Part of my job requires I take the occasional jaunt across undeveloped terrain and it is highly unlikely that it could have happened by chance, the most likely senario would be for them to run into eachother at the outpost, or Spock had already arrived at the outpost, was made aware of the marooning, and accompanied the recovery party.

-on your first point, we have theory's that support warp travel and replicators if we could harness a large enough power source, I suppose if red matter were some sort of highly unstable material that when it fissions instead of a lot of light you get a burst of energy in the form of only the theoretical particle gravatons then ok I can conceed there could be some basis there, I'll have to look for the prequel…

-a mining ship would be less well armed than a warship. look at today, oil tankers are being hijacked by teenagers with AKs, and if a 1909 Curtiss biplane managed to ram an F22 Rapter fresh of the assembly line, it's going down. Hell a bird on takeoff will take out pretty much every a/c we've ever developed including the space shuttle. my point is that war ships from a couple centuries ago would be more than a match for anything that isn't designed for warfighting.

that all aside, where the hell is the romulan fleet? some miner pissed about his wife isn't going to be the one to take on the federation, it would be a fleet admiral sworn to avenge the whole planet…

IMO, oil rigs aren't comperable to a ship made to do mining in space. And a tallship is much larger in proportion to an oil rig than the Kelvin was in proportion to the Narada.

Furthermore, the Narada was retrofitted with Borg technology, allowing the ship to grow & repair itself. I recommend the graphic novel "Countdown," which is a prequel to the movie and an origin of Nero, set in the original timeline.

!!!POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

- Apparently the creation and properties of red matter are mentioned in the prequel comic to the movie, Star Trek: Countdown. Okay, it doesn't make it any more feasible, but then warp travel and matter replicators are also unfeasible today, so you have to make some allowances.

- I would guess a mining ship would be pretty well equipped in the arms and armament field to begin with – not only to function as a mining ship but also to protect its cargo, but in this case the ship is also from the future, where both shield and weapons technology have advanced a great deal. Imagine a 1909 Curtiss biplane up against anything manufactured in the last ten years and suddenly it's not so unbelievable.

- I guess just a dramatic way to introduce the two characters that's a bit more interesting than them just walking along an ice planet, although it did serve to show Jim's hotheaded character, that he ignored the advice of the computer, and come on, TOS was always about Kirk fighting alien beasties, it's hardly out of line with the source material!

- They were both dropped off within hours of each other and were both making their way to the research station, so it's not that unbelievable that their paths would cross, especially as there seemed to be little on that path in the way of shelter. Sure, it's a big coincidence but it hardly defies all belief (and that's without even considering that, in both cases, the computers chose a point on the planet that would ensure the best chance of survival, which is likely to mean they would choose points close to each other to begin with).

my overal point was that it was a great movie, but it wasn't the best this year, Watchmen and Taken (eu edition)were much better written and executed. BTW EVERYONE said phantom menace was a pile of convienient plot holes among other things and your case was one of the chief ones mentioned.

I never said it was a bad movie, I said it was a great movie, and I think it's probably the best trek movie ever. However it's not perfect as it had some not so well thought out plot devices that could have easily been corrected.

I know it makes sense for old spock and kirk to end up on Delta Vega but it is ridiculous to think they would end up within stumbling distance of eachother by sheer chance… my point was the writers could have had old spock knowing where kirk would end up, which would have made a hell of a lot more sense

If romulus were destroyed because spock got there too slowly, some miners in a beatup freighter would be the least of his worries since the paroniod Romulan fleet wouldn't count on him, and would have survived. It would have been more likely that a romulan admiral with a war ship would have done this rather than some irritated miners.

I imagine they aimed Kirk's ship at the starfleet colony, as they wanted to exile him but not kill him. Also, the planet was obviously the closest planet to Vulcan, so it was the first place for Kirk to be dumped, and the only place Nero could dump Spock to watch the destruction of the Planet. It makes a lot of sense actually.