Star Trek (No spoilers in the first post, promise!)

[ECSNorway]

What Matrix Dragon said.

Also, re: travel time.

Spoiler

We know it took Enterprise hours because Spock took the ship towards the Laurentian system to get the rest of the fleet, and didn't turn back until Kirk and Scotty showed up and forced him to.

Nero would have had to interrogate Pike, get the codes, get through Earth's defenses, get into position, find the right spot to drill, and set up the drill, in those hours.

The trip to Vulcan took considerably more time than 4 minutes, but most of that was spent getting the cadets to their ships and loading relief supplies. That all got summed up into that little scene of guys calling out "Cadet X, you go tot he Farragut, Cadet P, you go to Enterprise," etc.

It would theoretically take several hours for the drill to reach sufficient depth to deploy the weapon.

As for why drill? It's possible that it's only in reaction with the planetary core that the Red Matter will, in the small quantities Nero was willing to use, form a black hole big enough to destroy the planet. We know that just trashing the containment system only formed one big enough to swallow his ship.

--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.