10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek Into Darkness

When the Vengeance first knocks the Enterprise out of warp Sulu reports the ship is 237,000 kilometers from Earth, which would put the ship 38% closer to our planet than our Moon is, yet we can see the Moon in the background and the Earth farther beyond this, a view that would happen if the range were in miles and not kilometers. Metric vs. Imperial confusion reigns.

Ignoring the visual incongruity, the big question is “Where the photon is everyone?” And by everyone I mean Starfleet.

The two ships are right at Earth’s doorstep, and the big bad is pounding the snot out of the hero ship. How does Starfleet not notice? Even assuming the Vengeance is a super-stealth ship, can it extend that stealth in a manner that prevents Starfleet scanners from detecting the Enterprise as well? The battle debris? The energy signatures of the weapons being fired? The comms exchanged between the ships? And even granting all this, what about when the 72 torpedoes go boom in the Vengeance’s guts? Is it still magically invisible then? Mind you, Uhura gets a video call through to Spock Prime on New Vulcan — wherever that is — but is apparently unable to call Starfleet HQ right next door and ask for help?

Seriously, are there zero Federation starships around Earth? Is the fleet still in the Laurentian system as in the last movie? Does the space station/dock orbiting above SF — from which the Enterprise was deployed — have no tractor beams? Or are Starfleet’s space cadets too busily engaged in the timeless act of navel contemplation to notice?

Does anything get dumber than this? Well… you guessed it.