That THING that follows Scotty round. Why do we need a Jar Jar Binks in Star Trek?
That "thing?" You mean the Starfleet officer of non-Human descent named Keenser?
That "thing?"
I understand if the character annoyed you, but considering that part of the point of
Trek is to accept diversity and to treat people who are different as equals, I'm surprised that you'd use language that implies that one character is, within the fictional world of
Star Trek, somehow less of a person than another character just because he or she has an alien biology.
I hated the "aural sensitivity" pun from the first time I saw it. It was one of those things that pulled me out of the movie.
That was not a pun, and you weren't supposed to interpret it as such. They were using technical jargon, but there's nothing in that scene to suggest that any sort of double entente was intended. It's absurd to try to read one into that, since that scene was decidedly non-sexual in nature.
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!
I believe that the implication is that their depiction of warp drive is a bit different from traditional depictions. Ships at warp seem to have difficulty, if they're even able to, use long-range sensors to detect what's going on outside of subspace.
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??
Apparently the deflector wasn't powerful enough to help after they came out of subspace in the middle of a debris field.
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??
Why would they? It may be an unusual thing, but what makes you think people would automatically associate it with an anomaly detected decades earlier?
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?
Because, amongst other things, a captain who gets it in his head to ram the
Narada can still disable it, as seen in the prologue. Obviously circumventing local defenses helps eliminate this threat.
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???
We don't know how the Red Matter works. What makes you think that it would cause a black hole and implode the planet
without being introduced to the high temperatures and gravitational stresses found in a planetary core?
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).
He probably knows that she's aboard because they
took the same shuttle, obviously.
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.
Right, because no one who is talented in languages ever makes minor mistakes or has minor problems understanding someone's articulation.
4) Kirk, a lowly, sickly, black-clad and obviously non-commissioned individual,
Actually, both TOS and this film (via Uhura) seem to imply that most of the cadets aboard the
Enterprise already held the rank of lieutenant.
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.
This has happened numerous times throughout
Star Trek. Ralph Offenhouse making it to the bridge of the
Enterprise-D in "The Neutral Zone," for instance.
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.
This just makes no sense. Why would the fact that one person puts a pattern together and another person doesn't mean that the latter is an idiot?
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?
There is nothing in the film to indicate that she did not pass this information on to her superior officer at the communications installation in San Francisco.
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.
When Uhura intercepted that transmission, neither she nor Starfleet realized that it had been the
Narada that had done it. The perpetrator of the attack was unknown.
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. <SIP> To me, it shows the lack of care and thought behind the picture.
Gasp! Someone put an "-s" at the end of a word that should have remained singular! That
never happens in real life!
I mean, since 23rd Century humans are, apparently, just as retarded as 21st Century ones, if the bar fight scene is anything to go by,
Are you seriously going to claim that something as minor as a
bar fight is an indication that an entire species is "retarded?"
By the way, re-watch "The Trouble With Tribbles." We see some 23rd Century Humans getting into a bar fight.
Star Trek's fictional society uses no money and Federation citizens don't work for their own financial wealth, like it or not. That fictional fact has become essential part of Star Trek like beaming, warp speed, dilithium crystals and phasers.
It was also never established in TOS, which featured Federation citizens engaging in financial transactions or acting for monetary gain all the time. To wit: Spock posing as a merchant in "Errand of Mercy;" Cyrano Jones selling tribbles in exchange for Federation Credits in "The Trouble With Tribbles;" Harry Mudd, stealing starships and engaging in what we would today call human trafficking (and is no doubt called something more inclusive, like "sentient trafficking," in the 23rd Century); the miners on Janus IV learning to work with the Horta to make a larger fortune; Tellar seeking to solidify its claim on Coridan and prevent it from entering the Federation as a separate Member because of the money it stood to make if it was accepted as Tellarite territory in "Journey to Babel;" McCoy telling a transport captain that he did not have enough money to pay that captain's price for getting to the Genesis Planet; etc.
It has been mentioned dozens of times on screen and is part of Roddenberry's vision of our future.
Or, rather, it
became part of Roddenberry's vision of our future, and also was
regularly contradicted even after it was established -- Quark selling his ship for scrap on Earth in order to buy passage on a transport to DS9, a Vulcan master upping the price of a meditation lamp upon seeing that Tuvok was a Starfleet officer, the Orion Syndicate robbin the Bank of Bolias (a Federation world), Crusher charging a purchase at Farpoint Station to her account on the
Enterprise, the Federation offering to pay the Barzanians 1.5 million credits for use of their wormhole, Ezri's mother owning a mining company on New Sydney, etc.
That ST09 depicts the Federation as having and using money just means it is consistent with TOS; no references to a moneyless society in the UFP occurred until
Star Trek IV, set twenty years after TOS began. Even if we ignore the fact that
Trek has regularly contradicted the "no-money" rule since introducing it, it was never introduced in TOS and ST09 would in fact be violating canon by depicting the Federation as lacking money, which it obviously did not in TOS.
Tom Paris admitted in VOYAGER that Earth completely stopped using conventional money/currency by the late 22nd century...
Yes, in a throwaway line "Dark Frontier." This contradicts
numerous instances of the Federation and Earth using money in TOS. The line was a canon violation and ST09 was right to ignore it.
Edit: I mean, jeez, even Star Wars, which isn't exactly the most character-driven franchise on the planet, didn't make Luke a Jedi instantly.
Agreed. If JJ wanted Kirk to be the captain at the end of the film, why the hell didn't they do a flash-forward? "Three years later" or something like that.
Very strongly agreed. The insta-promotion was stupid.
George Kirk basically restored a museum piece, a 20th century car.
Actually, dialogue seems to imply that the car belonged to the unseen adult male that Kirk's mother was living with (presumably Kirk's step-father). There's no evidence that it was the property of Kirk's father George.
Less facetiously, there would have been nothing to stop George from having modifying the programming of the in car phone to tie into whatever civilian communication system there is avaiable on 23rd Century Earth, or just straight up replacing it, only leaving a fascimilie control panel to imitate an actual car phone.
If anyone should have seen a connection it is him. 
