Revealing mistake: When the Enterprise begins to leave the spacedock, the background inside spacedock (behind Enterprise) seems to move in two different directions, the top moves towards the right, the bottom towards the left.
Revealing mistake: When Chang's Bird-of-prey explodes, a piece of debris can be seen bouncing back into frame because it ricocheted off the sound stage floor.
Continuity mistake: After the bird of prey first fires on Enterprise, Kirk is thrown right out of his chair to his left and lands on the floor. The camera pans around the bridge briefly, seeing the rest of the crew staggering and holding onto things. In the very next shot Kirk is back in his chair shouting "back off, back off" and the crew back in their positions as if nothing has happened.
Question: This might be subjective, but why does the Enterprise take so much damage, especially interior damage, long before the shields actually collapse?
Answer: The depiction of the shields in this movie is actually interesting because it seems they deliberately tried to show how the ship could plausibly take damage while the shields are up. Here the shields seem to be "on" the hull (or perhaps emanate from the hull itself) and their function seems specific to preventing hull breaches. In TNG and onwards the shields appear as a kind of energy bubble wrapped around the ship, and accordingly they seem to absorb much more impact.
Chosen answer: There's a limit as to how much the shields can protect the ship. Depending on the force of the explosions, the ship still suffers some damage from any weapon blasts. Also, the shield only holds for so long and gradually loses it protectiveness with successive attacks, causing increasing damage to the ship.
raywest ★