Star Trek Plot Holes and Issues

Posted by flung
May 18, 2009

For the average person who normally isn’t into Star Trek, the new J.J. Abrams version of Trek is certainly entertaining. It has all the elements to a summer blockbuster hit. Action, some suspense, special effects, loud booms etc etc.
For the hardcore Trekker like me, I can’t help but feel disappointed with the new Trek film. Yes, it’s exciting to see a new face for Trek but at what cost? BSG got "rebooted" nicely with a challenging story line and wonderful acting. Could the same be said of Star Trek? Doubtful. If anything, using time travel to change the Trek universe simply provides Abrams a clean slate to work with. Damn the cannon he says.. throw it out the window. With that said, here are my list of plot holes, and issues with the new Trek film.Spoilers abound so if you haven’t seen the flick - don’t read this.

1. Technobabble. We all know Trek suffered from too much technobabble through the years - from Star Trek TNG all the way to ST Enterprise. For Star Trek, we’ve got one MAJOR technobabble. RED MATTER. WTH.. this red goo which looks like blood is arguably the most powerful and destructive force known to the Star Trek universe. I mean - IT CREATES BLACK HOLES FOR GOODNESS SAKES. Now with that said.. why in God’s name is Spock carrying so much of it when a simple drop of Red Matter creates the black hole necessary to suck in that supernova anyhow?

2. The Supernova premise. You’re telling me there was a supernova so large that it posed a galactic threat? Excuse me?

3. So Nero sees Romulus get destroyed.. he blames Spock so he decides to go after him at the same time Spock is trying to stop the supernova. They both get sucked into the black hole.. and then each appears in different points in time in the past. You’re telling me that Nero was sooo hell bent on making Spock suffer that he sat around for 25 years waiting for him to appear? You’re telling me he figured out exactly where Spock would appear? Nero is a mining guy right? Guess he’s pretty bright in science too.

4. Uhura orders a Cardassian drink. Uh.. hello.. Cardassians weren’t introduced until the 24th century Trek

5. Speaking of not being introduced yet, at this point in time, Earth shouldn’t be aware of what the Romulans look like. Vulcans don’t even know they’re related to the Romulans mind you (Re: Unification Parts 1 and 2). Starfleet doesn’t first see a Romulan until Balance of Terror episode in ST TOS.

6. I’m sick of Time Travel and all the paradoxes it provides. Sure one could argue this is a parallel universe of sorts but come on now.. Spock goes from one alternate timeline and effects the past - thereby changing everything. Actually it’s Nero who really starts messing thins up. ANYHOW, once Spock and Nero changes things in the past, it affects the future and therefore their own destinies. And hence, we have these time travel paradoxes. LAME!!! Trek continually suffers from overuse of Time Travel stories. Let’s be original Trek.. think of something else

7. OK.. so let’s get this straight. A core dump of the Warp Engine is going to help the Enterprise escape a frigging black hole. And what is the Warp Engine? A delicate balance of matter and anti-matter according to traditional Trek lore. Sure.. combine the two and you’re gonna get a big bang.. but here’s the problem. You dump the core, the Enterprise drops out of warp and guess what? It should get sucked into the black hole IMMEDIATELY. Yet somehow.. it manages to stay just far enough so it won’t get sucked in immediately. Yeah. right.

8. The Space Jump from Pike’s shuttle. Um.. first of all - shouldn’t the more advanced Romulan mining ship have picked up three small blips flying down towards the drill platform? Second.. once they pick up these three small blips - won’t that piss them off and make them attack the Enterprise? If so.. then wouldn’t it have made more sense for the Enterprise to simply fire their phasers at the drill? I mean seriously now.. the Romulans were going to figure out that the drill was being sabotaged.

9. Which brings me to the notion of blocked communications and transporters. Um.. let’s get this straight.. the Enterprise couldn’t impulse themselves to the other side of the planet to get a clear transmission to Vulcan? You’re telling me that single drill was going to block transmissions all around the planet?

10. BTW - where is the vaunted Vulcan fleet? Those of you familiar with Star Trek First Contact and Star Trek Enterprise know the Vulcans have far better vehicles in space. Um.. where are they exactly? Vulcans look a wee bit backwards here don’t they?

11. The poor Vulcan elders.. they’re standing in this cavern that happens to be crumbling around them and you’re telling me that they don’t think at all to escape? It takes Spock to run in to make them realize something’s afoot? Uh lame.

12. Why in the world would Nero need the subspace codes from Pike when his ship is clearly more powerful than anything Starfleet has? He destroys one ship after another and he needs to sneak into Earth orbit? Um. yeah.OK.

13. What’s up with the lame Starship command structure? The first officer and captain are incapacitated and all hell breaks loose?

14. Remember the Kelvin? Explain to me how this starship doesn’t get its arse wiped out of space by the Romulan mining ship? This is the same Romulan ship that destroys the incoming armada of Starfleet vessels in no time (actually in a few minutes since the Enterprise got stuck back at Spacedock to the exterior inertia dampeners). So a starship 25 yrs older manages to survive long enough to ram into the ship. Right.

15. So Spock shows Scotty how to perform transwarp beaming. Why doesn’t he go ahead and show Scotty and the rest of the Enterprise how to make their phasors more powerful.. or their deflectors better? I suppose that would take too long but guess what? Time’s already screwed up so why not screw it up some more?

16. Oh yeah.. the Enterprise goes OUT OF ITS WAY to save the Vulcan elders only to have the elders stay on the ship while the Enterprise attacks Nero’s ship. If the Enterprise is destroyed, bye bye Vulcan elders.

I’m sure there are more.. but that’s it for now.

In a word… Star Trek is full of holes that make the story utterly ridiculous. I miss BSG.

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Information: May 18th, 2009; Comments

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Categories: Star Trek

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Mejensen77

It was a good action movie, but yeah if you were a fan of star trek, then there are so many plot holes. One big one everyone seems to miss is that if the Romulans have a huge fleet some of which use an artificial black hole as a power source, why in the hell would they need a federation or vulcan, or maybe even a tiny romulan ship depending on where Spock is (Did they ever explain that?) to create a black hole? If the star went supernova close enough to romulus to be a problem wouldn't they have a star map that says hey, this star is getting close to going supernova then maybe we should do something about it or take some precautions? I mean stars go supernova when fusion starts to create iron, and then the force of fusion overcomes gravity throwing all the mass of the star out into the universe, but I guess Romulans have a good enough knowledge of the universe, to conquer vast areas of space, create artificial blackholes, thalaron weapons capable of destroying populations of entire planets, just aren't very good at stellar cartography. Or the other theory that it went Super Nova in federation space, then it could pose a threat to Vulcan or Earth, and the Federation should've done something, so I guess all political leaders in the future have very diminished metal capacities.. They need to do a section 31 movie to fix all these plot holes...

D

1/2: Valid points. The whole "supernova that absorbs matter and becomes bigger" isn't unheard of though, it's similar to the notion behind strange matter, out of quantum physics.

3: If you saw your entire planet destroyed, and held one person responsible for it, it's likely you'd want to get back at them too. He actually spends a lot of that 25 years in Rura Penthe, in a scene cut from the movie.

4: Cardassians may be around in the earlier centuries. Just because we didn't see them until the 24th century doesn't mean they didn't exist.

5: At this point they had enchanted Romulans before (Earth-Romulan War), they just hadn't seen them. So when Nero hails them, well, they see them then.

6: Not a time paradox. They created an alternate reality. That's the movie's explanation. No paradoxes there - see Picard in All Good Things. Same concept.

7: The core, ejected behind the ship and towards the black hole, would have reached the blackhole and thereby exploded before the ship would get sucked in.

8: True, the Enterprise should've just fired on it. But Pike was probably hoping they could disable the drill and escape while the Romulans were distracted - if they opened fire on the drill, Nero would just destroy them.

9: Subspace doesn't work on the same principles as space. If it was blocking subspace transmissions, being on the other side of the planet would probably not have helped much. That also would've taken time, and risked Nero blowing them out of the sky as they tried to run.

10: Vulcans likely stopped having the majority of their fleet when the Federation was created, something like 50 or more years before this movie even takes place.

11: As you noted earlier, the Vulcan elders haven't heard anything from space. All they know is that their planet is undergoing seismic activity. They don't know that there's a blackhole being formed - nor do they have a means of escaping the planet (which is a bit odd, you'd assume they'd have an escape craft).

12: The Narada is more powerful, but all the ships warping in didn't have shields up, making them easy pickings. Fighting a starbase would probably still tax the ship, since all it has are missiles.

13: The ship is being piloted by most of a class of cadets. The command structure also broke down because Pike named Kirk first officer, which was unprecedented (and more questionable than anything you've noted past 1 and 2 so far).

14: It put its shields up before it took a missile to the face. The other ships going to Vulcan probably didn't. Why Starfleet sent a dozen or so ships to Vulcan for a geological disturbance is also a problem.

15: Spock may give them the tech later. But giving technology without explicating how it was developed and how it would be used doesn't benefit Starfleet much, and while he's very intelligent, he's not an android.

16: If the Enterprise was destroyed, the elders would die anyway when Earth or wherever else was destroyed by Nero.

David

Very belated comments... Firstly you've said just about everything that needs to be said but I'll toss in a few more that I picked up elsewhere and have myself thought of. I'm sick and tired of time paradoxes and the fact that Abrams relies on this old canard shows how lazy he is... or is he simply "lost". Once can only take this crap so much before you want to scream. "enough already". How is it that a mining ship gets cast back into time and supposedly destroys war fleets on more than one occasion? Why waste decades waiting or screwing off when you already know the future and can possibly save your planet? Drill platform needs to punch a hole in a planet in order to insert a drop of red matter that pretty much doesn't give a damn whether you drilled a hole or not. Why not launch torpedoes with the goop on board! Enterprise engine room scenes look like we're in a warehouse with even liquid lying around the floor! Scotty materializes in a coolant tube and you'd think it would be so frigging HOT it would boil a human alive wouldn't you? Planetary defenses for Earth? Only the ships that were vaporized by a MINING vessel? Jeeez! Here is a winner.... Vulcans have been exploring the galaxy for quite some time but manage to park 99.9% of themselves on the home world leaving a minute number in the tens of thousands elsewhere. Is that for religious reasons? Planetary defenses for Vulcan? Battle Cruisers? Hello! Anybody home?! Anybody? Younger Spock getting his emotional "freak" on with Uhura? Give me a break! Not gonna happen. And so the story goes.... I left feeling as though Abrams, while doing a noteworthy job of turning out an exciting "story" for the ignorant and easily bamboozled, exercised literary necrophilia with the Star Trek canon.

glangmead

I just saw this last night. You certainly captured a lot of the problems I had with the story as well. It was nowhere near as strong a story as we should expect from a serious attempt to resuscitate the franchise. And here's the other thing that bothers me, which is the silliness of this movie. None of the characters are taken seriously by the script! They're mostly one-dimensional. Sulu, Chekov and Scotty are practically comic relief. Except when Sulu and Kirk are on the platform, and then Sulu's a martial arts action hero. And no one seems to have any difficulties in a crisis... Chekov stares at the screen and through his genius manages to transport Kirk and Sulu back to the ship (where their momentum is magically removed and they barely hit the floor very hard at all -- but maybe I just don't understand transporters). Later, Chekov figures out how to hide in Saturn, which is close to typical Star Trek technobabble but still silly. And Scotty with that warp core trick... I mean, are they silly or are they geniuses? Either way, that's not what made these characters interesting before. They had *teams* under them, they had a work ethic, nothing came easily, know what I'm saying?

Sinfanti

Excellent list.

Addendum to Point #3: Apparently he's not so bright, because in that 25 years of waiting it never occurred to him to travel to Romulus and tell them to evacuate before the calamity 100+ years later. Sure it would create a paradox, but what's one more when the writers don't care about them in the first place.

An excellent movie, just as long as I don't let myself think too much (which in this case seems to be at all).

scorchedearth

Thank you very much for your thorough criticism of the movie. I had problems with the mediocre plot line and the rehashing of cheap themes. For my opinions, I have been vilified by the insipid masses who know nothing of good complex stories with overlapping plot threads that are coherent and form a larger story - none of which this movie had.

This movie was moderately entertaining at best. It was certainly not a Star Trek movie. It was an action movie.

Ramius

Double Amen! Agree with all points and Thomas' as well. This is not a Star Trek movie... it is an action movie... that is it. I am not like the hard core Trekkies but for God's sake I like some consistency, good story line and plot development instead of in jokes thrown all around (Red matter - as in from Alias?).

The movie was good, but doesn't reach Dark Knight levels to reboot the franchise, which in the end is a solely profit-making endeavor that disregards previous story lines and canon. Rebadge the whole thing to Galaxy Quest and change the names and you'd get the same thing..... a good action movie....

Thomas

Amen, brother. I am getting so sick of the rave reviews this movie is getting. I am not a die hard Trek fan. I didn't even notice that Uhura ordered a Cardassian drink, nor would I have cared if I had. But the rest of what you say is spot on. The most that you can say for this movie is that it had excellent effects. Everything else about it was awful. Plot holes galore, poor character development, and way too many coincidences for me to be able to suspend my disbelief. Keep on keeping on.

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