Star Trek: The Logic-Free Version

The other night I finally got around to seeing the Star Trek reboot, and found it to be decent enough; in fact I quite enjoyed it, until I started to think about the implausibility of the story. This sort of stuff isn't alien to JJ Abrams' films -- think Cloverfield, in which a sea-monster larger than a blue whale is somehow able to move around perfectly well on land. That's OK for a monster movie though -- this is Star Trek, a franchise that generally doesn't pay as much lip-service to the mechanics of science as this movie does.

Ignore all the references to the possibility of alternative universes in other parts of the franchise, or the way a comic book helped to explain stuff: I'm not that big a Trek fan to wade through The Next Generation and I haven't read a comic since I was 17. Besides which, as a film goer, I shouldn't need to read or see other media first to help me understand why enormous plotholes aren't really plotholes.

The thing is that this is a great movie, except for the fact that elements of the plot are so bat-shit crazy that if you think about them too much, any enjoyment of the film goes straight out the window. It's bad enough that Nero turns a planet into a black hole as revenge for something that hasn't even happened yet (instead of, say, simply warning everyone about what's going to happen in a century or so), but then Kirk turns Nero into one to stop him destroying the Earth. Then, in order to escape the black hole's gravitational pull, they eject part of its engine into it, causing an explosion that allows them to break free. Uh..? How would that work? A concussion wave... in space? Where there's no air to create one? Even if it did, the wave would have needed to exert enough force to accelerate the Enterprise to a super-light speed instantly.

You see where I'm going with this?

This leads me to ask: do the producers actually know anything about astronomy? The reason the red matter was developed was to turn a supernova that, in Spock's words "threatened the entire galaxy" into a black hole. Wha...? I don't know as much about astronomy as someone like Phil Plait, but even a gamma ray burst -- the most powerful kind of explosion in the universe -- wouldn't threaten an entire galaxy! A considerable part of it, sure, but not the whole thing. That's just dumb. Worse, stars don't just die overnight. It takes thousands of years for a star to degrade to supernova stage. Surely they would have noticed earlier?

OK. Let's forget about all that, and get to the part where the Nerada is attacking Vulcan. Fortunately for Nero, his ship is a mining vessel and just happens to be equipped with an enormous energy drill. It isn't apparent how even a spacecraft apparently the size of a medium-sized asteroid could produce the power necessary to drill through a whole planet, but at least early on Kirk says that it possesses "advanced technology", so that's an easy way to just make that problem go away. The issue is, if Vulcan was anything like Earth, as soon as he breached the crust, he'd be drilling through molten rock and magma, some of which would probably start spurting out in an enormous fountain thanks to the pressure release. Plus, it would be sort of like trying to drill through yoghurt.

But why does he even need to drill a hole? Red matter (apparently) creates a black hole by reacting with nuclear material. He could've basically just dropped the stuff anywhere on the planet. The tiny black hole it made would eat its way through to the core with the same result.

He could have wiped out the entire Federation in minutes!

So, after falling through a black hole 154 years into the past, Nero destroys Vulcan to teach Spock a lesson, because thats how you prevent your planet being destroyed in the future. Why he didn't just go to Romulus and warn everyone, I can't fathom. Probably because he's insane, which is why he then decides he's going to obliterate the entire Federation, starting with Earth. In reprisal for something that hasn't even happened yet and he has the power to prevent! I mean, he's got the red matter! Why doesn't he just go to the star, and do what Spock couldn't? Then, everyone would have lived happily ever after. Except Kirk's dad and that chick that got sucked out into space.

It's sort of like going back to the time before your wife was killed by a drunk driver, and wiping out the drunk's family in front of him instead of, I don't know, preventing him from getting behind the wheel somehow. I mean, if you have the ability to avert a tragedy, why not instead just allow it happen, and cause another one just for the hell of it! Satan would do it.

Anyway, after all that, let's say that the Spock from the future finally meets up with the Spock from the present, as happens after the climax. Basically, we're left with the impression that the young version of Spock goes on to live his life with the knowledge that in 129 years, he will suffer an epic fail that ultimately causes the destruction of his home planet, his mother and virtually his entire species -- 129 years in the past! Although, of course, knowing that the supernova was going to happen, they could get Spock Prime to develop the red matter 129 years early and stop it, preventing the events that set the entire plot in motion from ever happening. They would then all cease to exist, because their timeline would end abruptly at that point due to an impossibility paradox.