was shown in "The Emissary" (season 2). I did not see any warp drive on/in the probe. How did this work?
If you're thinking of something like a warp core, that wouldn't necessarily be required for something the size of a probe. IIRC, the TNG tech manual mentioned the more advanced probes having a warp sustainer engine, meaning they could enter and exit warp but wouldn't require a lot of maneuverability or power generation. The sustainer was simply there to allow the probe to be deployed without the need of sending a full ship somewhere to fire off the probe itself. The TM also states that the probe in "Emissary" (class 8) could only have sustained warp 9 for a maximum of six and a half hours, if necessary, so its endurance wasn't expected to be great.
Yeah it has "sustainer engine." Something else (a ship, the launcher) puts the probe at Warp 9 and it moves at that speed for as long as the sustainer engine has power or until something stops it. It hasn't it's own ability to enter or exit warp.
It would be somewhat logical to assume that a probe or passenger pod shaped and sized like a photon torpedo could also travel like a photon torpedo. And we know that photon torpedoes can be fired against ships that are fleeing at high warp (in VOY "Flashback" at least). The oddities remaining include size issues. The passenger occupies a large percentage of internal volume; where does the machinery fit? And if the machinery is that small, what is the volume normally filled with in a photon torpedo? Is the warhead really that massive? (Not that there'd be anything wrong with it - a high payload to overall volume ratio is a good thing!) Also intriguing is how the passenger pod was launched. Use of "sustainer engines" and reliance on an external launching system is fine and well. But where did that launching system come from? The point of using the pod was that the starbase sending the passenger had no starships available. Are we to believe, then, that starbases are equipped with torpedo launchers capable of propelling their projectiles to high warp? What would be the purpose, when the starbase would be immobile and any opponent moving at high warp would thus make himself unthreatening simply by shooting past his target in a split second? Long range interception sounds unlikely when we consider that DS9 never saw the need to intercept targets farther out than a few kilometers. Of course, we can forget about military issue torpedo launchers and speculate on the existence of a "launch sled" that brings the probe up to speed and is then discarded. But that sounds like specialist equipment, the existence of which would require a careful explanation. Timo Saloniemi
Photon torpedos and probes travelling at warp speed without a warp engine makes no sense to me. If I understand "warp" correctly, it is a deformation of space making distances shorter, so it is logically not possible to maintain warp speed without (permanent) creation of the warp field. To "shoot" a vehicle to warp speed and then just let it "conserve" the given speed(impuls), makes no sense to me. How do you see that? Addition: I could see torpedos travel at warp speed if the (two) ships are close (enough) and the torpedos travel within the warp field created by both ships.
Probes and torpedoes simply have the ability to "sustain" a warp-field. Why would that make any more or less sense than the idea of warp-travel at all?
Since time was of some essence, and the only known mission criterion was that K'Ehleyr had to be there, wouldn't it have made more sense to send K'Ehleyr to meet the Klingon ship aboard that putative other starship, while the E-D sailed in a completely different direction to perform that putative other mission? A ship incapable of dealing with the Klingons would IMHO be unlikely to be capable of firing the passenger torpedo, either... Timo Saloniemi
Because the warp-field is inherent in the distorted space and not the vessel itself. With the enigine you create a warp-field and modify the space around the engine. You can NOT simply sustain (elsewhere) the field because it is LOCALLY created and is NOT a property of the vessel. That is why travelling by sustaining the warp field would mean to distort the space in other regions for what you would need a warp engine. That's my opinion.
Picard is a proven diplomat, and Enterprise the best ship in the fleet. It makes sense to give the assignment to them rather than a Miranda-class science/cargo ship.
Except those skill were useless to the mission, when the Klingon ship was finally encountered, Picard was nowhere to be seen. A junior officer sat in the captain's chair.
From the very start, the idea seemed to be that there would be no diplomacy on Picard's part. K'Ehleyr was sent to orchestrate the encounter, and her first recommendation was that the Starfleet vessel destroy the Klingons in the sleeper ship outright before they have time to respond; any starship with a torpedo launcher could have done that. Her second recommendation apparently was the subterfuge they finally went for: she and Worf pretended that Klingons were in command of the Federation starship, which led the sleeper Klingons to think that any attack against Federation assets would be an attack against the Klingon Empire - both fruitless and counterproductive for their careers. This, too, could have been achieved with any generic starship. Timo Saloniemi
The subterfuge was Worf's idea. K'Ehleyr's two options were to keep the Klingons on the T'Ong asleep or to destroy her.
Ah, true enough. Sending the E-D probably was a good idea in the end: the trick would have had lower odds of success if only K'Ehleyr were available to play the role of the starship's master and commander and bridge crew. I mean, "Drumhead" shows that there are some other Klingons whom Starfleet might reach for a role in such a charade. But probably not all that many. Then again, they could have faked an all-holographic all-Klingon crew if they wanted: I doubt the outdated Klingon ship would have been equipped to tell the difference... Timo Saloniemi
How would they do that? TNG and later series seemed to suggest that you needed a dedicated holodeck to generate holograms, and the only exception I can recall was the super-advanced Prometheus. Voyager's EMH only got mobility through a lucky circumstance, as the Intrepid class wasn't designed to project the program outside of sickbay. That being said, I agree with you it would have been a viable option. But I doubt it would have been possible. I suppose one could argue that they could simply communicate from the holodeck itself and make it look like the bridge...
Yanno, it's not real. It's all about the plot. We are all supposed to suspense disbelief and believe that there must be some kind of gimzo that helps something do or sustain something
That would be the TNG way to do it, I guess. But in DS9, Sisko was able to fake his appearance and the identity of his vessel even when flying the Defiant which was known not to have any holodecks. Suitable "filters" could no doubt be used in the main communications software, too. If they fooled paranoid 24th century Cardassians, they'd probably work with freshly awakened 23rd century Klingons. Timo Saloniemi
What ep was that in? I'm not doubting you, I just can't rely on my memory. But I'd be interested to know, cause that offers an intriguing alternative.