Plot hole city: Part 3!

[Dukhat]

Why doesn't Uncle Owen recognize C3PO (and the droid even states his name) when Owen and Luke buy him from the Jawas, when C3P0 worked on Owen's father's farm for years, and was built by his father's wife's son?

This is a plot hole. Scotty falling down and getting right back up, or Spock not beaming from the bridge, are nitpicks. Plot holes and nitpicking are two totally different things.

 

[Pauln6]

I just watched this movie again last night for the first time since 2009. I could not find a single plot hole.

Of course there are plotholes. They're in every film ever made. It's just that the points brought up here aren't. They're just overly nitpicky things that could be easily explained by anyone who watched the film.

But that's why we're having fun explaining them! Refer back to response 19 again just in case you have forgotten... again.

Oh gods, and the Star Wars prequels have some doozys! Start a Star Wars thread if you want to go down that road!

 

[Ometiklan]

Here are my takes:
1) Nero goes about his business destroying planets and ships, and is about to destroy the Enterprise when he recognizes the ship (at least he seems to recognize the class before calling for a close-up; which makes sense since there were relatively few Constellation class starships back at this time period). Assuming that Spock was not on board would be more of a plot hole. He decides to take advantage of this, hurt Spock some more, and try to get the defense codes from Pike at the same time. Easy. Later when Nero says Kirk was a great man in another life, that doesn’t mean he did or didn’t know the extent of all the changes to the timeline that he has caused, just that he is terminating this one for Kirk.

2) Yeah, I didn’t like this either. I would have been happier with Spock Prime showing Scotty how to boost the warp speed on the shuttle (temporarily, before it burns out the warp coils or something) allowing them to almost catch up, then showing him how to beam aboard while at warp, but they didn’t do this. Instead, I think it is perfectly reasonable to posit that the Federation learns from the Dominion’s use of long distance transport (good catch, didn’t think about this one before) and makes use of it here. As for targeting the Enterprise, maybe they weren’t that far out. Does anyone remember if the Enterprise’s warp drive was damaged? When Kirk posits engineering crews could boost warp speed, Spock says (directly before kicking Kirk off the ship) that engineering crews are busy with repairs (radiation, etc.) and that Nero would have to drop out of warp for them to catch him. Could the Enterprise be moving at impulse for a time, or low warp, allowing Scotty and Kirk to catch up? For a mining ship, how fast can the Narada go anyway?

3) Standard movie hero survival skills: see also how long Scotty holds his breadth underwater, how Kirk survives the encounters on Delta Vega, how Kirk jump/falls 30+ feet basically onto his chest in the Narada, Sulu’s very useful parachute retractor (yet Kirk’s parachute cables break with the weight of two people), etc.

4) In TOS, they didn’t do site-to-site and they may have rarely done in-ship-to-transporter-pad. I think it is all about sensor accuracy and the transporter transceiver. Using internal sensors to lock-on to a person could be inadvisable at that time, or transporter transmitter/receiver wasn’t capable or reliable of locking onto people inside the ship.

5) While not done universally, as another poster said, Dax got the title in DS9 (“Behind the Lines”), and Data got the title in TNG (in Redemption part 2, Hobson says “We've arrived at the designated coordinates, Captain.” According to http://tng.trekcore.com/episodes/scripts/201.txt).

As for other questions:

I think the Narada defeated or circumvented the defenses at Earth and was preparing to lower the drill and thus had their shields down when the Enterprise entered Saturn’s orbit.

Now how the Enterprise was able to move at warp speed into the atmosphere of Titan (?) without being torn apart (the deflector dish was named that for a reason), I don’t know. But the bird of prey also did it in Star Trek IV in reverse (seemed a mistake then too).

 

[Dukhat]

But that's why we're having fun explaining them! Refer back to response 19 again just in case you have forgotten... again.

Nobody's complaining that they're not having fun. They're complaining that if you want to have a discussion about plot holes in the newest Trek film, then they should be actual plot holes, not randomly-picked-out nitpicks that have nothing to do with the plot of the movie.

Oh gods, and the Star Wars prequels have some doozys! Start a Star Wars thread if you want to go down that road!

But that's the point: Why is the OP so overly pedantic about this particular film (to the point that he feels the compulsive need to constantly post topics about it when there's already been two previous locked threads), when it's no different than any other film? If he came up with "plot holes" for some of the other Trek films for instance, it wouldn't be so apparent that he's just pinging on this film for the sake of pinging on it.

 

[number6]

But that's why we're having fun explaining them! Refer back to response 19 again just in case you have forgotten... again.

Nobody's complaining that they're not having fun. They're complaining that if you want to have a discussion about plot holes in the newest Trek film, then they should be actual plot holes, not randomly-picked-out nitpicks that have nothing to so with the plot of the movie.

This.

 

[Broccoli]

How come Kirk says "man" when in the enlightened future we will beyond such slang?

PLOTHOLE!@!!!

 

[number6]

The security guard says "Nice ride, Man" when Kirk rides up in his motorcycle.

 

[Pauln6]

2) Yeah, I didn’t like this either. I would have been happier with Spock Prime showing Scotty how to boost the warp speed on the shuttle (temporarily, before it burns out the warp coils or something) allowing them to almost catch up, then showing him how to beam aboard while at warp, but they didn’t do this. Instead, I think it is perfectly reasonable to posit that the Federation learns from the Dominion’s use of long distance transport (good catch, didn’t think about this one before) and makes use of it here. As for targeting the Enterprise, maybe they weren’t that far out. Does anyone remember if the Enterprise’s warp drive was damaged? When Kirk posits engineering crews could boost warp speed, Spock says (directly before kicking Kirk off the ship) that engineering crews are busy with repairs (radiation, etc.) and that Nero would have to drop out of warp for them to catch him. Could the Enterprise be moving at impulse for a time, or low warp, allowing Scotty and Kirk to catch up? For a mining ship, how fast can the Narada go anyway?

4) In TOS, they didn’t do site-to-site and they may have rarely done in-ship-to-transporter-pad. I think it is all about sensor accuracy and the transporter transceiver. Using internal sensors to lock-on to a person could be inadvisable at that time, or transporter transmitter/receiver wasn’t capable or reliable of locking onto people inside the ship.

I think the Narada defeated or circumvented the defenses at Earth and was preparing to lower the drill and thus had their shields down when the Enterprise entered Saturn’s orbit.

Tee hee, but the irony of some people complaining about others nitpicking over scenes in the movie by nitpicking about the definition of a plot hole is not lost upon me. If you aren't interested, why keep posting in the thread?

Nero travels from Klingon space to Vulcan in about a day so his ship can travel very fast when it has to. The Enterprise engines did suffer damage as they ask Scotty to try to tease out warp 4 if possible. The reason why the Enterprise can arrive at Earth in the nick of time while travelling at only warp 4 (after travelling in the wrong direction) probably does count as a plot hole, although some term it a plot contrivance (I think using TNG speeds it should take them about 2 months). I think I worked out that it would probably have taken Kirk a day to walk to the base using travel times for real life arctic explorers and allowing some time to sing row, row, row your boat around a campfire with Spock. Assuming Enterprise was travelling at warp 4 (although we later learn she was travelling slower), she would about 0.25 light year away by that time (according to one of the online warp speed calculators). Even travelling at warp 9 it would take Nero a few days to reach Earth but we have already established earlier in the movie that it takes less than a few hours in NuTrek. They have taken liberties with the warp speeds again but there is nothing new in that. However it does mean that, technically, Enterprise should have arrived months after Nero had destroyed the Earth. It also makes Spock's decision to rendezvous with the fleet completely pointless. If he's limited to warp 4, he needs to signal them to come to him. His time would have been better spent helping the survivors from Vulcan's destruction whose ships might have been damaged.

Basically, both Spock and Kirk acted like idiots and only really succeeded because of the plot hole of Nero slowing his ship down massively so that they could catch him. The ships are all very fast now regardless of their stated warp speed. I don't think the writers really understood the speed curve of increasng warp speeds. They were just banking that most viewers wouldn't either.

 

[Silvercrest]

How come Anakin was able to get through the Trade Federation's shields when the Trade Federation just claimed that nothing could get through them?

He flew through a plot hole.

 

[Ometiklan]

Tee hee, but the irony of some people complaining about others nitpicking over scenes in the movie by nitpicking about the definition of a plot hole is not lost upon me. If you aren't interested, why keep posting in the thread?

Pauln6, was the above meant for me? Or was it just a mis-copy/paste?

I agree totally that the new movie (and ST:Enterprise definitely) totally ignores and screws up realistic warp speeds. I think this is definitely a mood killer in Enterprise when this "the first warp 5 ship" can get anywhere it wants at the speed of plot. Where is the exploratory feel? It should have been weeks between systems let alone to Qronos. As for Star Trek (2009), I am a little more lenient cause the movie wasn't about exploring and being far from home, but rather defending home; the travel times and speeds are less important.

That said, I know it would be geeky to ask that future Trek writers/executive producers come up with a scale (or heaven forbid a map) to use that they stick to. maybe like those Rand McNally Road atlasas. "Hmm, let me see. Time between Vulcan and Earth, 4 days. Earth to Qronos, 2 months. New York to Washington DC, 227 miles."

 

[Pauln6]

Soz - my comment was a general one aimed only at those who have swallowed dictionaries

I think older writers have a get out clause since nobody knew what was going on but if I can log on and in 10 seconds work out roughly how fast it takes to travel from Earth to Vulcan I think they can too.

 

[Ometiklan]

Agreed. I don't see why a science consultant or the continuity editor or someone can't look into these things regularly. Some people might say it would ruin the tension, but I disagree. Instead of a 4 hour trip to Earth from Vulcan (or whatever it is), make it a 4 day trip. There are still no other starships in range, Starfleet's defenses are defeated due to the codes from Pike, and for anything you wanted broken on the Enterprise (such that it couldn't be used for the final battle) just say that stuff would need an overhaul at a fleetyard or starbase to fix; even with available transports, only a small fraction of earth's population could be evacuated, so the threat is still there (besides, where are they going to evacuate to? Mars? Nero could just hit that next.). Everything else works the same, and consistency is maintained. I think people are just lazy.

I think this points to my biggest complaint for Trek 09, some things were played too fast. Maybe to keep up the actiony-ness of the movie, but I think it was to the detriment of its long term impact or perception of quality. Kirk jumping to captain in the 3 years is often sighted as too unrealistic. But beyond that, all the little character moments that are important: Spock being upset over the death of his mom and the loss of Vulcan, one quick talk with his dad and he is over it, ready to be first officer again; Kirk gets in one bar fight, has one talk with Pike, looks at the Enterprise under construction, and his destructive streak is over (though the Kobyashi Maru could have been a chance to revisit that self-destructiveness, but that is never even attempted); we meet Scotty for like 5 seconds and he then becomes part of the crew; Kirk is back on board 5 seconds and he successfully "compromises" Spock, achieving Spock Prime's stated goals. Yes, it kept the plot moving forward but I think it underdeveloped the characters to not give them any time to develop in these short scenes (though I felt the actors all did a great job with their parts). I am hoping that Star Trek XII can build on this and give the characters more development and time.

 

[Pauln6]

Having decided to do an origin story featuring all the big 7, they were limited in the approach they could take. Kirk and Spock's arcs were reasonably done considering the time frame. They did waste some time on gimmicks like the unnecessarily long scene to shoe-horn in some CGI beasties and that excruciating in the scene with the kissing in the transporter room though. I would have preferred a few tweaks here and there.

 

[6079SmithW]

Nero travels from Klingon space to Vulcan in about a day so his ship can travel very fast when it has to. The Enterprise engines did suffer damage as they ask Scotty to try to tease out warp 4 if possible. The reason why the Enterprise can arrive at Earth in the nick of time while travelling at only warp 4 (after travelling in the wrong direction) probably does count as a plot hole,-----

The Enterprise was traveling at warp 3 towards the Laurentian system before Kirk takes command. After Kirk takes command, he orders a direction change to follow Nero and Scott increases the engine output to warp 4.

So, they changed their direction to follow the bad guy and increased their speed. This is all the information the audience needs to know in order to understand how they catch up to Nero. This is not a plot hole.

 

[Pauln6]

Nero travels from Klingon space to Vulcan in about a day so his ship can travel very fast when it has to. The Enterprise engines did suffer damage as they ask Scotty to try to tease out warp 4 if possible. The reason why the Enterprise can arrive at Earth in the nick of time while travelling at only warp 4 (after travelling in the wrong direction) probably does count as a plot hole,-----

The Enterprise was traveling at warp 3 towards the Laurentian system before Kirk takes command. After Kirk takes command, he orders a direction change to follow Nero and Scott increases the engine output to warp 4.

So, they changed their direction to follow the bad guy and increased their speed. This is all the information the audience needs to know in order to understand how they catch up to Nero. This is not a plot hole.

That part isn't the plot hole. Since we know he can travel much faster, the plot hole is the question why Nero travelled at less than warp 4 to Earth.

For example if Enterprise, taking into account she travels in the wrong direction and at a slightly slower speed travels at an average of warp 3.9 and Nero, who travels straight there at warp 4, the Enterprise would arrive over 5 days late.

The writers didn't really grasp that if you aren't travelling at the same speed, let alone in the same direction the time factor spreads out rapidly. In the time it takes the Enterprise to reach Earth, the fleet (or Nero) could travel 250 light years at warp 9.

 

[6079SmithW]

That part isn't the plot hole. Since we know he can travel much faster, the plot hole is the question why Nero travelled at less than warp 4 to Earth.

For example if Enterprise, taking into account she travels in the wrong direction and at a slightly slower speed travels at an average of warp 3.9 and Nero, who travels straight there at warp 4, the Enterprise would arrive over 5 days late.

Where did you get the five days from? We see Enterprise enter the Sol system after the Narada, but it was probably only a few minutes or maybe an hour behind it. Nero still has to disable the defense network, position the Narada, and deploy the drill before firing it. This gives the Enterprise ample time to catch up.

I guess the argument hinges around wether or not you believe Enterprise increasing her speed from warp 3 to warp 4 is enough of a speed boost to quickly make up lost ground and time.

The movie never quantitatively states how fast warp factors are or how far away planets are from each other. We can assume that the Narada is traveling at its maximum warp to reach Earth. We are never told what that maximum speed is. We know that warp 4 is faster than warp 3. We can therefore infer that warp 4 is fast enough to cover the distance the Narada did at an unspecified speed.

 

[Pauln6]

Where did you get the five days from? We see Enterprise enter the Sol system after the Narada, but it was probably only a few minutes or maybe an hour behind it. Nero still has to disable the defense network, position the Narada, and deploy the drill before firing it. This gives the enterprise ample time to catch up.

I guess the argument hinges around wether or not you believe Enterprise increasing her speed from warp 3 to warp 4 is enough of a speed boost to quickly make up lost ground and time.

That's the period it would take to cover the distance to Earth from Vulcan at warp 4 using the TNG scale apparently. There are loads of sites that will work it out for you! The TOS scale is even slower.

The actual speed isn't that relevant (except to NuJaneway). It's the comparative speed that's the issue. To be only an hour behind the Enterprise would have to be travelling faster than the Narada. Given how fast TNG ships can fly, why was Narada travelling so slow? That's the plot hole.

 

[number6]

The warp scale for this movie was never stated.

 

[6079SmithW]

That's the period it would take to cover the distance to Earth from Vulcan at warp 4 using the TNG scale apparently. There are loads of sites that will work it out for you! The TOS scale is even slower.

The actual speed isn't that relevant (except to NuJaneway). It's the comparative speed that's the issue. To be only an hour behind the Enterprise would have to be travelling faster than the Narada. Given how fast TNG ships can fly, why was Narada travelling so slow? That's the plot hole.

TNG warp speeds have nothing to do with this movie. Was there any onscreen canon reference to either the TOS or TNG warp scale? I don't know but I can't remember any quantitative speed reference. Just as TNG warp 4 is supposedly faster then TOS warp 4, then perhaps Abramsverse warp 4 is faster than TNG warp 4.


As I said in my edited post above, we are never told the quantitative speeds of the Abramsverse warp factors or the distances between planets. All we know is that warp 4 is faster than warp 3 and the speed increase allows Enterprise to make up lost time and ground to arrive after the Narada has but with enough time to spare to perform the beam over. It may be careless writing but it's not a plot hole.

 

[Pauln6]

TNG warp speeds have nothing to do with this movie. Was there any onscreen canon reference to either the TOS or TNG warp scale? I don't know but I can't remember any quantitative speed reference. Just as TNG warp 4 is supposedly faster then TOS warp 4, then perhaps Abramsverse warp 4 is faster than TNG warp 4.

As I said in my edited post above, we are never told the quantitative speeds of the Abramsverse warp factors or the distances between planets. All we know is that warp 4 is faster than warp 3 and the speed increase allows Enterprise to make up lost time and ground to arrive after the Narada has but with enough time to spare to perform the beam over. It may be careless writing but it's not a plot hole.

The Abramsverse might have much faster warp speeds but it is still tied to the Prime universe. The planets must still be the same distance apart.

Why was the Narada travelling that slowly? Did I miss that part of the plot? Or was it a plot hole?