Ignoring non-canon stuff, Narada was a gigantic, tough mining ship from 2387 with an infinite supply of missiles.
Like said above, there's a limit to the ship's ability to fire those missiles. But a ship that size, with an industrial original role and 24th century industrial capabilities, would probably be capable of manufacturing new missiles indefinitely and infinitely, even if the fact that she wasn't designed as a warship would limit her ability to spit them out.
That Enterprise caught up to it at warp 4 might suggest a low top speed.
We only need to make relatively light assumptions to accommodate that idea; the only time the
Narada spans another interstellar distance in a more or less known time is when she gets from the Neutral Zone to Vulcan between "2200 hours" and the arrival of the cadet armada. If she's limited to less than warp four, then the Neutral Zone (or at least that part of it where Spock enters the 23rd century) must lie close to Vulcan, but that's not much of an assumption or a contradiction.
To be sure, at "2300 hours", Uhura hears of the
Narada destroying the Klingon armada, which might force us to assume that the Klingons somehow got between the RNZ and Vulcan. If we already assume this is a short distance, then we might be facing a contradiction. Or we might say that the news reached Uhura at 2300 hours, whilst the Klingons had already been confronted and defeated before the space thunderstorm that brought Spock to the past.
Nowhere on screen do we see the
Narada moving particularly fast. She does attempt to pursue Spock's ship, which is rumored to be the fastest the 24th century can produce - but by that time, her skipper is already mentally too far gone to care about the tech specs of his own vessel.
It's hanger was filled with loads of the Vulcan ship from First Contact, and a 22nd century Bird of Prey.
Or at least ships of the same general shape - which IMHO implies at least the same size if not larger, because a smaller ST:FC lander or a smaller "Minefield" BoP probably would not be functional or habitable.
Might be something Nero captured in the 23rd century while hunting for Spock. Might be something that's useful for a 24th century miner, too. If the
Narada really is limited to a crawling speed, Nero would probably have a liaison ship or two for zipping between his mining operation and his customers or home base or his beloved family.
A few other interesting tech hints: the ship doesn't appear to have a tractor beam that could stop ramming or fleeing starships. Perhaps that's military tech that has no mining applications? Or then Nero lost his tractors when sucked into the past, and never managed to repair them.
Also, the only time we hear of the
Narada having shielding is in the final fight where Chekov declares that enemy shields went down when Spock rammed the ship. However, shields seemed to be down most of the time, because our heroes were able to transport in and out at will - apparently including a few seconds
before Spock's ship impacted on the
Narada. So perhaps the mining ship didn't have shields that would have made a difference in a fight, explaining why Nero never bothered to command these things raised or dropped?
Timo Saloniemi
