Solid Snake

Funny thing is...I never even knew it was him till you guys mentioned it. Ryder kinda took me out of the film. it's a weird role to just give to her.

Josh-da-man

Spock-prime comes from the post-Nemesis era, so its probably not out of the question that the Romulans could have salvaged some Borg ships and reverse-engineered them.

Unless I'm mistaken, the Borg were making incursions on the Romulan Neutral Zone as far back as season one/two of TNG, so it's probably safe to assume that they've had more conflicts since then.

Save Ferris

Its a mining ship, those spikes are probes--it probes meteors and space rocks and/or drills into them. The big laser drill is for planetoids with an atmosphere or are too big for the spikes to probe.

Indy Jones Fan

Regarding the red matter...if one tiny drop is enough to destroy a planet why was Spock Prime luggin' around a big huge ball of it?

AmityBoatTours

biteing my tounge and not going to respond the way this post deserves.

Sorry if my spelling of a single word is wrong, while typing that post on my phone.

seriously man you know what i was saying.

AmityBoatTours

The ship simulator explains that the way we see the Nerada is not how it looked when it was first launched, talks about how after romulus exploded the romulans used borg nano technology not to mention adding on huge sections onto the hull of ship to make it more fearsome and also make it better equiped to help protect the reminants of the romulan star empire.

As for how they got hold of borg technology, there could be any number of ways, i dont think it implies that the borg willing gave the romulans technology.

Defiant1

Janeway seemed to have dealt a serious, possibly crippling blow to the Borg in "Endgame". The Tal Shiar could have gotten intelligence data on Future Janeway's technology and used that to defeat Borg ships in their space and obtain their technology.

Supermallet

What Spock didn't mention is that when he finished taking out the supernova star, he was supposed to set up 18 more black holes around the galaxy to become the foundation of a new interstellar golf course.

Bad_Feeling

Save Ferris

The logical answer is that because this was an experimental technology, they didnt know how much red matter he needed, so he took a bunch of it.

islandclaws

Watched this the other night. Fantastic PQ, but did anyone else feel like the audio was lacking a little bit? My standard viewing volume is 55 on my receiver and I had to crank this up to 60 to get any real juice out of it. I had expected to be blown away a la TF2 or G.I. Joe, but this track seemed a little... I don't know, muted, or something.

WMAangel

Agreed...especially considering they had to put fakey-looking old age makeup on her....why not just cast an older actress??

Indy Jones Fan

Ah, but Spock Prime himself only extracted one drop of the red matter and I find it highly illogical that Spock, of all people, wouldn't have the precise calculations already planned out ahead of time. Not a big deal at all. I'm just playfully nitpicking.

AmityBoatTours

while its not cannon to the films it is intresting to note that the Shatnerverse featured the Romulans stealing capt kirks body and the borg reanimate him bringing him back to life. in the book series that shatner wrote the borg and the romulans had formed a sort of aliance to eradicate the federation.

again those books are not cannon. I just find it intresting that The bluray starship simulator makes several references to the ship featureing borg technology, and that SHATNERS book line had an aliance between the romulans and the borg. one of those cool little things kind of makes you wonder if it was done as little tip of the hat to fans of that book line.

Yavin

Wasn't the reason for the aged makeup because she appeared in scenes with Spock both when he was a child and when he was an adult? If not for that, for some reason I see Judi Dench as an actress who could have fit as Spock's mother (maybe it's because of her role in Chronicles of Riddick).

IMO, Tyler Perry's appearance took me out of the film more than Ryder's did.

Eric F

Read the graphics novel (official "canon" prequel) Star Trek Countdown- it explains all.

Supermallet

Still doesn't make the design of the ship any better. It was so awkward to see Nero run towards Kirk when he finds him on his ship. There's no reason why basic bipedal creatures would ever design the interior of their ship the way that the Nerada is designed. Perhaps winged creatures would.

I know this is ultra nerdy of me to think about, but it does bug me that the film's designers came up with a ship that looks completely amorphous and non-functional just so it could look more "threatening."

Edit: Even granting that almost any ship in Star Trek is not what you would design for efficient space flight (except the Borg cubes).

Solid Snake

See..that's a yes and a no. Perry didn't bother me, his role was much smaller. Ryder has those eyes that just give away she's still a younger gal. Again..this may be cuz of Ryder's acting which was ok..not like she had to try hard for it or anything. Now that I think of it...maybe it is her acting. Anytime you age an actor...that actor (I'm mostly refrencing and using De Niro's great role in Once Upon a Time in America as an example) they..just feel older. Ryder didn't. She just felt like a normal Ryder turned old.

Jason

You shouldn't have to read a comic book for the movie to make sense.

Solid Snake

That's what I've been arguing. In fact...that kind of thing shouldn't be canon. ST was a TV show...when it came to film it was a known continuation of the show. It's not like the ST cartoons are canon right?

Save Ferris

The ship was a mining vessel, it had a huge bay to take in pieces of rock to strip ore from. Large rock is brought into the bay, and flying drones and platforms hover around it to drill into it. Plus the Nerada could have had a much larger crew, but only the rebellious ones who Nero wanted were kept.

milo bloom

They were de-canonized per Richard Arnold, an assistant to Roddenberry sometime in the 80's, but the exact reason for that move is unknown. Roddenberry was very much involved in it's creation, it features the voices of six of the main seven characters (with Walter Koenig contributing with a script), and had many of the same writers as the live-action series. In fact, if you watch the opening credits, it just says "Star Trek". It was considered a continuation of the original show. Some of the elements are a little fantastical, (BEM, the reverse-aging universe), but there's so many other elements that both fandom and TPTB have more or less adopted them (the childhood of Spock from Yesteryear, and Commodore Robert April from the reverse-aging universe ep).

I consider it canon. It's problems are no worse than any other series, and some of the stories are just darned good stories (ep Yesteryear).

As for any other media's canon status? Officially, only the live action series and movies are considered canon, but Enterprise, TNG, VOY and DS9 have all had what are termed as "relaunches", where the editors and authors are making sure they're all playing in the same universe and they're not pushing the reset button at the end of each book. Canon or otherwise, these stories are mostly considered "official" by the fans since there's pretty much no more stories coming from any of those franchises.

Supermallet

Then you would have the open spaces, but you wouldn't have people working in them unless you were actively mining.

Eric F

So don't read the book, it won't kill you. There has been a long history of ST books being "canon" and filling in the blanks, this is one of them (and a very good one).

Here's another ST comic freebie that was in Wired magazine a few months back when JJ Abrams was guest editor. It's also pretty good (and short).

Shazam

ST books are never canon. Not even sure how they could be. So many of them contradict each other and just have tons of made up shit.