Goofs for
Star Trek (2009) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: After Spock boards the Vulcan ship on board the mining vessel, Kirk is seen walking through some pipes. His Starfleet phaser has switched to a Romulan gun (longer barrel and no lights), before switching back to the Starfleet one again in the next scene. He actually acquires the Romulan gun a few scenes later.
  
  
• Continuity: As Kirk is hanging from the drill platform after the fight, he hangs by holding on with only his right hand. Sulu then reaches out and Kirk reaches out with his free left hand. As the camera angle changes, we see Kirk being pulled up by his right arm only.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Stars take centuries to go supernova; it is unlikely that the residents of the planet would not take the time to prepare or evacuate. However, in the prequel comic book (written in part by the screenwriters based on their script) it's explained that the leaders of Romulus do not believe that the supernova will reach Romulus. Additionally, Ambassador Spock says the star is "a supernova unlike any the galaxy has ever seen", referring the speed of its expansion.
  
  

• Continuity: When Nero is told that Spock has destroyed the drill and Nero yells, "Spock," Nero's left ear is the one missing its tip instead of his right ear. (This shot was obviously reversed in editing.)
  
  
• Continuity: When the crew are discussing the plan to beam aboard Nero's ship Ensign Chekov states that in order to arrive in time they will need Mr Scott to get them to Warp factor 4 - however, the HUD on the view-screen behind the group clearly shows the ship to already be traveling at a speed in excess of Warp 4.3.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Zachary Quinto's Spock arches his left eyebrow, whereas Leonard Nimoy's Spock arches his right.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the original series' second pilot, "Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (#1.3)" (1966), the planet Delta Vega was a lithium-cracking station near the edge of the galaxy. In this film, the planet appears to have mysteriously been moved so close to the planet Vulcan that it can be seen in broad daylight from the surface. However, according to writers Roberto Orci and 'Alex Kurtzman' they were aware of this fact and chose to name the new planet in this film after the one originally encountered in the original series as a direct reference to the episode. It is also important to remember that conceivably there could be two planets named "Delta Vega," and given the same that they are light years away from one another in different solar systems, there would be no serious problem with this.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The "Enterprise" is referred to as Star Fleet's new flagship. While in current naval tradition a flagship requires an admiral on board, Starfleet has been established as having a premier starship referred to as a "flagship." In "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987), the Enterprise 1701-D was referred to as the Flagship of the Federation.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the final "Spock on Spock" scene, you can see the obvious height difference between the two. Young Spock should be the same height as old Spock. However, Vulcan biology is not fully understood and this could simply be a natural physical change. Additionally, this is consistent with human physiology. Old Spock is 120 years older than young Spock so it is natural that young Spock is taller. As humans age their spines become more curved and the cartilage in between the vertebrae become more compacted; hence they tend to be shorter. This height difference can be quite considerable so a handful of inches is really not unusual.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kirk first lands on the drill, he removes his helmet and throws it to the side and engages a Romulan in hand-to-hand combat. Several seconds later during a pan-out, we see Kirk hitting another Romulan in the head with the helmet he earlier threw off to the side, even though there would be no time for him to retrieve it from across the platform.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Chekov's Russian accent is sometimes perceived to have a major flaw in it. In Russian, there is no "W" sound, but there is a very, very common "V" sound (although heavily rounded with shades of "w"). As a result of this, his labored way of transforming his V's into W's might seem incorrect, but when speaking English, native Russian speakers will sometimes transpose V's and W's, e.g. "Ve are wery happy to be here". (A similar phenomenon is seen in speakers of Asian languages that possess only either "L" or "R", when speaking in English will often transpose them: "really" becomes "leary".) In any event, this is clearly a nod to Walter Koenig's portrayal of Chekov in the original series and most notably in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), when Chekov is seen in 20th Century San Francisco asking for directions to "nuclear wessels".
  
  
• Continuity: Inside the Romulan ship, Kirk jumps from one platform to the other. On the platform he lands on, a Romulan gun is clearly visible. A similar gun has not yet been taken off the opposing Romulan. (This error is corrected on the DVD version - the gun isn't there any more until Kirk takes it from the Romulan.)
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the scene at the Star Fleet outpost on Delta Vega , Mr. Scott says he had a transporter mishap with "Admiral Archer's prized beagle". The series "Enterprise" (2001) with Archer was set around 100 years before the events of the movie. Nero traveled 154 years into the past from 2387 to 2233. Spock arrived 25 years later, in the present, which is the year 2258. Enterprise was set in 2151 meaning Archer would be around 140-150 years old. So it is theoretically possible that he is still alive. His Starfleet record shown briefly in the two parter "In A Mirror Darkly" states he was at the launch of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. Also the Beagle they are referring to is obviously not the same dog from the series Enterprise. It is also possible that Archer had children, and that an "Admiral Archer" is his offspring. A Star Fleet officer with the surname Archer appears on Star Trek: Voyager, indicating his progeny have a tendency to join Star Fleet. (It's also entirely possible that this Admiral Archer is no relation at all to the Archer of the Enterprise series - "Archer" is not an uncommon surname in English-speaking nations, nor are beagles rare as pets.)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Kirk is making out with the Green Orion cadet in her bed, you can see green make-up on the front of his boxers (and a little on his skin above the boxers) when he first lifts himself from on top of her for some dialog. After the scene cuts to another camera angle and then back to Kirk, the green coloring is no longer visible on Kirk.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When the Kelvin encountered the Narada, the latter was emerging from a black hole, thus the "lightning storm in space". Before it started to attack Vulcan, there was another "lightning storm in space"; this was the arrival of Spock Prime's vessel, the Jellyfish.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: According to the Original Series, Captain Kirk mentions a Federation/Romulan War many years previously. The war was conducted through starship battles and the treaty for it was negotiated via subspace radio, so Romulans and Federation citizens never saw each other prior to that point in time. This means that the Federation knew about the Romulans and general background information about their ships (what radio frequencies were used, power signatures, etc.) long before the scene with the USS Kelvin in the movie which resulted in altering later history.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The female Vulcan Minister is smiling as she stands up at Spock's entrance hearing for the Science Academy.
  
  
• Continuity: In the high altitude parachute jump, the display on Chekov's screen showing the order of jumpers (Olsen, Kirk, Sulu) does not match actual order (Kirk, Olsen, Sulu) until the first chutes deploy.
  
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• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Spock Prime is surprised that Kirk is not yet Captain of the Enterprise. In his time line, he served under Captain Pike's command of the Enterprise for ten years, and Kirk became Captain after that time. He should know that Kirk is too young to be Captain. However Spock may not know the actual date yet - so far he's been abducted by Nero and abandoned on a planet near Vulcan, and although he's aware of a nearby Starfleet outpost, he's not been there yet.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where there are making a plan to sneak up on the Narada, Mr. Scott is holding a towel with both hands, but when they zoom up closer, he is holding it to his side.
  
  
• Continuity: During the awards ceremony, several flags can be seen in the background, including what appears to be the state flag of California. Towards the end of the sequence, the point of view shifts to Old Spock viewing from a balcony, and the flags are changed to Federation and Starfleet flags.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Uhura claims to be able to speak three dialects of Romulan. It has been established that relations between the Romulans and the Federation have never been friendly and that the only contact was to negotiate a peace. However, there's no reason to presume that their unfriendliness precluded either side learning the other's language somehow. There would be an immense tactical, political, and diplomatic advantage to figuring it out.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: According to the writers, the new Stardate system has the year and the decimal points indicate the day (i.e. Stardate 2258.42 is February 11, 2258). However, at the beginning of the film, Captain Robau says the Stardate is "twenty-two thirty-three zero four". This does not fit into the new system, as he only gives one placeholder zero instead of two or none (it should have been Stardate 2233.4). However, the Stardate system is essentially separating the two numbers. 2233.0000004 would have been correct. But if you want to hold them to a standard, then every Stardate should be four digits, then three, meaning every Stardate in the movie is wrong. This means the Captain was correct.
  
  
• Continuity: The earliest episode in the original series ("Star Trek" (1966)) was set on Stardate 1312.4. While it is possible that the Stardate system was reformatted after the attack on the Kelvin (in the alternate time line), this doesn't explain how the Stardate of the attack is 2233.04, after the original pilot, "Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (#1.3)" (1966).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: During the battle between the USS Kelvin and the Narada, the engineer of the Kelvin reports that the weapons are offline, yet in the next barrage of torpedoes from the Romulan vessel, the Kelvin's phasers are seen firing again. However, the phasers in this scene target only the torpedoes, indicating that they are likely part of a point-defense system, which is only designed to target incoming projectiles. Therefore, the weapons systems could still be offline, but defensive systems could still be operational.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kirk, McCoy and Uhura rush onto the bridge to inform the captain that they are racing into a Romulan trap, Kirk runs towards the captain and Uhura runs to stand right next to Spock. When the camera angle changes, Uhura is not standing next to Spock but about 5 feet to the left of him.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When young Kirk is driving the Corvette, there are several closeups of him shifting the manual transmission and slamming the clutch. However, in many of the shots, you can clearly hear the engine being shifted, yet both of Kirk's hands are on the steering wheel.
  
  
• Continuity: When McCoy and Kirk board a shuttle headed for the Enterprise, there are nacelles visible on the bottom of the hull. However, when it pulls out to reveal the Enterprise in orbit, the nacelles are on the top of the hull.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: A scar is visible on Zachary Quinto's real eyebrow line indicating that he previously had his eyebrow pierced.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the fight on the drill's platform, which is at an extremely high altitude, Kirk and Sulu remove their helmets. On Earth, humans would find it very difficult to breathe at that height without supplemental oxygen; in Trek mythology, Vulcan's atmosphere is thinner than Earth's. It was an acceptable practice, when visiting or residing on Vulcan, to receive an injection of a Tri-ox compound to assist in breathing ("Amok Time" TOS). Knowing that they would be fighting on Vulcan at a high altitude, it seems logical that the away team would be given a similar injection (considering McCoy's penchant for injecting Kirk on the fly), though it was not shown on screen.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the scene where Kirk convinces Pike and Spock that they are heading into a trap as they warp towards Vulcan, Kirk refers to 'Forty-seven Klingon Warbirds destroyed by Romulans.' Though typically Warbirds were Romulan vessels within the Star Trek canon, the fact that the timeline had already been altered, coupled with deleted scenes involving Nero's escape from a Klingon Prison camp, lends to the possibility that Klingon vessels are designated as Warbirds as well. Indeed, the Kobayashi Maru scene earlier refers to "three Klingon Warbirds".
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The deep crevasse that the young James Kirk dumps the corvette into is not a natural canyon (which are not generally found in Iowa) but a rock quarry.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Captain Pike is talking to Kirk in the bar, he says "You understand what the Federation is, don't you? It's important. It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada." However, here he is describing Starfleet and not the Federation. The Federation is an intergalactic government like the United Nations, while Starfleet is the "peacekeeping and humanitarian" force.
  
  
• Continuity: The Starfleet logo, the distinctive "arrow-head" that featured on all the teasers, was originally intended by the production designers of the original series to be the "assignment patch" for crew on the Enterprise only. This was reflected on-screen by the use of different patches for different ships or posts. The use of the arrowhead insignia on the Kelvin is therefore a continuity error since the histories of the two time lines are supposed to be identical up to that point.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: During Chekov's announcement to the crew during the voyage to Vulcan, he leans over to his left (towards Sulu) when talking about the "lightning storm in space." When Kirk replays the footage of this, Chekov shifts and leans slightly to his right (what would be away from Sulu, if from the viewpoint of the view screen) during this line. The replay of Chekov is reversed, as shown by the location of Captain Pike's knee behind Chekov. In the live version, Pike's knee is correctly on the audience's right. In the replay, Pike's black pant leg is seen on the left. Thus the replay of the video is correct.
  
  
• Continuity: When Captain Pike says that Kirk's father saved over 800 people's lives this would have to mean that the ship itself was over crowded and practically every on-board crew member made it off the ship alive other than Kirk himself. The original Constellation class ship, the type of ship the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is, had only 400 crew members on-board. The USS Kelvin had two secondary hulls giving us the need for a couple hundred more crew members but not double the amount of original crew.
  
  
• Factual errors: When they are passing Saturn, the rings are solid yellow and orange rings. However, its rings are actually made of millions of pieces of rock and ice.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Enterprise first encounters Nero's ship, the camera pans around the Enterprise. When the ship's registry NCC-1701 appears on the saucer section, it is facing the wrong way: towards the bridge when it should be facing away from the bridge.
  
  
• Factual errors: Saturn's moon Titan orbits in the plane of the rings, but when the Enterprise rises out of the atmosphere of Titan, the view looks down on the rings.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Ayel lifts Kirk by the throat you can see wires pulling Kirk up.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Characters are seen taking the turbo-lift DOWN to the engineering deck of the USS Kelvin. However the exterior shots clearly show the engineering hull is ABOVE the saucer section, where the bridge etc. is located.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Kirk's statement to the crew that Spock had resigned his commission was incorrect. He was not giving up his rank of Commander, he was stepping down as Captain of the ship. At the end when he is talking to Spock Prime about leaving Starfleet, then he would have resigned his commission.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the scene where Sulu is having trouble getting the Enterprise up to warp speed, Spock asks whether Sulu has "disengaged the external inertial dampener?" The correct term to use would have been "damper", which is a device used to restrain or suppress movement (such as a shock absorber). A "dampener" is something used to get something else wet.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Uhura walks in on Kirk and the Orion (the green girl), she says, "I've been working on solar systems." There is only one Solar system, the one that orbits the star Sol, our sun. Everything else should be called a star system.
  
  
• Continuity: During the space jump, Chekov reports the away team's altitude every few seconds. His first report gives an altitude of about 20,000 meters, however, the head-up display in front of him shows an altitude of over 100,000 meters. The away team's descent could not possibly have covered about 80,000 meters in such a short period of time. Later reports in the scene show the altitude to be more accurate.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: The shadow of the camera is visible on Spock Prime's back near the end of the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: When Spock enters the Bridge to become Kirk's first officer in the final scene (after Kirk relieves Pike), he steps off the Turbolift and steps behind a glossy panel. The panel reflects the face of one of the bridge crew: a woman whose red hair is bound up in a weird bun-like do. In the reflection her shirt is red. When the camera switches to the full bridge view, she is wearing blue.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Narada first attacks the Enterprise upon its arrival at Vulcan, its missiles impact the Enterprise on the Port (left) side of the "neck" connecting the Primary (saucer) and Secondary (Engineering) hulls. However, when Kirk is ejected onto Delta Vega from an airlock in the same general area where the missile impact occurred, there is no sign of any battle damage.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: When the Romulans attacks Earth, you can see the flame coming down on the seaport near Starfleet, creating a giant circular wave. But in close-up, there's no wave at all, just water evaporating.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: The Romulan ship managed to reach Earth and start drilling without Starfleet attacking because the primary fleet was in the Laurentian system, and only 7 ships were sent to Vulcan because they were all the available ships. Additionally, Captain Pike was forced to give Starfleet defense codes when the slug was attached to his brain stem. When Nero arrived at Earth, he was able to do so without alerting any Earth defenses.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: It's unthinkable that Kirk being named second in charge by captain Christopher Pike wouldn't be overruled by him being marooned for mutiny. However, as Kirk himself noted, Spock's actions (marooning him on a unsafe Class-M planet) are also against Starfleet regulations.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: Ejecting the warp core into a black hole would ultimately increase its mass and gravitational pull. Some viewers believe that in Star Trek physics, the solution should have been related to the inertial dampeners (believing that they neutralize acceleration/gravity). However, inertial dampeners have never been shown to neutralize acceleration or gravity, merely their effects on humans (otherwise the ship itself would never move - it still accelerates, and the crew with it; they just don't feel it). Also, the goal of ejecting the warp core was to gain additional velocity from the shock wave caused by the core's destruction.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: Some viewers have commented that the Nero/Spock confrontation that sends them through the black hole occurred immediately following the destruction of Romulus. The canon comic series "Star Trek: Countdown" makes it clear that there was a substantial time passage, during which Nero upgraded his ship significantly as part of his revenge scheme.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: Chekov obtained transporter lock on Kirk and Sulu because the transponders in their communicators helped him lock onto their biosignal, which was moving at a predictable velocity. However, losing transporter lock on Spock's mother was a different story. Whether from the lack of communicators or Vulcan's unique geology, transporter lock on the Science Council was only possible above ground. Unlike with Kirk and Sulu, her fall was a complete surprise, and her biosignal was masked by interference from the cliff walls and the debris engulfing her body.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: When Nero is accused of genocide after destroying Vulcan, he responds that he is trying to prevent it. He knows he has gone back in time, and he has the red matter, which he knows can destroy the supernova. He also knows from his own actions that it's possible to change the time line he is from. If he truly wants to prevent genocide, why does he not go to the star and eliminate it decades before it can destroy Romulus? This is in part because Nero also states that he wishes to eliminate the Federation since it is the primary nemesis of Romulus. Nero may have decided to destroy the Federation before saving his home world, since the supernova is not scheduled to take place for a hundred years. (It should also be noted that Nero is not exactly a picture of mental health, after having witnessed the destruction of his entire planet, travelling through a black hole and spending upwards of 25 years plotting revenge. Therefore any logical flaws in what he says can always just be put down to his tenuous grip on sanity.)
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: By destroying Vulcan, Nero does not prevent the development of red matter. The development of red matter was in his timeline and his timeline remains unchanged.
  
  

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