History Headscratchers / StarTrek2009

**** JimmyStewart (yes, ''that'' JimmyStewart) went from Private to Colonel in four years, a rise that's considered ''extremely'' rapid. Cadet to Captain in five seconds is beyond ridiculous.

** I believe it's pointed out on this film's entry in SuperPersistentPredator that it appeared to initially chasing Kirk for territory. Once Kirk rolled off the cliff, the creature stopped chasing him and roared for him to stay away. However, it then slipped and fell, and presumably got mad and decided to kill him.

*** I'd always figured that the Kelvin, which in the words of Kirk, had formidable and advanced weaponry, survived in the first timeline but had some sort of problem with power consumption or something so they decided to tone down the weaponry since most starships didn't need quite that much dakka. However in this timeline the Kelvin was bested by the Narada and destroyed (albeit on purpose by George Kirk) so they figured that all that advanced weaponry was necessary.

* There's some major Phlebotinum Contradictions in the new film surrounding how transporters interact with shields. The hard line in standard canon is that you cannot beam to or from a ship that has its shields up; but the ''Enterprise'' engages transporters during several combat situations (once above Vulcan, and again in the final battle when Scotty retrieves Kirk, Spock and Pike). The only possible answers are that 1) the shields were not up on the ''Enterprise'' or the ''Narada''; 2) there ''are'' no shields (doubtful, since the ''Narada'' at least should have brought theirs from the "mainline" canon), or 3) you ''can'' beam through shields. Which works, since this is a reboot. But JJAbrams, could you at least mention that on screen?

* The size of the Enterprise. JJ Abrams seems to love saying things are huge without actually showing us. First there was Cloverfield, where he insisted the monster had to be the biggest movie monster ever, bigger than Godzilla. But we don't get much evidence of that in the movie. With all the brief shots of the thing, it's hard to tell how big it's supposed to be. And then for this movie he insisted his Enterprise had to be three times bigger than the original. But how does he illustrate this? From the outside we only ever see the ship next to things much bigger than it is, so it looks kind of small. The Enterprise D and E had more windows all over them to help give the sense of a larger ship, but this one has the same number of windows as the original that look to be the same size. So are these windows like three stories tall? The only evidence we really get of its scale is in the cavernous interiors, but from the outside it doesn't really look any bigger than the original. People complain that the drydock scene in TMP was boring, but it did a great job of illustrating the scale of the ship. You get to see it from every angle with smaller craft and people floating around working on the ship.

* Alright, all of the points about how Nero could have used those twenty five years more constructively can be explained away by the fact that in the deleted scenes he was a prisoner of the Klingons. His reasons for hating Spock make more sense because he felt personally betrayed by Spock in the novelization. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why this wasn't included in the film shown in theaters. The audience could easily notice that Nero had plenty of time to avert the annihilation of his people but apparently did nothing. Why was this cut and left for the book? Did J.J Abrams think that the audiences would revolt over an extra fifteen minutes making things more comprehensible?

** According to what I read, Uhura was born in 2233 (same year as Kirk), Sulu was born in 2230 (same year as Spock) and Chekov was born in 2241 (which would make his age correct). I'm not sure where the other troper got their dates from, but there would be no need for this Headscratcher if these dates are correct.

** Not even naturally. We've seen how much work each individual Vulcan goes to to ''get'' properly Vulcan-ish. This ''on top of'' the whole MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch bit.

[[Did Nero move Delta Vega?]]
* Basically, there are a few shout-outs that really don't work and you can't just say "alternate universe" to ''everything.'' One, in the original series, Delta Vega was the closest planet when the ship was damaged by the barrier at the edge of the galaxy. That makes it ''impossible'' that it's a front row seat to anything happening on Vulcan. Also, Scotty got ReassignedToAntarctica because he beamed "Admiral Archer's prize beagle" somewhere. However, ''Enterprise'' predates all this by about as much as TOS predates TNG. Even if humans can live over 120 years by TNG (and look every ''minute'' of it) can a ''beagle'' live that long by TOS? These things seem quite nitpicky because most fans new to the franchise wouldn't know these things, but if you ''do'' know the franchise well enough to ''recognize'' the shout-out, that same memory tells you why it's all kinds of wrong.

*** Clarified by [[WordOfGod the writers]]; Kirk's eye color changed because of low level exposure to radiation due to the Narada's arrival and being born in a shuttle. His mother had been on meds to hold off his birth until they got back to Earth, and the attack triggered early labor. So yeah, you can blame Nero of the color change, at least on Kirk's side. Can't say McCoy's is justified really yet.

*** This clarifies this. Plus it makes me think about a Series/DoctorWho story[[hottip:*:Blink]] where victims are sent back in time far enough so that when the present day rolls around, the victims are too old to live, a secondary meaning to "impossible to get them back"

:::I can see why they deleted that scene: When the first thing we see our hero doing is stealing and destroying someone else's property, we certainly would NOT want any information allowing us to see this on-the-face-of-it reprehensible action in the light of extenuating circumstances that make it okay. Otherwise, the hero would be in serious danger of setting a sympathetic first impression.

** Nero's crew is as driven and insane as he is. Again, prequel comic shows this. Those tattoos and shaved heads and whatnot aren't because they're miners... they used to look like perfectly normal Romulans. The tattoos and shaving came ''after'' Romulus was destroyed and set on their course, it was a ritualistic sign of their dedication to vengeance. Basically, there's a gap between Romulus getting vaped and Spock successfully stopping the supeernova cascade. Presumably any of the crew who didn't want to follow Nero on his mission of revenge just left the ship to join one of the Romulan refugee flotillas sometime between Romulus' destruction and Nero's arrival at the Vault to have the Nerada refitted.