Let's Scientifically Nitpick the Movies

[JarodRussell]

Which would make Troi not particularly useful when dealing with someone over a viewscreen.

Of course, we could imagine a viewscreen that also sends infrared images.

I don't know why you would want to send that when they have an infrared-spectrum mindreader on the other side, but yes, you could...

Viewscreens need to work entirely different in Trek. First of all, humans only need 15-25 frames per second to view a smooth motion, but what about other aliens? Some of them might need 200 fps, who knows? Some of them might see other spectrums. Starfleet certainly would combine human and alien technologies to create a one-for-all system. Then they are 3-dimensional, like the walls of a holodeck. And then Geordi is able to look at the viewscreen and recognizes stuff normal humans can't see. And in a few episodes it was suggested that the actual image is a reconstruction based on sensor data (Worf was able to fake an attack of a Romulan Warbird because of that).

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

In First Contact, I'm not sure how long Cochrane, Riker, and Geordi were traveling at warp speed in the Phoenix, but I was under the impression that it was around a minute or two. When they finally stopped and turned around, they could clearly see the Earth as a round planet. Considering that they were traveling faster than light the Earth should have looked like nothing more than a bright star.

I could also nitpick the fact that we saw stars wooshing by when the Phoenix had clearly not left the solar system, but that seems to be the standard way of portraying warp speed in Star Trek. We saw the same thing in Star Trek 4 when the Bird of Prey was hurtling toward the sun at warp 9.

 

[JarodRussell]

I dunno, I think they where just flying at warp 1, that is lightspeed, not faster. The Vulcans were interested in the warp field, in the fact that humans used a warp drive, they were not interested in the actual speed.

And one minute at lightspeed is not such a big distance, since it would take 8 minutes to reach the sun, and about 12 minutes average to reach Mars.

And those streaks swooshing past the windows have never been stars. You would need to travel at tens of thousands of times the speed of light to have stars swooshing by at that speed, and then they wouldn't blur like that.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

I dunno, I think they where just flying at warp 1, that is lightspeed, not faster. The Vulcans were interested in the warp field, in the fact that humans used a warp drive, they were not interested in the actual speed.

And one minute at lightspeed is not such a big distance, since it would take 8 minutes to reach the sun, and about 12 minutes average to reach Mars.

One minute at the speed of light would take you more than eleven million miles, and they looked a lot closer than that.

And those streaks swooshing past the windows have never been stars. You would need to travel at tens of thousands of times the speed of light to have stars swooshing by at that speed, and then they wouldn't blur like that.

Those streaks have always been stars. The fact that you would actually need to be traveling tens of thousands of times the speed of light is what makes it a valid thing to nitpick.

 

[Timo]

And then Geordi is able to look at the viewscreen and recognizes stuff normal humans can't see.

Is he? I thought he was sent to look through a real window if such input was desired. At least this is done in "Justice"...

Those streaks have always been stars.

Never established as such, really. All we know is that when a ship accelerates from standstill to warp, some of the background stars become such streaks, and when a ship decelerates, some of the streaks become stars.

It would be quite consistent to say that most of those dots are pieces of debris that flash brightly when entering the warp field of the ship. Bright things up close, rather than even brighter things lightyears away; no visual difference.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kegg]

Never established as such, really. All we know is that when a ship accelerates from standstill to warp, some of the background stars become such streaks, and when a ship decelerates, some of the streaks become stars.

That sort of establishes that at least some of the streaks are stars, though.

Clearly, also, stars becoming streaks is the intended visual, so describing them alternately as debris and such is a rationalisation. Maybe the fact the stars are streaking as something to do with how the warp drive works - after all, the starship itself streaks as it jumps into warp.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. And the warp field around the ship supposedly distorts space, thus also one's vision of space. For all we know, those are the same stars streaking past the ship over and over again!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Just to drag an issue over from elsewhere: how could Will Decker state with any confidence whatever that a Voyager probe "disappeared into a [black hole] over three hundred years ago?" He's talking about a piece of 20th century technology and an event that would have had to have occurred in our era and somewhere shockingly close to our solar system. What in the instrument package of a Voyager probe or our current abilities to observe the Universe would make it possible for us to know - or even guess with confidence - such a thing?

Just as a f'rinstance, take a look at a summary of what we actually know and can infer from the data being sent back by the first Voyager probe regarding phenomena it was designed to observe (the section on "Heliopause"): Link

The Star Trek characters not only know that such a probe encountered a black hole, but that it "disappeared into it" as opposed to, oh, say being crushed by it.

 

[Timo]

There is no need for the knowledge to come from the 1970s. Rather, it could be that the presence of black holes close to Sol was discovered in the 2070s, and their properties analysed with the best available late 21st sensor technology, after which 22nd century theories were formulated to explain why Voyager 6 suddenly stopped transmitting when reaching the coordinates of such a black hole.

We hear of small black holes passing through the Sol system in DS9 "Past Tense" and causing havoc with the Defiant's transporters (i.e. sending Sisko and pals to the past). Similar phenomena, quite different from the larger black holes whose properties we think we currently understand pretty well, may have been discovered to be ubiquitous, and to have properties that allow for interdimensional travel or somesuch.

Of course, Decker could be just plain wrong, relying too much on the above sort of scientific certainty. After all, in VOY "One Small Step", it was discovered that another type of phenomenon was moving through the Sol system at that time - one that captured several spacecraft including Ares IV, and spirited them to the other side of the galaxy. This phenomenon could easily be responsible for the strange but nonviolent displacings of Voyager 6, Pioneer 11 (as the Klingons were able to use it as a shooting target without alerting the defenders of Sol in ST5:TFF), and probably also the Charybdis of TNG "The Royale" fame.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

There is no need for the knowledge to come from the 1970s. Rather, it could be that the presence of black holes close to Sol was discovered in the 2070s, and their properties analysed with the best available late 21st sensor technology, after which 22nd century theories were formulated to explain why Voyager 6 suddenly stopped transmitting when reaching the coordinates of such a black hole.

Decker states it as a certain fact. It's kind of important to the plot.

 

[Timo]

Why wouldn't it be a "certain fact" if they have the weapon, the time, and the motive? If they know there was a black hole there at that time, it would be pretty silly to keep on thinking that there is no "certain" explanation to the probe's fate.

Few scientific truths are based on eyewitness accounts. Virtually none involving outer space are. There would be no reason to doubt the validity of a good theory on the probe's disappearance - after all, theory = truth. Until a better theory, a better truth, comes along, that is.

As for saying that the probe "disappeared", Decker would probably say that even if the theory stated that the probe was destroyed by the black hole. After all, Decker is now seeing the probe sitting right there, happy as an apple. He wouldn't dare use the word "destroyed" any more.

It's not really an important plot point in the sense that the theorized disappearance would have predictive value. The theory merely gets confirmed, centuries late, as a plausible explanation for the plot fact that the probe sits there. Even if there was no such theory, the probe would still sit there, and Decker would have to adapt to the fact.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, you see, I was kind of interested in the premise of "nitpicking the science of the movies" here, as opposed to playing the Trek Logic Excuse-making Game that's carried on in almost every other topic on the board. The latter is something that everyone can do in their sleep by this time, at least to their own satisfaction. So I was wondering if anyone knew of any way that we might possibly actually get such specific data from a Voyager probe that such a conclusion could be reached or whether the statement in the movie is doomed to be only the customary and arbitrary Trek handwavium that it was clearly on the writer's part.

A lot of the "scientific nitpicking" thus far doesn't actually have much to do with either science or technology, though - debating whether the Genesis Device (which is based in neither science nor technology) could create a star and planet based on the parameters established for the thing has nothing to do with either, for example, but is entirely a conversation about the internal story logic of the script and nothing more.

 

[Cryogenic]

A lot of the "scientific nitpicking" thus far doesn't actually have much to do with either science or technology, though - debating whether the Genesis Device (which is based in neither science nor technology) could create a star and planet based on the parameters established for the thing has nothing to do with either, for example, but is entirely a conversation about the internal story logic of the script and nothing more.

Of course the Genesis Device is based, or purportedly based, in science and technology -- the Genesis DEVICE, developed by SCIENTISTS, for the purposes of SCIENTIFIC experimentation. The fact that you assert it isn't is either a) a gross failure on your part, or b) perhaps more damningly, a comment about the inadequacies of the TWOK screenplay and film. You talk about "Trek handwavium", so point that accusation where it's really needed. Few things exemplify ST's flirtation with the improbable through hokum more than the Genesis Device.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Dennis, as I would have pointed out in the Trek XI thread where this nitpick originated (and it is a legitimate nitpick), you're straining at TMP's paramecium while a school of Abrams' blue whales go merrily down your gullet. But okay, Decker should not have said that definitively. The addition of "It was theorized" would have solved that problem. But you (and Scalzi, God bless him) are ignoring one thing: Decker didn't say it was a black hole, he said it was what was once called a black hole and, as someone pointed out above, science already postulates more than one kind. Who knows, it could have been a chrono-synclastic infundibulum. If, in your book, the BSG finale can get away with using the much sloppier terminology of God, why can't Decker say "black hole" in a throw-away piece of exposition?

(As far as Voyager 6's sophistication goes: this was a later model of the Voyagers we launched--it was smaller, for one thing--and, in a universe where DY-100s were plying the spaceways in the 1990s, who can say how accurate a record of its disappearance it kept?)

 

[Cryogenic]

Still, Dennis *is* right about that dialogue. On the face of it, it's stupid. Moreover: Voyager 1 wasn't launched until 1977, and here's Voyager 6, which Decker asserts was "launched more than three hundred years ago," in spite of the fact that TMP is set circa 2272!!! It would seem, on first glance, that someone fucked up, and that more than a few someones declined to notice. But wait...

The easy way out of this error (as above), since it isn't actually a "science" error, so to speak, unless you consider the universe a closed system based on strict determinism, with only one way for everything to go (and even then, ST can simply be a parallel universe), is to say that everything post-1966 (i.e. ST's inception date) within the ST universe is highly speculative and represents an alternate future, which also neatly deals with Khan and the Eugenics Wars and a host of other things scheduled to happen remarkably close to what-was-then present day, but never did.

And is it even an error? In a way, the Voyager 6 craft, combined with Decker's remark, is maybe a poke at the low funding of the space program, and general lack of progress, relative to what we could have achieved, in the latter half of the 20th Century. To these men, women and transgendered people of the 23rd Century, Voyager 6 is an ancient piece of technology, more or less, but ironically, we never actually got that far, and it seemingly took us longer to get the Voyager missions going than in ST's more rapidly evolved reality. Life is sweet, but art can be sweeter.

Or something like that.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

... in spite of the fact that TMP is set circa 2272!!!

Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the year in which TMP took place was not established until several movies later. I don't think we even knew that TOS was taking place in the 23rd Century until Star Trek 4.

 

[Harvey]

^^
TWOK you mean? The film that begins with the title card "In the 23rd Century..."

 

[Kegg]

... in spite of the fact that TMP is set circa 2272!!!

Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the year in which TMP took place was not established until several movies later. I don't think we even knew that TOS was taking place in the 23rd Century until Star Trek 4.

'In the 23rd Century...' is used as a titlecard for Star Trek 2, but yes, TMP never specifices what year exactly the events of the film are taking place. If anything Decker's line suggests that the events of TMP were originally intended to take place later than 2272.

Edit: Drat Harvey and his lack of completely irrelevant paragraphs and beating me to the punch! Ahem.

Since 'black holes' are consistently called 'black holes' in subsequent Star Trek productions, and if we're to accept that as evidence, then Brutal Strudel's suggestion that it's referring to, well, not the crunchy variety of 'black holes' is possible.

 

[Cryogenic]

... in spite of the fact that TMP is set circa 2272!!!

Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the year in which TMP took place was not established until several movies later. I don't think we even knew that TOS was taking place in the 23rd Century until Star Trek 4.

I don't know. But if dates for TOS have been definitively established (I'm not as well-versed in TOS lore as I could be), then TMP's can be pinned down, as it is set "three years later", at least according to GR. In fact, the film really has a hard-on for threes and multiples thereof, up to the number twelve. TMP seems to treat such numbers and geometric arrangements in a cosmic religious sense, not unlike the ideas of the Pythagoreans, among others. Anyway, that's getting off the beaten path. I should just like to point out that I wrote "circa" for a reason. I'm pretty sure the idea that this was the mid-late 23rd Century had been settled on by TMP, even if an exact year hadn't been chosen. Or am I completely off-base?

 

[Lieut. Arex]

Well, you see, I was kind of interested in the premise of "nitpicking the science of the movies" here, as opposed to playing the Trek Logic Excuse-making Game that's carried on in almost every other topic on the board. The latter is something that everyone can do in their sleep by this time, at least to their own satisfaction. So I was wondering if anyone knew of any way that we might possibly actually get such specific data from a Voyager probe that such a conclusion could be reached or whether the statement in the movie is doomed to be only the customary and arbitrary Trek handwavium that it was clearly on the writer's part.

The only thing I can think of is JPL would see a huge Doppler shift in V6's radio transmissions, the same process that lead to the discovery of the Pioneer Anomaly though the Voyager 6 Anomaly would be a shift so large only a black hole's powerful gravitational pull could explain it. Astronomical observation of the area would show any disturbances of Kuiper Belt objects adding further evidence for the black hole's existence as would any X-rays, etc. given off by any of that matter falling inside as well. Since there was no huge shower of comets wiping out all life on Earth, dueling scientific papers would follow debating whether V6 was destroyed or sent through a wormhole with the findings in TMP settling the debates and requiring the losing estates to pay off any challenges made on Long Bets.

Still, Dennis *is* right about that dialogue. On the face of it, it's stupid. Moreover: Voyager 1 wasn't launched until 1977, and here's Voyager 6, which Decker asserts was "launched more than three hundred years ago," in spite of the fact that TMP is set circa 2272!!! Someone fucked up. And more than a few someones were too dumb to notice.

I disagree. The concept of a Voyager 6 fits perfectly well with the fact the American space program in the Star Trek universe was far better funded in the 1970's and 80's than in our own otherwise there's no way to explain the DY class existing in the mid-1990's. We see a picture of a space shuttle landing on the Rec Deck display in TMP, but there's no date. We know that's from one of the glide tests, but the Trek universe's Enterprise might be returning from an orbital flight launched off a modified or even a flyback F1 booster. (I'm excluding any info from any production after TMP for purposes of this point.)