Earth ship Valiant

[Ronald Held]

It has to be~ 200 year long trip covering much more than a few hundred light years.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I still think it's more likely that the Valiant was caught in a wormhole and immediately found itself at the galactic edge, rather than actually have time dilation come into play.

Besides, assuming the '200 years ago' figure is accurate, then the Valiant did in fact have warp drive, so time dilation would not apply.

[publiusr]

It wouldn't have to be a wormhole. I would think a cosmic string might serve as a catapault. One time only as the string itself would be disturbed.

[Warped9]

Time dilation has been invoked in this thread, but I submit that for time dilation to have any truly appreciable effect for a ship's crew you have be really cruising, like in the neighbourhood of around ninety percent light. Then the effect really comes on.

At about fifty percent light the dilation effect isn't significant.


Note: I worked a lot of this out with actual math when I was working out a story for a fast relativistic starship.

[Timo]

Relying on relativity to keep your crew alive and happy is somewhat predominantly dependent on acceleration. If it takes you a year to work your way up to the nineties, you will be overshooting the obvious nearby targets... And it will be a chore to stop at anything interesting but unscheduled.

If the Valiant set out for a sublight journey where relativity, rather than cryosleep, made traveling in a tiny tin can tolerable, then she probably was configured for a specific destination rather distant from Earth. It wouldn't pay to go explore unknown worlds that way: you'd have to know what was there that was worth your while before you started building the ship. Also, if you failed to make contact with home base after a few decades (say, in the early 2060s, following a 2020 launch), you wouldn't be "lost" for the next two centuries - your course would be known in detail, you could not deviate from it even if you wanted, and warpships would eventually come check you out.

Unless, of course, you were eaten by a course-altering space anomaly: a wormhole, a tachyon stream, a magnetic storm, a space amoeba, whatever.

Timo Saloniemi

[throwback]

I know from Memory Alpha that sleeper ships were used as late as 2210, when a vessel of this type was sent on a deep space exploration mission to Beta Capricus. ("11:59") So, it's possible that the Valiant was a sleeper ship. It's not possible to know for certain if the Valiant had a crewman who was awake to monitor the ship and its crews, like the deep space explorer mentioned previously, or that the leader was sleeping like the rest of his crew and the ship's computer automatically monitored the ship and its crew, ex. Botany Bay.

[Timo]

The funny thing is, cryosleep ceased to be used in insystem, sublight applications in the early 21st century, a valid reason for Kirk to remain fairly ignorant of them. But apparently they were still used regularly enough in outsystem, FTL applications in the early 23rd century. Why is Kirk ignorant of such a recent practice? He would probably have encountered examples of it in his training: if colonists were using it as late as 2210, Starfleet would still have to be capable of handling a colony ship emergency involving cryosleep around that time, and would probably retain the skill for at least half a century afterwards.

We can naturally assume that Kirk wasn't ignorant, and that McGivers merely assumed that he would be, hence her lecture. But why would McGivers in turn be assuming such a thing if cryosleep (or other techniques for suspended animation, regardless of the specifics) were a recent thing?

And McCoy did seem to be slow in coming to the conclusion that the "alien", low heart rates heard aboard might come from humans in suspended animation... Although this might have to do with differences between Khan's suspended animation techniques and the possibly more modern ones involved in, say, the 2210 mission.

Timo Saloniemi

[Warped9]

throwback wrote:

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I know from Memory Alpha that sleeper ships were used as late as 2210, when a vessel of this type was sent on a deep space exploration mission to Beta Capricus. ("11:59") So, it's possible that the Valiant was a sleeper ship. It's not possible to know for certain if the Valiant had a crewman who was awake to monitor the ship and its crews, like the deep space explorer mentioned previously, or that the leader was sleeping like the rest of his crew and the ship's computer automatically monitored the ship and its crew, ex. Botany Bay.

I suspect a non TOS source here again with more erroneous retconning.

[Timo]

...As opposed to a TOS source with erroneous retconning?

Whatever little continuity TOS ever had, all of it was of the "ret" type - writers thinking they remember an interesting tidbit from an earlier episode, but completely misremembering it (General Order 7 involves death penalty - or was it General Order 4?) or choosing to twist it till it's unrecognizable (one of Spock's ancestors once married a human - Spock's dad lives with Spock's human mother). Most often, there just wasn't any effort (TOS takes place 200 years in the future, except when it's 900 years, save for when it's 300 years or more than 1000 years). That in mind, the Voyager references (this "11:59" one included) were almost too reverential to the crappy "original" material...

Timo Saloniemi

[T'Girl]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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I still think it's more likely that the Valiant was caught in a wormhole and immediately found itself at the galactic edge, rather than actually have time dilation come into play.

If a wormhole was responsible for the Horizon's journey to the galactic edge, then she might then have been a pre-warp spacecraft, this would have made the "over two centuries" remark more plausible.

The Valiant could have disappeared on a interplanetary mission in the 2030's or 2040's.

[Timo]

The huge problem with that is Kirk's opening log entry. He says he has picked up "the call letters of a vessel that has been missing for over two centuries". This necessarily means he knows exactly what sort of a ship the Valiant is - he must have looked it up in order to connect the call letters to the missing-for-200-years information.

If he has thus learned that the Valiant is an insystem vessel limited to sublight speeds, he is not permitted to continue with his next remark: "Did another Earth ship once probe out of the galaxy as we intend to do?" No way, no can do, makes no sense.

He could say "Did another Earth ship end up here on the galactic rim before us?" safely enough. But the act of "probing" poses specific requirements on the performance of the Valiant. If she lacked that performance, Kirk could not say the words.

Sure, getting the Valiant from Earth to the Barrier might be a feat a hundred times greater than sailing a seven-meter launch across the Pacific. But there'd be nothing theoretically impossible about that - it would just call for more favorable winds and currents, slightly better luck fishing, slightly more rain for fresh water and so forth. But if the Valiant lacked the vital basics, if Captain Bligh only had cork jackets for his heroic band of eighteen rather than a launch, then the feat would be truly and blatantly impossible. Kirk would be speaking of divine intervention (or wormholes) rather than of "probing".

Timo Saloniemi

[Warped9]

Timo wrote:

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...As opposed to a TOS source with erroneous retconning?

Whatever little continuity TOS ever had, all of it was of the "ret" type - writers thinking they remember an interesting tidbit from an earlier episode, but completely misremembering it (General Order 7 involves death penalty - or was it General Order 4?) or choosing to twist it till it's unrecognizable (one of Spock's ancestors once married a human - Spock's dad lives with Spock's human mother). Most often, there just wasn't any effort (TOS takes place 200 years in the future, except when it's 900 years, save for when it's 300 years or more than 1000 years). That in mind, the Voyager references (this "11:59" one included) were almost too reverential to the crappy "original" material...

Timo Saloniemi

Whatever. Lets just say it's easy to see why I ignore a lot of what came later as getting it wrong rather than going on about how TOS was wrong.

[Timo]

And where's the fun in that?

Really - a bunch of assholes wrote poor stories for money, and we're supposed to "accept" it and "ignore" other stuff, rather than have fun actively dissecting it and gluing it together in other, prettier shapes?

Whatever indeed.



Timo Saloniemi

[Warped9]

Timo wrote:

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And where's the fun in that?

Really - a bunch of assholes wrote poor stories for money, and we're supposed to "accept" it and "ignore" other stuff, rather than have fun actively dissecting it and gluing it together in other, prettier shapes?

Whatever indeed.



Timo Saloniemi

Well if you think so little of the show then why bother trying to explain it as opposed to accepting that a bunch of assholes in the '80s and '90s wrote shitty stories and couldn't be bothered to do any homework? Hmm?

[blssdwlf]

Timo wrote:

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...As opposed to a TOS source with erroneous retconning?

I'm not seeing it in your examples.

Timo wrote:

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Whatever little continuity TOS ever had, all of it was of the "ret" type - writers thinking they remember an interesting tidbit from an earlier episode, but completely misremembering it (General Order 7 involves death penalty - or was it General Order 4?)

"Turnabout Intruder" doesn't appear to have a retcon to the information presented in "The Menagerie". The only thing we can tell is that between "The Menagerie" and "Turnabout Intruder" that Starfleet added an exception to General Order 4 to include a death penalty.

Timo wrote:

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or choosing to twist it till it's unrecognizable (one of Spock's ancestors once married a human - Spock's dad lives with Spock's human mother).

Spock's dad is one of his ancestors. Now if it was revealed in "Journey to Babel" that it was Spock's cousin who married a human you would have a point.

Timo wrote:

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Most often, there just wasn't any effort (TOS takes place 200 years in the future, except when it's 900 years, save for when it's 300 years or more than 1000 years).

The 900 years is from "Squire of Gothos" right? That's the one where the architecture could be correct as originating from the gothic era while the furniture and statues like the Salt Vampire are from a scattering of time periods not limited to just 900 years from Earth...

The 300 and 1000 years references I'm not sure about. Which episodes are those?

Timo wrote:

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That in mind, the Voyager references (this "11:59" one included) were almost too reverential to the crappy "original" material...

The "11:59" episode doesn't really contradict anything from TOS. The ship in 2210 made an interstellar journey that lasted 6 months and the pilot opted to stay awake for the journey there and back (totaling 1 year.) It isn't like the technology wasn't there since it existed as early as the 1990s in TOS