Theory regarding the super-fast trip from Qo'noS to Earth

It's been noted how the Enterprise's return journey from Qo'noS to Earth takes just an incredible few minutes, something which should be impossible, right? Yet I think I may have a possible explanation for this. Just before the Vengeance catches up to them, Carol says her father has been working on a highly advanced new type of warp drive. Is it possible the Enterprise got caught in the Vengeance's warp field, dragging it along at a highly accelerated pace?

 

Maybe. The more likely explanation is that the ship's travel time is inversely proportional to the running time of the film, and not based in any kind of reality, just like in STV, where the Enterprise-A's travel time to the center of the galaxy is just about 30 minutes.

 

If the Enterprise NX-01 could make it to Kronos in 4 days at warp 5 in "Broken Bow", then a century later the NCC-1701 at it's very top speed (which is warp 8 or more) could make it in a day in ID.

 

Sure! Why not? Works for me.

 

But in STID, the Enterprise reached Earth in just a few minutes. I don't think ships can do those kinds of speeds even in TNG.

I've always thought they used a wormhole or trans-warp conduit to reach the galaxy center in ST V.

 

Is there any precedent for one vessel's warp drive effecting that of another?

 

The Enterprise episode featuring the Columbia comes to mind.

 

Voyager did it in "Hope and Fear" and also later in "Timeless." TOS Enterprise did it in "That Which Survives", and in "By Any Other Name" had its warp drive modified to travel to the Andromeda galaxy in about 300 years.

There's also the Xindi Superweapon, which made the trip from the Delphic Expanse to Earth in less than an hour.

They probably retrofitted Enterprise-A with the transwarp drive from USS Excelsior.

Which, in this timeline, they simply invented a couple of years earlier (that or they always had it in TOS, just couldn't make it work on a ship as small as Enterprise until the 2280s).

 

But that was never mentioned in the film. But let's play devil's advocate and say you're right. That would mean one of two things:

1. Either Starfleet had the technology to create wormholes or transwarp conduits, or

2. It was a natural occurrence or accident that caused the Enterprise-A to get there.

Neither of these options really make sense. If Starfleet had the technology, then what happened to it by the TNG era? And if it was just an accident, how did the Ent-A get back?

So the Excelsior could have reached the center of the galaxy in 30 minutes as well? Why couldn't the Enterprise-D do the same thing, 75 years later?

 

I just figured they were time cuts.

 

I suggested this around the time the Blu-ray came out. Works well enough for me...

That background effects video for STID did have a screen that read "Transwarp System"...

 

The Enterprise-A and the Klingon bird-of-prey got back the same way they got there, through the hypothetical wormhole/ trans-warp conduit. It could have destabilized later, so it was no longer viable in the TNG era.

 

I don't recall anything suggesting the travel time was actually only a few minutes. They just skipped over the travel time. Just like all of the other Star Trek movies.

 

As ever, the Enterprise travels at whatever pace is necessary for the plot.

Warp drive has never been consistently portrayed on screen.

Warp drive will never be consistently portrayed on screen.

Some fans will recognize this fact. Some never will.

 

Christopher please see this thread and explain - like you did in this one.

 

I lean more towards it took longer than it seemed screentime-wise, but, we've never seen TNG time frame in this timeline, so, if, they used a new Technology, or a Wormhole, you have no way of knowing if it's still available in TNG Time Frame

 

What makes you think it couldn't?

 

"The Nth Degree" seems to suggest the centre of the galaxy is unreachably far away (while at the same time showing us the Cytherians who may well be the same species as STV's Big Giant Head)

 

If you actually watch the part of the film in question you'll see that that excuse doesn't work this time.

 

In all honesty, I'm inclined to issue a complete divorce between TOS and TNG over "irreconcilable differences," the anomalously high warp speeds being only the most prominent offender. TNG+ warp speeds seem way too slow (under the normal TNG scale, Enterprise-D would need a four year voyage just to get out of Federation space).