Enterprise arriving after the main battle over Vulcan

[T'Girl]

And, of course, ships have navigational deflectors to shunt all the small stuff out of the way (and 'small stuff' includes everything from dust to asteroids). Any bodies larger than that could be detected far enough away to navigate around.

This is one of the problems. why didn't the Enterprise know it was decelerating into a debris field of wreckage?

In the first Star Wars movie, Hans Solo decelerates into the debris field that was the planet Alderaan, it was a surprise because he and his ship were traveling blind. The Enterprise doesn't travel blind. Or shouldn't be, we've seen the Enterprise go from warp to impulse and rendezvous with a sublight ship, they knew it was there because while at warp the sensors showed a ship not at warp. If Captain Pike was going to drop to impulse into a formation of Starfleet vessels, he would need to know where they were. The sensors didn't detect the wreckage. They dropped into orbit blind.

Even if Nero hadn't destroyed the fleet, Pike and the Enterprise still would have been in danger of colliding with another Starfleet vessel.

When the Enterprise arrived in Vulcan's orbit the wreckage of the fleet was slowly dispersing. There were no remaining visible fireballs. The Enterprise may have left Earth's orbit 44 second behind the fleet, but it seems for whatever reason they arrived more that 44 second after the fleet arrived. Perhaps because the Enterprise was a brand new ship, maybe even on it's first long range cruise, on the trip to Vulcan she gradual lost ground to the rest of the fleet. The Enterprise arrived several minutes late, The wreckage wasn't wildly flying apart, but at it's slow speed of break up it had time to spread across a few miles of area.

 

[Bones2]

Basically our heroes survived because Sulu was a fucking nincompoop.

*table-thumping laughter*

He may never get the Excelsior now. Though heaven knows what they'll make that look like now.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

We're being expected to believe:

1) That it is safe to warp through a solar system (with planets, moons, comets, gravitational forces, asteroids, other ships, and satelites).

And we've been expected to believe this since the earliest episodes of TOS. Your incredulity on this matter is forty years too late.

2) That 6 ships came out of warp in such close proximity to each other and in such close proximity to the planet that they were all in torpedo range and none of them had the chance to raise shields.

The basic structure of fleet action since Deep Space Nine.

3) That the Narada has an unlimited supply of 24th century torpedoes on board (enough to destroy a klingon fleet and federation fleet) despite being a mining ship and despite being held by the klingons for 20 years.

Be consistent with which version of the film you're going with. If you go by the deleted scenes, then the Narada didn't destroy ANY Klingon ships and merely escaped from Rurapenthe. If you go by the theatrical version, Narada spent 25 years wandering the galaxy on its lonesome, presumably manufacturing the weapons it would need to launch a full-scale war against the Federation.

The only thing Nero lacked was red matter, and he had twenty five years to think of a way to use it. Clearly, the need for huge amounts of ammo crossed his mind at some point.

4) That all the ships were destroyed pretty much straight away.

And we're not expected to believe this, we're just flat out TOLD this by Nero. He might be wrong, of course; even Kelvin was effectively disabled by just two torpedoes even with her shields up. Six or seven such weapons could put a starship out of the fight and out of communications range, especially with that drill scrambling everybody's comms.

And on the subject of sensors, has anybody postulated why Nu Trek ships are faster than TNG ships with massivley superior trnasporters, but have vastly inferior shields, weapons, and sensors (and how are their transporters so good if their sensors are so bad). Why didn't the fleet's short ranged scanners pick up what was going on at Vulcan as they approached?

There is an implication from the scene that you can't actually SCAN ahead of you at warp speed, presumably because most of your sensors use light waves to gather information and traveling faster than light makes them pretty useless. Navigating between two points is largely a matter of charts, calculations, guesswork, and navigational deflectors, but unless you have a really good idea of what you're warping into, it's best to stop a few light seconds away and scope out the scene before you actually close in.

Starfleet had a really good and really wrong idea of what they were getting into, so they didn't bother to check. If Narada had been anything OTHER than a gigantic time-traveling juggernaut from the 24th century, the mistake would have been survivable.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I am maintaining that the time elapsed from warp-out to arrival at Vulcan was actually quite a bit longer than what we actually saw on the screen, and that the Narada could have done that damage.

I'm not sure that can be supported based on what's onscreen. For example, the arrival of Kirk and McCoy in sickbay suggests the film actually went backward in time to show that arrival from the turbolift from engineering.

Not necessarily. For all we know McCoy stopped off in the medical lab on the lower deck to give him a physical and then sweet-talk the duty officer into having his Starfleet commission activated (otherwise, what would be the point of bringing him aboard the Enterprise in the first place?). Assuming this took a few hours, his being sedated in sickbay might actually have taken place as much as half a day after leaving space dock.

There's also nothing to indicate that Enterprise proceeded immediately to maximum warp. For all we know, Pike had the entire fleet maintain warp four on its way out of the Solar system and only accelerated to "maximum warp" upon entry into interstellar space.

Continuity is only broken with the Narada drilling scene...

And the fact that when Kirk wakes up, Bones has changed into his duty uniform. Plus, I'm not sure what kind of sedative McCoy could have given him that wears off after only thirty seconds; if Kirk had jumped up that soon, McCoy probably would have had a reaction more along the lines of "What the hell? Why aren't you asleep?"

If the fleet is at warp enroute to Vulcan, they cannot be getting attacked by the Narada

They can in the 46 seconds during which they are not at warp and Enterprise still is. Which is the point. The length of the trip could be three minutes or it could be three days, only those last few seconds count.

And after three days of warping into what they think is a natural disaster in the making, I doubt they'd be on high alert when they dropped out of warp (Pike certainly wasn't).

 

[Pauln6]

And, of course, ships have navigational deflectors to shunt all the small stuff out of the way (and 'small stuff' includes everything from dust to asteroids). Any bodies larger than that could be detected far enough away to navigate around.

Except that NuTrek shows that full shields don't deflect debris...

 

[Pauln6]

I'm a dungeon master in a long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaign - if I gave one of my villains the plot-stretching abilities of the Narada my players would be crying foul.

In defence of the new movie, some of the stuff is no dumber than the Enterprise refit being the only ship in range to deal with V'ger when the cloud is travelling to Earth all the way from Klingon space or the Enterprise being the only ship close enough to Regula One when she's only just left Earth orbit (although in that case we would have to assume that several weeks must have passed since Khan also has to have time to get from Ceti Alpha V to Regula).

The 'unlimited torpedo' rule is no dumber than in a science vessel, Voyager (where they mentioned the difficulty of manufacturing torpeodes and then conveniently forgot about it) but I don't think it's realisitic even within Trek logic to suggest that a mining ship would be able to manufacture its own 24th century torpedoes.

 

[SilentP]

The 'unlimited torpedo' rule is no dumber than in a science vessel, Voyager (where they mentioned the difficulty of manufacturing torpeodes and then conveniently forgot about it) but I don't think it's realisitic even within Trek logic to suggest that a mining ship would be able to manufacture its own 24th century torpedoes.

What about replicators (a 24th Century technology), the ability to mine asteroids (you know, since this is a miningship we're talking about) and the like for resources and 25 years with which to have time to create a stockpile of weapons?

 

[Pauln6]

Replicators convert energy to matter and it isn't a 100% efficient process. If ships were capable of simply converting energy into anything they need on an industrial scale why would they even need a mining ship? I think as you scale up the size and complexity the energy requirements go off the scale. Plus photon torpedoes contain massive amounts of energy to blast through shields (not even sure what kind... perhaps a trek geek can help out here).

You may be able to tell that I've never been a fan of the unlimited resource backdrop for TNG. They are backing writers into a corner if anything apart from latinum can be replicated - unlimited fleets of ships, unlimited drug supplies, unlimited food - miracle-working repairs to damaged ships etc. Shows that deal with resource management issues like BSG and SGU have more varied interesting dimensions to me.

 

[SilentP]

Replicators convert energy to matter and it isn't a 100% efficient process.

I was under the impression that they converted one type of matter to another type of matter, using a variant on transporter technology to reconfigure the matter. Hence you'd still need to mine raw material in the first place. Or some materials are far more energy intensive to replicate than just to mine the stuff naturally.

So in this case, using the mining equipment to get the raw material, then using replicators to create the components for the torpedoes.

 

[Pauln6]

Yeah that would work if the mining ship has industrial replicators - which would require massive amounts of energy to run but the ship does have massive amounts of energy after all.

I'm still unconvinced that a mining ship would have the resources to manufacture 24th century massively powerful torpedoes - presumably you need specialist eqipment to energise the weapons. Sure they have 20-odd years to travel around and barter or steal tech to make weapons but 24th century equivalent weapons with 23rd century equipment? That would be as daft as transporting over light years onto a ship at warp using only 23rd century transporters and a computer algorythm...

 

[SilentP]

I'm still unconvinced that a mining ship would have the resources to manufacture 24th century massively powerful torpedoes

They might not be massively powerful for 24th Century standards, the problem for the ships the Narada destroyed, was that they were powerful for 23rd Century standards.

- presumably you need specialist eqipment to energise the weapons.

Maybe, maybe not. We're never actually told what kind of torpedoes these are (i.e. photon, quantum, plasma etc.), so we can't easily speculate as to what you'd need for them.

Sure they have 20-odd years to travel around and barter or steal tech to make weapons but 24th century equivalent weapons with 23rd century equipment?

Why would they need to steal tech? They already had the torpedoes to begin with; who knows how many they were carrying when they began, so probably plenty enough to take them apart and start learning how to make more of them, even if they couldn't use specs in their computers of what they'd need to be able to produce more.

That would be as daft as transporting over light years onto a ship at warp using only 23rd century transporters and a computer algorythm...

 

[EJA]

On the subject of absurd travel times in the movie, how about the Enterprise being able to catch up with Nero before he destroys Earth, despite Nero having at least several hours head start on them? See, the Enterprise had been warping towards the Laurentian system during the time that Kirk was wandering around Delta Vega and meeting Spock Prime and Scotty, which would have taken at least a good several hours. Once Kirk got back on board, it would have taken the same amount of time for the Enterprise to reverse course. Now since I cannot believe that the Enterprise's journey to Vulcan took more than an hour or two, there's no way the Enterprise could've gotten back to the Sol system in the time they did. NO FREAKING WAY.

 

[Pauln6]

They might not be massively powerful for 24th Century standards, the problem for the ships the Narada destroyed, was that they were powerful for 23rd Century standards.

Why would they need to steal tech? They already had the torpedoes to begin with; who knows how many they were carrying when they began, so probably plenty enough to take them apart and start learning how to make more of them, even if they couldn't use specs in their computers of what they'd need to be able to produce more.

They must be quantum torpedoes created in response to the Borg/Dominion threat. I don't think 24th century photon torpedoes would be so much more powerful.

The torpedo issue is related to whether the romulans had a) been held captive or b) fought the klingon fleet. I was simply suggesting that they would have to use up a fair number of torpedoes to destroy so many ships.

It's also not realistic to suggest that just anybody on any ship can manufacture weapons willy nilly without computer expertise, weapons expertise, or specialist equipment. Trek's Utopian future would devolve rapidly into armageddon...

 

[SilentP]

See, the Enterprise had been warping towards the Laurentian system during the time that Kirk was wandering around Delta Vega and meeting Spock Prime and Scotty, which would have taken at least a good several hours.

Problem here is that we don't (or at least I don't, if someone can show me, I'd be grateful ) know where the Laurentian system is with respect to Vulcan and Earth, so it might not be the case that it's a massive detour, though it will be a detour nonetheless, otherwise, the Enterprise could have dropped off a warning to Earth on the way to the fleet.

They must be quantum torpedoes created in response to the Borg/Dominion threat. I don't think 24th century photon torpedoes would be so much more powerful.

Again, we don't and can't know for sure. 100+ years worth of weapons research would make it unlikely that the photon torpedoes of the 24th Century are on par for the photon torpedoes of the 23rd.

The torpedo issue is related to whether the romulans had a) been held captive or b) fought the klingon fleet. I was simply suggesting that they would have to use up a fair number of torpedoes to destroy so many ships.

It would be true that they'd be using up a fair amount of ordnance against that many Klingon ships (regardless of the size of the individual Klingon ships).

It's also not realistic to suggest that just anybody on any ship can manufacture weapons willy nilly without computer expertise, weapons expertise, or specialist equipment. Trek's Utopian future would devolve rapidly into armageddon...

I wouldn't mean to imply that they can do it willy nilly, but suggest that they have the capability to do so.

 

[Pauln6]

If Voyager could get a message home there is no reason why Nu Enterprise couldn't have warned Earth whether it went to the Laurentian System or not! If Vulcan is only 30 minutes from Earth in NuTrek it is certainly close enough to send a warning. The sensible thing would have been for Spock to clarify his existing orders with the Fleet Admiral in the Laurentian system and/or from a superior on Earth.

Of course we can justify anything if we try hard enough. Of course Nero could in reality be a weapons engineer who retired to become a humble miner. As a lawyer I work on balance of probabilities. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary I think it is less likely than not that a mining vessel would be equipped with really powerful shields, weapons, and torpedoes at all let alone expertise and equipment to manufacture more of them so these aspects of the film stretch credibility for me without soe kind of sensible explanation.

In fairness though, apart from in Voyager, TNG has never specified where and how torpedoes are manufactured. I always thought they must be more powerful than phasers and more difficult to make otherwise why ever bother with phasers?

 

[SilentP]

If Voyager could get a message home there is no reason why Nu Enterprise couldn't have warned Earth whether it went to the Laurentian System or not! If Vulcan is only 30 minutes from Earth in NuTrek it is certainly close enough to send a warning. The sensible thing would have been for Spock to clarify his existing orders with the Fleet Admiral in the Laurentian system and/or from a superior on Earth.

Didn't they say that the communications system was damaged and they were attempting to fix it? Pretty sure that's what Spock told Kirk when Kirk said they should focus on repairing the warp drive.

Of course we can justify anything if we try hard enough. Of course Nero could in reality be a weapons engineer who retired to become a humble miner. As a lawyer I work on balance of probabilities. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary I think it is less likely than not that a mining vessel would be equipped with really powerful shields, weapons, and torpedoes at all let alone expertise and equipment to manufacture more of them so these aspects of the film stretch credibility for me without soe kind of sensible explanation.

[Emphasis mine]

Powerful only in relation to 23rd Century tech. We saw in 'In A Mirror Darkly' (the mirror universe episodes for ENT) how much a difference 100 years can make when the Constitution-class Defiant handed the alien rebel fleet it's collective ass on a plate with only it's phasers.

As for the ability to reproduce weapons, there's enough technology available in the Star Trek universe for me to find it believable that the Narada could have replenished it's weapons. Again with Voyager (the best example we have in terms of a ship operating by itself without support of it's home empire), look at what they were able to produce within 7 years; shuttles, torpedoes, pair of Delta Flyers and whatever else I've forgotten. Compared to that, 20+ years to produce a large amount of a single type of weapon repeatedly

In fairness though, apart from in Voyager, TNG has never specified where and how torpedoes are manufactured. I always thought they must be more powerful than phasers and more difficult to make otherwise why ever bother with phasers?

Because torpedoes are a volatile weapon? They're essentially mini-warp cores, engines and guidance systems, and we've seen how reliable warp-cores are at staying stable when under stress

Phasers also have a great amount of utility, such as providing cutting beams when you need, they're faster to hit targets (in terms of a close defence weapon) and there's far greater control over power output over a torpedo. Plus in a long continous engagement, phasers rely only upon a ship's power source to keep going, while with torpedoes, you'd be limited by the amount you have loaded in your magazines at the time, since it's unlikely your ship can spare any energy or manpower to manufacture extra torpedoes under a battle scenario.

 

[BurntSynapse]

I want the portion of your post quoted above my "Huh?" translated from clever smartass to something worthy of response.

Feel free to pursue that translation in any way you like, but in all honesty, the post's tone suggests insincerity, seeming to lack any real desire for understanding beyond that which might be used for attacking me or my objections to the poor writing of the film.

How much verbosity do you require before you can take it "seriously".

Typically, a serious inquiry results in more articulation than 3 letters... but I'd much rather talk about the film than answer questions about me - that is the forum's purpose, IIRC.

 

[BurntSynapse]

Geordi probably spent a few quiet minutes inside the turbolift, en route to the Main Bridge. But we never saw that, because it was in no way critical for the story, or the flow of the action... it was "useless" action. But to us, the TV viewer, we "bought" that all that was happening in "realtime". It's the same with the scene in JJ-Trek... there WAS more time spent in-warp than people think... plenty of time for the Narada to have taken out the fleet, EVEN given the Enterprise's temporal proximity to the fleet... because there were some things that transpired that the viewer never saw, due to the needs of the film's pacing.

That's all I'm trying to say.

I will freely grant your point about the duration of time in warp, but what your point seems to miss is that the available time for the Narada to attack the fleet was after THEY spent the same "longer" amount of time (to which we agree) arriving at Vulcan.

Regardless of total time to Vulcan, the Enterprise was less than 4 minutes behind the fleet, and this was before Kirk was running around with Uhura and Bones. Does that make sense?

 

[Pauln6]

Didn't they say that the communications system was damaged and they were attempting to fix it? Pretty sure that's what Spock told Kirk when Kirk said they should focus on repairing the warp drive.

We saw in 'In A Mirror Darkly' (the mirror universe episodes for ENT) how much a difference 100 years can make when the Constitution-class Defiant handed the alien rebel fleet it's collective ass on a plate with only it's phasers.

As for the ability to reproduce weapons, there's enough technology available in the Star Trek universe for me to find it believable that the Narada could have replenished it's weapons. Again with Voyager (the best example we have in terms of a ship operating by itself without support of it's home empire), look at what they were able to produce within 7 years; shuttles, torpedoes, pair of Delta Flyers and whatever else I've forgotten. Compared to that, 20+ years to produce a large amount of a single type of weapon repeatedly.

I don't recall there being a problem with communications but there should have been a line in there. However, it would be a poor and shortsighted command decision introduced as a plot contrivance to focus only on the engines. Tactically (and without the benefit of hindsight) one ship is going to make less of a difference than forewarning Earth, the fleet, and any other vessels that the Narada might encounter. They have multiple communications officers on board to effect repairs and Uhura sitting a station with nothing constructive to do - getting some kind of message to the nearest communications relay and getting them to do the hard work was essential.

Don't proceed on the assumption that the divergence in tech we see in other episodes is any less of a problem for me. Trek has a tendency to place the Federation at the top of the pile technologically. If a mere 100 years can make such a difference why don't we see enemies whose tech is 100 years more advanced than the Federation wiping the floor with them? Even the borg with the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of advanced species only seemed slightly tougher in terms of tech and were threatening for about 3 years. Trek seems to have 3 levels of tech - very limited largely planet-bound species, pretty much equal to Federation, and godlike beings with no real need for tech. Babylon 5 and Farscape dealt with spreading technological disparity much better.

 

[SilentP]

I don't recall there being a problem with communications but there should have been a line in there.

I'm pretty sure there was one, though I'll have to check when I get to a computer without blocks on it just to be sure.

However, it would be a poor and shortsighted command decision introduced as a plot contrivance to focus only on the engines. Tactically (and without the benefit of hindsight) one ship is going to make less of a difference than forewarning Earth, the fleet, and any other vessels that the Narada might encounter.

This is exactly what Spock's argument was when debating the situation with Kirk before kicking him off the ship.

They have multiple communications officers on board to effect repairs and Uhura sitting a station with nothing constructive to do - getting some kind of message to the nearest communications relay and getting them to do the hard work was essential.

Uhura may well of been overseeing the overall status of the communications systems from the comms station on the bridge. Again, they were working on repairing the systems until Kirk returned and ordered the Enterprise to Earth.

Don't proceed on the assumption that the divergence in tech we see in other episodes is any less of a problem for me. Trek has a tendency to place the Federation at the top of the pile technologically. If a mere 100 years can make such a difference why don't we see enemies whose tech is 100 years more advanced than the Federation wiping the floor with them? Even the borg with the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of advanced species only seemed slightly tougher in terms of tech and were threatening for about 3 years. Babylon 5 and Farscape dealt with this kind of technological disparity much better.

The Borg never invaded with a full fleet in the movies or TV series (read the Destiny novels if you want an idea of how badly a full fledged invasion of the Alpha Quadrant by the Borg could go if they actually tried).

The 2 times they do attack Federation space, they do so with only a single cube, which caused massive damage the first time round, and was only destroyed through manipulation of the Hive Mind by the Enterprise crew, and the second time round, we never know how many ships Starfleet sent against the Cube in that attack.

And a mere 100 years can produce a huge leap in advancement in terms of technology. In Star Trek, it was, what, 100 years between the flight of the Phoenix and the launch of the NX-01 Enterprise? In reality, look at the difference in technology between the years 1900 and 2000. 100 years is a long time for advancements. The advances made by the Federation in 100 years may not look that different to us, but then again ask a person from the Middle Ages to compare look at how far we've come in 100 years, and see how well he could appreciate the difference.