It all depends on how we interpret the local problems with transporting. Would they be of the sort that makes proximity a good idea and thus rules out the orbital approach? Evidently not, as the proximal, submerged starship
cannot use its transporters properly!
When the transporters do work, they do so from directly above the volcano. Getting directly above the volcano would appear to be easier if you start from space than if you start from the bottom of the sea!
Curiously, though, no part of Kirk's original plan actually calls for either transporters or the presence of a starship. Spock delivers his kool-aid via a shuttle; Kirk infiltrates the village on foot; McCoy improvises an overland escape, suggesting there's to be some sort of a pickup spot out of sight of the natives. It could all have been done with shuttles, then - so it's not even a question of choosing between putting the ship in the ocean or in orbit, as Kirk could put the ship in the next star system for all he cared!
Personally, I think the only way to make the underwater base of operations halfway rational is if Kirk was tasked with a relatively longterm covert survey of the planet, and only accidentally found out that he needed to rescue the natives from a volcano ASAP. Nothing about the volcano-plugging mission requires the Amazing Diving Starship, but a covert survey just might.
Or the distress call was just a standard planetary distress call, which Starfleet would be obligated to respond to no matter what the reason was.
Umm, no. Chekov tells us what the distress call was about: seismic trouble. And Chekov tells what Starfleet is going to do about it: assess, then assist with evacuation.
This already establishes the call as false: whenever Nero causes seismic trouble, that
rules out genuine distress calls, because the very act of drilling supposedly jams communications.
Huh? He didn't kidnap anybody.
I'm so sorry - he invited his would-be friends for tea and crumpets and sharp instruments. It's just that I prefer my wording here, if that's all right with you...
He invited Robau aboard the Narada, asked him if he knew Spock Prime, and then killed him. He got no information about Starfleet from him whatsoever. And as for Pike, same story. Except Nero tortured Pike after he'd already (according to you) sent Starfleet off to the Laurentian Sector and after he destroyed the cadet ships over Vulcan. So he didn't get that info from Pike either.
We get two cases of Nero interrogating his captives. Robau helped him get his bearings, Pike sold him Earth's defenses. It's pretty natural to assume there was a third interrogation, too, one that gave him Vulcan's defenses. And possibly dozens of others, considering Nero had twenty-five years to burn, and showed no change in his methods in that time.
Just the fact that he didn't even know one of the ships was the Enterprise until he saw it's registry on the viewscreen is ample proof that he didn't know anything about the ships.
Ample
what now? That doesn't make any sense!
The Narada's technology was a century ahead of Starfleet's, and the film pretty much implies that nothing short of a red matter implosion would be able to permanently take out Nero's ship.
Yes. And the explicit end result of
that is that Nero loses fights to individual starships, even if surviving to fight another decade. The massive disadvantages of flying a civilian mining rig simply outweigh the advantages, as we see on screen. The only saving grace of how Nero was able to handle eight ships when he couldn't even handle one is that this part was
not on screen.
The U.S. Navy aren't the only ones who possess helicopters and supplies.
They pretty much are the only ones who possess both - they'd definitely be the go-to organization if California suddenly shook to pieces. Everybody else there is a piecemeal operator; the USN has all this stuff nicely concentrated, organized and ready to launch on short notice, because of being a warfighting organization and all.
Trek is about sailing in space anyway. Vulcan, like every other player, is an island; the arrival of ships is a major improvement in available assets, compared with what the island itself can mobilize. Nothing about this is in conflict with what's established elsewhere, as televised Trek time and again shows a visiting starship acting as the local health care system, the local food distribution system, the local transportation system etc.
I never implied that the Enterprise had to do anything suicidal. I stated that the Enterprise would have been destroyed just as easily as the other 7 ships if Nero hadn't stopped his attack once he realized what ship it was.
I very much doubt that, because
a) the hero ship did triumph the next time around,
b) the hero ship withstood Nero's first volley anyway, so a suicide run was now an option and would definitely have given Pike his victory if it came to that,
c) Pike always also had the option of withdrawing, while Nero with his drill was immobile and helpless, and
d) we never saw any starship fire standard starship weapons at Nero's ship, only at his missiles; Pike could have had the presence of mind to attack Nero rather than stay on the defensive. And his ship had already made the first preparations for battle, and was doing more, while these visibly time-consuming steps obviously had not been taken by the cadet fleet.
Sure, Nero's ship was big, and his drill killed planets. But that should never be mistaken for Nero's ship being a powerful combatant, or his drill being a good weapon.
Those things are never shown in the movie.
The only battles we see on screen are the Kelvin (which caught Nero unawares right after his trip through the black hole into the past), the cadet ships (of which we see the aftermath), and the Enterprise (which, as I stated above, would probably have been toast if not for Nero's curiousity). We also hear about the 47 Klingon ships, which we have no evidence to the contrary that that battle didn't happen other than your theory. So it certainly looks like the Narada can hold her own against whatever the 23rd century throws at it.
Of the things we actually
see, it's at best 2 defeats and one victory for Nero - he loses to the
Kelvin, he loses to the
Enterprise. That casts great doubt on the Klingon tall tale. Also, Pike and Robau had their shields up and the cadet fleet evidently had theirs down (since there was no Kirk to tell them to deviate from standard procedure); that already helps explain why Nero could destroy the eight ships but fail to destroy the single ones. Klingon ships wouldn't be shieldless (unless Kirk tampered with the program)...
Timo Saloniemi