The world-building of this new Trek universe

Warp speed has always moved at the pace of the plot--especially in the films. The numbers Kirk and Picard spout are ultimately arbitrary and are completely meaningless to most people.

 

Exactly so.

 

Not much of a "Trek" if you can go to the end of the universe and be home before dinner :-)

It was sloppy writing, pure and simple

 

Since no one has done that, it's not a problem in any way.

 

Not only are the speeds true to TOS, much of TNG, and for that matter Enterprise - 4 days to Kronos in a ship a hundred years older - but given that Kirk was incredibly excited about the idea of doing a five-year mission exploration is still a big deal.

 

The sheer impossibly huge size of the galaxy (what, 10 billion Earth-type planets?) means there's plenty to discover out there, even if the journey there is at STV speeds instead of Voyager's.

 

Well, warp speed was always malleable before. There's a reason why there's a "traveling at the speed of plot" trope. Unfortunate, but this is a case of "story > physics".

How is that different from any science-fiction ? Hell, even historical fiction does this.

Meh. I didn't think so.

Retcon.

Not any more than I had with the old one did.

To be clear: If _I_ made it, it would be very very consistent. But maybe a bit more boring for most people.

 

Would you have prefered a "three weeks later" title as they get to Klingon space ?

 

I want to see all three weeks dammit! Every meal, every toilet break, every time Spock bangs Uhura!

Seriously, they should've dropped the Scotty line about being off the ship for only a day after coming back aboard the Enterprise from the Vengeance. That line kind of makes it hard to defend TPTB.

 

Thing is, in a series format you can more readily get the passage of time right. In movies, it's a bit harder. Possible, but harder.

 

At least you'd get your money's worth.

And make the guys at Orville Redenbacher happy.

 

Without the Scotty line, it leaves travel time to personal interpretation. With it, well they went from Earth to the Klingon homeworld and back in roughly a day and there's really no other way to interpret it.

 

Unless Scotty was just speaking metaphorically. Like "not long".

 

As KingDaniel pointed out, that's completely consistent with TOS,where the dialogue was very 1960s colloquial. "You've earned your paycheck for this week, Scotty" and so on. "Let's get the hell out of here."

A lot of the dialogue on the original series wouldn't have been out of place in a 1940s war movie set on a battleship or submarine. The characters rib each other, use contemporary slang, and even talk about going bowling. Heck, remember Kirk joking about dipping little girl's pigtails in inkwells?

(Okay, that line hasn't aged very well.)

Plus, the people in the new movie aren't completely contemporary. Last time I checked, most 20th century humans weren't having threesomes with cat-people.

 

The super-beaming has ramifications for the writing of future films.

With a backpack device you can beam from Earth to Chronos [and no I don't care what the proper spelling is for the Klingon home-world]; you basically have Stargates in Star Trek.

The travel appears to be instantaneous. It is, at the very least, a much faster form travel than that offered by the Enterprise. In Trek '09 the transwarp beam, for example, had to be faster than the Enterprise, which was traveling at high warp away from the Vulcan solar system. And that's after giving the Enterprise a nice head start (e.g., stranded, fighting monsters, finding Spock, meeting Scotty). In Trek '09 and in Nu-Trek II, there did not appear to be any need to a transporter pad on the other side. So, this is even better than Stargate technology.

In short, we should no longer be worrying about transporting diplomats from planet to planet or fretting over whether the Ritalin will make to the colony in time. Anything that is at least within the same distance is from Earth to Chronos should be relegated to transporter duty. Why send a ship with hundreds of people when you can just beam it over?

 

Not really. If the plot requires it, it'll be used. If not, it won't.

How many "game changing" technologies did they find on TOS that were forgotten about the very next week?

 

That's a good point, but we've had transwarp beaming over considerable distances in both films in the new franchise. If it was something they meant to drop or were embarrassed about, I don't think that they would have had Scotty complain about the use of his formula in the last film.

 

I agree that, brought to its logical conclusion, transwarp beaming makes starships obsolete.

 

I really don't think so. I'm not sure that too many folks will volunteer for the process. We've already seen how easy it is to disrupt a short range transporter beam. I'd bet the mortality rate of transwarp beaming would be incredibly high if used everyday to transport millions of people.

 

Disrupt ? When did that happen ?