Any Color You Like so Long as it's Black

Star Trek is a likeable film, because of the actors and chemistry between the characters. The story however, is full of colossal plot holes, sloppy writing and what I call 'logic bombs' things in the movie that pull you right out of the story as surely as a bomb going off under your seat.

If you haven't seen it, be prepared for spoilers ahead.

Apparently, if you read the comic book prequel, Star Trek: Countdown, it explains a lot of things that aren't in the movie, like Nero's motivations.

I'm paying $13 for a movie ticket. Why do I need to pay another $20 to get the whole story? Much of Nero's background is left blank - what did he do for 25 years while waiting for Spock to come through the black hole?

In blockbuster movies, some scenes are done purely to show off special FX, and Star Trek has this in spades.

Spock flies around in his ship which contains Red Matter, used for creating artificial black holes - you see this twice, used once to destroy a planet, and once to collapse a star that is exploding and going supernova. Both times, one drop of Red Matter is used to create the artificial black hole.

One drop is approximately .05 ml. The Red Matter containment unit shows a globe of Red Matter at least 1 meter across, approximately 523,599 ml, or enough to extract 10,471,990 drops of Red Matter.

If Vulcan was so worried about the Romulans getting their hands on Red Matter, why on Earth (or Vulcan) would they let Spock go to Romulus with enough Red Matter to destroy 10.5 million stars? Highly Illogical.

To activate Red Matter to create a black hole, it takes heat and pressure, so they drill to the planet's core, inject the Red Matter, and the heat and pressure at the core of the planet activate the Red Matter, and within minutes the resulting black hole swallows the planet.



Artificial black hole warfare - using Red Matter to destroy entire planets in minutes


There's so many logic bombs here it's not funny. To begin with, the drilling platform is lowered from orbit to a height with breathable atmosphere, as shown by Kirk, Sulu and Romulans fighting it out on the surface of the drilling platform without breathing apparatus.

The International Space Station is in low orbit - 350 km above Earth. Even if the Narada was only 1/3 of that distance, say, 120 km (unlikely given how small the planet looks in scenes featuring the Narada above Vulcan), that still means the drilling platform is hanging from 115 km of cable. Without acclimation, 5 km from the surface is about as far as a human can go for breathable atmosphere necessary for strenuous hand to hand combat.

We have Kirk, Scotty and another space-diving to the platform. Objects falling from space into the atmosphere burn up upon entering the atmosphere. Gravity accelerates your fall until you reach atmosphere thick enough to counter the effect of gravity. When this happens, the friction generated can reach 3,000°C. None of their planet-diving reflected this.




The Narada is in high enough orbit that you can't even see it. The characters should have been charcoal briquettes from the friction of entering the atmosphere by the time they reach the platform.




We're using 20th century style parachutes? Where's my fucking jetpack, dammit!



With jet streams, difference in ionization of upper and lower atmosphere, and other winds, there isn't any way the drilling platform could remain in one place, let alone perfectly still. In fact, the characters are shown having trouble keeping their footing on the rumbling platform as they fight.

Given that the beam would be swinging wildly like a pendulum in an earthquake, it's not possible for the drilling beam to go very far beneath the crust of the planet - it would never be able to drill a continuous hole.

Given, all that, even if it could stay perfectly still and drill to the core of the planet, as soon as you shut off the beam, 99.9% of the hole you just made would be instantly filled with magma, which has the density and thickness of wet cement. A torpedo fired into it wouldn't get far, much less to the core of the planet. Depending on the tectonic pressure, you might even have the beginnings of a volcano spewing lava. At that point, trying to inject Red Matter into that hole would be like trying to shove a marble into a fire hose that's blasting water.

If all it takes is heat and pressure to set off Red Matter, then placing some in the middle of the explosive component of a photon torpedo would be enough to trigger the Red Matter, much like fissile material is surrounded by shaped plastic explosive to create the fission necessary for a nuclear explosion.

"Get him off my ship!" Spock says to security. Kirk is stuffed into an escape pod, and launched to the nearest planet. He gets out, runs around, runs from large creatures who view him as a tasty appetizer, runs into a cave, and is saved by old Spock who waves a flaming torch to scare the monster away, they find Scotty at the Federation outpost, and eventually beam back onto the ship to rescue Earth from Nero.

Logic bombs go off like a string of firecrackers here. Starships have brigs. They don't need to throw someone off the ship. But of course, then Kirk would never meet old Spock, Scotty etc.

A more sensible way to have done this would have been for young Spock to have Kirk beamed to the outpost with orders to have him thrown in the brig there. That gets him hooked up with Scotty, and Spock can be there and bust him out.

Instead, we get a highly unlikely, contrived scene meant to show off creature FX.



Crap! I'm a appetizer?




Crap! I've gone from appetizer to garnish!



Apparently, starship captains get codes to shut down earth defenses. WTF? That's like giving a fighter pilot codes to shut down the entire aircraft carrier he launches from. This is how Nero gets past Earth's defenses, and lowers the drilling platform to begin the black hole sequence again. Monumental stupidity, or really bad writing to give Nero a reason to keep Captain Pike alive to be rescued later?

Does no one on Earth have a shuttle, fighter craft, phaser or anything else that can just shoot down these drilling platforms? Kirk and Sulu take one out with just phaser rifles. Any commercial craft, or private craft can be flown up and into it to destroy it.



Should we just watch these fireworks, or should, you know, someone do something about it, like take a shuttle and shoot down the beam platform?





Just a few shots with hand held weapons is enough to stop the drilling platform. Gee. Why didn't anyone else think of that?




The characters are great in the movie, Leonard Nimoy's scenes are fantastic. With the exception of all the overdone lensflares, the visuals are phenominal.

Hopefully the next Star Trek movie will be better written with far fewer plot holes and logic bombs, putting some 'science' back into "Science Fiction."