The large space in the ship is actually Narada's cargo hold. Scotty may actually have transported Kirk and Spock into what he assumed was the cargo hold, but it may have been refitted into the ship's bridge.
It's possible that when George Kirk rammed the Kelvin into it, it took out the original bridge.
Thing is, at first it bugged the hell out of me how Nero sounded. He frankly seemed less like a galactic threat and more like a truck driver... than I realized that, for all intents and purposes, he was a truck driver.
Watching the film just recently it occurred to me. Nero came from the future, well after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis when the Romulan Empire had been crippled by the Remans. Nero came from a Unified Romulus, which would be nothing like the Romulan Empire we had seen before. It's as much of a wasted opportunity to see how their culture had adapted before its destruction.
In the film, Red Matter is never explained at all beyond being able to make singularities and is associated with the Romulans. Nero's ship was supposedly designed to mine it. However, the Romulans use artificial singularities to power their warp drive. Putting these two facts together gives an obvious conclusion. The Romulans use Red Matter to create the artificial singularities that power their warp drives!
Actually, the Red Matter was developed/researched by the Vulcans. Spock offered to use it to stop the Hobus star going super-anomaly but the Vulcan government decided against helping. This lead to Spock being too late to help once he went rogue and is the reason why Nero destroys Vulcan.
I was right there with a lot of people about the Sci-fi authors not having a sense of scale with the whole 'the supernova of Romulus' sun threatened the entire galaxy' ... until I sat down and thought about it. And realized that it wasn't the actual physical damage of the supernova that was the problem. It was the Romulans themselves. Considering that in RL, we can ballpark when a sun will supernova, just how much more accurate would a society as technologically advanced as the Romulans be? They HAD to have known their sun was running out of time ... they probably just couldn't pinpoint the exact day/month. They probably had started mobilizing their society previous to this. Now, as bad as the Romulans were up to that point, imagine their ENTIRE home-planet's worth of people on spaceships, looking for a new home. This has 'oh shit' written ALL over it.
According to Star Trek Online and the movie's tie-in comics, it travelled by subspace, so effectively at warp speed. The Romulans thought they had months/years before it reached them. They only had hours/days.
I always wondered why Uhura and McCoy are always taking the same transport as Kirk, from Iowa to San Francisco, when Uhura is from Africa and McCoy from Georgia. Then I realized that Uhura was probably in Iowa to tour the Riverside shipyard with a class (taught by Pike?) or something, and that if there was already a transport for all those cadets leaving from Iowa, McCoy probably started out in Georgia that morning and was essentially catching a connecting flight.
It's a frequent comment as to why the Narada carried such heavy ordnance, but if whichever minerals the Narada had been built to mine were rare enough to be worth retrieving en masse from distant planets, rather than scooping them up in any old asteroid field, then presumably they're also valuable enough to be worth stealing. Considering the paranoid nature of Romulans, they would plausibly carry some armaments. These could be something that the Enterprise-E of their own time would laugh off, sure, but in Star Trek: Enterprise, Mirror Universe Archer gains access to a 23rd century Constitution-class starship and absolutely wipes the floor with every 22nd century ship he encounters. The same happens when a 24th century ship meets a 23rd century Starfleet.
One simple way of resolving the time travel creating a new universe in this movie with the writers' assurance that the primary timeline has not been erased is to suppose that either Nero and Spock emerged in an alternate universe (like Worf in Parallels) or that they just created a whole new one with a ton of alterations. The reason Temporal Agents wouldn't stop this is because their universe actually exists because Spock and Nero either arrived in it, resulting in their existence, or just created that entire universe by their actions. This also handily resolves every conceivable difference between the universes, even those that apparently go back to before 2233, where Nero arrived.
Many people have commented on the fact that in Star Trek: Enterprise, we saw Agent Daniels and his Time Agency watching for changes in the timeline, and logically, should have immediately prevented Nero from killing Kirk's father. However, Archer not only ended the Temporal Cold War back in 1944, but effectively wiped its effects from history. Depending on how much you believe in the Timey-Wimey Ball effect, this quite possibly wiped the Time Agency and its constant monitoring of history and instead left in its place a very small department that consists of things like the USS Relativity and that small time pod from TNG. Why? Something that always happens during peace time; the Federation got lazy and comfortable. The budget for chrono-monitoring was lowered, and as a result, the Federation became less "Time Lord" and more "Doc Brown's DeLorean" (in fact, considering we never see Daniels again after this point, that's pretty good evidence that he was wiped from history). In short, Daniels and crew either weren't paying attention or simply didn't have the technology to track and defeat Nero... if this happened during the Temporal Cold War, we probably would have had an epic meeting between Kirk and Archer instead of Kirk and Old Spock...
Admiral Vance in the 32nd century mentions that when the Temporal War ended everything time-related was either sealed or deliberately destroyed. So with the war over, all time tech inaccessible, and the sole individual that still had access to time travel, the Guardian of Forever, in hiding the Time agency had most likely been dissolved and thus couldn’t do anything to stop Nero or Spock from creating a new Timeline.
It has confused many as to why the USS Kelvin looked so different to anything else in the Prime Timeline, but then I realized the obvious fact; the Kelvin was a concept craft. In the original universe the altered uniforms, the window on the bridge, the shuttlecraft that looked far more advanced than the Galileo-class from the prime 1701 Enterprise - all of which were either dead ends or deemed impractical or expensive for the Prime Universe. This happens in real life with sports cars; many manufacturers release one of a kind cars that showcase exactly what they can do if money and resources were no object. So what changed? Economics. If you compare the Prime and Alternate Federation, it's clear the Prime Universe has far less money/resources than the alternate universe. Maybe one of the survivors of the Kelvin would leave Starfleet and go on to become a great businessman, maybe it was the cold war with the Klingons... regardless, in the new timeline, the Kelvin was considered the birth of a new, more advanced breed of starship. Alternatively, the Federation changed the uniforms and viewscreen to the Kelvin' concept variant as a mark of respect for the fallen.
A simpler explanation: The destruction of the Kelvin, if it is such a concept craft, by the Narada must have made Starfleet crap its pants especially as this was a Romulan ship. The fear that this was a concept craft of a new class of Romulan battle ships that somehow completely escaped Starfleet Intelligence/Section 31’s detection and the fact that it’s fallen into Klingon hands (and its well known that both parties at this point would like nothing more than to destroy and conquer the UFP) leading Starfleet command as well as the Federation to invest much more into hardening their ships for combat than exploration. It's not the first time we've seen such destruction leading to beefier ships: Wolf-359 led to the much more powerful ships you see in First Contact, DS9, and so on.
This explains how the Enterprise was able to pull a Big Damn Heroes moment and intercept the Narada's torpedo barrage towards Spock's ship. Starfleet improved the point defense systems of its ships after noticing Kelvin's weaknesses during its battle.
The decision to make Spock and Uhura a couple was probably one of the most controversial changes to the new timeline among long-time Trekkies, with many cynical fans decrying it as a cheap attempt at spicing up life on the Enterprise. And while it might have started out as that, it actually makes sense for this version of Star Trek continuity. You might recall that in the classic original series episode "Amok Time", we learned that Spock actually had an intended bride—a Vulcan woman named T'Pring—back on his home planet during the entire run of the series, but he didn't think to mention her to Kirk before that episode because Vulcan men traditionally don't interact with their brides until they marry. The primary point of divergence in this timeline is that Vulcan was destroyed by Nero—which means that T'Pring was almost certainly killed. Spock could very well have had feelings for Uhura in the prime timeline too, but he wouldn't have acted on them because he was engaged to be married. Here, he's single and ready to mingle.
Further, the original series did have a little bit of Ship Tease for them early on, such as in "Charlie X", which had Spock playing a lute while a mischievous Uhura decided to provide accompanying lyrics, singing a song which teasingly compared Mr. Spock to a devil who steals the hearts of unwary woman astronauts. Even back then, he evidently had a reputation as Mr. Fanservice.
The warp effect that Federation starships have is visually different from what we've seen in the previous films and TV series. Rather than distorted stars whipping past, it's more of a foggy, chaotic mess. It looks more like going into Hyperspace than warping space around the ship. But later when we see the Narada move through Hyper- I mean, warp, we see it's the same effect. Considering that Nero's incursion probably accelerated the technological development and militarization of Starfleet, the Federation probably reverse-engineered the unique physics of warp drive that Nero's ship used to improve their own systems. This additionally explains how the Enterprise is able to keep up with the Narada and the Jellyfish, ships with over a century's worth of technological advances, in the finale.
The way Nero addresses Captain Pike in their first transmissions is extremely casual. "Hi, Christopher, I'm Nero." But keep in mind, Nero got his start not as an officer on a starship, but as a miner. He was a civilian before the course of events that led to the events of this film. So it's only natural that Nero would not refer to Pike as formally as other adversaries might. Even if he was aware of such formalities in the past, that 25-or-so years spent in detention with the Klingons that was written out of the film but kept in the novelization probably erased that knowledge, or at least any regard he had for it.
At first, it confused this troper that the Narada's mining drill/laser would jam communications, but after thinking about it, I've found a plausible explanation. It might only jam 23rd century Federation com-signals. By the 24th century, the Romulans might be using completely different types of signals.
Anything which puts out a lot of energy is going to put out a lot of RF and EM radiation, which can, among other things, play merry hob with both radio equipment and even electronics. Depending on how your radio equipment is set up, even a relatively low-powered ham radio can cause circuit breakers to trip if you aren't careful. Either Romulan communications equipment is in a frequency range that doesn't suffer interference from the laser, Romulan standard operating procedure is to just not use the laser at the same time as communications equipment, or Nero modified his laser to cause extra interference, perhaps to help prevent The Cavalry from catching wind and forming an effective counterattack.
When Chekov is first seen, he introduces himself to Pike as "Chekov, Pavel Andreovich" (no doubt riffing off of the interrogation scene in The Voyage Home), and Pike says "Well, Chekov, Pavel Andreovich..." Initially, it seems like Chekov is just being an awkward sewenteen-year-old, and Pike is being mildly patronizing by repeating what he said verbatim. But, if you look at the Russian naming conventions, you can give a Russian name in either order, as long as the patronymic (ending in "-ovich" or "-ova") comes after the first name. Addressing a Russian like "Chekov, Pavel Andreiovich" is perfectly natural in formal situations, especially for first introductions. Pike seems well-read enough to know that. With that knowledge, the scene reads more as Chekov saying what comes naturally to him, and Pike subtly acknowledging Russian culture to make him feel at ease.
Also, Pike was trying to address Chekov by his last name, but kept getting it wrong. ("Chanko? Cherpov?") Chekov started by correcting him on his name ("Ensign Chekov, Pavel Andreivich") and Pike acknowledged the correction ("Fine, Chekov, Pavel Andreivich").
This is a bit of fridge logic from the end of the movie, Pike promoted Kirk to 2nd officer randomly which immediately brings Kirk up to 1st officer. The fact it was because of him that the Enterprise wasn’t caught by the Narada with her (metaphorical) pants down when she dropped out of warp in comparison the rest of the fleet (the Enterprise arrived at Vulcan ready to do battle) probably had something to do with it.
The Kobayashi Maru is an unbeatable Secret Test of Character because no cadet can truly grasp the ramifications of losing a crew in a simulator with no real stakes.
Normally when Vulcans meet after not seeing each other for a while, they say something like "It is agreeable to see you again." Pleasant and polite, but devoid of deeper emotions. However, when Spock Prime saves Kirk on Delta Vega, what does he say? "It is remarkably pleasing to see you again, old friend." Yet another sign of how he's come to accept his human side, and with an alternate version of the man who helped him do so.
This also edges into Tear Jerker territory when you consider that, even though the prime universe Kirk technically only died 16 years earlier, Spock effectively lost him in 2293, when he disappeared and was presumed dead, since Kirk was dead for real by the time Spock would have learned what had really happened. No wonder he's so happy to see Kirk; he hasn't seen his best friend, arguably the person he loved most in the world, in nearly a century.
Multiple alien-looking crewmen speak with a voice that sounds like a computer, all echo-y and metallic. This could be a different way of representing the universal translator at work and averting Aliens Speaking English.
During the Kobiyashi Maru test, Kirk casually munches an apple. The prime universe Admiral Kirk did the same thing while "stranded" inside the planet Regula during The Wrath of Khan. Obviously a character tic!
