Bad Science Fiction

Rating: 3/10 (25 September 2009)

Very dumb and very disappointing. There are many things in this film that a hard-core Trekie will find objectionable, but playing fast and loose with legacy characters and situations isn't what disturbs me most about this film. The main problem is the script. I am a Sci-Fi fan from way back - both books and film - and there is nothing more irritating that the factual absurdities one always finds in marketing committee scripted Hollywood Sci-Fi flicks. I'm not talking about transporter tech or warp speed; I mean plot stupidities that absolutely destroy the credibility of the story being told. There are plenty of brilliant Sci-Fi writers around, so why are so many Sci-Fi film scripts written by people who think we're too dumb to spot the logical contradictions?
Here are just a few of the things that really irritated me about this film:
1) Spock goes to create a black hole at the heart of a star going supernova in an attempt to save Romulus from destruction; yet he isn't in time. The star was not Roumuls's home star but that of a nearby(?) system. So how is it that the warp-drive possessing Romulans were caught off guard by the sub light-speed shock wave? And is the Romulan's understanding of astrophysics so primitive that they didn't know centuries in advance that the star was unstable? How is it that the Roumulans had no off-world colonies to survive the destruction of the home planet?
2) Nero attacks both Earth and Vulcan with his mining ship, dropping his cabled mining mechanism into the atmosphere of both planets to first drill a hole to the planetary core and then initiating a black hole by means of the ridiculous 'red matter'. How is it that 23rd century Earth and the even more advanced Vulcan didn't possess the military capability to shoot a tethered mining platform out of the sky?! A 20th century airplane could have done the job. During the attack, both humans and Vulcans run about like clueless Chicken Littles while this silly tether goes about it's business. Nero would have met no less opposition had he attacked 5th century BC Greece.
3) When Kirk stumbles open the aging Spock on the planet Whatever, there is a flashback of Spock watching Vulcan being destroyed when he first arrived there. The planet is about the same size in the sky as the moon seen from the earth. That means this M-class planet is in the same system as Vulcan and very close to it as well. Yet on this planet there don't seem to be any Vulcans or any tech, just a Federation station peopled with one human his alien sidekick. And again, how is it that the Vulcans don't possess any off-world colonies to continue Vulcan civilization?
4) Then there is the ridiculous time-traveling plot where the Romulan Nero is so enraged at Spock for not saving Romulus that he decides to destroy Earth and Vulcan. How dumb is that?! And if Nero was able to travel 100+ years back in the past, why not just warn his fellow Romulans about the impending disaster with the super nova??!!
What we're they thinking when they scripted this piece of garbage?