A big logic gap to me in Into Darkness is why didn't Kirk or Marcus make use of their vessels' shuttlecraft or lifepods, when both ships were disabled and sitting defenseless near the moon following their battle? I understand that communications with Earth were apparently down for some inexplicable reason (even though they were practically in Earth orbit, and could still call Spock Prime on New Vulcan for some reason, but can't call for help??), so why didn't Kirk launch shuttles to take some crew to safety and warn Earth and get help? Scotty had temporarily disrupted the Vengeance's weapon systems, so it's not like Marcus was in any position to shoot down the shuttles, although I guess Vengeance had shuttles - did we get any indication in the movie why neither ship launched shuttles - I guess you could argue that the Section 31 agent who sabotaged the Engines earlier in thd film was at work again, shutting down all communications abilities, and all extravehicular options and port ( Kirk and Khan had to be launched out a garbage chute, if I recall correctly, which would seem to indicate all other ports were shut down), but Spick orders everyone to their evac positions to abandon ship when Ent starts falling to Earth. Why weren't the shuttles or lifepods used at all when both ships were disabled?
The same reason none of the other ships in Trek never seem to use their self-sufficient shuttlecraft when they lose power during some crisis.
I'm not saying this is a -good- reason, but with power down it stands to reason that the shuttlebay doors may be non-responsive.
A simple and logical explanation, my thoughts as well. BTW, not many Star Trek captains on any show or movie tried to get the crew to safety using shuttles or other means in emergency situations. That is an exception in Trek, rather than the rule. So STID simply follows that tradition Mario
This is my take on it for all its worth. 1. Spock didn't call for help as Marcus would have outranked him and the help may have turned against the Enterprise 2. Marcus didn't call for help as he didn't want more witnesses. 3. Spock didn't put people in lifepods or shuttles while the Enterprise was still in the game. She had a chance of winning while Kirk and Scotty (and Kahn) were aboard The Vengeance and Marcus has already indicated his intention to get rid of everyone. Though it would be hard to explain later why he shot down lifepods. 4. Spock sent everyone to the lifepods once The Vengeance was out of action but they refused to go.
Well, shuttles are never used whenever we see similar circumstances in other Treks. Hell, the Scimitar in Nemesis had something like a hundred of those fighter craft and the only time they're used is by Picard and Data to escape. Also, I'm going to assume Vengeance simply didn't have the crew to spare to fly a shuttle.
Also, the kinetic forcefield would be down, which would have caused a violent decompression. If the doors only barely opened or will still openening, the decompression would pull all the shuttles, people, and stockpiled super torpedoes right into the doors and cause one hell of an explosion blowing the ass off the ship. So yeah, not a good idea.
Kirk's reason: if Khan hadn't turned out to be resistant to phaser stuns, that never would have been necessary. They would have taken back the Vengeance, arrested Marcus, shut down his jamming devices and called Starfleet for a tow. Marcus' reason: Enterprise was a sitting duck, didn't even have transport capability. As soon as his computers were back up, he'd open fire and finish off the Enterprise and then probably kill whoever was screwing around with his computers. Basically, both of them thought they had the situation under control and it was just a race to see who could finish their plan first. Neither of them were counting on Khan being a supreme badass, which they probably should have considering all the other shit he's been doing throughout the movie.
You're Kirk, you're used to jumping to platforms from space, you've saved the world twice. Would you be a wuss and take a shuttle? It's just not cool. It's so much fun slaloming through a debris field every cool kid wants to do it. It's not like he had any time in the Academy to have his Nick Locarno moment before they fast tracked him to Captain. Besides, why give Khan a perfectly good shuttlecraft to steal?