Lightning Storm? What Lightning Storm? [SPOILER ALERT!]

[Timo]

That's a good point, a good distinction to make. I have no objection to the use of the term "lightning storm in space" the first time around: the crew of the Kelvin, supposedly among the brightest researchers and explorers in Starfleet, have been frustrated in their attempts to understand this new phenomenon, and humiliated into sending their findings for Earth to analyze. It's only natural that they'd throw up their hands and start calling the thing a "lightning storm" from between their teeth. The frustration, humiliation and resignation is all there in the acting when the Kelvin sends her request for assistance.

It's only the repeated use of the term that is a contrivance.

And I hadn't previously thought about the lack of a subspace radio warning from the six ships that got to Vulcan earlier. One more plot hole to add to the list...

But, as stated, it wasn't a plot hole: it was covered. There was no warning or other message, and our heroes were uneasy because of that fact, but they pressed on nevertheless, since that's what they do for a living. Communications blackouts in crises are probably a regular occurrence - certainly they were in TOS and TNG. They are no excuse not to proceed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[lawman]

And I hadn't previously thought about the lack of a subspace radio warning from the six ships that got to Vulcan earlier. One more plot hole to add to the list...

But, as stated, it wasn't a plot hole: it was covered. There was no warning or other message, and our heroes were uneasy because of that fact, but they pressed on nevertheless, since that's what they do for a living. Communications blackouts in crises are probably a regular occurrence - certainly they were in TOS and TNG. They are no excuse not to proceed.

The writers hanging a lampshade on this doesn't make it any more plausible. However quickly Nero destroyed the six ships that preceded the Enterprise, it still defies belief that not one of them managed to send back so much as an automated alert.

 

[DarkHorizon]

And I hadn't previously thought about the lack of a subspace radio warning from the six ships that got to Vulcan earlier. One more plot hole to add to the list...

But, as stated, it wasn't a plot hole: it was covered. There was no warning or other message, and our heroes were uneasy because of that fact, but they pressed on nevertheless, since that's what they do for a living. Communications blackouts in crises are probably a regular occurrence - certainly they were in TOS and TNG. They are no excuse not to proceed.

The writers hanging a lampshade on this doesn't make it any more plausible. However quickly Nero destroyed the six ships that preceded the Enterprise, it still defies belief that not one of them managed to send back so much as an automated alert.

Except that the Narada drill platform was already deployed and active at that point, disrupting all communications.

 

[Timo]

Or at least our heroes supposed that the drilling platform was doing the jamming. Nero could certainly have bought a 24th century jammer from a random Ferengi at the price of half a holonovel, and it would have brought the best mid-23rd communications systems crashing down.

Of course, since the destruction of the drilling head did lift the communications and transportation block, our heroes apparently supposed right.

One wonders why the beanstalk drill was necessary in the first place. Many a 24th century starship has been able to drill similar holes by using an emitter that was located outside the atmosphere; it was only tens of thousands of kilometers of atmosphere that in VOY "Extreme Risk" blocked phaser beams. Would the dedicated drilling beam emitter of the Narada really need to hang down deep in the atmosphere?

Then again, the platform no doubt was originally intended for some other use than penetration of planetary mantles. The Narada supposedly (and according to the comic book backstory) was a thoroughly civilian vessel to begin with, and the drill beam might have been optimized for the vacuum conditions of asteroid mining, making the beanstalk necessary. Or something.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Or at least our heroes supposed that the drilling platform was doing the jamming. Nero could certainly have bought a 24th century jammer from a random Ferengi at the price of half a holonovel, and it would have brought the best mid-23rd communications systems crashing down.

Of course, since the destruction of the drilling head did lift the communications and transportation block, our heroes apparently supposed right.

One wonders why the beanstalk drill was necessary in the first place. Many a 24th century starship has been able to drill similar holes by using an emitter that was located outside the atmosphere; it was only tens of thousands of kilometers of atmosphere that in VOY "Extreme Risk" blocked phaser beams. Would the dedicated drilling beam emitter of the Narada really need to hang down deep in the atmosphere?

Then again, the platform no doubt was originally intended for some other use than penetration of planetary mantles. The Narada supposedly (and according to the comic book backstory) was a thoroughly civilian vessel to begin with, and the drill beam might have been optimized for the vacuum conditions of asteroid mining, making the beanstalk necessary. Or something.

Timo Saloniemi

Presumably, the "jamming" functionality would be related to the fact that Nero's ship was half-borgified (again, per the comic prequel that nobody watching the movie woudl be aware of).

From that standpoint... it almost makes sense... if this technology was part of the Borg "planetary harvesting" system. Of course, the "space-elevator/drill" was established (again, in the comic, not onscreen) as being largely "original equipment" for the originally-much-different Narada.

I can easily imagine a massive "extended edition DVD" which actually explains all the stuff that you really... REALLY... needed to see in the film in the first place (which is, essentially, everything in the comic and everything in the various deleted scenes, like the break-out of Nero from the Klingon penal colony, after he was captured during the period after the destruction of George Kirk's ship).

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Or at least our heroes supposed that the drilling platform was doing the jamming. Nero could certainly have bought a 24th century jammer from a random Ferengi at the price of half a holonovel, and it would have brought the best mid-23rd communications systems crashing down.

No, it's a major plotpoint. They had to disable the drill in order to use their transporters. Either the drill or just Nero's weapons apparently have extremely deleterious effects on long range communications as well, seeing how Enterprise was unable to summon reinforcements from the Laurentean system via subspace radio.

One wonders why the beanstalk drill was necessary in the first place.

Precisely because it IS a dill and not, say, a phaser or a giant force beam. More likely it was designed to carve deep holes in an asteroid and then extract the contents from within using a second mode, like an oil rig or something. The second stage probably would have involved the Narada descending closer to the planet and actually dipping the beanstalk into the hole it drilled, but Nero had no need for that when he could just fire a drop of red matter.

 

[ST-One]

Or at least our heroes supposed that the drilling platform was doing the jamming. Nero could certainly have bought a 24th century jammer from a random Ferengi at the price of half a holonovel, and it would have brought the best mid-23rd communications systems crashing down.

Of course, since the destruction of the drilling head did lift the communications and transportation block, our heroes apparently supposed right.

One wonders why the beanstalk drill was necessary in the first place. Many a 24th century starship has been able to drill similar holes by using an emitter that was located outside the atmosphere; it was only tens of thousands of kilometers of atmosphere that in VOY "Extreme Risk" blocked phaser beams. Would the dedicated drilling beam emitter of the Narada really need to hang down deep in the atmosphere?

Then again, the platform no doubt was originally intended for some other use than penetration of planetary mantles. The Narada supposedly (and according to the comic book backstory) was a thoroughly civilian vessel to begin with, and the drill beam might have been optimized for the vacuum conditions of asteroid mining, making the beanstalk necessary. Or something.

Timo Saloniemi

Presumably, the "jamming" functionality would be related to the fact that Nero's ship was half-borgified (again, per the comic prequel that nobody watching the movie woudl be aware of).

From that standpoint... it almost makes sense... if this technology was part of the Borg "planetary harvesting" system. Of course, the "space-elevator/drill" was established (again, in the comic, not onscreen) as being largely "original equipment" for the originally-much-different Narada.

I can easily imagine a massive "extended edition DVD" which actually explains all the stuff that you really... REALLY... needed to see in the film in the first place (which is, essentially, everything in the comic and everything in the various deleted scenes, like the break-out of Nero from the Klingon penal colony, after he was captured during the period after the destruction of George Kirk's ship).

Actually, everything you need to know is in the movie.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

Basically, then, it wouldn't be a plot hole (which I think the movie didn't have in abundance). It would merely be a plot contrivance - which in turn the movie was heavily ballasted with.

Kirk wouldn't have been able to tell Pike it was a trap unless he mistook Spock's arrival for a sign of Nero's evil antics. A coincidence and a contrivance. But so was the fact that Earth only had cadets and second-rate ships available at the critical hour; not a plot hole, since it's perfectly possible for Starfleet's best men and ships to be engaged in some other task at the time of any given Kirk adventure - but certainly a coincidence and thus a contrivance. Having Kirk's friend McCoy become the CMO of Kirk's starship at a time of crisis was also possible, but contrived. And so forth.

I don't think there was anything in the movie that would have been impossible by the rules of the Trek universe. But the whole movie was a big pile of things that were plausible alone, but highly improbable in combination, in the Trek universe.

Timo Saloniemi

I've been operating on the personal theory that Time is self-correcting and will create co-incidences to throw people and events together to put itself back together. Somewhat akin to what happened in Voyager's year of hell.

Having come to this conclusion I have been smiling about this movie ever since.

 

[Timo]

Precisely because it IS a dill and not, say, a phaser or a giant force beam. More likely it was designed to carve deep holes in an asteroid and then extract the contents from within using a second mode, like an oil rig or something.

Being a drill would explain the need for the extracting mode. But it doesn't quite explain why Nero used that mode when he was extracting nothing. Surely the dipping of the drill head into the atmosphere had little or no effect on the drill's ability to do its work?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Ultimately the drilling platform is the most effective and fastest and only way to get through to the planet's core.
The Narada doesn't seem to be armed with standard phasers "only" those cluster missiles which would be useless for drilling purposes.
And the original purpose probably included changing the angle towards the asteroids it was mining without maneuvering the ship too much.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Precisely because it IS a dill and not, say, a phaser or a giant force beam. More likely it was designed to carve deep holes in an asteroid and then extract the contents from within using a second mode, like an oil rig or something.

Being a drill would explain the need for the extracting mode. But it doesn't quite explain why Nero used that mode when he was extracting nothing.

He wasn't, seeing how the ship never descended to physically insert the drill into the hole it made.

Surely the dipping of the drill head into the atmosphere had little or no effect on the drill's ability to do its work?

Actually, that might just be a coincidence. The Narada is clearly not in ORBIT of the planet at the time, or at least nothing that would resemble a normal orbit by realistic standards, so it's pretty clear the ship is actually hovering over a particular spot using antigravs or something to that effect. Given the mass-reducing effects of impulse engines and warp drives, this actually seems to be pretty common; if you can only stop relative to a fixed point in space and can't drop out of warp at a particular orbital velocity, then as soon as you enter sublight suddenly you're in freefall (rather like the wrecked ships Enterprise almost crashed into and never appeared on screen after that; they probably ended up on the surface of Vulcan). Kirk and Sulu's lack of fiery reentry interface is another indicator of this; Narada wasn't orbiting Vulcan, it was hanging over a particular spot.

 

[Ronald Held]

BTW is the drill an energy device? if so does the matter it is removing go to the same place as a disintegrated body by a phaser? To counter the extreme pressures at the core, is there a force field surrounding the beam?

 

[Jimmy_C]

Precisely because it IS a dill and not, say, a phaser or a giant force beam. More likely it was designed to carve deep holes in an asteroid and then extract the contents from within using a second mode, like an oil rig or something.

Being a drill would explain the need for the extracting mode. But it doesn't quite explain why Nero used that mode when he was extracting nothing. Surely the dipping of the drill head into the atmosphere had little or no effect on the drill's ability to do its work?

Timo Saloniemi

The drill could interfere with the ship's systems. It interfered with the Enterprise's transporters and communications. Who knows what it would do close to the ship. Hence, the drill could be on the boom for safety.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Precisely because it IS a dill and not, say, a phaser or a giant force beam. More likely it was designed to carve deep holes in an asteroid and then extract the contents from within using a second mode, like an oil rig or something.

Being a drill would explain the need for the extracting mode. But it doesn't quite explain why Nero used that mode when he was extracting nothing. Surely the dipping of the drill head into the atmosphere had little or no effect on the drill's ability to do its work?

Timo Saloniemi

The drill could interfere with the ship's systems. It interfered with the Enterprise's transporters and communications. Who knows what it would do close to the ship. Hence, the drill could be on the boom for safety.

I always love it when someone actually thinks about things, rather than just going with the "standard operating procedure" for Trek (where you put personnel standing right next to a piece of hazardous equipment with only a quarter-inch of plexiglass between them).

Hell yeah, a device capable of boring a hole through the mantle of a planet... and realize, we're not JUST talking about making the hole, we're talking about keeping it clear by continuously destroying material which is inevitably going to be falling inwards to collapse that hole!... is going to be a VERY high-power device, and would inevitably put out stuff that wouldn't be "happy" for the people right there next to it.

The real question, really, posed by this scene was "how could Kirk, Sulu, and the Romulans be right there next to this piece of equipment and not immediately be flash-fried?"

Yeah, they did the "if you get into the beam, you flash." But remember, this is in an ATMOSPHERE. How hot do you think the air around that drill would be?

OK, maybe your counterargument is "well, they have the drilling beam in an 'annular confinement beam' so it's not in contact with the atmosphere." In that case, wouldn't Olsen have just bounced off the containment beam?

No... this entire scene was really an excuse for a "kewl action sequence."

The thing that REALLY amazes me about this little sequence is that the Vulcans didn't have every air-worthy craft in their inventory swarming the thing. Apparently, nuVulcans are luddites who just happen to like to build upside-down buildings? (sigh)

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Being a drill would explain the need for the extracting mode. But it doesn't quite explain why Nero used that mode when he was extracting nothing. Surely the dipping of the drill head into the atmosphere had little or no effect on the drill's ability to do its work?

Timo Saloniemi

The drill could interfere with the ship's systems. It interfered with the Enterprise's transporters and communications. Who knows what it would do close to the ship. Hence, the drill could be on the boom for safety.

I always love it when someone actually thinks about things, rather than just going with the "standard operating procedure" for Trek (where you put personnel standing right next to a piece of hazardous equipment with only a quarter-inch of plexiglass between them).

Hell yeah, a device capable of boring a hole through the mantle of a planet... and realize, we're not JUST talking about making the hole, we're talking about keeping it clear by continuously destroying material which is inevitably going to be falling inwards to collapse that hole!... is going to be a VERY high-power device, and would inevitably put out stuff that wouldn't be "happy" for the people right there next to it.

The real question, really, posed by this scene was "how could Kirk, Sulu, and the Romulans be right there next to this piece of equipment and not immediately be flash-fried?"

Yeah, they did the "if you get into the beam, you flash." But remember, this is in an ATMOSPHERE. How hot do you think the air around that drill would be?

OK, maybe your counterargument is "well, they have the drilling beam in an 'annular confinement beam' so it's not in contact with the atmosphere." In that case, wouldn't Olsen have just bounced off the containment beam?

No... this entire scene was really an excuse for a "kewl action sequence."

The thing that REALLY amazes me about this little sequence is that the Vulcans didn't have every air-worthy craft in their inventory swarming the thing. Apparently, nuVulcans are luddites who just happen to like to build upside-down buildings? (sigh)

The platform itself could shield them from most of the heat the beam is emitting. Of course the platform itself might get very hot and they have to vent it occasionally. You just don't want to step on the venting hole at the wrong moment... oh, wait!

 

[David cgc]

OK, maybe your counterargument is "well, they have the drilling beam in an 'annular confinement beam' so it's not in contact with the atmosphere." In that case, wouldn't Olsen have just bounced off the containment beam?

Well, we've seen a great many examples of not-quite-solid forcefields, in open shuttlebays, for instance. It could be tuned to keep the heat and harmful energies of the beam in, rather than keeping foreign objects out (which would probably require more power than a one-way or semi-permeable barrier). Let's face it, leakage from that beam is going to hurt the outside world a hell of a lot more than leakage from the outside world is going to hurt the beam. As for why they'd put a forcefield up at all instead of just letting the drill burn the air, it would protect the drill operators inside the platform, the drill equipment itself, and any workers or operations on the ground near the drilling site.

No... this entire scene was really an excuse for a "kewl action sequence."

I can't imagine any big action sequence ever caught the writers of anything by surprise, so that excuse can be applied to anything. Warp engine trouble in TMP? Excuse for a kewl action sequence. Selectively-bred superman takes over the ship in "Space Seed?" Excuse for a kewl action sequence. Freakin' invisible spaceship in Balance of Terror? Such an excuse for a kewl action episode.

The thing that REALLY amazes me about this little sequence is that the Vulcans didn't have every air-worthy craft in their inventory swarming the thing. Apparently, nuVulcans are luddites who just happen to like to build upside-down buildings? (sigh)

Yes, if only there was some plausible way the drilling platform could've been covered from attack. Perhaps some sort of miles-long spaceship from the future that could effortlessly destroy all challengers and was physically attached to it. Maybe they'll add one to the scene to fill that plot hole in the special edition.

 

[Ronald Held]

Why under normal circumstances would a drilling platform need protection from an attack?

 

[Phily B]

The lightning storm was Spock coming out of the "black hole", and it was near Vulcan/The Neutral Zone. I'm sure Starfleet picked it up, and thought that it may have had something to do with the natural disaster Vulcan was experiencing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And Kirk wrongly assumed the Narada was the CAUSE of that phenomenon, never realizing it was just an amazing (though hardly inexplicable) coincidence.

Proof yet again that, as fat as the Enterprise is concerned, it is better to be lucky than smart.

 

[USS Intrepid]

This movie is full of conveniences & plot holes. From a Trek Tech perspective its total blasphemy. Character moments and dialogue are excellent, but plot-holes, conveniences and tech issues are horrific.

Luckily these issues will go over the heads of 98% of people who watch the movie

I was entertained and enjoyed the movie, so its a job well done in that department. Infact I was enjoying it so much that I missed most of the plot holes!

Me too, honestly. Well, beyond the utterly simplistic understanding of black holes and supernovae, but those aren't actually "plot" holes. But then... I wasn't expecting realistic or even Trek-realistic science and tech from JJ Abrams and the writers of Transformers.

But, but, but, they followed current scientific thinking for their time travel mechanics.