Writers forgetting common technologies?

[Deks]

They said in episode one that you need Benamite crystals for slipstream which are rarer. I still think this whole Dilithium thing is silly. They should be long away from that still being used.

'Timeless' episode also established that they can synthesize Benamite crystals too... but that the process would take years and they degrade relatively fast (both are limitations which SF/Federation would have likely been able to surpass and improve upon in the 10 to 20 years after Voyager returned - along with the phase variance issue).
I agree though that 930 years in the future the Federation should have been WAY past use of dilithium and M/AM... probably should have reinvented its own Spore Drive by then.

I wouldn't object to dilithium being critical for all conventional warp, regardless of the power source. That is, you always have to pump that power through a dilithium crystal if you want it to become warp power: it doesn't matter whether the power comes from m/am annihilation, fusion, a spare Kelvan outboard engine, the burning of coal or the frantic pedaling of 4.7*10^18 hamsters, it needs the dilithium as a filter anyway.

We know that there is magic involved in warp drive at some point: it's fundamentally unreal. We can decide where to draw the line, but drawing it at lumps vertenium cortenide going FTL when energized with real-world power isn't the best way to go. Warp plasma itself is already magical to a degree, as in "Fair Trade"; not just any old plasma will do there. And dilithium is a magic material by its very nature, while m/am annihilation is a known thing in reality, so drawing the line right there should work fine.

We have never had a pressing reason to think Romulans could manage without dilithium (which they mine from Remus, say), and now we have a pretty pressing storytelling reason to think that they couldn't. This should tip the scales on the otherwise ambiguous AQS power issue nicely enough.

Timo Saloniemi

Warp drive isn't really 'unreal' and real life theoretical models have been proposed which scientists are grabbing a serious look at. Its just the energy requirements are seen as too big right now.
At first, researchers postulated you'd need an exotic power source (such as say antimatter) the size of the universe... which they later reduced to size of Saturn (which is still humongous, but microscopically tiny compared to the size of the universe... give them a bit more time and they will likely further be able to refine the theory and reduce the power source size down to something like a football).

While Romulans still use dilithium yes, it was never established that the Quantum Singularity core needs dilithium per say.
Its possible the technology was incorporated into most of their Warbirds in the late 24th century, but I doubt ALL Romulan ships would have quantum singularity cores... and if they trade with other species or use dilithium for something else (as I imagine it has other uses), then it would make sense they still mine dilithium.

Its also possible that the Romulans were crippled by the Supernova which may have destroyed the information on how to build new quantum singularity cores... but this makes little sense because each and every ship comes with its own set of data to help chief engineers understand how the core works, to affect repairs, etc.

Or, its possible the Tal Shiar may have suppressed the information intentionally after the Supernova to keep the technology for themselves.

We also don't know what kind of power core the Valdore warbird (the one from Star Trek Nemesis) used.
Its possible when Shinzon grabbed power, it destabilized the Romulan Star Empire and we've seen the Scimitar did manage to reign supreme over most ships... so its possible Shinzon simply crippled most Romulan warbirds before appointing himself Preator and just used dilithium and M/AM for the scimitar (Remus certainly had enough of dilithium).

 

[Timo]

Whatever the reason, AQS power systems aren't solving any of the Burn-related problems. It just seems to be that the safe default position here is that they never would have.

But it's almost equally attractive to think that the AQS systems, even if dilithium-free, would never have met Starfleet's or Booker's definition of "practical". Perhaps seven out of ten warbirds blew up (sucked down?) within the first year of operations for AQS-related reasons, but the Romulans in the 24th century were willing to define that as acceptable?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Myk]

Whatever the reason, AQS power systems aren't solving any of the Burn-related problems. It just seems to be that the safe default position here is that they never would have.

But it's almost equally attractive to think that the AQS systems, even if dilithium-free, would never have met Starfleet's or Booker's definition of "practical". Perhaps seven out of ten warbirds blew up (sucked down?) within the first year of operations for AQS-related reasons, but the Romulans in the 24th century were willing to define that as acceptable?

Timo Saloniemi

That sound like them. "Acceptable losses".

 

[F. King Daniel]

instead of SB-19, why didn't they simply equip their ships with quantum singularity drives?

Because those drives probably still use dilithium in some way.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Because those drives probably still use dilithium in some way.

This is Star Trek, fans be needing...

 

[thribs]

I would like to know how fast their max warp is now. I imagine they rescaled the warp scale a few times since TNG.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I would like to know how fast their max warp is now. I imagine they rescaled the warp scale a few times since TNG.

Speed of Plot.

 

[fireproof78]

Speed of Plot.

So, nothing has changed.

 

[SJGardner]

Speed of Plot.

They might have even gone plaid.

 

[Deks]

I would like to know how fast their max warp is now. I imagine they rescaled the warp scale a few times since TNG.

Same here...
But 810 years post Voyager?
I would expect Warp drive to be hundreds of lightyears per second at minimum... with medium being 10 - 100x faster, and 'maximum' being at least 1000x faster.
Starfleet even used Hypersubspace communications using MIDAS array which allowed real-time communications over a distance of 16 000 Ly's.
I'd be surprised if Starfleet's Warp drives hadn't advanced to the point where they would be that fast per second (at least) in the 26th century (especially when you factor in the Federation had the benefit of sensor scansof advanced technologies, and knowledge dump from Cytherians and active scans of other FTL propulsion technologies - which apparently... never came to fruition).

However, it seems that Warp speed hadn't been pushed a lot (at all) since Voyager came back.
We saw Vance talking with other SF captains to deliver shield generators (which would take about 2 weeks) and another supply run to provide fresh replicators which would take a few months (to get there and come back most likely).

Granted, we have no idea WHERE in the galaxy the Federation HQ was or how far either of those destinations were (lightyears-wise or at which Warp speed).
For that matter, we don't even know how far away was the USS Tikhov... we only know from Vance that it was 5 months away from HQ (but we never heard the distance in Lightyears or at which Warp speed was Tikhov 5 months away).

Ambiguous as ever and probably as slow as ever.

SB-19 was mentioned by Vance that it works similarly to the Spore Drive and it basically transports a ship thousands of lightyears in a second (looked more like the transwarp aperture from that simulation we saw)... if that was the case with Warp drive in the 32nd century (which it really should be at a minimum)... it wouldn't take them weeks (let alone months) to get anywhere in the galaxy.

Or its possible the writers are as bad as ever when it comes to picking up a calculator and have no idea how fast Warp drive is supposed to be now - so they left it intentionally ambiguous.

I'm sure they will say something along the lines: 'warp drive reached a plateau speed-wise hundreds of years ago, and we couldn't advance it more beyond x Lightyears a day' - and whatever number they come up with would be insufficient/unrealistic to swallow given the enormous passage of time (at least from my point of view... but I stand ready to be pleasantly surprised).

Either way, I don't think we will learn too much about it seeing how Warp drive may be taking a back seat next to the Spore Drive.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So, nothing has changed.

Yep, they get there when they get there.
Dammit, Spock/Michael/Will/T'Pol/Chakotay/Kira/Una we're three days away at maximum warp!!!!!

 

[fireproof78]

Yep, they get there when they get there.
Dammit, Spock/Michael/Will/T'Pol/Chakotay/Kira/Una we're three days away at maximum warp!!!!!

And still the only ship in the sector.

 

[Nerys Myk]

And still the only ship in the sector.

At least post Burn there might be an excuse for that.

 

[Deks]

And still the only ship in the sector.

I know.
Out of what... thousands of ships in the entire Federation?
But this isn't exactly without precedent.

We do have at least 1 reference from Voyager in which Janeway states when they used Tash's catapult to go through 30 sectors of space in less than an hour and cut 3 years from their journey (which doesn't exactly correspond because 30 sectors of space in real life translates to about 600 Lightyears... not 3000 Ly's - but Voy writers were never good with numbers or looking things up).

As I mentioned, a sector of space spans at least 20 light years (in real life), and 30 sectors rounds that up to about 600 lightyears... interestingly this was the SAME reference we got from Star Trek Discovery S3 episode 1 in which Sahil mentioned his inability to scan beyond 600 Ly's due to long range sensor failure - and only seeing 2 Federation ships in that radius (though post-Burn this would be expected since most SF ships exploded when the Burn occurred).

But if the Federation encompassed 8000 Ly's by the late 24th century, and already had 7000 ships in active service over 100 years prior... you'd expect to see MORE than 2 ships across 600 Ly's at least in those time frames (23rd and 24th century... unless they were all out exploring).

7000 Starfleet ships were in active service in the 23rd century... by the 24th, they would have to have at least 10x as many to cover 8000 lightyears of Federation space alone and have a large contingent of ships out exploring or being able to fight in the Dominion War.

Most Trek writers apparently don't like numbers (or didn't have a fleshed out idea of just how big the Federation was).

But Discovery surprisingly managed to use some realistic measurements/numbers and keep some kind of consistency.

At least now we can't complain about 'the only ship in the entire sector' because the Burn actually justifies it.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Most Trek writers apparently don't like numbers (or didn't have a fleshed out idea of just how big the Federation was).

They never bothered to flesh out the state of the Universe and the Federation.

 

[Phoenix219]

Hey, they're the one's who choose to kick Discovery nine hundred years into the future without thinking through all the problems that would entail from that.


You're falling into the same trap hole that the writers did.

The problem is, Anti-Matter isn't the end all be of all power generation, without getting into exotic theoretical's it's just the best bang you can get for fuel volume because it's a 100% conversion of the two particles. However that one Anti-Matter reactor, could be replaced with say 10 fusion reactors, and generate the exact same amount of power at the cost of 10 times the fuel.

And while it's true for most fuel carry volume would then limit range, the Federation of that time period can make things bigger on the inside, which negates fuel carry volume as a problem.

And also you ignored that Voyager was able to synthesize Benamite crystals.

I've seen references to this in various posts, but must have missed it on screen - when and how was this revealed?

 

[Phoenix219]

I'm tired of people who think they're Super-Old School Fans when they're really not. Two can play at this game.

In 1987, did TNG writers forget the following?

1. Transwarp Drive
2. Genesis allows them to bring people back from the dead! After 78 years, you'd think they'd perfect it!
3. Phasers can send out a wide-beam that can stun everyone immediately. Why are there phaser fights?
4. An android more advanced than the M-5 can't use contractions?
5. There were no families on starships in TOS! What are the writers of TNG thinking?!
6. Why are they treating the holodeck like something new? Didn't they see the rec deck in TAS?
7. How can it take the Enterprise 300 years to get back home from two galaxies away? Did the writers of "Where No One Has Gone Before" do their homework? Did they even watch the original show?! In "By Any Other Name", it would've only taken the old Enterprise 300 years to reach Andromeda, the galaxy next door! Sure, they modified the engines to travel at Warp 14, but this new Enterprise is supposed to be twice as fast!

See how easy that is?

Yup, and they are ALL still valid points!! Thank you!!!

 

[Deks]

I've seen references to this in various posts, but must have missed it on screen - when and how was this revealed?

I think it refers to Star Trek Enterprise series where a ship (which was presumed by Archer to be a survey vessel studying the past) from 900 years into the future... aka 31st century, was found by NX-01 adrift (after which both the Suliban and the Tholians were after).
Tucker and Reed managed to get inside the vessel and discovered it was much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside (even without power).

Though to be fair, you can actually do this already with holodecks in the 24th century (and we also have an example of a ship-wide power loss which caused the hologrid to freeze on Voyager due to a dampening field, but it did NOT stop the program from running - episode 'Night' if I'm not mistaken).

Trouble with the TARDIS tech (bigger on the inside than on the outside) is that its distinctively from the period when Temporal technology was still widely in use (and the vessel in question was leaking Temporal Radiation as well)... so if the effect was accomplished with temporal technology, it wouldn't be in use anymore by the 32nd century after the Temporal technology ban.

However, I suspect it wouldn't HAVE to be connected to temporal technology and Starfleet simply found a way to extend the ship innards (and it occupants) into another phase or dimension and was able to do so with all power lost (aka, the hull materials would have extra-dimensional properties by default and wouldn't need active power to get that same effect).

 

[thribs]

Speed of Plot.

I get that but they do try sometimes to be consistent with the speeds. I wonder if something like warp 9.999999 is like warp 15 in their new scale. Warp 20 is the new warp 10 that turns you into a salamander.
I could see Dilithium not lasting very long if ships are going at that speed.

 

[fireproof78]

I mean, the Warp 9 thing drove me nuts to begin so why not change it?