At this point one thing is clear: J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek has been a huge success. He has single-handedly broadened the fan base for Star Trek by about a zillion people, and the stigma that has stuck to this movie franchise has been expunged. That said, it’s hard not to notice a few loopholes in the logic of the movie that leave you scratching your head as you leave the theater. Beware: This entire article is a spoiler.
Source: Paramount Pictures
7. How do the people on board the SS Kelvin have any familiarity with Romulans?
Source: Paramount Pictures
The first time anyone in the Federation ever sees an actual Romulan happens in an episode in the series, thus Spock and Kirk are somewhat older. A long war between the Federation and the Romulans had been going on involving only probes: so nobody on the Kelvin should have ever actually seen a Romulan before, to say nothing of the shock that should ensue that this race is so similar in looks to Vulcans (the races are “cousins,” whatever that means). Yes, the fact that Nero has travelled through time changes everything (thus the term “reboot”), but it still doesn’t explain the fact that everyone onboard the Kelvin should be a bit more baffled as to the nature of this alien race no one has ever encountered in person before.
6. Kirk and Spock wind up in the same solar system on the same planet in the same ice cave at the same time.
Source: Paramount Pictures
I mean, come on. What are the chances? Yeah, Spock has been exiled to the ice planet so that he’ll be forced to witness the destruction of Vulcan. But when was the last time you bumped into your best friend while vacationing in Dubai? ‘Cause the odds are a lot higher that that would happen than you bumping into your future best friend on a random ass planet in the middle of a huge frickin’ ice plain.
But we’re not stopping there, oh no. How about the fact that Spock possesses the state-of-the-art technology to beam onto spaceships while they’re travelling at warp speed – hell, at any speed! If this is the case, then why has he been kicking it on Planet Ice Cube for 25 years when he could’ve beamed aboard some Federation vehicle passing by (the planet is in Federation space) and gotten busy saving his home planet?! Nay, his own mother?! Way to not take advantage of your God-like abilities, Spock! Now who’s being illogical?
5. The Vulcan kids who bully Spock show a helluva lot of emotion.
Source: Paramount Pictures
Call me kooky, but doesn’t it seem a little out of place that a gang of Vulcan kids have made their joie de vivre picking on little Spock? Doesn’t their bullying strike you as a little…what’s the word…illogical?! Here you have a race of people who are purportedly devoid of emotion, they’re walking computers with infrequent slivers of compassion, but this gang of hoodlums gets their kicks by mean-spiritedly provoking Spock to violence. Something about their pastime smacks of human nature.
You’d think they’d spend their off hours memorizing pi to the eight billionth decimal, but instead they’re just as worthless as their human counterparts. Sure, the argument can be made that they’re simply prodding Spock as if he were an experiment, but the obvious pleasure they get from causing him unhappiness is kind of the whole point of the scene – that, and the fact that Spock’s mother is a whore (kidding!). These little Vulcans get an "F" for Vulcanism.
4. Why does the planet Romulus exist in Star Trek: The Next Generation?
Source: Paramount Pictures
If Romulus goes boom back when Spock is around and kicking, then doesn’t that mean that Romulus should not exist at any point during Next Generation? Now, I’m not as good at physics and numbers and mind-melds as Spock, but it just seems categorically impossible for Jean-Luc Picard to ever have suffered any headaches due to these hostile, pointy-eared bastard cousins of the Vulcans if their home planet long since got eaten up by a star (in the original time line, not the new one created by Nero). It doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to figure this out, though we could really use his help piecing together the timeline in the new Star Trek.
