Garlonuss

Answer: Yes, the new Star Trek movies are occurring in an alternate reality. The writers talked about it and are specifically using a "quantum reality" approach to the timeline where dramatic temporal events cause a branching of known realities. Specifically, everything that happened in previous movies and series remains intact in the Prime timeline, and these new movies are a new timeline that is occurring at the same time, but in a different reality. Hence "alternate reality" rather than "altered timeline".

Garlonuss ★

Answer: There was a scene cut from the movie that shows Nero being held in Rura Penthe, the klingon prison planet that was attacked in the transmission that Uhura intercepted and translated. The attack was the Narada crew coming to free their commander. And if you were to read the Countdown comic book that is used to give back story to Nero and his relationship with Spock, you'd see that the Narada originally looked nothing like what we see in this film. It was more utilitarian. But after the destruction of Romulus, Nero and crew come across a Romulan space station that is taking in refugees from the doomed planet. They had been working on some technology reverse engineered from Borg technology. Nero offered his ship as a test candidate as they were looking to start field testing it on a ship at that time. And as far as waiting for Spock, it could have been a simple thing to calculate the time and place of Spock's arrival using temporal mechanics based on the size and intensity of the singularity that sent them there, and an educated guess of when Spock entered the anomaly based on the telemetry they had at the moment they entered in themselves. They've had 25 years to wait and calculate what they needed to know.

Garlonuss ★