not the problem I had. Even if the missile got there in seconds, it would've likely taken several minutes for the results to be seen coming back to Veridian at light speed.

In TUC, that shockwave from the explosion of Kronos's moon covered a lot of space far too fast, too.

Oh, well. It's all what one has to do to move a story along. No one's gonna sit for however long it takes for that light or shockwave to really get to where it needs to go to create the action.

 

They broke the "Time Barrier" back in "The Cage" so time is irrelevant for most things. Plot is what is important.