Force of Nature
- Thread starter Thanos007
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This one is one my favorites. Despite the story issues and behind-the-scenes drama (recounted on the episode's Memory Alpha page), it was nice to see an environmental damage episode where they really don't know how to fix the problem.
I don't doubt that many would have been glad to assume either of these things, since the episode was a total buzzkill, but a solution was never discussed in any episode or film. Maybe the Picard show will address it....
My only beef with this one is the utter failure to show the Fleming rescue in any sort of external VFX.
As portrayed, the ecological problem of the episode does not need a solution. Not in the next thousand or ten thousand years yet, that is. And in that time, one would expect all the involved cultures to have progressed past the polluting type of warp.
I mean, we know that everybody who came before them has. Civilization in the Milky Way is billions of years old, and nothing much has happened to subspace in all that time. So it's an issue the heroes can turn a blind eye on for hundreds or thousands of generations. They certainly don't need to do any better than the villains, who outnumber the heroes a thousand to one for dramatic reasons, yet haven't created any subspace potholes of note yet...
Yet the irrational panic and the warp 5 speed limit are quite plausible responses from a human civilization. And sort of the opposite of what we're facing here on Earth now, with actual threats looming at extremely short timescales but no panic reactions kicking in.
Timo Saloniemi
As portrayed, the ecological problem of the episode does not need a solution. Not in the next thousand or ten thousand years yet, that is. And in that time, one would expect all the involved cultures to have progressed past the polluting type of warp.
I mean, we know that everybody who came before them has. Civilization in the Milky Way is billions of years old, and nothing much has happened to subspace in all that time. So it's an issue the heroes can turn a blind eye on for hundreds or thousands of generations. They certainly don't need to do any better than the villains, who outnumber the heroes a thousand to one for dramatic reasons, yet haven't created any subspace potholes of note yet...
Yet the irrational panic and the warp 5 speed limit are quite plausible responses from a human civilization. And sort of the opposite of what we're facing here on Earth now, with actual threats looming at extremely short timescales but no panic reactions kicking in.
Timo Saloniemi
A potentially decent idea was squandered with sledgehammer tactics followed by nobody caring for continuity.
Now, to be fair, the episode does imply via dialogue how other the empires aren't going to bother - and it's the most subtle part OF the episode.
- TNG, post-episode, would keep saying "Authorized to exceed warp 5 limitation" :\
- "All Good Things" silently implies a third nacelle resolves the problem
- DS9 doesn't address it
- VOY (silently? I don't remember) implies using tinier nacelles resolves the problem
- TNG movies implies using bigger nacelles resolves the problem
Now, to be fair, the episode does imply via dialogue how other the empires aren't going to bother - and it's the most subtle part OF the episode.
Par for the course. I was with friends watching "Gambit" and for various scenes, everyone was hyped for an f/x extravaganza - such as for a piece of scanning equipment. The resultant blinking from an array of nightlights resulted only in exasperated sighs. By then, the most of the money was going to DS9 - can't blame them, it was a much more invigorated show and doing much to expand the Trek universe.
I vaguely recall the scene, but if they decided to use that long period of time - it renders the whole claim of urgency moot at best, which is another reason why the story is laughable. And even the Federation allowed the exceeding of the warp cap often enough - so I'll admit, they did try continuity for a while but if there was an arc, it needed honing.
Which implies all technological civilizations occur at the same time, which seems unlikely. The species from "Booby Trap" was warp capable but died out around 1350AD our timeframe. It's possible civilizations existed long before, some stress on space was put in, but healed over time. Many possiblities.
##WIN
It wasn't that no one cared for continuity that the idea got dropped, it was because it was realised by the showrunners not long after the episode aired, that the idea, was in fact very shit and was best ignored.
I'd imagine something as fundamental as warp drive damaging space would have meant Starfleet pulled all its resources to find the answer as quickly as possible; which makes me wonder if Voyager's tilting nacelles was a first experiment and late addition to Voyager's construction timetable. I expect in the meantime they probably found an answer pretty quickly, that would be fitted to all new build starships from that point forward, and then eventually something that was nothing more than a warp field software upgrade for the existing fleet.
Starfleet imposed a warp five restriction except in emergency circumstances. They then developed a warp drive first used in the Intrepid-Class that didn't have as serious an impact on subspace.
Or then stopped to think, understood that there was no need to do anything at all, and instead decided upon a policy stunt that looked good but cost absolutely nothing.
Sounds a bit unlikely that the drive would be a thing to be changed late in the game, especially on a ship where complex mechanical arrangements are involved. I mean, nacelles are probably an easy thing to swap, and quite possibly Starfleet puts its engines in nacelles for the very reason. But those hinged pylons with integrated impulse engines and whatnot look awfully complicated, a high-strung package rather than a last-minute improvisation.
As regards the timetable, there's a USS Intrepid in this very episode. LaForge competes with that ship's engineer on "power conversion levels". Is the E-D competing against the first ship of the Intrepid class, perhaps? She can't be an ancient design or individual in order to compete successfully on efficiency; assuming she isn't another Galaxy, we're dealing with a characteristic that is shared by different ship types with different machinery, and efficiency doesn't sound like something that would get better with age. Competing against a brand new ship would be an exercise worthy of the engineer of the Federation Flagship, so this could well be our insight into the design and construction timetable of Voyager type ships.
Then again, LaForge says he's competing with the engineer Kaplan whom he knows from the Academy; the ships in question might be irrelevant to the saber-rattling...
Why? Warp doesn't damage anything even on geological timescales. Except for the Hekarras Corridor, that is. And the solution there can't be to build special ships. Except if one builds special ships for use in the Hekarras Corridor, and offloads all incoming and outgoing cargo at the ends of the Corridor onto these special ships that then perform the transit.
The scenario from "Force of Nature" is quite akin to the Army only belatedly finding out that tires create grooves in the roads, thus theoretically eating through the bedrock in just a few million years at the current levels of traffic - and that a hundred years of heavy truck traffic over a particular area at Yellowstone has brought it close to collapsing into a magma chamber. This means zip to the highway network in general, and at Yellowstone the solution is to close that particular road, even if it means evacuating the town on the other side or building a bridge or an airstrip to literally get over the problem.
Timo Saloniemi
I seem to recall something about Voyager nacelles resolving this problem in one of the trek publication/articles back in the day around the time Voyager was about to come out.
Non-canonical.
It seems they didn't. It would be amusing if people in-universe wrote and yelled that Starfleet in prioritizing resisting the Dominion over adhering to the speed limit was Denying Science, being anti-science. While I'm sure it was unintentional, the idea that Starfleet did prioritize other things for over seven years is both amusing and intriguing, good unintentional, realistic social commentary. Admitting and agreeing that there is a problem doesn't mean a solution can even somewhat quickly be developed.
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What about on DS9 when Sisko made the sailing ship.
The one with the actual sail.
He was so ahead of the times, that guy.
The one with the actual sail.
He was so ahead of the times, that guy.
I think I remember a throwaway line at the start of Voyager about new filters or something but I may be imagining that.
There had to be less on the nose ways to make environmental analogies.
Another dumb thing about this ep. Worf declares “The Klingons will follow these rules, the Romulans will not.”
What?! If anything the Romulans are more likely to take it seriously at least when military interests are not in conflict with going slow.
There had to be less on the nose ways to make environmental analogies.
Another dumb thing about this ep. Worf declares “The Klingons will follow these rules, the Romulans will not.”
What?! If anything the Romulans are more likely to take it seriously at least when military interests are not in conflict with going slow.
It was an odd line, to be sure.
I head-canoned it to be just Worf betraying his own prejudice. I mean, consider the source.
Sisko: Captain's personal log, continued. Stardate 51721.4. I've decided to bring the Romulans into the war. After all, they're the only ones that can intercept those Dominion combat vessels without having to ask permission every time.
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