miscellaneous questions

[Captrek]

Of all the places where Nero could have left Spock Prime on the planet of Delta Vega, how did he happen to end up in the very cave that Kirk ran into when being chased by the big animal? Was it TCOTEOF’s “currents of the river of time” bringing them together, as well as the entire bridge crew of the original timeline’s Enterprise?

Kirk says that the Narada is too close to the singularity to survive without assistance and offers to provide that assistance. When Nero refuses the offer, Kirk orders his crew to "Fire everything we've got." If the Narada was doomed, why waste the ammo?

The Enterprise sticks around while the Narada is crushed by the singularity, and then is nearly pulled into the singularity itself. Why didn't they retreat and watch from a safe distance when they were done firing at the Narada?

When Nero orders his crew to fire on the Jellyfish, his crew warns of the danger of igniting the red matter. When they fire, the Enterprise shows up and takes out the Narada's projectile weapons, allowing the Jellyfish to ram the Narada. If the red matter can destroy the Narada from a distance, why the need to ram it? If it can't, why did Nero's crew warn against firing on the Jellyfish?

Why was the Jellyfish carrying more red matter than was needed to stop the ultrasupernova?

 

[Dukhat]

Of all the places where Nero could have left Spock Prime on the planet of Delta Vega, how did he happen to end up in the very cave that Kirk ran into when being chased by the big animal? Was it TCOTEOF’s “currents of the river of time” bringing them together, as well as the entire bridge crew of the original timeline’s Enterprise?

Because that's what the script needed to have happen for the movie to go forward.

Kirk says that the Narada is too close to the singularity to survive without assistance and offers to provide that assistance. When Nero refuses the offer, Kirk orders his crew to "Fire everything we've got." If the Narada was doomed, why waste the ammo?

Why not?

The Enterprise sticks around while the Narada is crushed by the singularity, and then is nearly pulled into the singularity itself. Why didn't they retreat and watch from a safe distance when they were done firing at the Narada?

Because maybe they wanted to make sure the Narada was completely destroyed and Nero didn't escape somehow?

When Nero orders his crew to fire on the Jellyfish, his crew warns of the danger of igniting the red matter. When they fire, the Enterprise shows up and takes out the Narada's projectile weapons, allowing the Jellyfish to ram the Narada. If the red matter can destroy the Narada from a distance, why the need to ram it? If it can't, why did Nero's crew warn against firing on the Jellyfish?

They were just warning him of the danger. They didn't know exactly what would happen if they fired on it.

Why was the Jellyfish carrying more red matter than was needed to stop the ultrasupernova?

So he'd never have to worry about wasting it?

 

[F. King Daniel]

About the Red Matter: It's possible that it's only stable enough for transport (as in, transport via Spock's ship) in large quantities.

 

[T'Girl]

Kirk says that the Narada is too close to the singularity to survive without assistance and offers to provide that assistance. When Nero refuses the offer, Kirk orders his crew to "Fire everything we've got." If the Narada was doomed, why waste the ammo?

Kirk lied.

The Narada survived one transit through a time travel/black hole, there was no reason to suspect it could do it again. Kirk didn't so much want to save the Narada's crew as he wanted to deprive the Narada of a crew. After beaming Nero and his men into the nearest water filled tube, Kirk was most likely going to fire on the then empty Narada anyway.

The Enterprise sticks around while the Narada is crushed by the singularity, and then is nearly pulled into the singularity itself. Why didn't they retreat and watch from a safe distance when they were done firing at the Narada?

The Enterprise hung around because they were busy hacking the Narada to piece for as long as our heroes could still see it. As soon as it disappeared into the black hole, Kirk ordered "Sulu, let's go home." At no point were they ever just "watching.

 

[Captrek]

The Enterprise sticks around while the Narada is crushed by the singularity, and then is nearly pulled into the singularity itself. Why didn't they retreat and watch from a safe distance when they were done firing at the Narada?

The Enterprise hung around because they were busy hacking the Narada to piece for as long as our heroes could still see it. As soon as it disappeared into the black hole, Kirk ordered "Sulu, let's go home." At no point were they ever just "watching.

It appears to me that they stopped firing about 37 seconds before “Sulu, let’s go home.” There’s enough visual noise on the screen that I can’t be 100% positive what’s happening, but we don’t see any of the pink streaks that are characteristic of the Enterprise’s weapons and the view is from an angle at which those shots should be visible.

At about 15 seconds before “Sulu, let’s go home,” we can see the bridge viewscreen and at that point the Enterprise is clearly not firing on the Narada.

 

[Timo]

What do you expect when you put an inexperienced commander in charge of an exotic and exacting mission? Kirk made an error of judgement. And to be frank, the only one who might have caught it was Spock, off to a mission of his own.

Making 101% sure that the Narada was dust was a worthwhile mission goal. Working out that the black hole created by the red matter would be too strong for the ship to fight was a major scientific challenge. The combination would probably warrant the loitering, unless you were a hardened space veteran who knew when and how to respect the unknown...

(Really, it does stretch credibility quite a bit that the ship couldn't fight a black hole. A starship can by definition fight the gravitic pull of a star, after all - it's really surprising that something as tiny as the Narada could suddenly have more pull than that. Clearly, red matter didn't just catalyze the collapsing of the Narada mass into a black hole, but somehow added mass or gravitic pull from somewhere else, creating something significantly more alien and more potent.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gary 7 of 9]

It was great fortune that Kirk was dropped in an area of Delta Vega so close to Old Spock and Scotty. Call it coincidence, luck, convenient writing. It worked for me. All the Delta Vega scenes were great and cool.

 

[Timo]

Kirk being dropped near Scotty was probably wholly intentional. Or rather, young Spock aimed at deploying Kirk right into that base Scotty was administering, but apparently the lifepod drifted a bit off course. Spock wasn't trying to get Kirk killed - he was merely trying to get Kirk off his back, very well knowing that he had a way of rebounding and would probably have been out of a shipboard cell in no time flat. Sending him to the Delta Vega outpost would accomplish Spock's goals, while deliberately sending Kirk to a random spot on Delta Vega would get Spock a jail term and a lifelong ban on ever approaching anything Starfleet-related again.

Old Spock being dropped off close to the outpost was probably by Nero's design, too - he wanted old Spock to survive, live long and suffer, so allowing him to eventually walk to the outpost would accomplish Nero's goals.

Kirk running into old Spock would be the part that requires cosmic coincidence, fate, the intervention of gods, whatever. They both were in the same neighborhood by design, yes, but Kirk finding the right cave was one-in-a-billion shot. Unless we speculate that old Spock had telepathically domesticated that beast to herd Kirk in his direction...

Personally, I found most of the Delta Vega scenes superfluous to the story, and the double beasts hunting Kirk a childish nadir moment for the movie. But hey, anything to get Leonard Nimoy back in camera view...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[I-Am-Zim]

Of all the places where Nero could have left Spock Prime on the planet of Delta Vega, how did he happen to end up in the very cave that Kirk ran into when being chased by the big animal? Was it TCOTEOF’s “currents of the river of time” bringing them together, as well as the entire bridge crew of the original timeline’s Enterprise?

Nah. It was just another plot contrivance chalked up to lazy writing in my opinion. NuKirk, NuOldSpock, and NuScotty all conveniently meeting in the same place stretches the suspension of disbelief factor to its very limits.

Kirk says that the Narada is too close to the singularity to survive without assistance and offers to provide that assistance. When Nero refuses the offer, Kirk orders his crew to "Fire everything we've got." If the Narada was doomed, why waste the ammo?

Good question. The "black hole" was actaully inside the Narada. It was being torn to bits anyway. There was no reason to suspect or even consider that any part of the ship would survive. If you watch that scene, you can clearly see the tentacles breaking into little bite-sized bits. The only reason they fired everything they had was to get a cheer out of the audience for killing the bad guy (which is really a testament to the sad state of people's morals these days). An experienced captain probably would have backed the ship away from the event horizon and observed the destruction of the ship after Nero's refusal of assistance.

The Enterprise sticks around while the Narada is crushed by the singularity, and then is nearly pulled into the singularity itself. Why didn't they retreat and watch from a safe distance when they were done firing at the Narada?

That is also a good question. They should have known that a "black hole" would probably be difficult to escape since not even light can escape its gravitational pull. However, the Abramsprise can travel faster than light, so, theoretically, that shouldn't have been a problem. However, if they had retreated to a safe distance, NuScotty wouldn't have had a chance to run around flailing his arms shouting "I'm givin' 'er all she's got cap'n!"

When Nero orders his crew to fire on the Jellyfish, his crew warns of the danger of igniting the red matter. When they fire, the Enterprise shows up and takes out the Narada's projectile weapons, allowing the Jellyfish to ram the Narada. If the red matter can destroy the Narada from a distance, why the need to ram it? If it can't, why did Nero's crew warn against firing on the Jellyfish?

In this case, I think NuSpock wanted to get the red matter as close to the Narada's center of mass as possible to ensure its destruction. If the red matter had ignited far enough away from the Narada, it could have escaped.

Why was the Jellyfish carrying more red matter than was needed to stop the ultrasupernova?

JJA has a thing for big, red balls. That 's the only reason. there was logically no need to carry that much red matter when all he needed was a tiny drop. It was a severe case of overkill.

 

[Ryan8bit]

NuKirk, NuOldSpock, and NuScotty all conveniently meeting in the same place stretches the suspension of disbelief factor to its very limits.

I think they were just taking a page from things like the Mirror Universe. It doesn't make sense that all the same people would be in the same places for the MU, but that's how it works.

Now, only the MU was treated that way, and every other bit of time travel where the past was changed never indicated any sort of self correction in the timeline. That's just a Bad Robot style of time travel (see Lost). They think there's fate governing the universe, but that goes against all previously seen time travel on Trek, and it kinda goes against common sense.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Nah. It was just another plot contrivance chalked up to lazy writing in my opinion. NuKirk, NuOldSpock, and NuScotty all conveniently meeting in the same place stretches the suspension of disbelief factor to its very limits.

Your opinion is unsurprisingly ill-informed; this issue was addressed in the script very much along the lines of "City On The Edge Of Forever" and the explanation simply edited out.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Movies should stand alone and not require supplementary materials to back something up of this nature. One shouldn't have to dig up an old script to figure out why fate exists for certain character interactions, but not major things like say, Vulcan imploding. The movie should explain that.

 

[number6]

The movie explained all that it needed to. It's only the rabid fans incensed that someone dared make a film without their permission that require the extra explanations. The rest don't really care about all the minute aspects of the series' continuity the way some here seem to.

 

[Timo]

None of that applies to the issue of Kirk meeting Spock Prime. That's elementary storytelling, and anybody can tell there's something badly wrong with a guy lost in snowy wastelands just stumbling onto another guy in an ice cave. That is an improbable event, in other words a plot contrivance.

Whether it requires an explanation is somewhat genre-specific. A story about an ordinary guy becoming a pawn in a spy game and surviving because he's a skilled electronics engineer is based on the plot contrivance of exactly that guy being exactly there exactly then. Any other guy would be dead. Extreme plot contrivance, but plausible, and without it, there'd be no movie. Here, though, the even more extreme contrivance exists without a clear purpose - it could have been avoided altogether.

Now, it could also have been turned into a story point, about fate and whatnot. The writers completely dropped the ball in that respect, though. The audience can't be expected to "figure out" something the writers didn't bother to put together in the first place. Or if the audience does figure it out, the audience is deluded into seeing something that's not there. (Which may be all right in scifi, but it basically just results in people taking shitty writing and elevating it to cult status for its shittiness. Take the endings of things like Prisoner, nuBSG or Lost.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[number6]

None of that applies to the issue of Kirk meeting Spock Prime. That's elementary storytelling, and anybody can tell there's something badly wrong with a guy lost in snowy wastelands just stumbling onto another guy in an ice cave. That is an improbable event, in other words a plot contrivance.

Whether it requires an explanation is somewhat genre-specific. A story about an ordinary guy becoming a pawn in a spy game and surviving because he's a skilled electronics engineer is based on the plot contrivance of exactly that guy being exactly there exactly then. Any other guy would be dead. Extreme plot contrivance, but plausible, and without it, there'd be no movie. Here, though, the even more extreme contrivance exists without a clear purpose - it could have been avoided altogether.

Now, it could also have been turned into a story point, about fate and whatnot. The writers completely dropped the ball in that respect, though. The audience can't be expected to "figure out" something the writers didn't bother to put together in the first place. Or if the audience does figure it out, the audience is deluded into seeing something that's not there. (Which may be all right in scifi, but it basically just results in people taking shitty writing and elevating it to cult status for its shittiness. Take the endings of things like Prisoner, nuBSG or Lost.)

Timo Saloniemi

I don't see Kirk and Spock meeting by chance in the cave as anything but a coincidence of convenience. This isn't that big of a deal.

 

[Captrek]

Nah. It was just another plot contrivance chalked up to lazy writing in my opinion. NuKirk, NuOldSpock, and NuScotty all conveniently meeting in the same place stretches the suspension of disbelief factor to its very limits.

Your opinion is unsurprisingly ill-informed; this issue was addressed in the script very much along the lines of "City On The Edge Of Forever" and the explanation simply edited out.

That’s interesting. Can you provide any more details?

 

[F. King Daniel]

I remember reading that a line was cut during the scene between Kirk and Old Spock in the ice cave on Delta Vega, where Old Spock, after being told the same crew he knew is assembled on the Enterprise despite everything changing so much in the wake of Nero's interference, says something about the timeline perhaps attempting to repair itself. IIRC the writers chose to cut it because it took fate out of the characters' hands, and made them tools of the gods/slaves to probablility.

"City on the Edge of Forever" said something vague about "the currents of time" bringing Kirk, Spock and McCoy together at the time they had to right history - but they were dealing with a semi-sentient rock time donut.

Unless of course Dennis is talking about something totally different.

 

[Ryan8bit]

The movie explained all that it needed to. It's only the rabid fans incensed that someone dared make a film without their permission that require the extra explanations.

This is pretty ignorant. People can still wonder about why there are tremendous coincidences without being the type of fanboy you describe.

The movie pretty clearly throws aside a more deterministic approach to changes to the timeline in favor of something like fate. The former was typically how previous Trek worked, and the latter shows an affinity towards fantasy, which is where Trek seems to be growing into.

 

[Devon]

Nah. It was just another plot contrivance chalked up to lazy writing in my opinion. NuKirk, NuOldSpock, and NuScotty all conveniently meeting in the same place stretches the suspension of disbelief factor to its very limits.

Your opinion is unsurprisingly ill-informed; this issue was addressed in the script very much along the lines of "City On The Edge Of Forever" and the explanation simply edited out.

That’s interesting. Can you provide any more details?

Not to answer for anyone else, but Orci did mention that one of the earlier versions of the script had Spock figuring out that the timeline was trying to mend itself, thus some of the "coincidences."

This is pretty ignorant. People can still wonder about why there are tremendous coincidences without being the type of fanboy you describe.

Yet most people couldn't care less.

 

[Ryan8bit]

This is pretty ignorant. People can still wonder about why there are tremendous coincidences without being the type of fanboy you describe.

Yet most people couldn't care less.

And what is your point supposed to be? Is this another one of your broken record tirades about how the majority thinks one way, so everyone must or that it's prudent? Give it a rest.