Star Trek (2009) - 13 questions

Question: Why was Spock's ship carrying so much red matter? We see that a tiny drop is enough to destroy a planet, and Spock uses a similarly tiny drop to destroy the exploding star, so why would the ship carry what appears to be hundreds of thousands of that quantity?

Answer: Spock's trying to stop a supernova, which is a hellishly big deal. Much better to take too much and end up not needing it, than take too little and end up failing.

Question: How did Spock Prime get off Delta Vega?

Answer: Most likely, the Federation sent a ship to pick him up after the events of the movie. After all, some time passes between the destruction of Narada and the ceremony of Kirk's promotion.

Question: How come in the scene where Kirk rescues Captain Pike from on board the Narada, Pike appears to be able to move fine with only some assistance from Kirk, but at the scene at the end he is in a wheelchair?

Answer: The wheelchair may well be just a temporary measure. While Pike's able to move with Kirk's assistance, he's clearly not enjoying the experience, but, given that it's get moving or stay on a doomed ship, he just has to go for it. Even with the advanced medical technology available to them, it's not unreasonable that he wouldn't be back to normal immediately, and thus using a wheelchair for the time being is a sensible move, rather than continuing to move under his own power and risk damaging things further.

Question: In the Iowa bar where Kirk meets Uhura, he says something about her being from another world. Is Uhura from another planet, other than Earth? I can't remember anything from the original series that states this.

Answer: Kirk's never met Uhura - he wouldn't know where she's from. When he asks her name, she says that her name is "just Uhura" - Kirk's expecting to hear two names, first name and surname (just as he introduced himself as "Jim Kirk"). As such, his first question is to ask whether they don't have surnames on whatever world she comes from. As it happens, she is from Earth, she just doesn't want to tell him her full name; he doesn't know that, so he's making assumptions that are, in this case, completely wrong.

Question: In the scene where Kirk boards the shuttle and bangs his head, is this by any chance a homage to the infamous Stormtrooper blooper in Star Wars?

Answer: No. There are plenty of scenes in movies where people bang their heads, including Scotty in Star Trek V. There is no evidence that this is intended as a specific homage to any of them.

Question: On the Federation ships, in addition to the signature photon torpedoes and phaser banks of the series, there were arrays of small anti-aircraft-like cannons that fired rapid tiny blue energy bolts. 'Probably most-prominently seen on the USS Kelvin, but other ships might have used them. I was wondering what they were (i.e. if there was an official designation).

Answer: I would have to say that they are Plasma cannons, having seen Star Trek: Enterprise, which predates this movie, the plasma weapons on vessels seen in that show resemble the weapons that you are describing.] [I would have to say that they are Plasma cannons, having seen Star Trek: Enterprise, which predates this movie, the plasma weapons on vessels seen in that show resemble the weapons that you are describing.

Question: When Spock throws Kirk off the ship, Spock intends to immediately return to Earth, something that we've seen to take about five minutes, and he would certainly want to get there as soon as possible. But Kirk is able to crash land, wander the ice planet, get saved by Old Spock, learn his entire back story, travel to the outpost, meet Scotty, and get beamed back - and the ship is still in warp. Why weren't they already back to Earth?

Answer: Because, as they clearly state, they're NOT heading back to Earth. That's what Kirk wanted to do, but Spock decided to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet instead - their disagreement is what gets Kirk thrown off the ship in the first place. We don't know how far away the fleet is, so it's not unreasonable that the Enterprise could still be in warp at that point.

Question: How are Kirk, Sulu, and Olson able to parachute from space to Earth without burning up in the atmosphere?

Answer: Vulcan has a thinner atmosphere than Earth. That, combined with the special dive suits they're wearing and the lower speed than space vehicle re-entry makes it possible.

Question: Nero destroys Vulcan, because he believes Spock caused the destruction of Romulas. In the movie, 'The Journey Home' when the Enterprise crew go back to find the whales, the movie starts off with the crew on Vulcan with the stolen Klingon spacecraft, also Spock is talking to his mother as he regains his memories. How can that happen if Nero destroys Vulcan and Spock's mother dies in that event? Also, in 'Star Trek Nemisis' the movie starts with scenes on Romulas, but it was destroyed, how can that be?

Answer: As elder Spock speaks to Kirk, it is mentioned that in the 'real' timeline George Kirk actually lived for many years, long enough to see his son, James, become Captain of Enterprise. It is in that timeline that 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home' and 'Star Trek: Nemesis' occur. There are numerous changes to the 'real' timeline, including the fact that James never knew his father. As to the "how", when elder Spock tells James of his failed effort (120 years in the future) to save Romulas from being obliterated by a supernova (after the events of Nemesis), he explains that it results in the black hole that transports Spock (in his ship) and Nero (in his ship, the Narada) into the past - which changes the timeline.

Question: If Spock easily destroys the Romulan drill in his "Jellyfish" ship, and Kirk and Sulu nearly take it out using hand phasers, why couldn't the Starfleet garrison on Earth, or some other planetary defense weaponry destroy it? Surely there was a single ship with minimal armament that could have taken it down.

Answer: Spock's ship is from 200 years in the future, and is likely quite a bit more powerful than its size would imply. Kirk and Sulu were able to land on the drill because of their significantly smaller size to a ship, i.e. they were invisible to scanning. And finally, as was so amptly displayed by the Nerada, it destroyed seven Federation Starships in a matter of minutes, I think its fair to theorise that a much smaller ship would fare little better in sneaking a shot at the drill.

Question: How did Kirk and Scotty manage to teleport onto the Enterprise, through its shields, when it had obviously traveled many light years? It is safe to say that Kirk was marooned on the planet at least an hour before teleporting off it (in reality it would have taken much longer to walk 14km in the snow, meet Scotty, figure out the equations, etc), so the Enterprise would have traveled an extreme distance at warp speeds in even one hour, as the ship can go much faster than the speed of light. Even if Scotty figured out how to teleport onto a ship moving at warp speeds, it doesn't explain how they managed to teleport such extreme distances.

Answer: Scotty mentions early in his first scene that he believes distance is not a factor in teleportation, contrary to popular belief. He uses an example of transporting a grapefruit from one planet to another (a pretty massive distance), and this is before Spock gives him the formula for mid-warp transport. After looking at it, Scotty says he never thought to consider that space is the thing that moves. If he's already certain he can transport between planets, and then he sees a formula that lets him bend space, distance shouldn't be a factor at all.

Question: What was Nero doing for the 25 years between his attack on the Kelvin and the one on Vulcan? Additionally, how did he know when and where Spock was to appear? Did he sit his ship in front of the black hole for 25 years? And why was his ship armed to the teeth? It's supposed to be a mining vessel.

Answer: There was a scene cut from the movie that shows Nero being held in Rura Penthe, the klingon prison planet that was attacked in the transmission that Uhura intercepted and translated. The attack was the Narada crew coming to free their commander. And if you were to read the Countdown comic book that is used to give back story to Nero and his relationship with Spock, you'd see that the Narada originally looked nothing like what we see in this film. It was more utilitarian. But after the destruction of Romulus, Nero and crew come across a Romulan space station that is taking in refugees from the doomed planet. They had been working on some technology reverse engineered from Borg technology. Nero offered his ship as a test candidate as they were looking to start field testing it on a ship at that time. And as far as waiting for Spock, it could have been a simple thing to calculate the time and place of Spock's arrival using temporal mechanics based on the size and intensity of the singularity that sent them there, and an educated guess of when Spock entered the anomaly based on the telemetry they had at the moment they entered in themselves. They've had 25 years to wait and calculate what they needed to know.

Question: Why would Nero insist on drilling to the core of Vulcan and Earth to deposit the red matter, when it could just as easily envelop the planet by creating a black hole on the surface?

Answer: Since we don't know much about the red matter in question, its tough to say, but it stands to reason that they wouldn't have done it without a reason. It is conceivable that a small amount of it would only be able to create a black hole and destroy a planet if exposed to enough heat and pressure, say at a planet's core. They make reference to "igniting" the red matter, which is what causes the final black hole, and that only happened by igniting all the remaining matter.