This sort of spins off from my earlier posts in General Trek Discussion regarding the commandent of Rura Penthe. I'm sure other people have pondered this before, but here goes: If Nero and his crew were incarcerated on a prison planet for two and a half decades, how did they manage to regain the Narada? I find it unlikely that the Klingons would've just had it in orbit of the planet, where it was quite possible Nero would be able to escape and get to it. And before anyone says anything, Nero must have been locked up all those years, otherwise he would've made his presense known in a big way (and he must've got those Centauri slugs from somewhere).
How the hell did they get the Narada back?!!
- Thread starter EJA
- Start date
Well, there's two possible answers to that question:
1. Nero and his crew were never prisoners, because that scene was deleted from the film. So we don't know what they did for 20 years while waiting for Spock to arrive. Your speculation that he "made his presence known in a big way" is wrong, because no one knows who he is when he contacts the Enterprise, and Kirk states that the Narada was never seen again after destorying the Kelvin.
2. If you must believe that they were prisoners even though that scene was deleted, the deleted scene clearly shows Nero escaping and rescuing Ayel. There was no implication that the Narada was in orbit of Rura Penthe, just that Nero and his crew managed to escape. They could have stolen a Klingon ship and found the Narada later.
Which actually lends credence to the idea that they were incarcerated.
The idea that Nero and his crew escaped the penal planet on a Klingon ship is an interesting one, but there are still difficulties: a) How would they know where to find the Narada? b) Why return to the Narada anyway if they already have a ship? c) Dialogue in the movie states clearly that the penal planet was attacked, and around the same time the Narada destroyed the Klingon fleet. IMO, the evidence points strongly towards the Narada being the attacker....but why would Nero attack the planet if he's already escaped? 
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
And yet kept it nearby so Nero could steal it back? And didn't use it themselves to attack the Federation or the Romulans?
You'd think that Nero would have found SOMETHING to do in the 25 years he spent hanging around waiting for Spock to make a red matter delivery. (I just had the image of Spock dressed in a milkman's uniform delivering quart bottles of red matter).
You'd think that Nero would have found SOMETHING to do in the 25 years he spent hanging around waiting for Spock to make a red matter delivery. (I just had the image of Spock dressed in a milkman's uniform delivering quart bottles of red matter).
One thing I do count from the Nero comic is that the Narada's defense systems kept the Klingons from getting too close to its technology, which is why it wasn't reverse-engineered; it wouldn't let them.
Maybe we should just ignore the line in the movie about the penal planet being attacked. But as I said, even if Nero did commandeer a Klingon ship to escape, we still have to figure out how he knew where to find the Narada. And whoever was watching over the Narada at whatever spaceport it was kept at would surely be ready for Nero once they were informed of the escape and theft.
Maybe we should just ignore the line in the movie about the penal planet being attacked. But as I said, even if Nero did commandeer a Klingon ship to escape, we still have to figure out how he knew where to find the Narada. And whoever was watching over the Narada at whatever spaceport it was kept at would surely be ready for Nero once they were informed of the escape and theft.
Any science-fictiony answer can be postulated about this; it's not that difficult. Say, they found the Narada because it had a homing beacon, and once they found it, they could remotely control it to destroy whatever base or yard it was held at before they re-boarded it. Simple enough explanation?
Here's a better one. The writers just couldn't come up with any explanation that would be convincing enough to warrant the screen time. So rather than use what they had, they deleted it and simply had him reappear 25 years later. Does that solve the problem? I guess. Does that mean it works? Not really. Having the villains in a ship that is so massive and so powerful that it can wipe out 47 klingon ships without so much as a scratch on it but they don't do anything for 25 years makes the villains of the show come off as nothing more than literal plot devices that the writers use at their disposal. Nothing develops organically and we're left with questions that go unanswered.
Sure, you can come up with explanations and theories as to why Nero did nothing for 25 years, but that's like trying to figure out why Soran didn't just fly into the gawddang Nexus.
Read the Nero comic. Skip the bit with V'Ger.
Don't like that? Invent your own story. Nero and chums were a resourceful bunch, and Nero effortlessly whupped three armed Klingons by himself - just because everything wasn't explained in excruciating detail doesn't make it somehow wrong. We see the start of Nero's breakout in the deleted scenes, then we see him back on Narada - thus he got it out of prison and got it back. Does the how really matter?
How did Khan take over the Reliant? We never saw that either.
Or maybe the writers just figured that 90% of the movie's viewing audience wouldn't really give a shit what Nero was doing, since it had no relevance to the story being told and would have interrupted the flow of the movie to boot, so they didn't think it was a big deal to drop it. And they were right.
Nero needed the Narada's drilling abilities to drill into Vulcan's core.
Or maybe the writers just figured that 90% of the movie's viewing audience wouldn't really give a shit what Nero was doing, since it had no relevance to the story being told and would have interrupted the flow of the movie to boot, so they didn't think it was a big deal to drop it. And they were right.
Nero needed the Narada's drilling abilities to drill into Vulcan's core.
Gee, I don't know...maybe he was pissed at the people who tortured him and imprisoned him in a stinking jail cell with rags for clothes?
Here's a shot...
Warp drive on the Narada was broken during the black hole trip. They had to travel at near-light speeds to get to the nearest place they could find that had the macguffinum needed to fix the warp engine. Because of time dilation, this took 25 years in absolute time, though it seemed like much less to them.
They had a cloaking device, so no one spotted the ship on long-range sensors.
Rura Penthe just happened to be the first planet they reached.
How, you might ask, did Nero happen to get warp drive back just as Spock was popping back in time?
The same way Kirk happened to end up within a few hundred feet of Spock when he was removed from the Enterprise.
Warp drive on the Narada was broken during the black hole trip. They had to travel at near-light speeds to get to the nearest place they could find that had the macguffinum needed to fix the warp engine. Because of time dilation, this took 25 years in absolute time, though it seemed like much less to them.
They had a cloaking device, so no one spotted the ship on long-range sensors.
Rura Penthe just happened to be the first planet they reached.
How, you might ask, did Nero happen to get warp drive back just as Spock was popping back in time?
The same way Kirk happened to end up within a few hundred feet of Spock when he was removed from the Enterprise.
I'd always assumed that Nero destoryed the Klingon ships that were preventing him escaping from Klingon space after busting out of Rura Penthe, and finding the Narada.
It is reasonable that the Klingons may have kept the Narada at their own facility, attempting to (probably unsuccessfully) reverse engineer it, and the guards at Rura Penthe probably knew of this strange ship through the rumor mill, or high-level reports disseminated to a select few regardign these efforts.
Nero extracts this information from this officer, steals his ship, then kills him once they've used him to access the Narada, which subsequently takes on those 47 warbirds.
If the facility was at Rura Penthe, it is likely to ensure that Nero was close enough to be interrogated at whim in order to gain deeper access to the Narada's systems.
It is reasonable that the Klingons may have kept the Narada at their own facility, attempting to (probably unsuccessfully) reverse engineer it, and the guards at Rura Penthe probably knew of this strange ship through the rumor mill, or high-level reports disseminated to a select few regardign these efforts.
Nero extracts this information from this officer, steals his ship, then kills him once they've used him to access the Narada, which subsequently takes on those 47 warbirds.
If the facility was at Rura Penthe, it is likely to ensure that Nero was close enough to be interrogated at whim in order to gain deeper access to the Narada's systems.
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