My friends and I laughed really hard over the "red matter" partly because it's ridiculous but mostly because the Giant Red Ball of Doom is something JJ Abrams used on Alias. The almost-excessive amounts of action and some of the visuals they used were also really Alias-influenced... I could have done with more quieter moments.

And as soon as the monster appeared in the snow I wondered, "WTF, are they on Hoth?" From what I've read JJ Abrams was a Star Wars fan in his youth rather than a Trekkie so it struck me that he used several really strong Star Wars-style visuals, when the cadets were all queuing to get into the ships and then when the one guy dangles Kirk over the precipice Darth Vader-style.