Fairly decent-sized spoiler for the new Star Trek film after the jump (not a review or anything, just a nagging plot point):
Ok, so Spock and Nero both come from the normal timeline to around 130 or so years in the past yeah? 130 years before the star that blows up Romulus goes critical.
Is it just me or would you go with the red matter to the star and collapse it 130 years early? Job done. Everyone saved, use some red matter or whip around the sun to go home.
(I know, I know, but that’s really bugging me. The film is generally very good – definitely better than the last few, though the plot has… issues if you think it through logically. The worse thing I can say is that I thought the music was poor – especially compared to the trailers. And where was Paul McGillion?)
And feel free to come back here Monday for some Trek/PR fun – leaving it until then to try and minimise folk moaning about spoilers.
49 responses to “The Biggest Problem with the new Star Trek plot”
From the movie, I got the impression that Nero did not know why or how Romulus was destroyed. I felt that Nero *thought* Spock did it for no particular reason, not because Spock was actually trying to save the planet.
Also doesn’t it stand to reason that if Nero destroyed that star it would affect Romulus? Perhaps making it unlivable for the current Romulans in that time period?
If so then he might not exist, his wife might not exist and everything would be for nothing.
Him destroying the entire federation just means that the Romulans would be alone in the universe and more then likely exist just fine.
Wasn’t Mr. McGillion the guy they got their ship assignments from and both Kirk and Uhura were bitching at about not being on the Enterprise.
I agree with your issue about the plot by the way, though they may have been trying to indicate that Nero wasn’t so bright or possibly kind of insane. Still 25 years trapped in the past should have been long enough for someone to figure out that they could save Romulus with the red matter.
Also very true as someone else mentioned.
Nero doesn’t have the material to detonate the star till Spock arrives, 20 years later. So he had to wait.
Paul McGillion plays the ‘Barrack Leader’ during the scene in the shuttle hanger bay, where cadet receive their assignments. He’s calling out assignments and informs Kirk he’s grounded. Still wish he was playing Scotty over Pegg.
I think the bigger plot hole is that Nero has tons of the red matter and for some reason feels he needs to drill into the planets surface before dropping the red matter into the planets core.
Why not just make a bunch of torpedoes/probes with some red matter in each of them and program them to fly to all of the federation planets and crash land at the same time. From what we see in the movie a single drop would take out a whole planet with or with out drilling to the planet’s core; and Nero has buckets of the red matter.
My big plot hole runner up is the super long distance warp transport. Once the Federation has this capability it changes the entire Trek universe pretty dramatically.
P.S. I loved the movie.
Wouldn’t the bigger plot hole be that the timeline is changed and no one fixes it? Just a thought.
Strange as it seems you were not paying attention. He did not get the Red Matter until spock returned in the other ship. It was on SPOCKS ship.
First he enters space and comes upon the U.S.S. Kelvin. Time is effectively screwed up when this encounter happens and JTK dad is killed and the ship is lost.
NERO waited for Spock 25 years to exact revenge on SPOCK PRIME.
Actually it was quite eligent. Sorry I think you should pay Attention instead of thinking there was really a plot hole.
I was trying to bust the plot line along the famous episode when Kirk and Spock first see a Romulan. They claim it was the first time anyone in the Federation had seen a Romulan. They claimed a long drawn out Federation/Romulan war had occured that killed millions. It was fought with long distance probes. One of the helmsmen in that episode claims many of the crews fathers were killed in that war. So, that would be Kirk father’s war. Did Nero’s arrival change history and that war never occured. If it did occur, with Nero’s anger to eliminate the Federation would he not come to the aid of the Romulans since millions died in that war. Did Nero identify himself to Kirk’s Dad or the Kelvin crew that he was Romulan? If so, would the Federation be concerned that some distant war they were fighting with probes that the enemy has now shown up in a massive new ship. In the episode it was made a very big deal that the Romulans looked like Vulcans, the crew was shocked. In fact they are distance cousins (Spock in the movie says this). But how would he know that yet because outside of Nero the Federation has had no prolong contact with Romulans if any. I have not thought this time line out but there maybe some issues.
Solved the whole movie and JJ I want 10% on the back end because you doufuses didn’t think of this. Introduce Yarr or some relative of Yarr along with Nero. You already ratchet up the movie with Trekers. They come back to the past because of Romulus’ destruction, but also for general disdain of the Federation. When they do, they kill Kirk’s father and his ship thinking that they will wipe out James T. Then they attempt destroy the Federation before it grows. This allows for a much more vengeful world of might makes right. This earth is the earth of original TREK MIRROR/MIRROR. You have now created an alternate universe that exist in Trek lore and if need be you move the story along to Mirror, where when Kirks change places, evil Kirk takes a view of a much more peaceful world back to his universe and he tries to unite the Federation in a much larger cause. Kirk can then save the whole universe.
Here’s my problem with the plot and continuity in the Star Trek “universe.” Nero, who lived at the time of Spock & Kirk, is mad because Spock failed to save Romulus from a super nova that destroys his planet. How can this be when Romulus was alive and well in the Next Generation “Universe” that took place long AFTER Spock & Kirk were dead and gone?
The old Spock and Nero are both from the time of the Next Generation. The time they started out from is sometime after the events of Nemisis.
Loved movie, but didn’t understand plot. Too many questions to go into here. One of which was question discussed here. Also, did a black hole get created at the end near Earth’s orbit; won’t this be the end for Earth? … REQUEST: If someone could publish a chronological timeline of all the movie’s events, that would help clear things up.
Street Doc: Because, the Next Generation is something like “70” years in the future. Spock came back from 130 years in the future..
They say in the movie that because of Spock and Nero going back in time, they greated an alternate timeline, so nothing that happened in the future applies.
What I thought was pretty crappy was not only did Spock fail in the future and kill those billions of Romulans in THAT timeline, he came back in the past and caused the death of Kirk’s dad, and his own mother, as WELL as the destruction of his home planet. Way to go Spock!
Okay, so no one has an issue with the whole black hole swallows a supernova and poof it’s all gone thing? For one if they both neutralize each other no matter what you do the sun in that solar system will be gone. Which means the planet’s doomed even if it’s not blown up. Granted you can likely evacuate the people on the planet IF the planet is not swallowed by that huge supernova/black hole, or the planet’s aren’t blown off into space due to the loss of stability (they did lose the lynchpin holding them in orbit aka the sun’s gravity).
Or how about the illogic of Spock making a huge amount of that Red Matter, even though he was going to “save” one sun. Why would he need a huge ball of Red Matter for that when they show only 1 drop taking care of the sun? Wouldn’t he have been in a rush to go save the planet, why make so much?
And how do you make something that not only creates black holes but creates black holes that conveniently only swallow one planet/sun then disappear? Poof! No lasting effects in the local area. I mean Spock watches on a very close planet as Vulcan disappears, and nothing happens where he’s standing.
And why would Red Matter that works on an exploding sun work on a solid innert planet? If the Red Matter created a Black Hole where ever one put it, how can it be possible to safely carry it around at any moment? And why would Spock create so much of something so dangerous???
Granted you could assume that an explosion is necessary for the Red Matter to create the Black Hole, but then how could the chain reactions be limited to stop at just that one planet/sun?
Especially with the sun, wouldn’t the resulting Hole have to use all the energy given by the exploding star, which would mean that rather than burning the planets in the solar system, Spock would have just had a black hole swallow the planets in that solar system instead.
Yes and why the Temporal Police haven’t shown up is a huge question in my mind, after all everyone makes a huge issue of keeping the timeline pure.
And I would have loved to have seen the Spocks save Vulcan as the end of the movie. It seems such a huge move to destroy the planet.
interesting points everyone, for sure. all of which made the movie hard to swallow. (still loved it) but in the end i realized that the timeline is really irrelevant in the star trek universe or any universe for that matter.
which means that ALL of these questions achieve what the writers intended. uncertainty for the future. now the same characters can move into an alternate universe / timeline. but each timeline can still affect the others.
so wouldn’t it be possible then :
a ) in the 25 years that nero waited, he went to romulus and warned them, or something?
b ) in this newly created timeline where there is now 2 spock’s, couldn’t the older spock go back to the point before nero returns and stop him from causing harm to the timeline? then this brings moral questions for the people who exist in this NEW timeline. i.e no future.
older spock may be a god but he can’t save everybody.
hmmmmm…all of this is very interesting indeed. I must say that I loved the movie far more than a man should love a movie.But you guys raise interesting questions.
One thing I must say is that the star that was going to destroy Romulus was not Romulus’ sun but merely a nearby star that was going to go supernova ans destroy Romulus. So Romulus could have survived (with its actual sun still intact) if Spock had been able to save it.
Now why did Nero not warn Romulus?
Why did Nero not simply take the red matter from Spock and use it to destroy the star that would 130 years later destroy Romulus?
Well there is a whole subplot with Nero where he and his crew are stuck in a Klingon penal colony world of Rura Penthe (first seen in Star Trek VI). It is here, apparently, that they spent part of their 25 years waiting for old Spock and planning their escape. This is also how Nero lost one of his ears, which is conspicuously missing in the latter half of the film.
So thats why they didnt warn Romulus. But it still begs the question why not go and stop said future super nova star instead of going on this vengeful killing spree…
well I got nothing…possibly 25 years of imprisonment, anger, and sadness have affected his decision making skills and made him simply a bitter and vengeful monster simply looking for blood. And eye for an eye ya know?
And once again the time line was screwed as soon as Nero made it to the “past” so the whole Romulan war and the Romulans never being seen yet stuff have thereby been altered simply by Nero’s presence in the past (I guess).
These “answers” probably are not that concrete, this is just me trying to put together what was going on…And once again…I LOVED THIS MOVIE!!!!
From what I understood, Nero (and old Spock) did not plan to travel back in time but their ships were sucked in by the black hole and it was a kind of spur-of-the-moment thing. I’m quoting from the plot description in Wikipedia: “Captain Nero of the Romulan mining ship Narada attempts to exact revenge on Spock for letting Romulus be destroyed, but both ships are caught in the black hole’s event horizon, traveling into the past and creating an alternate reality from the original Star Trek series.” In other words, 1) the time travel thing wasn’t planned, therefore Nero probably did not have any plan to save Romulus in the past; he was merely trying to complete his original intention (i.e., to get Spock). 2) They inadvertently created an alternate timeline, therefore anything we saw in the original series and movies might be different from the moment Nero’s ship emerged (the day Kirk was born).
I forgot to add – this alternate reality created by Nero traveling back in time is supposedly playing out concurrently with the original timeline (which is unaffected by the events in this movie, except that now we know that in the original timeline post-Nemesis, the whole planet of Romulus has been destroyed, which is a quite a big deal). One of the screenwriters (Bob Orci) said in an interview that their view was that traveling back in time doesn’t affect the original timeline, it just creates a new one that branches off and plays out concurrently with the original timeline. Here’s the link to the interview: http://trekmovie.com/2008/12/11/bob-orci-explains-how-the-new-star-trek-movie-fits-with-trek-canon-and-real-science/
Though I contend the movie did not even represent the original timeline up to the point Nero arrives. Under Bob Orci’s view the original timeline should have been in play up to the point Nero arrives. In the original series when Kirk and Spock first see a Romulan (they claim it is the first time any Federation member has seen a Romulan). Remember the crew is surprised that Romulans look like Vulcans and even become suspicious of Spock. The helmsman in that episode mentions a generational war between the Federation and the Romulans fought with long distance probes or non-man ships that has killed millions. He also mention’s many of the crew’s fathers died from that conflict. This would be Kirk’s Dad’s war. But there in no alarm that a Romulan just shows up with a massive kick-ass ship. Remember up to that point no one in the Federation has seen a Romulan. There is not metion of a generational war with Romulans. In fact they mention the fleet is off somewhere else. If there was a generational war going on would the fact Romulans are showing up in person not be an escalation of that war. At the Stat Fleet Academy there was not mention of the Romulan war. All of this should be pre-Nero’s arrival and therefore unchanged. In the Movie Spock mention’s Vulcan’s are similar to Romulans but outside of the fight with Nero I’m not sure anyone else in the Federation had seen a Romulan.
I really want to like this movie, but I can’t get over the older Spock being on the same planet (and cave) as Kirk when he is marooned off the Enterprise. Coincidences like this kill me. Or is their meeting NOT a coincidence and I’m just missing something?
I never really watched the original series or movies, although from what I have read and the link that shows us screenwriter Bob Orci’s explanation, I can appreciate the new movie being considered canon.
So can someone please explain that Spock and Kirk’s meeting was not just a coincidence. Did they “gravitate” towards each other? What are the chances of Kirk being marooned on the same planet as Spock? And what about that Federation station with Scotty that is conveniently walking distance from their location? Are there Federation stations on all planets?
This is my only problem with the film.
@ Noob:
The only explanation is that Nero dropped off old Spock at a planet near Vulcan so that old Spock could watch his planet get destroyed. And, because young Spock was just leaving Vulcan when he ejected Kirk from the ship, it’s not that far of a stretch to believe that they ended up on the same planet. But, the fact that they found each other on the same planet is pretty implausible. That’s something I’m willing to forgive, though.
Yea I was thinking that over today. It is very possible that they could be on the same planet then. And maybe old Spock saw the pod with Kirk in it and followed the commotion, you know with the aliens and such… But then there is that Federation station. This movie was awesome either way.
Why pick apart the movie for, star trek has never been known for its realism. Most of the movies I have ever seen can be picked apart, Aspeshaly movies set in a future setting, like star wars or star trek. For example, while its still simi fresh in my mind, First Contact. captain pacard was told not to go to th borg engagment because star fleet thought his time with the borg would compromise them. Then after the battle starts he pretty much says screw em i am going anyway but when he gets there he takes charge and tells the fleet to fire on certain spots, that didnt look to the sensors like vital spots but they was. Why at the start of the movie when he was talking to the admiral did he not give him that little piece of intell
If it just come to him when he got there because he was hearing the borg in his head why was the borg not able to take control of him Then worf he was suppose to be stationed on deep space nine even in the defiant how did he get there in time
Another thing in the movie that i can think of is when the borg first took over engineering the caption and worf and others went down there to try to get into engineering so they could bust that plasma node or what ever by the warp core so it would kill bio parts of the borg but when they got down to that deck it was infested with borg if u watch there is borg regineration nodes everywhere or what ever there called then towards the end of the movie when everyone is leaving the ship the captain stays on and goes down there to save data when he gets there not a borg in site not even any regineration nodes and the door opens right up for him
there all over the place in engineering how ever if that was a diff door then the one he tried to go through earler why did the walk through all them borg when he could have just went to that door to start with even if the borg cut the power to that door i have seen data even worf force open doors before what makes that one diffrent
you can pick a part a movie all day if your looking for it but this is a new start trek reboot i guess most long time fans are really looking harder at it honestly though if i wanted detail and realism
i wouldnt be watching star trek i would be watching american idol o some other reality show
sorry about my grammer and typing and all that my keyboard started messing up
As I understood it, the last time we saw Spock as in TNG’s Reunification, when he effectively defected from Star Fleet to work with the Romulan underground movement. It was understtod that he could not come back from that. So how could he have been sent on a mission from Vulcan to save Romulus?
Nevertheless, i love the new film.
I do wish they bridged the TNG’s Reunification with the movie better, but i guess that just leaves it up to the imagination.
Star fleet has always been forgiving and faced with Romulans crisis
they let him come back to help make that ship.
So Spock (150 + old space geriatiric) is given the task to save Romulus alone? Come on.
I Liked parts of the movie, but there were so many odd implausable scenes it was hard to fully enjoy it. So Spock is like 20 and in charge of a starship? Then we have 22 year old Kirk who shows up and annoys Spock who then has him jettasoned out of the ship onto a random planet? Is that typical Federation justice? Is this mirror mirror? Wouldnt that be murder in most cases? Kirk then goes from discipline boy to captain in 5 minutes in a scene so poorly written it made you wonder if it was a studio change.
This is a great movie with one major flaw in its logic and scientific premise.
bgood touched upon it, in an earlier post. Having a neighboring star go supernova will not destoy Romulus by a blast wave of stellar material and energy. We have to assume that the star had to be well out of the Romulan system and have almost no gravitational effect. Can we assume that this neighboring star is fairly distant? Somewhere between 1 and 5 light years away? That’s pretty close in terms of Star Trek. When the star does explode, they would have anywhere from 1 to 5 years to evacuate the planet Romulus, since probes can communicate via subspace, which is faster than light.
Here’s the other problem. Since Spock and the Romulans came up with a plan, why didn’t they decide to take the safe route and evacuate the planet anyway, just in case the plan fails, or the unpredictable star blows up? Wouldn’t that be logical?
In my view they just wouldn’t spend more effort on the events that lead to the destruction of Romulus ‘cos they just didn’t give a rat’s ass about the star trek universe. They just wanted to start a new ST thing to exploit in their own manner and free from canonic handcuffs.
Spock Prime explained the plot in such a shallow way without major details that it all sounded like an episode from SuperFriends cartoon. “An star exploded and threatened the whole galaxy”…wth?? And what about the Romulans, when did they get so backward and hopeless they couldn’t foresee or solve a simple natural phenomenon (or at least flee to a safe distance from it) ??
Anyhow, i enjoyed to see more Star Trek stuff going on.
Agree @ Paw and Element1971
The destruction of Romulus is one of the biggest gripes I have about the movie. A star doesn’t just go supernova without any kind of warning. As far as I know, a star can live billions of years, and only at the end (last thousands of years) can it go supernova. If so, from the moment the Romulans invented space travel (and probably before that), they should have known about the nearby star potentially going supernova. They’ve had hundreds of years to prepare for it, they’re a major power in the quadrant, and the best thing they can do is ask the Vulcans for help at the very last moment?
I’m trying to convince myself that they probably had all kinds of planetary defenses/shielding prepared and were just too arrogant and underestimated the supernova blastwave (with the Vulcan solution just being a “backup plan”), but still for me it’s sounds like a stupid premise.
Anyway, I still enjoyed the film. It does have a few faults though IMO.
Why didn’t Spock use the transwarp to transport the red matter into the star?
Transwarp was first used by the Borg and not by Scotty.
In TNG, Scotty was on the Dyson sphere and Spock on Romulus, so Scotty’s transwarp had to exist during Picard’s time. So, why didn’t they use it?
Hi.
I saw Star Trek last night. I really enjoyed it. I thought the action was amazing and tension filled, the visuals were stunning, the characters were well played, the sound effects were fantastic. All that is fine.
But I left the movie with one nagging question about the plot that I haven’t been able to explain away. And I’ve searched a bit on the net to see if anyone else has asked this and I haven’t seen anyone asking—-so here’s my question:
How did Nero know the exact location and moment when Spock Prime would show up in the Jellyfish ship so he could capture it?? Nero and the Narada showed up 25 years prior to Spock’s arrival. They both got sucked into the black hole/time anomaly almost at the same time…….Nero pops out 154 years in the past and battles the Kelvin, and then Spock pops out 25 years later…….yet, Nero had his ship go to the specific coordinates at the specific moment where the Jellyfish was going to show up, and then scooped it up, which then gave him access to the Red Matter…..so this is kind of a big point…..no Jellyfish—no planetary-sized revenge…..I could understand if Nero had only gone back 25 years in time and then he waited for Spock to do his normal journey and then scoop him up because he would have known where Spock was going to be, but that doesn’t gel with the story because he was 154 years back, and the movie was happening 129 years before Spock would have done the real journey to Romulus. So somehow, Nero magically knew where and when Spock would pop out of the time anomaly—after 25 years of losing contact with Spock…..how did he know that??!
Anyone know how to explain this kind of major point in the story? Did I miss something?
@dogbone
I’m guessing that in those 25 years, Nero must have completely gotten to understand the temporal phenomenon he got caught up in, and used that knowledge to calculate Spock Prime’s exact time and location of arrival. I don’t know how the captain of a mining vessel could be so well versed in temporal mechanics, but well, at least I can see it happening easier than Spock just running into Kirk on Delta Vega by coïncidence. =P
How did nero know when and where old spock would show up thats easy he didnt. Unless I am misunderstanding the movie, at times not hard to do.
Trying to remember the movie I dont think it ever said any of the black holes closed. When old spock was explaining to kirk what has happend, spock said nero waited for him. So I thought thats what he did waited for him to show up. To him it could have been 1 year or 100 the way nero was in the movie he would have waited forever.
The federation could have sent ships to study the black hole or investigate what happend to the kelvin. Romulan are known for the cloaking devise. I know nero’s ship is a mining ship, but the way Romulans are portrade in star trek lore do u think its above them to put one on there?
The only reason the kelvin even spotted them was they was first coming out of the black hole. They did not have time to turn it on, nor would they have sense nero did not know he was in a diffrent time. He was still pissed at spock and wanted to kill him at that time.
So i think they come out attacked the kelvin, then after the battle was over turned on there cloak and waited.
no way to edit what you already wrote.
Did not mean to put black hole, i just could not think of a better name for it, the portal that nero come out of i guess is a better way to say it, but it never said the portal closed behind nero. Just because you cant see a portal don’t mean its not there.
Hey im sure this is off topic, i didnt read through all of the comments so someone may have already said this. If Spock did destroy the star 130 years before Romulus was destroyed, then Nero never would’ve had a reason to try to kill Spock and destroy Vulcan yada yada yada. Now if this were the case, then Nero never would’ve kidnapped Chris Pike, Spock wouldn’t have been captain, the Vulcans wouldn’t be an endangered species, Spock wouldn’t have had the emotional troubles he did, and most importantly, he wouldn’t have checked himself into sickbay leaving Kirk as captain. The writers of the movie may or may not have thought this through, but if they did, that would explain why they did not destroy the star in present time. If they didn’t think this through, which is very likely, then it is all just a big coincidence. But I think this would make the most sense.
The answer to the initial post, in part seems to be:
It couldn’t be done because of a variant on the grandfather paradox.
If Nero went back in time and was successful in saving Romulous at an earlier point, then as there would be no need to try later, he wouldnt have got catapulted back in time in the first place as that event that sent him back would never take place.
At least thats the way it seems to me.
Ladies and gentlemen, don’t fear, I can fix the star trek universe!!! It’s really pretty easy. Old Spock is stuck in the current timeline, he knows the exact date and time when the star goes supernova. All he has to do is get together with young spock and create some more red matter. They have roughly 130 years to venture to the sun that will go supernova and destroy it. The instant the star is prevented from going super nova, and Romulous is saved, the alternate universe that was created by nero and spock going back in time will cease to exist. Nero doesn’t go back in time, therefore James T. Kirks dad lives a long happy life, Vulcan is never destroyed. The characters and universe are back to normal. It’s self correcting. If old spock had died, and never spoken to anyone then the universe would have been forever changed. However, he lived ,so all is well!
Guys….guys…..GUYS! If you’re having this much trouble with the new movie than you must HATE the original series! Seriously, how many dozens of times have lost people been found on planets by happenstance? The most highly rated TOS episode EVER, City on the Edge of Forever has McCoy JUST SO HAPPEN to run into the same mission Kirk and Spock are staying in in past Earth. I mean, COME ON! And I’ve NEVER heard anyone complain about it. This is some serious nitpicking guys.
I don’t mean to be “that guy” by posting on an old thread, but this was the only site I could find where I didn’t have to create an account.
I saw this movie again recently and I have a burning question… Where did the supernova’d star go? Weren’t the Romulans and Spock sucked through the same thing as it was? Would the star itself not (in theory) go back in time also? If I’m way off base here, my bad, but is there a way to explain that away? Because I want to…
Like Dogbone, I’m kinda stuck on the timeline of the event horizon. The “blackhole” took 25 years to get through, right? But if Nero and Spock entered it only seconds or minutes apart, does that mean Nero took 25 years but Spock took 50 years to get through it?
Is Old Spock now stuck 129 years in the past, forced to relive that timeframe again, but old? Or perhaps I should say he is living an alternate past now.
i agree with a lot of what’s been said here. i had a great many wtf moments in the film. i still loved it better than all of them except khan.
i found out recently that nero had been captured and tortured by klingons in a sequence that was cut. it’s when he lost the top of his ear and where he got the truth slugs. makes me wonder what else happened in those 25 years. i had a lot of trouble making sense of his motives as well, but maybe he went a little batty, what with the torture and the waiting and the dead wife and whatnot. so maybe his motives just don’t make sense because he’s crazy. maybe he did warn romulus, but then thought that just to be safe he should wipe out the whole federation so that the empire could flourish.
Also, a note on all the coincidences, such as the three unlikely meeting on Delta Vega and Kirk’s rather improbable rise to the command of the Enterprise. JJA said in an interview that he also cut scenes for time in which the characters speculate that the change in the timeline was a wound that the universe was trying to heal by getting its players back in their proper places. Sure, you could ask “but what about those 6 billion dead Vulcans?” Well, quit asking questions!
Here is my issue, when the ships enter from the black whole is the only time that they generate the “lightning storm in space thing” right? Well supposedly that is what is relayed back to starfleet from vulcan and what leads Kirk to believe that the rescue mission to vulcan is actually a trap. See the issue. By this time everybody has already arrived through the black hole. THERE WOULD BE NO STORM!!!!!
Also does that mean that if the “new” Kirk and Spock time travel back before their time line splintered say to the 1980’s or 60s they could pontentially run into their other selves. In fact as time travel has created so many “other” universes Kirk and Spock should be running into themselves all the time. The temporal time Police from the 27th century really screwed up here, as they should have prevented Nero and Spock travelling in time at all.
It’s not a plot hole – the answer is actually in the film. Nero tells Captain Pike that his purpose “is not simply to avoid the destruction of the home that I love, but to create a Romulus that exists free of the Federation”. He intends to use his ship to destroy every Federation planet and then, presumably, use the Red Matter to destroy the star that will eventually go super-nova.
Why would Spock or anyone believe the red matter would “save” Romulus? It would have died a slow, frozen death if the red matter worked on time as Spock had planned. The star would not have gone supernova but Romulus would not have had a local star to sustain life on Romulus. As intelligent space travellers the Romulans would have had enough smarts to get off their old planet or at least you would think so. There’s plenty of holes to fill with future plots.