TSFS Destruct Sequence: Why Chekov?
- Thread starter alpha_leonis
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If I'm not mistaken this is exactly what the novel of the movie says, Sulu is gung-ho to get the Excelsior and starfleet says it's not happening due to Genesis.
There's no cannon explanation for this, but the Crucible books touch on it some. After the trial in which Kirk was demoted, he had a meeting with Admiral Cartwright to talk about what his next assignment would be. Cartwright told him that he was being offered command of a vessel with no senior staff, but didn't tell him the name (Enterprise-A was a surprise). He also said that the other officers involved in the theft of Enterprise would be unable to return to their old positions because of the drama surrounding the Genesis planet and the incident with the Klingon BOP.
Kirk asked if he could name any of the officers to his senior staff so that they would have jobs, and Cartwright was okay with it, adding that if the officers performed well under Kirk that they would have a chance to resume whatever tracks they'd been on prior to TWOK and TSFS.
--Sran
To me, that says more about Starfleet than it does Kirk and his friends. There's simply no excuse for Styles neglecting the security of his vessel and allowing Scotty to dismantle the engine. That the vessel was a prototype carrying high expectations only makes what happened worse, because the Federation wasn't able to test their new technology as planned.
--Sran
Which gives Starfleet all the more reason to chastise the heroes!
How so? Supposedly, yanking out a few chips would be trivially reversible, and the ship would be back at transwarp testing in no time flat.
Whether those tests were a splendid success or an embarrassing failure, we don't know. But we never were told that Scotty would have broken the ship for good.
Timo Saloniemi
Yet we don't see the technology again until the Borg show up. You're right that the project wasn't necessarily abandoned because of Scotty's sabotage, but it clearly was put in mothballs for some reason. Otherwise, it's likely we'd have seen future ships equipped with transwarp drive.
--Sran
According to the TNG science advisers, 24th century ships were faster than their 23rd century counterparts and how warp factors were calculated changed.
So if "transwarp drive" was merely the name of next gen warp drive, it may have been completely successful.
That's true. And it's never really explained what Excelsior's engine was supposed to do. Could it create conduits to travel through space like the Borg did? Did Starfleet even conceive such an idea during the twenty third century? Thinking about continuity, it's likely someone would have referenced the idea when talking about the Borg, and an explanation of why the Federation did or didn't have transwarp drive would have been given.
--Sran
Was it used like a shortcut? Otherwise, I don't see why it would help space travel. In any case, I hope everyone was treated before the drive was used. Remember what happened while the Enterprise was in that area?
--Sran
Yes. I would also figure Starfleet would figure out how to enter the interphase without it affecting the crew.
The Tholian Web said:
The bit about using the interphase phenomenon for transwarp is from Shane Johnson's Mr Scott's Guide. It's described as a sort of a permanent micro-wormhole that the ship carries along - basically the same thing as a warp bubble, then, making distances shorter (and speeds thus seemingly faster) by perverting the nature of space.
But the name "transwarp" never applies to any specific technology in onscreen Star Trek. Rather, it seems to be the general term for anything that is better than current warp. The Borg seem to know a dozen ways to do that (all of them no doubt the result of assimilation from others); the Feds might have developed one in the 2280s, adopted it, and then set their goals at something even better.
(Of course, the terminology now also carries the "in and out of warp" meaning, as in "transwarp beaming"...)
Timo Saloniemi
But the name "transwarp" never applies to any specific technology in onscreen Star Trek. Rather, it seems to be the general term for anything that is better than current warp. The Borg seem to know a dozen ways to do that (all of them no doubt the result of assimilation from others); the Feds might have developed one in the 2280s, adopted it, and then set their goals at something even better.
(Of course, the terminology now also carries the "in and out of warp" meaning, as in "transwarp beaming"...)
Timo Saloniemi
Isn't that assumed rather than specified?
Could easily be any three officers of Lt. Cmdr and above including the current CO.
In TNG it is specified to require the CO and XO, though one assumes the computer would know if Picard and Riker were not aboard to accept input from whoever is currently acting CO and XO, e.g. Data and Geordi. Losing the ability to blow up your toys rather than let them fall into the wrong hands seems to be a big deal for Starfleet, so I doubt they would write in such a big bug.
Of course, there is always "shoot a phaser at the warp core" - but destroying the ship doesn't extend to suicide, at least not for Janeway... (though of course you could argue given time she would have done so, she had only a split second before the Kazon got to the bridge).
I imagine that this is the hardest part because starships probably have so many failsafe systems around that thing that you cannot just drop them.
...After which you'd still have to answer "Are you sure?" "Did you think this through?" and "Perhaps you'd like to consult your fellow officers, especially the Medical Officer?" sixteen times or something, apparently.
A logical system would simply require the input of, say, three officers (or any number user-selectable by the CO or by a council of top officers). These could be lowly Ensigns for all the computer cares, as it's quite possible that the ship would be so badly hurt that only these three would survive and the sensors would be too badly damaged for the computer to establish whether or not this were true. But the thing would be, if the three Ensigns order self-destruct, a trio with higher ranks can override them. But if Picard, Riker and Data say that the ship must die, then officers of lower rank cannot override them.
Picard set self-destruct in a gambit to scare off Nagilum and the Bynars, hoping that the enemies would yield and the self-destruct could be cancelled (and this is what happened in both cases). Kirk likewise made threats against Commissioner Bele - but when he got the opportunity to actually blow up the ship rather than just bluff with the concept, in a bid to stop the Kelvans from taking over the galaxy, he said "Are you mad?"... Sisko neither bluffed nor attempted self-destruct.
Threatening with self-destruct and trying to blow up the ship are two completely different things. One basically always excludes the other!
Timo Saloniemi
A logical system would simply require the input of, say, three officers (or any number user-selectable by the CO or by a council of top officers). These could be lowly Ensigns for all the computer cares, as it's quite possible that the ship would be so badly hurt that only these three would survive and the sensors would be too badly damaged for the computer to establish whether or not this were true. But the thing would be, if the three Ensigns order self-destruct, a trio with higher ranks can override them. But if Picard, Riker and Data say that the ship must die, then officers of lower rank cannot override them.
Actually, Janeway is the only starship skipper hero to have activated self-destruct with the actual intent of blowing herself up along with the ship.
Picard set self-destruct in a gambit to scare off Nagilum and the Bynars, hoping that the enemies would yield and the self-destruct could be cancelled (and this is what happened in both cases). Kirk likewise made threats against Commissioner Bele - but when he got the opportunity to actually blow up the ship rather than just bluff with the concept, in a bid to stop the Kelvans from taking over the galaxy, he said "Are you mad?"... Sisko neither bluffed nor attempted self-destruct.
Threatening with self-destruct and trying to blow up the ship are two completely different things. One basically always excludes the other!
Timo Saloniemi
Correct. Only O'Brien's quick thinking in regaining control of the ship prevented it from happening.
--Sran
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