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I wouldn't be supriced if Admiral Marcus had left the Starfleet chain of command in a mess after the attack in San Fransisco on purpose to make sure no "peace loving weakling" (read:anyone sane) would be able to stop him if they found about his plans. So earth CnC might have been trying to figure out who has the authority to launch the ships since they can't get Marcus to authorize it (as he's dead at this point).

Batman wrote:Mind you if the sequence had been much longer I would ask why no other ship tried to tow Vengeance clear or at least blew her into harmlessly small chunks before reentry, (or did the same for the Big E when she was deorbiting) but as depicted I'm perfectly willing to accept 'what the hell is going on' general confusion to explain why nobody else got involved in that.

While it wasn't made entirely clear, I got the impression that the Vengeance was limping toward Earth on what little engine power it had left after the exploding torpedoes tore the guts out of the engineering section. To anyone watching it would probably have looked as if the Vengeance was trying to stop the Enterprise's own near-death spiral, with the first clue of Khan's attempted suicide run probably not being until it flew past the Enterprise in Earth's atmosphere, which would have been WAY too late to do anything about it.

Batman wrote:That'd be the part where Nero had already blown them to scrap by the time the Big E arrived at Vulcan?

Yeah, that was the point. So how do some dead ships at Vulcan mitigate the issue of an apparent lack of ships at Earth?

NecronLord wrote:Are you seriously arguing that they should have kept those ships around Earth instead of helping Vulcan?

No, I think I was arguing that Earth appeared to be completely undefended as usual. But have fun with that strawman, I guess.

Earth was undefended because they sent all available ships (seven of them) to help Vulcan since the main fleet was elsewhere. Those ships get massacred and the main fleet still can't make it back in time to stop the Narada. This really isn't hard to understand.

Arawn Fenn wrote:No, I think I was arguing that Earth appeared to be completely undefended as usual. But have fun with that strawman, I guess.

They had ships at Earth, fuckwit. Then they were called away. If you are arguing that they should have kept Earth defended then you consequently argue that some or all of those ships should not have gone to help Vulcan.

NecronLord wrote:Then they were called away.

Thanks for the recap, Einstein.

NecronLord wrote:If you are arguing that they should have kept Earth defended then you consequently argue that some or all of those ships should not have gone to help Vulcan.

What am I, your puppet? Maybe some of them should not have gone to the Laurentian system. Either way the problem remains: Earth was completely undefended by a certain point in the film. And you seem to indicate that this was by choice: that they intentionally left no ships behind. Which was kind of the point. So I think it fits the pattern. But I guess each incidence of this trope is a uniquely special little snowflake, or something.

NecronLord wrote:If you are arguing that they should have kept Earth defended then you consequently argue that some or all of those ships should not have gone to help Vulcan.

What am I, your puppet? Maybe some of them should not have gone to the Laurentian system.

None of them did. They went to the Vulcan system.

Either way the problem remains: Earth was completely undefended by a certain point in the film. And you seem to indicate that this was by choice: that they intentionally left no ships behind. Which was kind of the point. So I think it fits the pattern. But I guess each incidence of this trope is a uniquely special little snowflake, or something.

The trope is that there's never any starships around to defend Earth period. There undeniably were quite a few of them in this movie. Yes, they decided to send all of them to Vulcan, but that trip took all of what, 5 minutes? With that kind of response time yo can afford to leave your strategic centre uncovered for a short period of time especially when there is zero evidence of an external threat.

Batman wrote:

NecronLord wrote:If you are arguing that they should have kept Earth defended then you consequently argue that some or all of those ships should not have gone to help Vulcan.

What am I, your puppet? Maybe some of them should not have gone to the Laurentian system.

None of them did. They went to the Vulcan system.

I think he's talking about the fleet rendezvous Spock was going to until Kirk got back aboard and changed the plan.

Arawn Fenn wrote:And you seem to indicate that this was by choice: that they intentionally left no ships behind. Which was kind of the point. So I think it fits the pattern. But I guess each incidence of this trope is a uniquely special little snowflake, or something.

Earth wasn't undefended, though. Remember those defense grid codes Nero was so eager to get from Pike? Earth was protected by a defense system that gave even Nero enough pause for him to go out of his way to secure the codes; and this is with the same ship that took out something like 40 Klingons and then wiped the floor with the Starfleet relief force at Vulcan. Apparently it's pretty good.