Corrected entry: Considering the time it took for the fleet to travel from Earth to Vulcan, coupled with the fact that Vulcan had started feeling seismic activity even earlier, we can conclude that it takes a fair amount of time for the Narada's drill to penetrate a planet's structure. There should have been plenty of time for Vulcan's defense force (or even a shuttle craft) to fly up and shoot the drill, as Spock did at the end of the movie. For that matter, why didn't the Enterprise shoot a torpedo or fire phasers at the drill? Same goes for Earth.
JC Fernandez
11th Mar 2013
Star Trek (2009)
22nd Oct 2012
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Nero claims that Starfleet has border protection grids surrounding its planets, hence his need to capture Pike and interrogate him. Yet earlier, Nero's ship managed to get past Vulcan's defenses with nothing but his ship's weapons. Yes, they're advanced weapons, but Nero needed Pike's information to get past Earth's defenses, so there's no reason he'd be able to get past Vulcan's.
Correction: There's any number of ways Nero could have obtained the information he needed about penetrating Vulcan's defenses and not Earth's. He could have posed as a Vulcan [if this timeline follows TOS timeline, then no one is aware of what Romulans look like]. Or he could have captured a Vulcan ship and interrogated one of its officers.
24th Mar 2012
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: In the scene showing the drill first attacking Vulcan (before Amanda comes out and sees it) the shot is showing a clear blue sky around the upper parts of the drill. Vulcan has been established as having an orange/brown tint to both the planet and its atmosphere. No amount of "alternate reality" explanation works here.
Correction: All this means is that the atmospheric conditions were different on this particular day. There are any number of seasonal or meteorological reasons why the sky make look different. Vulcan has only been depicted about a dozen times throughout the various Trek series, that hardly means that the sky's appearance would look exactly the same every time. Here on Earth, if one were to visit the polar regions a dozen times in the winter, the sky would always be dark. But if you suddenly visited it in the summer, would that suddenly be a mistake? Nope.
24th Aug 2010
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Throughout the movie, it is mentioned that Nero's drill prevents sensors and communication. It prevents the Enterprise (and other Starfleet ships) from detecting Nero's ship at Vulcan and later prevents them from contacting Earth to call for reinforcements. However, when the Enterprise is en route to Vulcan, during his announcement to the crew, Chekov says that they received a distress call from Vulcan saying that they were experiencing extreme seismic activity (which we later learn is caused by the drill) which would have been impossible if communications were 'jammed' by the drilling.
Correction: The jamming may have been "line of sight." A communication station on the side of planet *opposite* Nero's ship would be able to send a distress signal and report seismic activity of unknown origin.
23rd Apr 2011
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: When Captain Pike is attempting to convince Kirk to join Starfleet in the bar, he wrongly says that the Federation is a humanitarian and peace keeping armada. Starfleet is the armada, the Federation is the inter-planetary government.
Correction: We shouldn't expect Pike to give a comprehensive and detailed definition of Starfleet and the Federation (and the distinctions between the two) in that particular scene. He wasn't holding an academic lecture on the nature and purpose of the Federation/Starfleet. Pike wanted to get Kirk join Starfleet. So yes, Pike was simplifying things a bit. Not to mention that The Original Series was never spot-on and terribly well-defined at times concerning the purposes and missions of either the Federation or Starfleet. So this confusion/ambiguity fits in with how we've seen the era depicted in the past.
30th Aug 2010
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Kirk is taking the Kobayashi Maru, the tactical report refers to the enemy ships as Klingon Warbirds. However, when you can see the view screen, the vessels shown are actually Klingon D-7 Battle Cruisers.
Correction: You're confusing Klingon warbirds with Birds of Prey. Putting aside that name changes could be easily explained as a change due to the altered timeline, the term "warbird" in relation to the Klingons was established in Star Trek: Enterprise (which predates the film's chronology). D-7 Battle Cruiser may be the technical term for the ships and "warbird" its nickname, much like an A-4 aircraft is also called a Skyhawk.
25th Apr 2010
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Chekhov is Russian and has a Russian accent. but actually, in the Russian language there is no 'W' sound and there IS a 'V' sound so his 'wessels' actually should have been 'vessels.'
Correction: It's never been outright stated that Chekov's v/w transposition is due to his accent. He may simply have a speech impediment.
11th Jan 2010
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: It is illogical for 'new' Spock to destroy the Narada drill when he has the ship with the red matter. The Romulans can't do anything with the hole if they don't have the red matter to put in it; taking time to destroy the drill only gives Nero more opportunity to recapture or destroy the 'squid' ship. Does he do it to anger Nero and ensure the Narada pursues him away from Earth? No, that's pretty much a done deal with or without the drill being destroyed. Maybe to prevent the creation of a volcano in San Francisco? That would be a secondary concern to saving the whole planet from the red matter.
Correction: Spock had no idea if the Romulans had already taken a red matter sample to launch into Earth's core. So destroying the drill was definitely the logical thing to do. Plus the drill was disrupting communications and transporter functions. Not to mention that we've seen that the drill being active interferes with the transporter. Kirk was in process of rescuing Pike. They wouldn't be able to beam back to the enterprise until the drill was destroyed.
7th Jul 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Kirk is promoted to Captain in an auditorium filled with the Academy cadets that were present at his trial for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru. The faces should almost all be different - the only surviving cadets from the trial would be the ones who were assigned to the Enterprise; all the others were killed in the battle with the Narada.
Correction: Most of the faces are not recognizable in either scene, particularly the latter one. The concentration of black/gray uniforms at the front of the auditorium in the latter scene indicates that it's filled with more academy and Starfleet brass than the earlier scene.
17th May 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: The view of Saturn's rings from Titan's atmosphere looks impressive, but from Titan's orbit the rings always appear nearly edge-on. (01:37:00)
Correction: Untrue. Here is an image taken from the Hubble telescope where Titan (the large reddish disc) is nowhere near being aligned to the rings' edge. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2009/03/hst_saturn_4transit.jpg.
2nd Jan 2010
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: In the scene following young Spock's fight with the other Vulcan children, after his father approaches him, the shot is a close up of Spock's head, in which you can see light passing though his right ear lobe from the window behind him, however, the light is reddish, since Vulcan blood is green, as proven by the green blood on his lip in the same shot, the light passing though his ear lobe should be greenish, not red. (00:16:10)
Correction: *Oxygenated* Vulcan blood is green. There's nothing to say that unoxygenated blood might couldn't be a different color (much like unoxygenated human blood is a darker red).
3rd Jan 2010
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: In his attempt to rescue the Vulcan leadership, Spock beams down to the planet, then has to run up the side of a mountain to reach the sacred cave. Later we see there is plenty of room just outside the cave entrance to stand to be beamed out. Why couldn't Spock just beam to the mouth of the cave and save himself the precious time of having to run up the mountain?
Correction: Sure, there's plenty of room outside the caves. But it would also be a very precarious position to beam in, as there were many rocks coming down the unstable mountainside. Spock was probably beamed a reasonably safe distance away to avoid being pummeled by a falling rock.
28th Dec 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Despite the Kelvin supposedly existing in the pre-Nero Prime universe, it displays design characteristics more in line with the Abrams rebooted universe concept, such as a window on the bridge instead of a viewscreen, an irregular warp nacelle configuration and an engineering section that looks like a factory.
Correction: Since we've never before seen a starship from the Kelvin era, this conclusion is exclusively based on supposition. Whatever happened in the original timeline to alter the design aesthetic simply didn't occur in the altered timeline and so things from the Kelvin-era ships carried over to the rebooted Enterprise.
28th Dec 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Nero's drill interferes with both transporters and communications. Yet when Kirk, Sulu and Olson space-jump to the drill, the Enterprise can read their telemetry data and the trio can provide verbal updates.
Correction: The drill interferes with long-distance *subspace* communication, hence their inability to contact Earth (as well as why they didn't receive a warning from the ships that arrived first). Clearly it doesn't disrupt all communication as Nero is able to contact the Enterprise. As for the telemetry readings, that could be patched via the suits' communication system. In other words, the readings could be coming from Kirk and co's suits, not from the ship's sensors. Even if they are readings from the ship's sensors, establishing coordinates is the simplest part of the transporter system, but not the only thing needed in order to successfully beam in or out. It's been long established in Trek that you can't beam onto a shielded ship, despite having telemetry readings as to the other ship's location.
23rd Dec 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Spock is on the bridge of the Enterprise, then goes into the lift and it looks like he's going up, but when he gets out, he's on the bridge again.
Correction: More detail is needed. We see Spock in the turbolift several times in the film. Which instance are you referring to?
10th Dec 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: When Kirk and Gaila are in bed and Gaila turns on the lights, there is a green smudge from Gaila's makeup on Kirk's right nostril.
Correction: They were making out. I get my girlfriend's makeup (which matches her skin color) on my face all the time.
6th Dec 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: When the ships leave Earth for Vulcan, we can see a whole string of them as they gain altitude in Earth's atmosphere to go to their respective starships. Starfleet is in San Francisco, but the transport/crew ships themselves are coming much further south and east than that. Also, when Nero targets Earth with his drill, we can see the Alaska panhandle in the upper right of the screen. However, his computer indicates that San Francisco is located much further southwest, near the Hawaiian Islands.
Correction: San Francisco is correctly placed. The shot is composed at an angle so the center of the screen is actually to the northwest (Note how the Aleutian Islands, which normally face southwest are more west-northwest.
27th May 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: When older Spock witnesses the destruction of Vulcan, he sees the planet very clearly from the surface of Delta Vega, the same way we see the moon from Earth. For the two planets to be this close to one another would be impossible. The tidal forces alone would cause massive destruction on the surface of both planets. Not to mention the fact that a singularity created on Vulcan would almost certainly destroy the neighboring planet as well.
Correction: It's established that Vulcan has a sister planet in close proximity. Impossible or not, this planet (and its moon) were both visible (and quite large) in "The Motion Picture." Assuming the singularity conforms to our understanding of black holes (and doesn't dissipate because of the red matter), then yes it would consume Delta Vega... eventually.
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Correction: Yes, Spock destroyed the drill... with a ship from the FUTURE. Given what we see the Narada did to a fleet of starships, it's safe to assume that any Vulcan or Earthly defense would have been (and may have been offscreen) easily thwarted by Nero's people.
JC Fernandez