Beyond: potential plotholes

[Shark]

How did the much less advanced Franklin make it through the asteroid field/nebula when the much more advanced Enterprise was needed to make it through on the way to Altamid?

Possible explanations:
-The Enterprise crew uploaded the navigational data from the destroyed Enterprise into the Franklin's computers so they could easily find their way back.

-They followed the route Krall took.

-It is easier to make it "out" of the nebula than it is to make it "In".

The last two explanations are probably the weakest in terms of convenience.

One other potential plothole: How was the comparably slow Franklin able to make it back to Yorktown in time to intercede Kralls attack?

Horse and buggy indeed.

 

[Timo]

How did the much less advanced Franklin make it through the asteroid field/nebula when the much more advanced Enterprise was needed to make it through on the way to Altamid?

Because it isn't that much of a feat. It's just a deadly risk, and you don't take it if you don't have to.

Plenty of ships had made the transit - say, Jaylah's. All had been captured, providing an inflow of slaves/food for Krall who did appear to require a steady supply. What Kirk achieved with the Enterprise wasn't exceptional. It just happened to be exceptionally safe now thanks to the new tech, and thus was the first time anybody from Starfleet (or even the Federation) had dared try it.

(Note that the Franklin had never flown in - the wormhole had supposedly taken care of that part. She only need survive one transit, while Kirk going in knew he was going to risk at least two.)

One other potential plothole: How was the comparably slow Franklin able to make it back to Yorktown in time to intercede Kralls attack?

Speed wouldn't be an issue inside the nebula, where everybody had to crawl. And it was nebula all the way from Altamid to Yorktown - we see the dense rubble field at both ends of the trip.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

Plenty of ships had made the transit - say, Jaylah's.

I don't think they specified in the movie whether Jaylah's ship traversed the Nebula. Altamid was on the other side of the Nebula from where Yorktown was located, but was not inside the nebula itself. It could be reached from other directions.

 

[F. King Daniel]

How did the much less advanced Franklin make it through the asteroid field/nebula when the much more advanced Enterprise was needed to make it through on the way to Altamid?

Possible explanations:
-The Enterprise crew uploaded the navigational data from the destroyed Enterprise into the Franklin's computers so they could easily find their way back.

-They followed the route Krall took.

-It is easier to make it "out" of the nebula than it is to make it "In".

The last two explanations are probably the weakest in terms of convenience.

Sulu piloted the Enterprise through, Sulu piloted Franklin back out. Perhaps it wasn't so much the Enterprise sensors as it was him. The Franklin was also comparatively tiny and perhaps more maneuverable, making it easier to avoid the crazy asteroid movements.

One other potential plothole: How was the comparably slow Franklin able to make it back to Yorktown in time to intercede Kralls attack?

Horse and buggy indeed.

The film depicts Altamid as being a stone's throw from the Necro Cloud which is a stone's throw from Yorktown. Perhaps it's another case of moviemakers having no sense of scale.

 

[Shark]

Sulu piloted the Enterprise through, Sulu piloted Franklin back out. Perhaps it wasn't so much the Enterprise sensors as it was him. The Franklin was also comparatively tiny and perhaps more maneuverable, making it easier to avoid the crazy asteroid movements.

Solid points.

 

[David cgc]

It's also possible that the nebula seemed more inhospitable than it was. Krall had captured Starfleet's probes, so either the fact that they were lost or Krall himself feeding back false telemetry might've made the nebula seem excessively dangerous. After all, Kirk was under the impression that the nebula would disrupt all communications, but Krall was able to maintain an uplink with Starfleet using the probe, and all of the crew's actual communication failures can be explained by the swarm's "jamming."

 

[fireproof78]

Just like the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy. Nobody's done because "it's scary."

 

[Timo]

Also goes to show that Starfleet is dead right in trusting crewed starships over automated probes: the latter failed both here and at the Great Barrier, for whatever reason.

I don't think they specified in the movie whether Jaylah's ship traversed the Nebula.

Fair enough.

Altamid was on the other side of the Nebula from where Yorktown was located, but was not inside the nebula itself. It could be reached from other directions.

Then why would Kirk go through the nebula? Moreover, why would Kalara brave the nebula in her "daring escape"? Why would our heroes go through the nebula to follow Krall to Yorktown, rather than take the quicker route (it would be much quicker even if it were a thousand times longer, because at least some passages in the rubble could be only traversed at walking pace while the long way around could be traversed at warp)? Why would Krall take the slower route himself?

We get no reason to think Altamid would not have been immersed in the rubble nebula - dialogue, visual, plotwise, other. Indeed, the nebula might be the only reason Krall felt stranded: he had a working starship, resting intact and level on a mountaintop, yet still felt he was better sitting on that sorry rock and waiting for Federation help than taking off and trying to reach the Federation himself (with his surviving compatriots, or with his drone army, pick your preferred timeline point).

A seemingly impenetrable rubble nebula, combined with lack of knowledge on where the wormhole had taken the ship, would be excuse enough for Krall to resign to his fate and seethe in his juices. Eavesdropping on Yorktown comms would change that overnight - but by that time, Krall had given up on rescue and planned on revenge instead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[WarpFactorZ]

How did the much less advanced Franklin make it through the asteroid field/nebula when the much more advanced Enterprise was needed to make it through on the way to Altamid?

Giant Green Space Hand.

 

[fireproof78]

It was in the credits the whole time!

 

[Shark]

Then why would Kirk go through the nebula?

Because it was the shortest route. Space be big, man. And there is no evidence either visual, nor through dialog that puts Altamid in the 'Nebula'. Oh, and I re-watched the movie last night and the asteroid field runs through the entirety of the 'Nebula' and is not limited to it's outer edges.

 

[Shark]

Giant Green Space Hand.

I was speaking specifically how the Franklin (Under Kirk's command) made it out of the 'Nebula' on it's way to Yorktown.

Scotty's supposition about how the Franklin made it to Altamid originally was fairly sound. (Wormhole)

 

[Timo]

Because it was the shortest route. Space be big, man.

But that makes no sense. We saw how ships move through this "shortest route" - at a walking pace. To say that a detour a thousand times longer would also be a thousand times faster is the understatement of the aeon!

To spell it out, if the rubble field lay only between Yorktown and Altamid, and Kirk took a route around that was, say, a thousand lightyears longer, he'd be at Yorktown thousands of centuries before Krall at the speeds witnessed. Of course, since Krall did get to Yorktown in a matter of hours rather than geological ages, part of the rubble field must be easier going - but that doesn't alter the fact that other parts, explicitly and visually near the respective endpoints, do slow starships to a crawl, and the fantastically faster warp speeds then make any and all "long routes" massively more attractive.

And there is no evidence either visual, nor through dialog that puts Altamid in the 'Nebula'.

Except for the fact that everybody feels they have to go through the nebula to get there. We never see any evidence of a clear route, eiher visual or dialogue - and there would be an obvious plot requirement for using such a clear route yet at least three separate parties fail to make use or mention of it.

Oh, and I re-watched the movie last night and the asteroid field runs through the entirety of the 'Nebula' and is not limited to it's outer edges.

The movie only shows us snippets of the nebula, never a single solid run through it. All we know is what it looks like near Altamid (the first time our heroes are shown dodging the rocks) and near Yorktown (the first time Krall is shown emerging from the rubble) plus random bits from the time McCoy/Spock and the Franklin brave the field. And that already is solid proof that the entirety of the nebula can't be like that - because Altamid and Yorktown are in different star systems visually, and "rubble speeds" would make the transit between them so long that both stars would die out in the meantime.

As a thought experiment, what would it take to make the nebula the fastest route? Let's assume that the long and clear way around could only be traversed at one-third lightspeed for whatever reason. Let's also say the nebula is a wide flat disk that is, say, a thousand times wider than it is thick. So it's a thousand units around, one unit through. The speed through could be generously estimated as 100 m/s, vs. the 100,000,000 m/s on the way around. See the problem? The nebula would have to be more like a million times wider than it is thick for the math to have any chance of working. And that's before evoking warp, which should be available for at least part of the way even if we postulate that Yorktown and Altamid orbit the same star.

If Starfleet was interested in what lay behind the rubble curtain, why not establish Yorktown at its edge instead of the middle? A warp speed peek around would then be trivially easy and quick.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

^ You're full of nothing but shit. I'm not going to bother arguing with you over such obvious shit. Have fun circle-jerking, guy. lol

 

[Timo]

Heh, clearly not my loss. But the difference between walking pace and warp speed ought to be obvious to pretty much everybody else here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Locutus of Bored]

^ You're full of nothing but shit. I'm not going to bother arguing with you over such obvious shit. Have fun circle-jerking, guy. lol

This is needlessly personal and over-the-top and right on the edge of being infraction worthy. Please refrain from this type of response again.

 

[matthunter]

Also, during the end scenes, Kirk says "we know our way through the nebula now - imagine what we'll find on the other side" so my take was that there was a safe course that could be charted, and Sulu simply took the reverse route back.

 

[Timo]

When Uhura thinks she has managed to send an SOS to Yorktown, Krall gloats that "the coordinates were altered" by him and the rescue ships from the station will merely become stuck in the rubble field.

It appears, then, that Uhura was unable to transmit the specs of a safe route. A full route map should not be subject to the sort of quick and dirty "coordinates changed" trickery Krall boasts on. Fine and well: Sulu might be the only person with the map in his head, and he was there to supply it, but perhaps he isn't as good at memorizing a million relevant coordinates as we think. And of course any computer records of the route would be uselessly sitting in the wreckage, since the rubble field would have prevented them from being relayed back to Yorktown during the transit.

But how come the heroes did not follow the route that Kalara took, the one that was clearly survivable? That route should have been accessible to Kirk and the Yorktown rescue ships alike - that is, to both of them or to neither of them. Oh, well, perhaps Kalara claimed she was unable to properly record her route, or did it in a ship too small to be applicable for rescue vessels.

Yet what "coordinates" did Krall alter, really? The real location of Altamid would be known from the get-go or Kirk would not set out on a mission. Did Krall nastily misplace one crucial route marker somewhere in the middle of a known route? It would then have to be either the route supplied by Kalara (but then why the need for Kirk's supership and expert crew?) or the route established by Sulu (he might have been able to supply it from memory after all for Uhura to transmit).

In any case, if Sulu could do it once, he could probably do it again. Even Kirk in his pep talk claimed it was the crew of the Enterprise, not the superior navigation gear, that mattered.

And of course Sulu could just follow the tracks left by Krall's invasion fleet...

Timo Saloniemi