THE DELTA VEGA DISCREPANCY

In the second 'Star Trek' pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before"), Delta Vega was a planet near the edge of the Galaxy which had an automated lithium-cracking station. It was here that the Enterprise stopped to make repairs, and where Kirk hoped to strand his friend Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner after they both became imbued with dangerous powers from contact with the Great Barrier. But in the new "Star Trek" movie, Delta Vega is an icy planet in the same solar system as Vulcan, which can be seen quite plainly with the naked eye from the surface of Delta Vega.

"We moved the planet to suit our purposes," said Robert Orci in an interview with TrekMovie.com. "The familiarity of the name seemed more important as an Easter egg, than a new name with no importance."

Even so, they should have realized that die-hard Trekkers* would know the origin of that planet's name and complain that it would be impossible for a planet at the edge of the Galaxy could also be that close to Vulcan.

No amount of rebooting the 'Trek' timeline could reconcile that discrepancy - or could it?

Here's a "just maybe": because everything else - especially the technology - was put into high-speed advancement in the new timeline because of the interference by Nero and his revenge-seeking Romulans, some other Starfleet vessel sought out the Great Barrier at the edge of the Galaxy before Kirk and his crew had the chance. Rather than Mitchell and Dehner, somebody else on that "wessel" gained similarly heightened powers and proved to be a danger not only to the ship but to the entire Federation as well.

I'm thinking that somehow those new meta-humans combined their powers to "fling" Delta Vega through the Galaxy until it finally "came to rest" in the same star system shared by Vulcan.** As it shot through space, the climatic conditions on the planet were radically altered, so that it was basically an ice-ball by the time it settled into orbit. This would explain why such an arctic environment would have a creature evolve that looked to be more at home in a tropical atmosphere.

This would have happened long before the movie takes place, so that it's reasonable for nobody to feel the need to mention it. And that lithium-cracking station would now be buried under the ice, but still operational - a perfect gulag where Scotty could be banished - er, assigned.

It could also have been due to an earlier reboot of the timeline caused by the crew of the Enterprise, led by Captain Picard, dabbling in the affairs of Zephraim Cochrane (as seen in the earlier "Trek" movie, "First Contact".)

Upon arrival in the Vulcan star system, the abrupt gravitational pull of Delta Vega could have caused major upheavals to the surface of Vulcan. And this could serve as a splainin for the difference in the landscape between the original episode "Amok Time" and the re-mastered version........

BCnU!

*By the way, I don't mind being called a "Trekkie". No stigma to that in my mind.

** Hey - if it could happen in Commander Koenig's coma dream in the Toobworld version of 'Space: 1999', why not in the "real life" of the TV Universe?