In Star Trek Eleven, was there ever a explaination as to why the tendrils projecting behind Spock's jellyfish starship spun? Yes, I know that they spun in the movie for the sake of appearences. But in-universe did the novelization, the tie-in comic books or interviews with the production team ever go into the reasoning behind the spinning motion? I assume the tendrils are the ships warp engines, but when nu-Spock took off from the Narada the tendrils were spinning right from the start. So maybe they had to spin for the jellyfish to move at all?
I strongly suspect the official explanation is "movement is cool". But we could compare Spock's hot rod with another high-performing spacecraft, the Orion vessel of "Journey to Babel". Its spinning structure in the TOS-R rendition might indicate a way to run an exceptionally powerful powerplant or drive by dissipating... Well, something to the four subspace winds with the spinning motion. I mean, it's not as if heat dissipation in vacuum would be boosted by spinning. But one could imagine it boosting the dissipation of heat or a comparable property into a transfer medium (say, a very hot blade of a kitchen electric mixer spinning in water, rather than just staying still - thus encountering "fresh" cool water rather than just already heated-up water with each revolution) - and Trek has its vacuum filled with the "subspace" medium... Timo Saloniemi
I remember reading in the art book or an interview somewhere that the Jellyfish's warp drive was based on "new principles". So not an Vulcan warp ring, not a Cochrane nacelle pairing, but something else. Something faster. As for it spinning at sublight speeds... don't the TNG-era warp engines glow the same sublight as they do at warp? It's also possible that this drive works as well at sublight velocities as it does at FTL, eliminating the need for separate impulse engines. The art book also talks about the skin of the ship being organic and grown over the frame, which is pretty cool.
I was going to suggest the spinners somehow weave subspace back into place as it passes by the ship thus eliminating the damage warp engines cause to it discovered in TNG: Force of Nature. Whatever the in universe reasoning behind them I find the existence of the Jellyfish and its advanced technology in the Nuverse kinda leads to a, I don't know... plot hole - or something. It's been postulated that scans of the Narada resulted in accelerated technology which explains why technology in NuTrek is beyond where it should be by that time. Soooo, didn't the Enterprise scan the Jellyfish when she had the chance, why didn't NuSpock grab some files on how it works while he was in the damn thing and by extension shouldn't the Vengeance then have been designed with this newly acquired technology? [/overthinking]
Postulated, yes - but this seems unnecessary. The differences seem quite minor, and if anything, nuTrek seems to be missing a thing or two from the old timeline! Weaker sidearms, clumsier shuttles, no life support fields in evidence, less use of gravity control... Whether the Jellyfish represented advanced technology or not, we don't really know. It was the fastest ship Spock could get his hands on, but this may simply mean he got the decrepit old scooter from the Vulcan Science Academy when the government refused to give him a proper warship or courier vessel. There are no scenes where the Jellyfish would demonstrate high speeds, and indeed Nero appears to think it possible to chase after this craft in his slow-as-molasses mining rig after Spock destroys his drill. Timo Saloniemi
The ship's computer does report a commissioning date of 2387, about nine years after Voyager's return to Earth.
I think the spinning has something to do with field effects. Maybe subspace boring. I think one novel talked about something called side-warp. That might be it.