Maximum speed of the NuEnterprise

[Pauln6]

That's because "phased plasma that actually creates the field" is a backstage as opposed to canon source.

As it stands, the tech manual describes a different process altogether:

Notice that this an EM signal with a frequency measured in hertz, inside the warp core, not in the warp field surrounding the ship; is THIS the warp core frequency then?

I'm not wholly convinced that they aren't talking about the same principle in slighlty different ways. However, they still talk about a range of frequencies and not a single static frequency that could be memorised and input without the use of sensors.

This made me think of something. Thinking in terms of audio frequencies for a moment, and of musical tones in particular, nearly any sound you hear an instrument produce consists of a fundamental pitch (having a specific frequency) and an overtone or harmonic series consisting of higher tones (in varying intensities) which are frequency multiples of the fundamental. Which overtones are stronger or weaker determines tone quality - it it's the particulars of the overtone series which make a violin sound like a violin, a clarinet sound like a clarinet, and so forth. This would, of course, also be true of non-pitched sounds; the spectrum just gets a whole lot more complex.

Could not the warp core signature be an analogue to this? Might each warp core have its own unique "harmonic series" determined by mathematical relations to a fundamental operating frequency?

Just throwing that out there.

I think something along these lines should be correct. I don't think that equalising warp frequencies should be simple.

I think I just have a philosphical divergence from newtype_alpha: I like the existing tech to be developed, defined, and limited for consistency and to allow focus on the human drama, whereas he seems happy for writers to re-invent ways of doing the same thing for the sake of convenience to allow focus on the human drama.

One problem with beefing up transporters as we see in the movie is that they aren't restricted to living beings. If it was simple, then (cloaked) planetary defence posts or ships could just transport bombs onto enemy ships while still billions of km away. Does it really matter if a chemical bomb materialises inside a bulkhead or water pipe?

Obviously, it makes sense for starships to travel with shields raised at all times to prevent this sort of incursion and yet we know from decades of Trek that they don't (presumably because of energy consumption concerns). For that matter it would be quite a good tactic to use at sub-light too. Transponders are coded so Federation ships would be able to spot each other (or a stolen Federation ship) but without them, presumably long range sensors don't notice sub-light vessels as easily as a warp signature (and most races do not have the warp 'equation' yet).

For that matter, why use a bomb when you can just beam away part of the bulkhead (the bridge is a good start) or warp nacelle housing. Has anybody ever covered why this isn't possible?

 

[JarodRussell]

LOL, just wait for the lines "We're out of transporter range!" in the next movie (after a distance of something like 1,000 kilometers has been established).

Good point about the philosophy. I believe the writers are as well only going for plot convenience and not for internal logic and consistency. Which is very bad in my opinion.

For that matter, why use a bomb when you can just beam away part of the bulkhead (the bridge is a good start) or warp nacelle housing. Has anybody ever covered why this isn't possible?

Well, for one thing the shields would prevent you from doing that. But since they beamed over 9 AU (~1.3 BILLION kilometers) through the Narada's 24th century shields (which may or may not be derived from Borg technology)... the distance between Delta Vega and the Enterprise might have been as well a lightyear, the beam must have travelled much faster than the Enterprise's speed, and the Enterprise was definately flying with raised shields (combat situation and all), so yeah, I believe they could do everything they want with this magical plot device.

 

[Pauln6]

LOL, just wait for the lines "We're out of transporter range!" in the next movie (after a distance of something like 1,000 kilometers has been established).

Good point about the philosophy. I believe the writers are as well only going for plot convenience and not for internal logic and consistency. Which is very bad in my opinion.

For that matter, why use a bomb when you can just beam away part of the bulkhead (the bridge is a good start) or warp nacelle housing. Has anybody ever covered why this isn't possible?

Well, for one thing the shields would prevent you from doing that. But since they beamed over 9 AU (~1.3 BILLION kilometers) through the Narada's 24th century shields (which may or may not be derived from Borg technology)... the distance between Delta Vega and the Enterprise might have been as well a lightyear, the beam must have travelled much faster than the Enterprise's speed, and the Enterprise was definately flying with raised shields (combat situation and all), so yeah, I believe they could do everything they want with this magical plot device.

Federation encounters usually go:
'Unknown ship is 40 billion km away, sir. They're charging weapons.'
'Raise shields at leisure - it will take them ten minutes to reach us at warp 6.'

Not:
''Unknown ship is 40 billion km away, sir. They're scanning us.'
'Hail them, perhaps they're friendl...'
Roof dematerialises and the Bridge crew floats off into space...

Beefing up tranporters is a terrible, terrible idea.

 

[SalvorHardin]

Not:
'They're scanning us.'
'Hail them, perhaps they're friendl...'
Roof dematerialises and the Bridge crew floats off into space...

You know, that actually sounds like a pretty interesting scene

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think I just have a philosphical divergence from newtype_alpha: I like the existing tech to be developed, defined, and limited for consistency and to allow focus on the human drama, whereas he seems happy for writers to re-invent ways of doing the same thing for the sake of convenience to allow focus on the human drama.

I'm not HAPPY about it at all. I'm just willing to excuse it because that's the way it will always be and there's nothing I can do about, so there's no sense getting my boxers in a knot over it.

Writing is hard. Writing on a deadline is harder. Writing with a hundred million dollars of studio bureaucracy up your ass is really really hard. I'm most willing to forgive these types of liberties as long as the writers keep it simple and un-flashy; this is why I am so much happier with "We can use the formula for transwarp beaming" than "We can modulate the transporter signal to match the harmonic frequency of the other ship's warp coils, which will allow us to generate a covariant spatial aperture to guide the transporter beam to the target." That's pretty much the way it was done in TOS: "Cross circuiting to A... cross circuiting to B..." is a bit more elegant than "rerouting emergency power to the heisenberg compensators."

One problem with beefing up transporters as we see in the movie is that they aren't restricted to living beings. If it was simple, then (cloaked) planetary defence posts or ships could just transport bombs onto enemy ships while still billions of km away. Does it really matter if a chemical bomb materialises inside a bulkhead or water pipe?

Hell, why don't they do this with REGULAR transporters? It took the Voyager crew five years to figure out how to do that with the Borg, and even then they never did it again.

For that matter, why use a bomb when you can just beam away part of the bulkhead (the bridge is a good start) or warp nacelle housing. Has anybody ever covered why this isn't possible?

It's certainly possible. As to why nobody ever does it, who the hell knows? It's one of those great mysteries of treknology, like how come a guy with a phaser ever bothers to AIM at a target (and possibly miss) when he could just as easily set his phaser on wide field and stun everyone in the room.

Personally, I'd much rather leave this unexplained than have someone try to supply "science" to explain why this can't always be done.

Not:
'They're scanning us.'
'Hail them, perhaps they're friendl...'
Roof dematerialises and the Bridge crew floats off into space...

You know, that actually sounds like a pretty interesting scene

It really does, come to think of it. If anything it would give the Enterprise a new and scary type of threat to have to combat.

 

[Pauln6]

I'm not HAPPY about it at all. I'm just willing to excuse it because that's the way it will always be and there's nothing I can do about, so there's no sense getting my boxers in a knot over it.

Writing is hard. Writing on a deadline is harder. Writing with a hundred million dollars of studio bureaucracy up your ass is really really hard. I'm most willing to forgive these types of liberties as long as the writers keep it simple and un-flashy; this is why I am so much happier with "We can use the formula for transwarp beaming" than "We can modulate the transporter signal to match the harmonic frequency of the other ship's warp coils, which will allow us to generate a covariant spatial aperture to guide the transporter beam to the target." That's pretty much the way it was done in TOS: "Cross circuiting to A... cross circuiting to B..." is a bit more elegant than "rerouting emergency power to the heisenberg compensators."

No, I agree that technobabble is largely inappropriate but I distinguish that from defining the limitations of the technology and working within them. The Stargate franchise seems to do very well in this regard and quite a lot of their attempts at modifying technology have hideous unforeseen consequences that come back to haunt them in a subsequent story as an effective way of maintaining many of those limitations.

I agree that the writers have a difficult job but the basics of Treknology can be listed on one reference page. In fairness to NuTrek, pretty much all of the plot holes can be explained away fairly easy if they just establish warp corridors to formally increase the speed of the ships and assume that Delta Vega is in a different system to Vulcan.

Hell, why don't they do this with REGULAR transporters? It took the Voyager crew five years to figure out how to do that with the Borg, and even then they never did it again.

It's certainly possible. As to why nobody ever does it, who the hell knows? It's one of those great mysteries of treknology, like how come a guy with a phaser ever bothers to AIM at a target (and possibly miss) when he could just as easily set his phaser on wide field and stun everyone in the room.

Personally, I'd much rather leave this unexplained than have someone try to supply "science" to explain why this can't always be done.

Yes, leaving things unexplained works fairly well until some bright writer has a character actually do it. I've always assumed that wide beams drain the phaser power packs rapidly but yeah, in most engagements they should open with a couple of wide angle beams to thin out their opponents. Plus it might be sensible to carry spare power packs...

Not:
'They're scanning us.'
'Hail them, perhaps they're friendl...'
Roof dematerialises and the Bridge crew floats off into space...

You know, that actually sounds like a pretty interesting scene

It really does, come to think of it. If anything it would give the Enterprise a new and scary type of threat to have to combat.

I don't think it would that effective since emergency forcefields would pop up but explosives could be used to knacker some of the internal systems on a ship. Or transport explosives to knacker the shield emitters and you're in business!

Again, the problem can be resolved quite simply by laying down some bullet points about transporters. If there must be some kind of signal for the transporter to lock onto then the enemy ship would first have to attach such a transponder to the hull of a ship. They should never make it possible to beam up people without communicators or a transponder of some kind - thus losing your signalling device creates dramatic tension (although why they don't 'chip' their crew is a mystery - maybe they emit radiation that is harmful over long periods). You could also rule that standard navigational deflectors that are always active block transporter signals unless they are through linked transporter pads while full shields block even the pad signals. Plus internal ship's systems could interfere with transporter signals just enough that transporting site to site anywhere other than a pad inside a ship carries a significant risk. These issues can be overcome (by getting intruders on board your enemy's ship or a computer virus that lets you remotely activate their transporter pad - both of which can create dramatic tension) but prevent casual incursions. And restricting transporter range to at most a few hundred thousand km is preferable in my view. Long distance transporting within a star system isn't terrible if it's pad to pad but longer distances than that without using pads leave me very uneasy.

As an interesting aside, they should probably establish an 'energy limit' i.e. a limit to how much energy (as opposed to matter) the transporter can re-materialise - this would prevent the transport of high energy weapons like huge bombs but allow phasers and communicators to be charged up to a finite point after rematerialisation.

That wasn't even a full page of text and it easily covered the points I wanted with hardly any technobabble at all.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Again, the problem can be resolved quite simply by laying down some bullet points about transporters. If there must be some kind of signal for the transporter to lock onto then the enemy ship would first have to attach such a transponder to the hull of a ship.

Unfortunately that ship has sailed. If we had it to do again I would limit transporters such that you can only beam from one transporter to another, which would require the ship to drop a probe or something to a potential landing site before beaming anyone anywhere (of course you can't beam back to the ship if your beamout site is compromised; frequent plot device potential).

As an interesting aside, they should probably establish an 'energy limit' i.e. a limit to how much energy (as opposed to matter) the transporter can re-materialise - this would prevent the transport of high energy weapons like huge bombs but allow phasers and communicators to be charged up to a finite point after rematerialisation.

Good call. So even if you could beam a photon torpedo into the enemy bridge, you can't beam its warhead or its power systems with enough juice to arm it (although I'm not sure whether beaming antimatter is such a good idea, all things considered; some of it might spontaneously react in your pattern buffer).

Of course, writers probably have their own little cliff notes on tech things that include things we've never thought of and exclude lots of things we have. Since nobody's asking us, we're better off applying these ideas in really good fanfiction.

 

[Pauln6]

Unfortunately that ship has sailed. If we had it to do again I would limit transporters such that you can only beam from one transporter to another, which would require the ship to drop a probe or something to a potential landing site before beaming anyone anywhere (of course you can't beam back to the ship if your beamout site is compromised; frequent plot device potential).

Of course, writers probably have their own little cliff notes on tech things that include things we've never thought of and exclude lots of things we have. Since nobody's asking us, we're better off applying these ideas in really good fanfiction.

Restricted landing sites are the staple of Stargate after all!

Sadly, I only write really bad fan fiction.

 

[Captain Robert April]

That's because "phased plasma that actually creates the field" is a backstage as opposed to canon source.

As it stands, the tech manual describes a different process altogether:

Notice that this an EM signal with a frequency measured in hertz, inside the warp core, not in the warp field surrounding the ship; is THIS the warp core frequency then?

I'm not wholly convinced that they aren't talking about the same principle in slighlty different ways. However, they still talk about a range of frequencies and not a single static frequency that could be memorised and input without the use of sensors.

This made me think of something. Thinking in terms of audio frequencies for a moment, and of musical tones in particular, nearly any sound you hear an instrument produce consists of a fundamental pitch (having a specific frequency) and an overtone or harmonic series consisting of higher tones (in varying intensities) which are frequency multiples of the fundamental. Which overtones are stronger or weaker determines tone quality - it it's the particulars of the overtone series which make a violin sound like a violin, a clarinet sound like a clarinet, and so forth. This would, of course, also be true of non-pitched sounds; the spectrum just gets a whole lot more complex.

Could not the warp core signature be an analogue to this? Might each warp core have its own unique "harmonic series" determined by mathematical relations to a fundamental operating frequency?

Just throwing that out there.

Something like how each submarine has its own distinctive auditory singature on sonar?

If so, then we have further evidence that "Spock Prime" is not from the main timeline, because the only way he could punch in a warp core frequency that matched up with that bloated monstrosity of a starship is if, in his timeline, the Enterprise is just as bloated and misshapen, i.e., no way in hell would the warp core signature from the TOS ship even come close to resembling JJ's ship.

 

[M'Sharak]

I'm not wholly convinced that they aren't talking about the same principle in slighlty different ways. However, they still talk about a range of frequencies and not a single static frequency that could be memorised and input without the use of sensors.

This made me think of something. Thinking in terms of audio frequencies for a moment, and of musical tones in particular, nearly any sound you hear an instrument produce consists of a fundamental pitch (having a specific frequency) and an overtone or harmonic series consisting of higher tones (in varying intensities) which are frequency multiples of the fundamental. Which overtones are stronger or weaker determines tone quality - it it's the particulars of the overtone series which make a violin sound like a violin, a clarinet sound like a clarinet, and so forth. This would, of course, also be true of non-pitched sounds; the spectrum just gets a whole lot more complex.

Could not the warp core signature be an analogue to this? Might each warp core have its own unique "harmonic series" determined by mathematical relations to a fundamental operating frequency?

Just throwing that out there.

Something like how each submarine has its own distinctive auditory singature on sonar?

Very much like that, yes.

If so, then we have further evidence that "Spock Prime" is not from the main timeline, because the only way he could punch in a warp core frequency that matched up with that bloated monstrosity of a starship is if, in his timeline, the Enterprise is just as bloated and misshapen, i.e., no way in hell would the warp core signature from the TOS ship even come close to resembling JJ's ship.

Evidence schmevidence -- if it says "Spock Prime" in the script, then it's pretty clear that he's intended to be the Spock with whom we're already familiar, and looking for "further evidence" that he's some other, never-before-seen Spock, then crowing about it when you think you've found some is absurd, to put it mildly -- and you might as well have saved your double "bloated" to use where it might have a faint chance of impressing someone. Here, it's just more of your usual.

But try this as an easy fix: just have Scotty enter the frequencies, hey? All Old Spock was ever really required to do was to show him the equation; Scotty was already perfectly well-equipped to understand what was being described when he saw it, never mind that a guy who we already know consumes tech manuals as recreational reading and who in the movie already seemed to possess more than a passing familiarity with the Enterprise's technical specifications would very possibly have that set of details available in his head already.

 

[I-Am-Zim]

I'm not wholly convinced that they aren't talking about the same principle in slighlty different ways. However, they still talk about a range of frequencies and not a single static frequency that could be memorised and input without the use of sensors.

This made me think of something. Thinking in terms of audio frequencies for a moment, and of musical tones in particular, nearly any sound you hear an instrument produce consists of a fundamental pitch (having a specific frequency) and an overtone or harmonic series consisting of higher tones (in varying intensities) which are frequency multiples of the fundamental. Which overtones are stronger or weaker determines tone quality - it it's the particulars of the overtone series which make a violin sound like a violin, a clarinet sound like a clarinet, and so forth. This would, of course, also be true of non-pitched sounds; the spectrum just gets a whole lot more complex.

Could not the warp core signature be an analogue to this? Might each warp core have its own unique "harmonic series" determined by mathematical relations to a fundamental operating frequency?

Just throwing that out there.

Something like how each submarine has its own distinctive auditory singature on sonar?

If so, then we have further evidence that "Spock Prime" is not from the main timeline, because the only way he could punch in a warp core frequency that matched up with that bloated monstrosity of a starship is if, in his timeline, the Enterprise is just as bloated and misshapen, i.e., no way in hell would the warp core signature from the TOS ship even come close to resembling JJ's ship.

I totally agree. Couldn't have said it better myself. Hahaha! Bloated monstrosity!!! I can think of a few other, less flattering descriptives for that poor excuse for an imitation Enterprise.

 

[startrekrcks]

that's just taking the movie apart and nitpicking every single aspect of the movie my opinion may differ it may be a monstrosity to some but not to me.

 

[I-Am-Zim]

Nitpicking is fun!

 

[startrekrcks]

to you maybe I don't know what canonists have against this reboot of Star Trek honestly not trying to start a arguement here.

 

[I-Am-Zim]

What we "canonists" have against this reboot is the fact that the whole movie flies in the face of "canon". Yes, I know, it's an alternate universe/reality/timeline/waffle/spaceball/whatever. The events of this movie were never intended to fit within existing canon or the established continuity of Star Trek. The problem I have with the movie is that it was so far removed from established Star Trek that if they had given the characters different names and called it something completely different, it would have made no difference.

 

[startrekrcks]

I think it worked this reboot gives the chance for new adventures and that anything can happen anyway IMO

 

[startrekrcks]

it is a alternate universe did you not know that was their intention to do so

 

[Captain Robert April]

It felt like one of those movies where they're going about making their own story, then someone from the legal department points out that they're a little too close to this other property, so they make a point of buying up the rights to that other property, then go right back to making the story they were doing in the first place, now with names from the other property, pleasing almost nobody. Except the lawyers.

Kinda like what they did with "Starship Troopers". It was never about adapting Heinlein's novel to the screen, but to keep his widow from suing them for copyright infringement.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What we "canonists" have against this reboot is the fact that the whole movie flies in the face of "canon".

I suppose that's true. But the title of the show is "Star Trek," not "Canon Trek."

 

[C.E. Evans]

My own viewpoint was when CBS and Paramount went their separate ways after ENT, each took half of the Star Trek franchise with them (CBS the TV shows and Paramount the movies).

Star Trek XI wasn't so much to relaunch Star Trek as a viable property as it was Paramount's attempt to relaunch Star Trek movies as a viable property. A renewed overall interest in Trek was probably gravy for CBS as the overall license holder, but Paramount probably benefited from the movie's success more.

For Paramount, Star Trek XI allowed them to have their own Star Trek franchise that was now separate from the TV shows and allowed them the freedom to chart their own path free of previous continuity. IMO, this movie was where the TV shows and the movies said good-bye to one another, so a lot of stuff was fair game, including the Enterprise...