“…they left a black hole out there orbiting Earth when they destroyed the Romulan ship!
So how massive is that BH?”

The black hole would have the mass of the Romulan ship plus the “red matter” used to make the black hole. If it’s in a stable orbit it’s no threat as long as its location is tracked and ships avoid it. It would have no effect on Earth and certainly none on the other planets. Without matter spiraling in, it would emit only Hawking radiation.

I glanced at the review Phil linked. The author spent lots of time on the orbit of the Romulan ship while it was drilling. Obviously in was nowhere near geo-synch orbit, so it would have to use its engines to hover over one spot.
That brings up the TOS adventures with decaying orbits when the engines fail. Once again, the ship is much closer than geo-synch orbit, perhaps because transporters can’t reach that far. If you want to sit over your away team, you would use your impulse engines (thrust-vectored so the ship doesn’t have be tail-down) to give you enough lift to stay in orbit. If the engines fail, you’re moving much too slowly to maintain orbit and down you go. The ship often moves over the planet’s surface but sometimes is stationary, such as when it blasted Vaal.

Chief amonng them is the fact that characters from AFTER point-of-divergence (Picard and company) traveld back in time to BEFORE the point-of-divergence and saved the world from the Borg… Now how is that going to play out correctly in the new, Vulcan-less timeline?

It can still play out correctly. Remember that in the days of Dr. Zefram Cochran, Vulcan has not yet been annihilated; and so, First Contact can still happen.

As for Capt. Picard and company, they’ll still come around even after the Narada point-of-divergence. Fandom dictates this, and Paramount knows.

“Hey, fans, you know the universe that you’ve helped keep alive lo these many years? Well, I’m JJ Abrams and I just kicked it to pieces in the name of ‘rebooting’. Be sure to tune into ‘Lost’ on ABC!”

From a nerd-fan level, the reboot created a bunch of annoying paradoxes. Chief amonng them is the fact that characters from AFTER point-of-divergence (Picard and company) traveld back in time to BEFORE the point-of-divergence and saved the world from the Borg… Now how is that going to play out correctly in the new, Vulcan-less timeline? IT MAKES NO SENSE dangit! Argggghhhh! Geek-anger rising!!!

Ok… geekrage dissapated. From a non-nerd level, it just seems mean to dismiss the existing storyline with only a single tossed of line of dialog to cover it. My aunt, who got me into Trek, has been a trekkie since TOS aired, and she was heartbroken when I told her how the new movie went down. Surely a way could have been found to re-energize the franchise without disenfranchising the loyal old gaurd…

Oh well, its not really important, after all… But it still bugs me.

(Do Vulcans get senility? )

Yes, in one TNG episode, Sarak was suffering from some disease that caused the equivalent of Alzheimer’s *, causing problems because of his ‘telepathic’ (one SF concept I do NOT like) ability. I believe that’s also the one that ‘killed’ the character.

*kicking to anti-vax, the ‘increase’ in diagnosis of Autism is partially due to the definition. Once, Alzheimer’s Disease was simply ’senile dementia’, and considered to be ‘natural’ after achieving a certain age… the ‘creation’ of the Alzheimer’s diagnosis was when a patient was discovered suffering from it BELOW that ‘certain age’.

J/P=?

The other thing that struck me which no one has yet mentioned – they left a black hole out there orbiting Earth when they destroyed the Romulan ship!

So how massive is that BH?
How much radiation is it emitting and how long will it last?
How will it effect the Earth & other planets? Can’t be too good a thing to have close to Earth now can it? Hmmm ..?

@ #12 Romeo Vitelli :

The whole reboot thing still makes no sense. Especially the part where Spock (who we SAW take the Enterprise back in time to save a couple of whales in a previous movie) doesn’t seem to have any problem with leaving Vulcan destroyed even though he presumably has the knowledge to go back and repair the timeline. Whatever.

Well no. Star Trek IV Voyage Home (the whales one) was set a considerably long time after the events that have taken place in the prequel so no, Spock – at least young Spock – does NOT have that ability yet.

Old Spock OTOH .. ? Hmm .. Not sure there. He’s been back in time and so maybe its his principles or time paradox issues or just too difficult to get right or something else stopping him …? (Do Vulcans get senility? ) Or maybe old Spock is plotting something like that now and we’ll find an attempt to do just that in the next movie?

Anyway, for all its faults the Prequel /reboot sure is the best Trek movie in quite a while – up there with ‘First Contact, ‘The Undiscovered Country’ ‘ & ‘Voyage Home’ in my humble opinion. Fun. Not very scientifically accurate sure but fun.

Mind you, personally, my vote for best SF TV /movie franchise ever would still have to go to ‘Babylon-5′ with ‘Dr Who’ and ‘Firefly’ following. I actually didn’t mind ‘Jeremiah’ either … (Been a long time since I saw any trek n0w – I don’t hate it or anything although its just a little saccharine and light for my taste. Trek : TNG was great, DS9 & ‘Voyager’ had their moments, ‘Enterprise’ turned me off after a couple of episodes as pretty dreadful.