Exelsior's Transwarp drive

[Myasishchev]

^The Constitution could produce far more power than its frame and cooling mechanisms and such could handle, though. Warp 14? Sure, if you want to fry like an egg. The maximum output of the engine and the nacelles seemed significantly larger than the ability of the ship to actually sustain already.

 

[JNG]

It's entirely possible that Excelsior was not built around the special drive so much as she was, in development, so much better suited for its testing than any other ship that she was diverted from the regular workflow and reengineered for the test.

It would seem silly to argue that the drive was a success when it seems very clear that she spent years in spacedock after the failed test, emerged with a different configuration, and no one ever mentioned a homegrown transwarp per se again.

It is really stretching it that such a buzz was made over transwarp and its different systems and engineering, only for us to accept that after a successful test, it was rapidly engineered into mostly every other Federation ship we ever saw without further comment. Moreover, this makes the whole issue of its needing to be tested on Excelsior into a strange one, because there would be a strong implication of its easy retrofit into designs that we know are older, such as the Miranda class.

Again, this is not impossible, but all seems like a lot of work to justify something that wouldn't mean much in the long run, let alone the fact that "transwarp" in the TNG era seems to have the same general meaning as a beyond-warp-drive kind of thing...are we really to figure that all the buzz about the new drive would fade as every other ship got it and the term would come back into use to mean "trans-transwarp?" I know this is not impossible because of the way people create conversational shorthand, but we need to remember that this is what passed for technobabble, and was probably supposed to have a more technical (if potentially classified in-universe) meaning as it was used in the movie.

Speaking as a writer, I can't get past the pointlessness of introducing a new drive with such heavy skepticism from the engineer character among Our Heroes if it was supposed to "really" be a success. The movie introduces it this way, nothing else ever references it directly, the ships in TNG are not so much faster than those of TOS by the backstage values for each production (and are in fact notably slower than certain speeds thrown around for TOS warp...doesn't the Enterprise travel 990.7 LY in a couple of days at most in "That Which Survives")...I don't feel that there are hidden clues telling us to believe it was a success in the direct sense, nor that we'd gain much by devaluing the term "transwarp" to the point where it could have been.

Maybe Starfleet got way too excited about potential implications of a new breakthrough and tried to put it into practice, only to experience a costly failure in the realization that it either wasn't ready for prime time or couldn't be made that way for some more fundamental reason; I think there are a lot of real-world stories that mirror this.

 

[Praetor]

^The Constitution could produce far more power than its frame and cooling mechanisms and such could handle, though. Warp 14? Sure, if you want to fry like an egg. The maximum output of the engine and the nacelles seemed significantly larger than the ability of the ship to actually sustain already.

That's actually exactly my point regarding both ships, and by extension the Shuttlecraft Cochrane from 'Threshold.' Tom Paris makes a point to mention the problem that the warp field intensity is so high that it's essentially destroying the structural strength of the nacelle pylons, and his ultimate solution to make the drive workable involved fixing this.

It's entirely possible that Excelsior was not built around the special drive so much as she was, in development, so much better suited for its testing than any other ship that she was diverted from the regular workflow and reengineered for the test.

It's interesting you mention that; I've always thought that the ship was under at least design work already when the separate Transwarp Development Project was approved for field testing and grafted onto it.

It would seem silly to argue that the drive was a success when it seems very clear that she spent years in spacedock after the failed test, emerged with a different configuration, and no one ever mentioned a homegrown transwarp per se again.

Exactly!

It is really stretching it that such a buzz was made over transwarp and its different systems and engineering, only for us to accept that after a successful test, it was rapidly engineered into mostly every other Federation ship we ever saw without further comment. Moreover, this makes the whole issue of its needing to be tested on Excelsior into a strange one, because there would be a strong implication of its easy retrofit into designs that we know are older, such as the Miranda class.

Agreed as well! I presuppose that the Excelsior was meant to be a bigger and better heavy cruiser and replacement for the Constitution class, so simply by virtue of being newer and theoretically more well-built it should be better suited for transwarp tests, combined with any direct construction concessions made for the transwarp experiments..

Again, this is not impossible, but all seems like a lot of work to justify something that wouldn't mean much in the long run, let alone the fact that "transwarp" in the TNG era seems to have the same general meaning as a beyond-warp-drive kind of thing...are we really to figure that all the buzz about the new drive would fade as every other ship got it and the term would come back into use to mean "trans-transwarp?" I know this is not impossible because of the way people create conversational shorthand, but we need to remember that this is what passed for technobabble, and was probably supposed to have a more technical (if potentially classified in-universe) meaning as it was used in the movie.

Speaking as a writer, I can't get past the pointlessness of introducing a new drive with such heavy skepticism from the engineer character among Our Heroes if it was supposed to "really" be a success. The movie introduces it this way, nothing else ever references it directly, the ships in TNG are not so much faster than those of TOS by the backstage values for each production (and are in fact notably slower than certain speeds thrown around for TOS warp...doesn't the Enterprise travel 990.7 LY in a couple of days at most in "That Which Survives")...I don't feel that there are hidden clues telling us to believe it was a success in the direct sense, nor that we'd gain much by devaluing the term "transwarp" to the point where it could have been.

Very, very well said.

Maybe Starfleet got way too excited about potential implications of a new breakthrough and tried to put it into practice, only to experience a costly failure in the realization that it either wasn't ready for prime time or couldn't be made that way for some more fundamental reason; I think there are a lot of real-world stories that mirror this.

Exactly what I think myself.

Stop reading my mind!

...or did you read that draft Excelsior technical manual I posted a while back?

 

[Longinus]

Does anyone think it might have been a little irresponsible of Styles, or his superiors if he was directly ordered to do so, to take out an untried but vital experimental ship into possible combat with the Enterprise, a battle-scarred but powerful vessel? Would the Excelsior necessarily have even been loaded with weapons yet, for a trial run of her engines?

Granted, the Enterprise was junked, but Styles might have been taken by surprise before the automation burned out, and a "lucky shot" might have ended Ye Olde Transwarpe Experiment for good.

And here's a notion in regards to the OP:

Why would Starfleet build an entire new starship, with labs and weapons and a bridge and crew and crew quarters in the hundreds, around an engine that may or may not work? The British didn't launch Dreadnought wondering whether her steam turbine would work.

Perhaps we may infer that transwarp definitely worked, had been previously been tested on comparatively cheap vessels, and Excelsior was the production version of the future's version of the steam turbine (and for a "failure" they sure built a hell of a lot of her).

Yes, exactly. It makes little sense to assume that it ultimately didn't work. It is totally absurd that Stiles would be so sure about the engine that had never been tested. Besides, if Scotty knew the transwarp couldn't work, why he had to sabotage Excelsior in the first place?

Besides, considering how static the tech in Trek universe is, it would be nice to see that at least some of their supertech projects were viable.

 

[Myasishchev]

It's entirely possible that Excelsior was not built around the special drive so much as she was, in development, so much better suited for its testing than any other ship that she was diverted from the regular workflow and reengineered for the test.

I doubt they would have diverted the pathfinder of the class into a side project that would not have required nearly the capital expenditure to prove. It seems far more likely that long before TWOK and perhaps before TMP, transwarp was shown to work and incorporated into the Excelsior specs.

What does Scotty say about it? He says, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon." This is not a highly technical dissection of the Excelsior's inner workings. In fact, it seems more in line with the same conservatism on display (if compounded by loneliness) in Relics.

Iirc, from that episode, initially LaForge is (if dickishly) almost contemptuous of Scotty's expertise, lending credence to the notion that something fundamental has changed about warp theory and practice. By way of analogy, if Karl Benz came back from the dead, he might well be capable of fixing your car, because, rampant computerization aside, internal combustion engines do still operate on the same principles. If James Thomson came back, however, and wanted to fiddle with my computer's innards, I wouldn't let him, because although he invented a analog differential equation solving computer, he might try to do something hydraulic to my motherboard and its digital operating principles.

But let's digress from Scotty and his sour grapes--and listen to what Sulu says. This here is a master flight controller. Surely he's up on the next big thing in spaceflight, and he seems impressed but not incredulous. The capabilities of a drive system and the speed of a ship are no doubt of as paramountly important to him as they are to an engineer. Sulu would know at least as well as Scotty. Kirk, for what it's worth, also appears receptive to the transwarp "great experiment."

In the next film, Sulu remarks that he's hoping for a post on the Excelsior. By TUC, Sulu's gotten his dream job and his dream ship. I wonder: would he have been so bent on attaining the captaincy of the Excelsior if she had been, as you assert, a failure?

It would seem silly to argue that the drive was a success when it seems very clear that she spent years in spacedock after the failed test, emerged with a different configuration, and no one ever mentioned a homegrown transwarp per se again.

Excelsior herself is mentioned once, in TVH, in a positive manner, and seen briefly in TUC. But if transwarp had not been mentioned at all, in six hours of screentime in films focusing on a different ship and one of which took place 90% in 1985, I wouldn't suppose that's conclusive evidence of her failure. I sometimes go whole days without mentioning transwarp drive. By TNG, of course, transwarp = warp.

It is really stretching it that such a buzz was made over transwarp and its different systems and engineering, only for us to accept that after a successful test, it was rapidly engineered into mostly every other Federation ship we ever saw without further comment. Moreover, this makes the whole issue of its needing to be tested on Excelsior into a strange one, because there would be a strong implication of its easy retrofit into designs that we know are older, such as the Miranda class.

Miranda is indeed the oldest ship we know of that might have been refitted with tranwarp. It is somewhat implicit that Mirandas can keep up during fleet actions with Excelsiors and Galaxies. I would remark that the Miranda is (far) newer than the Constitution, the application of transwarp to whose spaceframe failed, if it were attempted at all.

Again, this is not impossible, but all seems like a lot of work to justify something that wouldn't mean much in the long run, let alone the fact that "transwarp" in the TNG era seems to have the same general meaning as a beyond-warp-drive kind of thing...are we really to figure that all the buzz about the new drive would fade as every other ship got it and the term would come back into use to mean "trans-transwarp?" I know this is not impossible because of the way people create conversational shorthand, but we need to remember that this is what passed for technobabble, and was probably supposed to have a more technical (if potentially classified in-universe) meaning as it was used in the movie.

Stranger things have happened. If we routinely traveled at multiples of the speed of sound as the denizens of Trek travel at multiples of the speed of light, I suspect "hypersonic" would lose a lot of its buzz over a period of a century. "Hypersonic" today might be Mach 5+, but if hundreds of different spaceplanes are already going Mach 50 and there's a new one that can go Mach 500, "hypersonic" would attach more readily, imo, to the Mach 500. "Mach 500: the new hypersonic" would appear on the cover of Popular Mechanics and such other publications.

Speaking as a writer, I can't get past the pointlessness of introducing a new drive with such heavy skepticism from the engineer character among Our Heroes if it was supposed to "really" be a success.

And such cheerful enthusiasm from our accomplished pilot and acceptance by our godlike captain...

The movie introduces it this way, nothing else ever references it directly, the ships in TNG are not so much faster than those of TOS by the backstage values for each production (and are in fact notably slower than certain speeds thrown around for TOS warp...doesn't the Enterprise travel 990.7 LY in a couple of days at most in "That Which Survives")...

So TOS didn't do astronomical distances well. No Trek never has. They say she has transplot speed?

I don't feel that there are hidden clues telling us to believe it was a success in the direct sense, nor that we'd gain much by devaluing the term "transwarp" to the point where it could have been.

I don't think it does devalue it. Rather the opposite: it revalues it by evolving the word. If the Federation was on the brink of discovering the propulsion capabilities of the Borg in the 23rd century, I think that would devalue transwarp. If they gave up, I think that devalues Starfleet.

Maybe Starfleet got way too excited about potential implications of a new breakthrough and tried to put it into practice, only to experience a costly failure in the realization that it either wasn't ready for prime time or couldn't be made that way for some more fundamental reason; I think there are a lot of real-world stories that mirror this.

The production history of the Excelsior begs to differ. The ships served as the backbone of Starfleet for a century. They would have served as that for even longer, except by the 2370s, they simply weren't first-rate warships anymore, and the Dominion blew a lot of them up. It seems unlikely that a navy would build dozens or potentially hundreds or thousands of ships when the first sucked. There is even some suggestion from the reg numbers that a new run of Excelsiors was commissioned in the mid-23rd century--but I realize this is weakly persuasive at best!

However, add to that the change in warp scales that happened sometime after TUC, and you have a preponderance of evidence that transwarp worked, and still worked, in 2379, the last canonical appearance of a Starfleet vessel with engines of the Excelsior type.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm telling you it still makes the most sense if you accept the Excelsior's transwarp drive as being like the Cochrane's transwarp drive in 'Threshold.' (Heaven forbid.) It wasn't that the engine didn't work, it was that the ship started tearing herself apart and they couldn't get the ship up to maximum (in this case infinite) velocity.

We know from the 'She'll fly apart' line in 'TUC' that the Excelsior, like the TOS ship, could produce a lot more power than she could actually endure. My thought is that Starfleet got the transwarp engine to reach high warp nine on test models and were optimistic that they could get it higher on the real thing, but that ultimately did not materialize, and so it did end up being a 'failure' in that regard, not reaching the ultimate goal. Nonetheless, it was so successful that it set the format for the much faster TNG-style engine, and the ultimate recalibration of the warp scale.

Yeah, but again, this was before the warp scale was re-calibrated; the new warp nine is equivalent to something like warp 12.5, which is probably what prompted the re-calibration in the first place: transwarp factors allow for less energy consumption at much higher warp factors, but the downside is that, above a certain limit, the warp field becomes unstable to the point that you slip into some kind of space-time wormhole thing that causes Weird Shit to happen.

I'm again drawn to the comparison between propeller-driven aircraft and jets. Early pioneers of the jet age discovered that aircraft behave very strangely at supersonic speeds. New engine and airfoil designs mitigated this problem, but there is still a practical limit to how fast a jet can go before it goes nuts. The SR-71 achieves the speeds it does because it is basically a turboramjet, which (by analogy) would be the most extreme application of what used to be called "transwarp" drive (probably Voyager's engine design). If you modified the SR-71 with, say, a liquid oxygen tank and rocket fuel you could probably fly the thing into orbit... and then you discover that your high speed jet is a death trap because it can't maneuver in space and can't survive reentry into the atmosphere. At that point, you're better off designing a completely new type of vehicle...

And that's when the Starfleet discovered transwarp conduits.

 

[JNG]

The production history of the Excelsior begs to differ. The ships served as the backbone of Starfleet for a century. They would have served as that for even longer, except by the 2370s, they simply weren't first-rate warships anymore, and the Dominion blew a lot of them up. It seems unlikely that a navy would build dozens or potentially hundreds or thousands of ships when the first sucked.

Nowhere did my post state, or even suggest, the Excelsior sucked. I in fact suggested the opposite: that she was the latest, greatest thing and hence the best candidate (if not the only viable candidate whatsoever) for the experimental drive. You will recall it was not my suggestion that the ship was designed from the ground up for this; I imagine rather it was the first ship capable enough to stage a realistic real-world test of a drive that had probably been researched for a long time. Not only I, but the TNG Technical Manual suggest that Excelsior was, aside from this, a very successful ship design; the fact that the experimental propulsion systems with which she was test-fitted did not succeed wouldn't change that at all, and I would expect she still managed a speed record for the Starfleet with conventional warp drives.

As for your comment suggesting Sulu and Kirk were enthusiastic about the transwarp drive, I look at the script and I see Sulu say "She's supposed to have transwarp drive," which sounds a little dubious to me, and Kirk talking about "young minds, fresh ideas...be tolerant." It is noted that he speaks "dryly." If this reads as a ringing endorsement to you, you are of course entitled to your opinion, but I don't believe the subtext intended in the scene is very hard to spot.

This is not to say they are mean-spirited and hoped for a failure of the drive, of course, and it is still plausible that Sulu (or anyone else, really) might hope to soon serve on the new pride of the fleet. But it would fit with my thesis that Starfleet had perhaps jumped the gun a bit on this because of its exciting possibilities, and maybe diverting Excelsior from the regular workflow as I described was a controversial move among experienced officers who know the difference between new tech on paper (or flimsiplast, or...hell, on a strange geometric blue and green computer display) and, say, tech proven enough for you to trust your life to it on a five-year deep-space mission.

A piece of offscreen supporting info: the original plan was to make the Enterprise-A an Excelsior-class vessel. The fans responded negatively to the "pregnant guppy," and the issue of its superiority and new innovations was ordered dropped for the time being, although Shane Johnson got the message too late to change what he was working on. If there'd been a direct onscreen reference to the test addressing its success or failure, we can safely conclude from this what the answer would have been. Down the line, I guess they thought it was implied, what with the lack of references to transwarp again and then a later appearance of Excelsior in which no suggestion seems to be made that she was using a notably different drive (even during the time-intensive situation in which the story placed her, where we might have fairly expected a mention).

It would seem a bit grandiose to tag even the speed increase between the TMP and TNG Enterprises as transwarp, given their warp drives seem to function in largely similar ways, have reactor cores of similar design, and so forth. Moreover, I had envisioned even this not-so-dramatic increase as having taken place slowly over the decades in between; you wouldn't think the producers would expect the fans to associate it with the drive system we saw not working in STIII. (I'm sure the associated research had value, of course.)

Just for fun, Vonda McIntyre's novelization has a bit of strangeness about how transwarp is expected to work:

"No way, Kirk," Styles said. "We'll meet you coming back! Prepare for warp speed! Stand by transwarp drive!"
Damned showoff, Sulu thought. Excelsior could catch the Enterprise with warp speed alone; with transwarp it would overshoot its quarry and, indeed, have to come back to meet it.

I also wonder why, if transwarp is simply a version of warp drive that is faster but not all that different, why lines like "Prepare for warp speed! Stand by transwarp Drive!" are in there at all. They really seem to be trying to suggest it is going to have clearly different operation, which runs rather contrary to the idea that it could silently and comprehensively replace warp drive throughout the Starfleet without further comment.

 

[Longinus]

It would seem a bit grandiose to tag even the speed increase between the TMP and TNG Enterprises as transwarp, given their warp drives seem to function in largely similar ways, have reactor cores of similar design, and so forth. Moreover, I had envisioned even this not-so-dramatic increase as having taken place slowly over the decades in between; you wouldn't think the producers would expect the fans to associate it with the drive system we saw not working in STIII. (I'm sure the associated research had value, of course.)

Eh, considering the different scale, we have no clear idea how great speed increase we are talking about. Formulas are non-canon, and do not match screen evidence. Furthermore, reactor cores being similar is neither here or there, as it merely supplies the power to nacelles.

I really do not like to think that the Federation scientits were so stupid and incompetent that they designed (and built) an engine that was so badly conceived, that it could not been made to work even in seven decades.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

Nope... in Scotty's log entry he specifically says "She's got a fine engine, but half the doors won't open! And guess whose job it is to make it right?" Basically, the engine on the ship was the ONLY thing that worked right; the rest of it was falling apart.

True, but we would expect the engines to be back and online first from our resident miracle worker.

The line I am referenceing is from the scene with Scotty and Uhura on the bridge and it is pretty clear that Kirk said something along the lines of "Let's see what she's got," and they she is towed back to Starbase. Thus illiciting Scotty's line similar to what I described above.

To me, either transwarp was unsuccessful, or it was successful by other means, in this case the combination of more than a pair of nacelles (probably should run for cover on this). See USS Stargazer as an early example and the Ent.-D as a modern example. If my memory serves me correctly (and that ain't a given - approaching 40 just plain sucks) according to the TNG Technical Manual each of the Ent.-D's nacelles essentially has 2 nacelles incorporated into it for a total of 4.

Furthermore (again, memory being what it is), this was the reason given for the change in the warp scale given by Mike Okuda in a footnote in the TNG Technical Manual. If I need to, I will dig up the books (Mr. Scott's Guide and the TNG Manual) and see if I can't find the references, but they are buried under piles of other things, so it might take a while to find them (stupid real life getting in the way again).

YMMV

 

[Vance]

Erm, when, exactly, was the Excelsior spending years in Spacedock? We know only that it malfunctioned due to sabotage before trial runs in TSFS, and that it was in spacedock a couple of months later (at the most) for TVH.

We also know that Sulu was completing a tour of duty on the Excelsior by the time of TUC, which was only a few years after TFF. So, exactly, where's the time possible that you're talking about?

The 'transwarp failure' was nothing more than Roddenberry being petty and Okuda doing his usual 'yes, sir' drill at the time. In light of what we see of TNG's treatment of warp, escpecially, it makes more sense that the Excelsior's transwarp technology is just what the TNG people refer to as just 'warp'.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Nope... in Scotty's log entry he specifically says "She's got a fine engine, but half the doors won't open! And guess whose job it is to make it right?" Basically, the engine on the ship was the ONLY thing that worked right; the rest of it was falling apart.

True, but we would expect the engines to be back and online first from our resident miracle worker.

The line I am referenceing is from the scene with Scotty and Uhura on the bridge and it is pretty clear that Kirk said something along the lines of "Let's see what she's got," and they she is towed back to Starbase. Thus illiciting Scotty's line similar to what I described above.

Nope... in TVH Kirk says "Let's see what she's got" and then Enterprise ZOOMS OFF INTO THE DISTANCE on warp power. Clearly the drive system worked on that one-time shakedown cruiser... the problem, as our hapless chief engineer discovered, was apparently that the rest of the ship was plagued with computer failures, probably related to the effects of the whale probe, although it may be that the ship was refitted too hastily with incompatible components.

If I need to, I will dig up the books (Mr. Scott's Guide and the TNG Manual) and see if I can't find the references, but they are buried under piles of other things, so it might take a while to find them (stupid real life getting in the way again).

Mr. Scott's guide makes no reference to a new warp scale, but it does suggest that Excelsior's transwarp drive experiment was a success.

 

[Myasishchev]

The production history of the Excelsior begs to differ. The ships served as the backbone of Starfleet for a century. They would have served as that for even longer, except by the 2370s, they simply weren't first-rate warships anymore, and the Dominion blew a lot of them up. It seems unlikely that a navy would build dozens or potentially hundreds or thousands of ships when the first sucked.

Nowhere did my post state, or even suggest, the Excelsior sucked.

Well, all right, Starfleet's transwarp drive sucked.

I in fact suggested the opposite: that she was the latest, greatest thing and hence the best candidate (if not the only viable candidate whatsoever) for the experimental drive. You will recall it was not my suggestion that the ship was designed from the ground up for this; I imagine rather it was the first ship capable enough to stage a realistic real-world test of a drive that had probably been researched for a long time.

Why even build a saucer section for a test flight that relies on the saucer not at all? (I think that someone sometime might have mentioned that warp field geometry is affected somehow by the geometry of the ship, although firstly, this makes no sense, and secondly, it is belied by the staggering variation in ship designs. If the saucer-engineering-exposed-nacelles design is the best, then every ship would look similar to every other ship--just like real-life boats and aircraft, whose environments permit few variations in shape, are discernible only by people with in-depth knowledge of the different classes and types. I mean, I can tell the difference between a MiG-29 and an Su-27, but most people couldn't because they are very close in function and thus need be very close in form; but anyone could see the difference between a Klingon ship and a Federation one.)

As for your comment suggesting Sulu and Kirk were enthusiastic about the transwarp drive, I look at the script and I see Sulu say "She's supposed to have transwarp drive," which sounds a little dubious to me, and Kirk talking about "young minds, fresh ideas...be tolerant." It is noted that he speaks "dryly." If this reads as a ringing endorsement to you, you are of course entitled to your opinion, but I don't believe the subtext intended in the scene is very hard to spot.

I'll have to watch this scene again, but I didn't read that into at all.

A piece of offscreen supporting info: the original plan was to make the Enterprise-A an Excelsior-class vessel. The fans responded negatively to the "pregnant guppy," and the issue of its superiority and new innovations was ordered dropped for the time being, although Shane Johnson got the message too late to change what he was working on.

Aw, I didn't know that. That would've been sweet. "Pregnant guppy"?

If there'd been a direct onscreen reference to the test addressing its success or failure, we can safely conclude from this what the answer would have been.

Quite the opposite. If they built TWO Excelsiors, it's almost conclusive that they did already know transwarp worked. Unless, as you say, they really were using NX-2000 as a testbed, in which case there's no need for NCC-2001/NCC-1701-A to have been outfitted with transwarp drive.

Down the line, I guess they thought it was implied, what with the lack of references to transwarp again and then a later appearance of Excelsior in which no suggestion seems to be made that she was using a notably different drive (even during the time-intensive situation in which the story placed her, where we might have fairly expected a mention).

Interestingly, the script of VI refers to an order for warp 9. But it's not in the film, and need not be considered. But, for fun, if we did consider it, it may be possible that it's TNG Warp 9, the last power threshold before infinity, and a good place for Sulu to start when going from the Alpha Quadrant to Khitomer.

It would seem a bit grandiose to tag even the speed increase between the TMP and TNG Enterprises as transwarp, given their warp drives seem to function in largely similar ways, have reactor cores of similar design, and so forth. Moreover, I had envisioned even this not-so-dramatic increase as having taken place slowly over the decades in between; you wouldn't think the producers would expect the fans to associate it with the drive system we saw not working in STIII. (I'm sure the associated research had value, of course.)

Just for fun, Vonda McIntyre's novelization has a bit of strangeness about how transwarp is expected to work:

"No way, Kirk," Styles said. "We'll meet you coming back! Prepare for warp speed! Stand by transwarp drive!"
Damned showoff, Sulu thought. Excelsior could catch the Enterprise with warp speed alone; with transwarp it would overshoot its quarry and, indeed, have to come back to meet it.

I also wonder why, if transwarp is simply a version of warp drive that is faster but not all that different, why lines like "Prepare for warp speed! Stand by transwarp Drive!" are in there at all. They really seem to be trying to suggest it is going to have clearly different operation, which runs rather contrary to the idea that it could silently and comprehensively replace warp drive throughout the Starfleet without further comment.[/quote]

Actually, perhaps Styles was using the words interchangably. He wants them to "Prepare for warp speed" (for the benefit of the helmsman, the velocity at which they'll be traveling) and "stand by on the transwarp drive" (for the benefit of his now chief-engineerless redshirts, the means by which that velocity is attained).

Reading that passage from the novelization, I see that as strongly suggesting that transwarp works. Sulu appears to believe that Styles is merely "show[ing] off." Styles would be silly to "show off" something he had no idea would work or not.

Another Styles chestnut:

If he tries to get away with warp drive, he's really in for a shock...

Sounds like he knew Excelsior's transwarp drive worked. Otherwise, he wouldn't be quite so confident. The alternative is he's an arrogant idiot. I submit that he's not, he's just an arrogant jerk. Who emory boards his nails.

Finally, if Styles were not sure, and if warp and transwarp are different drive systems, it would be hugely irresponsible of him to attempt to catch the wounded Enterprise with transwarp when warp was plainly available. The possibility of an accident with an untested FTL propulsion system, with an engine sitting atop tons of antimatter, inside the Sol system, heart of the Federation, is too irresistable to ignore for anyone who sits in the captain's chair. (Although Kirk thought it was okay to go to warp inside the atmosphere of a planet in TVH, but I try to ignore that scene, or chalk it up to some weird frame-of-reference effect of the spacetime-warp field.)

 

[Praetor]

A piece of offscreen supporting info: the original plan was to make the Enterprise-A an Excelsior-class vessel. The fans responded negatively to the "pregnant guppy," and the issue of its superiority and new innovations was ordered dropped for the time being, although Shane Johnson got the message too late to change what he was working on.

Aw, I didn't know that. That would've been sweet. "Pregnant guppy"?

If there'd been a direct onscreen reference to the test addressing its success or failure, we can safely conclude from this what the answer would have been.

Quite the opposite. If they built TWO Excelsiors, it's almost conclusive that they did already know transwarp worked. Unless, as you say, they really were using NX-2000 as a testbed, in which case there's no need for NCC-2001/NCC-1701-A to have been outfitted with transwarp drive.

But they hadn't already built two. IIRC, the original plan was to actually give the crew the Excelsior as is, name and all, then they changed to possibly renaming it Enterprise, until they did away with that plan entirely. There's no actual evidence that they had built a second ship yet. However, some have argued that 'Flashback's reference to the Yorktown when coupled with the assumption that the Enterprise-A was the former Yorktown means that this was a 'new' Yorktown and thus an Excelsior. No matter how you feel about that particular debate, that is a serious jump of logic.

For my retcon money, they probably did at least start basic framing what would later become the Enterprise-B by this point because they were so arrogantly sure transwarp would be a total success.

Down the line, I guess they thought it was implied, what with the lack of references to transwarp again and then a later appearance of Excelsior in which no suggestion seems to be made that she was using a notably different drive (even during the time-intensive situation in which the story placed her, where we might have fairly expected a mention).

Interestingly, the script of VI refers to an order for warp 9. But it's not in the film, and need not be considered. But, for fun, if we did consider it, it may be possible that it's TNG Warp 9, the last power threshold before infinity, and a good place for Sulu to start when going from the Alpha Quadrant to Khitomer.

According to an article written by Andre Bormanis for the Star Trek Magazine, it wasn't recalibrated until 2312. I don't see why it couldn't be 'old' warp nine.

I'll keep saying it: "Threshold" actually makes the drive make sense, even if the episode in and of itself, does not. A super-efficient drive limited only by structural integrity and theoretically capable of pushing the ship into another 'dimension' of 'infinite speed' which it can exit at will at any point in the known (or theoretically even unknown) universe. It's just faster warp coupled with a weird jump drive. I will never understand why hatred of that episode causes recrimination against a perfectly plausible (for the Trek-verse) drive.

 

[JNG]

It would seem a bit grandiose to tag even the speed increase between the TMP and TNG Enterprises as transwarp, given their warp drives seem to function in largely similar ways, have reactor cores of similar design, and so forth. Moreover, I had envisioned even this not-so-dramatic increase as having taken place slowly over the decades in between; you wouldn't think the producers would expect the fans to associate it with the drive system we saw not working in STIII. (I'm sure the associated research had value, of course.)

Eh, considering the different scale, we have no clear idea how great speed increase we are talking about. Formulas are non-canon, and do not match screen evidence. Furthermore, reactor cores being similar is neither here or there, as it merely supplies the power to nacelles.

I really do not like to think that the Federation scientits were so stupid and incompetent that they designed (and built) an engine that was so badly conceived, that it could not been made to work even in seven decades.

Yes, but going only by the canon, you could make a strong case that the TOS and TMP ships were way faster than in TNG, which would seem to blow the hell out of the idea even more severely. For the record, there are a number of times TNG warp travel matches up pretty well to the planned values, whereas it is not easy to do stuff with, say, the trips to the center of the galaxy.

You're basically arguing that the reactor core wouldn't have to look different, the nacelles seem the same, it could be retrofitted, and there's not going to be any clear evidence that it's faster, but I should nevertheless accept that this was, despite never being mentioned, indeed the revolutionary transwarp--because otherwise Federation scientists would look incompetent?

It's not as if we must imagine that it didn't work at all, like a big Price is Right failure sound effect played when they tried to engage transwarp for the first time; there are plenty of ways that it could have revealed a flawed understanding of some transwarp physics or simply proven impractical. Voyager's attempt to use quantum slipstream drive both worked and proved impractical for continued use, and there are a couple of other ST: Voyager series drives of the week about which one could say the same.

There really is a weakness in the thinking that a transwarp drive must have been thoroughly tested before mounting it to a ship. I am not sure you can convincingly say this is how such a drive would work, and that seems even more true if you view it as some new implementation of existing principles that uses similar hardware (thus suggesting some matter of scale might be involved). It's not quite like saying that you can pull off a manned moon landing because the unmanned landings are well established. It may be that there was only a single device which is built to both generate the power to attempt some sort of transwarp propulsion and be robust enough to remain intact during the test, and I think that device was called Excelsior. If the transwarp drive was essentially a done deal, had been tested by sending Rosy the chimpanzee to the Lesser Magellanic or something, and all the questions had been asked, I would hardly expect Mr. Scott to be suspicious of it any more, or for there to be any particular reason for mystery and suspense around the idea that Excelsior is "supposed" to have it. I think of it as some sort of Starfleet equivalent of zip-fuel experimentation or something: promised as the solution to a lot of problems, but bringing too many new problems to the table where the rubber meets the road.

Federation physicists and ship designers and so forth are in an odd position; Starfleet has, on a number of occasions, encountered aliens who prove beyond a doubt that certain things Starfleet can't hope to get working right now are very much possible. It must feel rather different than here on Earth, where sometimes one is fighting a potentially correct perception that a given goal is impossible, and a lot of it is just figuring out where the lines are. I think this transwarp business was probably not the only heavily-hyped experiment that didn't work as designed, and also maybe not the only one that Starfleet got a little too pumped about ahead of time. (How are they on big-picture concerns, anyway? Remember when that guy thought they were going to be "mothballing the Starfleet" when they had only a possible impending peace agreement with one enemy among several?) Considered in this context of grasping at things certainly possible but still seemingly unachievable in practical terms, I don't think it makes the Federation scientists and engineers look incompetent so much as, let's say, suitably ambitious.

 

[Vance]

The problem with the fans not liking the Excelsior was that they weren't supposed to. Look at how it's used in the story, she's the 'new trophy wife' that the crew is supposed to divorce the Enterprise for, and no one wanted it. She was to replace the old girl, and the hostility meant for her was indicated in her introduction, and the choice not only of the characters on the ship, but the actors they chose for the speaking roles (Styles and Navigator).

Naturally, who wanted the NCC-1701-A to be a 'carbon-copy' of a ship that the fans were supposed to hate in the previous movie? They wanted the old girl back, and that's pretty much what they got.

 

[Praetor]

Agreed, Vance. I've often thought that some of the design quibbles of the Excelsior that are most often cited are parrots of fan reactions based on their dislike of the ship as portrayed, not the design itself.

 

[Myasishchev]

But they hadn't already built two. IIRC, the original plan was to actually give the crew the Excelsior as is, name and all, then they changed to possibly renaming it Enterprise, until they did away with that plan entirely. There's no actual evidence that they had built a second ship yet. However, some have argued that 'Flashback's reference to the Yorktown when coupled with the assumption that the Enterprise-A was the former Yorktown means that this was a 'new' Yorktown and thus an Excelsior. No matter how you feel about that particular debate, that is a serious jump of logic.

That's a lot of assumptions, yeah. Why couldn't the Yorktown be an older Connie? So Tuvok served on it, so what? Picard was captain of a Constellation class before he got to the sweet assignments.

You know what I wonder? Whatever happened to Captain Styles, anyway? Admiral Styles? Maybe he really was busted for taking the Ex out in a fit of pique to go chase Kirk around Mutara.

For my retcon money, they probably did at least start basic framing what would later become the Enterprise-B by this point because they were so arrogantly sure transwarp would be a total success.

I still say that's so beyond arrogance as to be wilfull wastage of taxpayer (or communal, or whatever) capital.

According to an article written by Andre Bormanis for the Star Trek Magazine, it wasn't recalibrated until 2312. I don't see why it couldn't be 'old' warp nine.

Oh, it could. I'm just arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (it increases asymptotically toward infinity.) 2312? Maybe it had something to do with the Tomed.

I'll keep saying it: "Threshold" actually makes the drive make sense, even if the episode in and of itself, does not. A super-efficient drive limited only by structural integrity and theoretically capable of pushing the ship into another 'dimension' of 'infinite speed' which it can exit at will at any point in the known (or theoretically even unknown) universe. It's just faster warp coupled with a weird jump drive. I will never understand why hatred of that episode causes recrimination against a perfectly plausible (for the Trek-verse) drive.

I like the establishment that "infinite velocity" (infinite speed + infinite direction, apparently) requires infinite energy. In my conception of the warp drive as a electromagnetism-into-gravity device that is capable of bending and pulling space toward the ship to an extent that from an external frame of reference it looks like it's going FTL, it makes sense to me, too, that Warp 10 makes the universe colocated with the geometry of the warp field.

Now, the bad thing about this is that the universe is colocated with the geometry of the warp field. And, if it really does take infinite energy, then gravity is perforce also infinite. Delta Flyer wouldn't be able to pick its destination, it would be crushed into beyond-degenerate matter, because it has collapsed the universe.

The only thing I don't like about Warp 10 is Warp 9.999x. Some people bitched about AGT's Warp 13, but that's much better than Warp Nine Point Eight Nines and a Two. I also wonder what the physical explanation is for the location of nine power thresholds and no more.

 

[Tigger]

It is described in Star Trek III as allowing a ship to instantaneously travel at any warp velocity, rather than having to progressively increase velocity to the desired magnitude.

I've seen TSFS many, many times and I'm pretty sure this description is nowhere in the movie.

The source of this idea is likely based on the novelization of the film, where Styles told Kirk - "We'll see you on the way back." The reason given was that Transwarp drive was so fast, the Excelsior would actually shoot past the Enterprise and have to wait for it to catch up with them.

Sulu was also supposed to be promoted to Captain and take command of the Excelsior after her trials under Styles.

I do not know if the writer created this herself or if she was working off a different script draft then the one film where this line and data was present.

My assumption has been that the Excelsior experiment turned everyone on the ship into newts, and was abandoned.

I recall one Star Trek fanzine in the late 1980s that offered the idea that Transwarp was actually flawed and when the Excelsior tried the drive for the first time, a "warp wave" occurred and swamped the ship, destroying it with all hands (including a number of dignitaries aboard). This "warp wave" could not be fixed and the program was abandoned.

 

[Myasishchev]

^I guess it's a good thing Styles didn't do that within spitting distance of Earth then. Chalk another save to Kirk and Co.

 

[Praetor]

But they hadn't already built two. IIRC, the original plan was to actually give the crew the Excelsior as is, name and all, then they changed to possibly renaming it Enterprise, until they did away with that plan entirely. There's no actual evidence that they had built a second ship yet. However, some have argued that 'Flashback's reference to the Yorktown when coupled with the assumption that the Enterprise-A was the former Yorktown means that this was a 'new' Yorktown and thus an Excelsior. No matter how you feel about that particular debate, that is a serious jump of logic.

That's a lot of assumptions, yeah. Why couldn't the Yorktown be an older Connie? So Tuvok served on it, so what? Picard was captain of a Constellation class before he got to the sweet assignments.

Tuvok's dad, but yeah. And, FWIW, the Stargazer was originally going to be a Constitution class ship herself for 'The Battle' even though the study model for the ready room had already been built to represent that ship.

You know what I wonder? Whatever happened to Captain Styles, anyway? Admiral Styles? Maybe he really was busted for taking the Ex out in a fit of pique to go chase Kirk around Mutara.

I always suggested he ended up a deck jockey afterward, one way or the other. Personally, I say he didn't last much longer before retiring. Given Starfleet's propensity towards crazy Admirals, he may well have been promoted. Perhaps he was only a career test captain anyway? I wouldn't want to serve on his ship.

(I also posit that Chief in Command Morrow also lost his position after the failure, after having used the Excelsior and the transwarp development projectto make his career in the Admiralty in the first place.)

For my retcon money, they probably did at least start basic framing what would later become the Enterprise-B by this point because they were so arrogantly sure transwarp would be a total success.

I still say that's so beyond arrogance as to be wilfull wastage of taxpayer (or communal, or whatever) capital.

Me too, but the same kind of crap has happened and still happens with the real-world military.

According to an article written by Andre Bormanis for the Star Trek Magazine, it wasn't recalibrated until 2312. I don't see why it couldn't be 'old' warp nine.

Oh, it could. I'm just arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (it increases asymptotically toward infinity.) 2312? Maybe it had something to do with the Tomed.

Entirely possible! Or, since the Ambassador was launched in, what, 2315, maybe it was to coincide with that new design?

I'll keep saying it: "Threshold" actually makes the drive make sense, even if the episode in and of itself, does not. A super-efficient drive limited only by structural integrity and theoretically capable of pushing the ship into another 'dimension' of 'infinite speed' which it can exit at will at any point in the known (or theoretically even unknown) universe. It's just faster warp coupled with a weird jump drive. I will never understand why hatred of that episode causes recrimination against a perfectly plausible (for the Trek-verse) drive.

I like the establishment that "infinite velocity" (infinite speed + infinite direction, apparently) requires infinite energy. In my conception of the warp drive as a electromagnetism-into-gravity device that is capable of bending and pulling space toward the ship to an extent that from an external frame of reference it looks like it's going FTL, it makes sense to me, too, that Warp 10 makes the universe colocated with the geometry of the warp field.

Now, the bad thing about this is that the universe is colocated with the geometry of the warp field. And, if it really does take infinite energy, then gravity is perforce also infinite. Delta Flyer wouldn't be able to pick its destination, it would be crushed into beyond-degenerate matter, because it has collapsed the universe.

I thnk that's a valid interpretation as well, and a rather interesting one. Not being a warp physicist, do I really have any authority to assert my view over anyone elses. (I don't want you to think I'm trampling your turf or anything.)

I just think that having it, in essence, being a disguised jump drive, makes more sense, if we are to take 'Threshold' and the definition of warp ten into account, which I do because I don't like the slippery slope of picking and choosing episodes to ignore. (Moments, perhaps, elements, perhaps, but episodes no.) If not, the field is clear.

The only thing I don't like about Warp 10 is Warp 9.999x. Some people bitched about AGT's Warp 13, but that's much better than Warp Nine Point Eight Nines and a Two. I also wonder what the physical explanation is for the location of nine power thresholds and no more.

Oh, agreed. I think naturally as ships become better able to achieve high warp speeds in the Trekverse, it would be logical to have more charted 'steps' between 9 and infinity. Not the old system literally, of course, but something more like it.