That scene was totally unnecessary as the Narada was toast anyways. It was just a big excuse for the 'grand finale' where the ugly Nu-E is put in danger and to give every bridge member the obligatory screen shot of them smiling their faces off. This was a cringe worthy moment. Ugh.
As if unnecessary stuff was never shown in any Trek.
For me, the cringeworthy moments are more technical than other parts of the story.
First, when they arrive at Vulcan the E-crew are completely taken by surprise from the other ship's debris. Uh.. guys? You got long-range sensors right? Or even short range ones? USE THEM! And then Pike has to order the helm to make the ship 'duck' underneath the flying broken hull. Where the heck was the deflector?? Did they deactivate it??
Second, why couldn't Starfleet get on "full alert" mode when they heard of the news of a "lightning storm in space"? It is established early on that it is a highly unnatural occurrence so much so that even Kirk is alerted in a dazed and confused mode. So none of the eggheads in Starfleet could cross-reference the event with any of their history information??
Third, why would Nero even need the "subspace frequencies for Starfleet's border protection grids"? His ship is like in fricking God-mode! Narada was capable of taking out 47 Klingon ships and then the weak-ass Starfleet ships, why would he care to slip by the border grid when he could just shoot his way through?
Fourth, and the most jarring one:
why even go through the hassle of drilling to a planet's core when you could just fucking shoot the red matter into the star of your intent-to-destroy system and go on your merry way???
Though even after all those irritations, this movie still is the most entertaining movie I have ever seen. Well yes I am biased because its Star Trek. So sue me!
The film is horribly contrived and executed start to end, though the section you describe may contain the highest density of stupidity. I feel you're being very generous in having omitted so much, so allow me to fill in some of the blanks:
1) The awful inflatable hand and "numb tongue" jokes that precede this segment really drag the movie down to the level of farce (and not good farce). I know, I know: I'm hardly the first person on the damn Internet to talk about this, but it's so incongruous with the dire transpirations driving the movie forward that it reduces the world of Trek to that of an SNL skit.
2) When Kirk bashes away (with bulbous fingers) on a computer terminal, looking for Uhura, how does he know she's even on board? In the embarkation scene (i.e. scene of the cadets boarding shuttles), Kirk protests that his name wasn't called, which means the viewer must infer he listened to everyone else being assigned, including Uhura -- and Uhura was assigned to the Farragut (this was only changed when Uhura admonished Spock and guilt-tripped him into changing his decision, which Kirk wasn't privy to).
3) When Kirk does locate Uhura, he speaks in a very harried manner, unnecessarily putting Uhura on edge (not to mention her reaction to his cartoon hands). However, even as his articulation begins to fail, you can still clearly make out he's asking Uhura if the ship was "Romulan" -- yet Uhura, "unmatched in xenolinguistics", let alone contemporary American English, can't understand Kirk or this very distinctive noun, which Kirk has to say three times before she gets it.
4) Kirk, a lowly, sickly, black-clad and obviously non-commissioned individual, rushing to the bridge of the flagship vessel, and making it through the doors and into the heart of the ship's command centre, without meeting any resistance whatsoever, is something of a stretch. Although he's doing it for a good reason, seeing him argue with and talk over Spock while trying to get Pike's full attention also makes me cringe.
5) Why would Pike, a man who wrote a bloody paper on the original "lightning storm", not show the faintest hint of doubt or trepidation until super trooper James T. Kirk lectures him and makes him realise that he
might want to get a clue? This is a blatant example of cheaply propping up Kirk's superior insight and mad skillz by making the rest of Starfleet, even its venerable captains, look like brain-dead, blithering idiots. It's a wonder anyone in Starfleet could even remember their own name before the advent of Kirk, let alone pass exams or conduct missions of exploration.
6) Uhura intercepted a transmission which involved the obliteration of 47 (ugh) Klingon war birds by one Romulan vessel, and she didn't think this was significant to report or pass on to anyone? How many ships were creamed by the Borg at Wolf 359? 39, right? And that was considered a massacre, was it not? Here, not only were a further eight ships destroyed, but they belonged to a warrior race, built and manned for battle, and this was done in the 23rd Century, by a single Romulan vessel, belonging to a species known for treachery. This should have put the fear of Zeus into these people, but then, I suppose if the distance to Vulcan, Starfleet's command structure and every other aspect of verisimilitude in this movie can be reduced to pap, why not be totally nonchalant about the decimation of entire fleets by a clandestine force, too?
7) The entire bridge argument and prelude to an action sequence is shot in close-up, and badly blocked and edited, to boot. When the argument begins, Kirk is roughly in the middle of the bridge, but by the end of the scene, just before the Enterprise drops out of warp, he's clutching a console at the rear of the bridge. Further, before he's shown clutching the console, another shot depicts him simply standing, as if waiting for an order, and his position relative to Spock also changes; in one shot, Spock is stood at Kirk's left, in the next, he's at Kirk's right. You have to watch closely, but it's very clumsily done, and I guess Abrams hoped his tossed salad style of photography and editing would confuse people too much to notice. Uhura also assumes her post amazingly fast, given that in
less than ten seconds she: walks over to the console, relieves the crew member, dons the famous earpiece, scans for activity and asserts that she isn't picking up any transmissions -- talk about efficient.
8) Given that the Enterprise is still at warp and still heading towards this "trap", why doesn't Pike order an emergency stop to bring the ship short of Vulcan and send details back to Starfleet, or at least prepare the ship in an orderly fashion for battle, or even retreat? Instead, with all this foreknowledge, which amounts to jack sh*t in the end, they continue all the way to Vulcan and drop straight into the maelstrom, as Kirk predicted. Nothing changes. All Kirk's bluster amounts to is the screenwriters giving the character a platform from which he can demonstrate his supposed tenacity and brilliance of mind, which then leads to the major contrivance of Pike promoting him to second officer, allowing him to leapfrog into the captain's chair via another contrivance that isn't too far away.
9) When Pike orders that the Enterprise be dropped down underneath a piece of debris, Sulu has the silliest look on his face, which is very off-putting (although it's only a brief shot, almost subliminal), and then the Enterprise actually collides with another object, ripping plating and God-knows-what from the top of its saucer, in spite of the fact that a line of chatter that precedes this moment indicates that the "deflector shields are holding", and in spite of the fact that Sulu is meant to be a master pilot -- then again, Sulu did leave the "parking brake" on, so I suppose he can't actually be trusted to peel an orange, much less steer a starship. Personally, I just think the shot of the Enterprise sustaining visible damage was just put in to look cool, and not for any logical or weighty reason.
10) "Divert auxiliary power from port nacelles to forward shields." This line makes absolutely no sense. Not only is the Enterprise clearly vulnerable from all angles, which leaves the idea of diverting power to *forward* shields looking stupid and redundant, but there are no port nacelles; there is precisely *one* nacelle at port and *one* nacelle at starboard, and that's it. Maybe the screenwriters meant for Pike to say "aft nacelles", but even the adjective "aft" would be redundant; there are only two nacelles and they're both at aft. Or, if the screenwriters really did mean to have Pike order that auxiliary power be diverted from *the* port nacelle to forward shields, then that's plain dumb, since the ship is under impulse and doesn't need *auxiliary* power going to either of its nacelles, let alone both, so why not divert as much of it to where it's needed? To me, it shows the lack of care and thought behind the picture.
I could enumerate reasons why this film blows chunks all night, but I won't. I think ten points for
five minutes out of a 2-hour movie is damning and draining enough. STXI gives me brain bleed -- and after INS and NEM, that's saying something.
I've no doubt that you enjoyed the film and found much to both enjoy and think about and that's great, but as much as I wanted to, I really don't like it at all. To me it plays like Kubrick's discarded outtakes from 2001 using the Star Trek characters.
