Kelvin Universe Warp Speeds

I was watching Star Trek (2009) and, not sure why I did not spot this the last time I watched it, but I did this time, but, how fast was the Enterprise going to get to Vulcan in such as short time? I only ask because I am sure that in Voyager, 15 light-years, at maximum warp, took 48 hours (when they had to chase the USS Dauntless). I heard that they dumbed down the techy side a bit to appeal to a wider audience.

 

Not sure but it didn't seem like a long time at all.

 

The big piece of evidence point to the Earth-to-Vulcan travel time being unreasonably short is Sulu telling Pike they've reached maximum warp, which starts an unbroken stretch of action that goes all the way to the Enterprise arriving at Vulcan. There is a time gap just before that, when Kirk passes out, which lasts at least long enough for McCoy to change uniforms. Kirk could be unconscious for seconds, or he could be out for days, but the kicker is that they ship probably should hit top speed earlier than the last couple minutes of its journey unless the entire journey only lasted a few minutes. It's hand-waveable, but awkward.

No, the really hard one to figure out is STID, where the trip from Earth to the edge of the Klingon home system takes an ambiguous amount of time, but the trip back seems to cover only a couple minutes, unless, again, McCoy waits several hours for no reason before checking out Khan and telling him they've fled the Admiral's ship. Worse than that is that is the dreadnaught knocks them out of warp inside the orbit of the moon; one, the Enterprise really should've already slowed down if they were that close (it's like being run off the road in a 90 MPH car chase down the interstate, and crashing into your own mailbox), and, two, the Admiral has already failed in keeping Kirk from getting to Earth and telling Starfleet about his dastardly plan; even if communications are jammed, they can still just look out the window and watch Admiral Robocop murder their golden-boy with a mysterious, evil-looking starship.

Beyond is a bit better, if only because nobody does anything while the ships cross through the nebula aside from crossing through the nebula, so it's easy to imagine it takes as much time as seems reasonable to cross the nebula.

 

They had high-speed warp tunnels according to Adm Marcus' office display, IIRC

 

I think its more a pacing issue which leaves the travel times fairly nebulous. The editing implies a fairly quick time, yet McCoy has time to change out of his cadet uniform, for Kirk to have a full on allergic reaction that is extremely severe swelling/angioedema, and Uhura has time to change and take her station.

Now, one explanation that I have seen is that Sulu is providing an update to Pike (i.e. "still at maximum warp) and then Pike orders the mission briefing, rather than Sulu reporting their first achieving maximum warp. Not the best explanation but a possibility.

Except, Kirk wasn't the golden-boy at the time and Marcus could easily have spun that as "Kirk was in league with the terrorist John Harrison and I had to stop him."

 

Speed of plot.

 

So, Star Trek?

 

a) The sensor scans from the Nerada, the same ones that provided the quantum leap in technology in only one generation that culminated in the supersized Kelvinprise, also allowed Starfleet to crack transwarp ahead of schedule. Well over a century ahead.
b) The Kelvinverse was already far ahead of the curve tech-wise compared to the Prime Universe, and Nero only added some extra nitro to their already blistering developmental speed.
c) Brain and brain, what is brain?!?

 

Trek was always inconsistent but the one I really hated was in Into Darkness when the Enterprise is on the edge of Klingon space, get chased a bit by the Vengeance and then turn up near Earth a few minutes later. It's not just the super duper warp drive that annoys me but small universe of reference points with small universe design. Instead of being Earth they could have said it was some Federation colony and had the scene play out the exact same way. Nothing about it being Earth mattered except the audience is from Earth. It'd be basically what they did in Beyond by having Yorktown as a stand in to the idea of civilisation or the Federation without having to resort to using Earth again.

 

Come again? Nothing about Kelvin universe seemed more advanced until the Narada incursion.

Boy, all the other TOS films must have really been annoying too.

 

Is this the part where I point out that what happens in that specific scene in Into Darkness never happens in any other Trek film? Yes the Enterprises end up back at Earth in the films, yes the Enterprises might have super fast warp drive. I don't think there's a scene in any other film that has both happen at the same time. But if it did, yes it would have been annoying too.

 

Time/speed/distance in Trek is a mess, they make it up as they go along. In Voyager's pilot episode they give her top speed as warp 9.975, which the tech advisers sent memos saying that'd get them home in just a few years not 70 as the plot required. They ignored it. In TOS "That Which Survives" the Enterprise explicitly travels 1000 light years in 12 hours at warp 8.4, which would have gotten Voyager home in a month. TOS, TAS and the movies also visited the rim of the galaxy twice and the centre twice, like it was no big deal.

Here's a somewhat outdated chart showing how inconsistent it all is:

 

People commenting 'speed of plot' to these sorts of questions doesn't get old at all does it?

 

Does it get more or less old than people asking the question in the first place?

 

Nope. The ship will always move as fast or as slow as the story needs. If it has to be at Vulcan by act two it will be. No charts and calculations will change that.

 

Sorry I asked LOL

 

About the same. It's just a bit of a flippant answer isn't it? In the same way that you could reply to most threads where a poster asks a question about some aspect of Star Trek with 'because it's only a TV show'.

Doesn't make for a very good conversation on a discussion board.

 

It's not a bad question it's just one that most people have been arguing and come to terms with since back in 2009.

 

I was more amused by the idea that Earth was in danger in Into Darkness was somehow unique.

I'm not disagreeing that it isn't annoying. The pacing of the Kelvin films is probably my biggest gripe with films that overall I find to be good films. I am just noting that these films play with similar concepts to other Trek iterations.