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Sulu: "She's supposed to have transwarp drive"

As far as Sulu on the Excelsior goes, maybe the powers-that-be agreed with Shatner when he said to Takei, "But George, all the action takes place on the Enterprise!"
 
Was it ever said on screen that the "Great Experiment" failed? Only the TNG Tech Manual said so, and that book is hardly canon. And as others have pointed out, at some point warp factors were re-scaled, implying there had been a new development in warp drive. The Excelsior's warp drive would work well as that new development.
For 40 years now (!), this has been my biggest beef surrounding the Excelsior. Scotty CLEARLY sabotaged it, which is why it "failed". This was even mentioned in the STIV trial sequence. How on Earth this evolved to "transwarp drive was a failed experiment" is beyond me. I'm sure some other engineering found the missing chips from the transwarp computer, replaced them, and "Voila! Transwarp Excelsior".

As was pointed out upthread, you don't attach engines to a brand new ship design without knowing they're going to work.
 
It wasn't Excelsior that was a failure. It was transwarp. Vonda McIntyre included a deleted reference to being able to fly to Andromeda using transwarp in the novelization, so it isn't canon, but that was the idea. And since they obviously can't fly to another galaxy, it doesn't work, making it a failure.
 
I think there's two different facts here:
1) Scotty sabotaged Excelsior's transwarp drive.
2) Transwarp drive didn't ultimately work as intended; hence, it was a failure.

The problem seems to be that some people believe that #1 leads to #2.
 
It wasn't Excelsior that was a failure. It was transwarp. Vonda McIntyre included a deleted reference to being able to fly to Andromeda using transwarp in the novelization, so it isn't canon, but that was the idea. And since they obviously can't fly to another galaxy, it doesn't work, making it a failure.
This is all bullsh!t. Not canon is not canon. The gist that came out of STIII was that transwarp didn't work because Excelsior didn't engage transwarp drive. Even though this is because Scotty sabotaged it. Because people don't make connections from A to B.
 
This is all bullsh!t. Not canon is not canon. The gist that came out of STIII was that transwarp didn't work because Excelsior didn't engage transwarp drive. Even though this is because Scotty sabotaged it. Because people don't make connections from A to B.
Are you saying that Starfleet considered transwarp drive a failure because Excelsior's sabotaged drive didn't work? Why would they assume a sabotaged system was any sort of evidence of failure?

That would make about as much sense as me calling a computer a failure for not booting into Windows after I removed the hard drive.
 
That's kind of what the TNG Technical Manual implied at the end. Perhaps those improved warp engines prompted a redrawn warp scale in the 24th-Century.
Paris’ Transwarp was what they were shooting for—and since Stiles was already a reptile—no problemo

No sabotage by Scotty, Excelsior outruns Enterprise—but it takes longer…same speed as the other Excelsior class ships in TNG that can roughly keep up with Galaxy class ships.

Perhaps Excelsior would have reached Genesis to take care of the Bird of Prey?

There was a quote about “all speeds available” via Transwarp—so that is clearly Voth or maybe Stargate Universe capability that they were hoping for.

In the novel there was a Magellanic Cloud ship (smaller, sleeker..unarmed) that makes me wonder.

Maybe Vonda got a glimpse of the POTT study model and got creative?

Then there is the novel Dreadnought!
 
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Paris’ Transwarp was what they were shooting for—and since Stiles was already a reptile—no problemo

No sabotage by Scotty, Excelsior outruns Enterprise—but it takes longer…same speed as the other Excelsior class ships in TNG that can roughly keep up with Galaxy class ships.

Perhaps Excelsior would have reached Genesis to take care of the Bird of Prey?

There was a quote about “all speeds available” via Transwarp—so that is clearly Voth or maybe Stargate Universe capability that they were hoping for.

In the novel there was a Magellanic Cloud ship (smaller, sleeker..unarmed) that makes me wonder.

Maybe Vonda got a glimpse of the POTT study model and got creative?

Then there is the novel Dreadnought!
I doubt all of that. :hugegrin:
 
I don't really know what transwarp was intended to do, but I doubt TPTB knew what it was intended to do either. In the end I think Styles just intended to showboat. Use transwarp to outrun the E, showing off how much better Excelsior was, then double back to capture Our Heroes. Much like Spaceball One going to Ludicrous Speed. If Styles hadn't been so arrogant and stuck to regular warp, things might have progressed quite differently.
 
I don't really know what transwarp was intended to do, but I doubt TPTB knew what it was intended to do either. In the end I think Styles just intended to showboat. Use transwarp to outrun the E, showing off how much better Excelsior was, then double back to capture Our Heroes. Much like Spaceball One going to Ludicrous Speed. If Styles hadn't been so arrogant and stuck to regular warp, things might have progressed quite differently.
That gave me a great mental image.
 
Thing is, that actually is a pretty cool looking ship. A shame they soiled it with an incorrect registry. I guess if we get any more Abrams Filth movies they could use it there, that kind of registry is their thing after all.
 
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