Use the multiquote function from now on.
Temporal Cold War and the rest of Trek history
- Thread starter Noddy
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Use the multiquote function from now on.
This argument is entirely circular. We all know exactly why Picard didn't mention the Xindi attack - because it hadn't been written yet, and it was therefore impossible for it to be included. Continuity can be a wonderful thing, but it's completely ludicrous to say that Star Trek can't show a story about a surprise attack on Earth simply because Picard once named a few examples of historical surprise attacks which didn't include any that specifically targeted Earth.
People don't automatically express every single piece of knowledge in their heads simply because some of it might be relevant, and there isn't even any logical reason to assume that any of the 24th century crews we've watched automatically must have had any in depth knowledge of all these 200 year old events in the first place.
^^^
I agree, someone in the 26th-Century might mention a few conflicts the Federation has been involved in off-hand and skip the Dominion War. It's not because it happened in another timeline, but just because that person is only mentioning a few they're more personally familiar with than others.
I agree, someone in the 26th-Century might mention a few conflicts the Federation has been involved in off-hand and skip the Dominion War. It's not because it happened in another timeline, but just because that person is only mentioning a few they're more personally familiar with than others.
Both Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg have written a considerable number of time travel stories. Both authors make the point that just because the time traveler knows he will eventually succeed, that doesn't excuse him from skipping everything between that point and the point when he does find out he succeeds. If he doesn't do the prescribed actions, the outcome could very well be a massive failure. So while the Enterprise crew are back in the past, nothing is certain - they haven't finished doing everything they were supposed to do.
The Doctor Who version of technobabble that doesn't even try to sound "techno," let alone scientific.
That's a very Human-centric point of view, though. Picard talks about "first contact," but he may not be speaking necessarily of Human first contact. The Federation, even at its founding, was a union of Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites. Maybe the disastrous first contact to which Picard referred was Vulcan/Klingon first contact, and it led to decades of war between Qo'noS and Vulcan.
The Doctor Who version of technobabble that doesn't even try to sound "techno," let alone scientific.
Yes, it's true -- Doctor Who is not trying to sound impressive, just to have fun. To paraphrase Seth MacFarlane, this is a frivolous indulgence that Star Trek is quite above.
At least the Jon Pertwee era's technobabble sounded like technobabble instead of just babble.
That's a very Human-centric point of view, though. Picard talks about "first contact," but he may not be speaking necessarily of Human first contact. The Federation, even at its founding, was a union of Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites. Maybe the disastrous first contact to which Picard referred was Vulcan/Klingon first contact, and it led to decades of war between Qo'noS and Vulcan.
The Doctor Who version of technobabble that doesn't even try to sound "techno," let alone scientific.
Yes, it's true -- Doctor Who is not trying to sound impressive, just to have fun. To paraphrase Seth MacFarlane, this is a frivolous indulgence that Star Trek is quite above.
"...reverse the polarity of the neutron flow..."
Maybe, maybe not. Is there anything that states that it is? Absolutely not, and youhave a good point with "In a Mirror, Darkly."
But as I see it, as federation technology advances, they tend to make their ships larger. So it is my belief that the Abramsverse Enterprise is far more advanced than the TOS Enterprise, since the Abrams version is about the same size as the Enterprise D. The ability for the Nu-Enterprise to Warp from Earth to Vulcan or Q'onos in mere minutes seems to imply they have perfected transwarp in the Abramsverse, or some other means of FTL that is faster than TOS, or TNG for that matter. I believe that the Kelvin is also more advanced than the TOS Enterprise, since it seems to be about twice as large, and based on the phaser\torpedo volleys it went out with, before being destroyed. Seemed to have more firepower than the 1701-Prime, especially prior to refit.
That is all admittedly anecdotal on my part, though.
Kind of like Doctor Who "Pyramids of Mars", where Sarah Jane automatically assumes history is safe because she knows Sutekh wasn't released in 1910, and the Doctor shows her what will happen if they don't stay and stop Sutekh.
^ Right on Noddy. Pyramid of Mars happens to be one of my favorite serials.
A similar event can be seen in the ENT episode "Twilight". Where the Xindi succeed at destroying Earth because Archer wasn't in command of Enterprise. Remember Daniels said the Xindi attack on Earth (Florida) was never supposed to happen. The subsequent destruction of Earth (and by extension the Federation would never be founded) would follow if Archer and his crew did not prevent the Xindi from destroying Earth with their weapon.
A similar event can be seen in the ENT episode "Twilight". Where the Xindi succeed at destroying Earth because Archer wasn't in command of Enterprise. Remember Daniels said the Xindi attack on Earth (Florida) was never supposed to happen. The subsequent destruction of Earth (and by extension the Federation would never be founded) would follow if Archer and his crew did not prevent the Xindi from destroying Earth with their weapon.
It's really only Voyager that slowed warp speed down to make crossing the galaxy a lifelong journey. Ignoring the warp speed charts in technical manuals and going by on-screen evidence, the new movies fit in very well with...
In TOS, TAS and the movies they visited the rim of the galaxy twice ("Where No Man..." and "By Any Other Name"), the centre of the galaxy twice ("Magicks of Megas-Tu" and STV: TFF), they covered 1000 light years in 12 hours at warp 8.4 in "That Which Survives" (they would have made Voyager's entire journey in a month!). In Enterprise they got to Kronos in 4 days at warp 4. In First Contact the Enterprise-E got from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in a scene break. In various DS9 episodes, they got from a space station on the frontier to Earth, Romulus, Kronos, Ferenginar and Kronos in the space of a scene break, often just by Runabout, without any hint of the weeks of journey time that those trips should have taken.
I say the new movies are just basing their warp speeds on different examples to, say, Voyager and are ignoring the time/speed charts in the technical books (as all the above did)
Yet 25 years later, the new Enterprise fired the same kind of phasers and torpedoes we saw in TMP and TWoK. So whatever extra weapons the Kelvin had (and those red phaser beams looked very TOS-ish to me), it wasn't something carried over into the next generation of starships.
All my opinion, of course. I say the new fits with the old just fine, if only we modify our assumptions a little.
(...of course, that leaves Voyager in a bind, their warp 9.975 being significantly slower than TOS' warp 8.4 - yet they crossed over with TOS, TNG and DS9.... it's confusing.)
I disagree.
Part of defending the Federation is deciding based on available evidence what threats they should be focusing on. When the Hansens went out, Starfleet was defending from more noticeable threats - the Tzenkethi, the Cardassians, and the like. On top of that, the Borg weren't exactly nipping at the Federation's heels yet; even assuming Starfleet was taking them seriously and believed the Borg were within warping distance, the last Starfleet had heard of the Borg were secondhand accounts from a handful of El Aurian refugees; should they be focusing on rumors, or on the border conflicts that were actively costing lives right then?
I agree. Even an organization as vast as the Federation doesn't have infinite resources and equipment. Starfleet sent its ships and troops where they were most urgently needed. Allocating significant manpower to chase down rumors about a machine-based civilization from a far corner of the galaxy isn't good decision-making. Starfleet had no reason to believe the Borg were any more dangerous than the neighboring civilizations it was already dealing with.
Things changed after the brass read Picard and Riker's reports, but that situation involved a face-to-face encounter that cost the lives of eighteen men and women. Real casualties need to be treated with much more care and seriousness than rumor and innuendo.
--Sran
Regarding Starfleets apparent lack of knowledge over the Borg: as long as we're speculating, I'd like to think pre-Federation Section 31 attempted to cover up the info from "Regeneration" becase they had some inkling that general knowledge of the Borg shouldn't be available to people until the Fed's "official" first contact with them in the 24th century. Not everything could be repressed over the centuries (El Aurian refugee stories, etc), but the arctic team's scans could certainly be, so the Borg would simply exist to most who even cared to know as something along the lines of Bigfoot...
As events in the 24th century unfolded, whomever had this classified data could have seen fit to start releasing it to certain individuals such as the Hansens to investigate through unofficial channels.
OR.... Starfleet records from the pre-Federation era may have been stored on Etch-A-Sketches, which would explain why the Ferengi incident, most knowledge of the Xindi and the Temporal Cold War itself seem to have been lost. Someone shook the records...
As events in the 24th century unfolded, whomever had this classified data could have seen fit to start releasing it to certain individuals such as the Hansens to investigate through unofficial channels.
OR.... Starfleet records from the pre-Federation era may have been stored on Etch-A-Sketches, which would explain why the Ferengi incident, most knowledge of the Xindi and the Temporal Cold War itself seem to have been lost. Someone shook the records...
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TOS Warp Scale (Cochrane Scale):
V/c = WF^3
Where V = Velocity of the vessel, c = the velocity of light, and WF = the warp factor.
TNG Warp Scale:
Up to warp 9:
V/c = WF^(10/3)
Past Warp 9:
V/c = WF^[<(10/3)+a*(-Ln(10-WF))^n>+f1*((WF-9)^5)+f2*((WF-9)^11)]
Where a is the subspace field density, n is the electromagnetic flux, and f1 and f2 are the Cochrane refraction and reflection indexes respectively. Under ideal conditions values of a = 0.00264320, n = 2.87926700, f1 = 0.06274120 and f2 = 0.32574600 can be expected within a "normal" area of deep interstellar space
There is a theory about "non-normal" areas of space called warp highways. A warp highway is a region of space where interstellar conditions such as gas density, electric and magnetic fields, and local fluctuations in the subspace domain combine to allow starships to travel at speeds significantly higher than normal. These regions can consist of broad areas encompassing a number of whole star systems, or narrow corridors which can extend for many thousands of light years. You could also think of these as the same way we would use ocean currents to speed up sea travel.
The converse of the theory explains regions called "sandbars" where warp travel is impossible. One such example is the Briar Patch in Insurrection.
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Warp 9.975 was (iirc) Voyager's maximum speed, given the long journey ahead Janeway and her senior staff could have made the decision only to use that speed when they had to and to travel back to Earth at a more reasonable rate of speed to preserve the engines.
Also, we often saw Voyager (especial at the start of episodes) not at warp, but obviously at sublight speeds. My interpretation is that they were "dashing and pausing," frequently slowing to sublight to perform preventative maintenance, again to preserve the engines for the long journey.
These two things are why it was going to "take them so long."
"Even at maximum speeds, it would take seventy five years to reach the Federation."
That's Janeway's exact quote. No wiggle room, it's how long it'd take if they maintained their warp 9.975, established earlier in the episode as their "sustainabe cruise velocity" (which leads one to think they can actually go faster for short periods)
As for Sans' talk of subspace field density and warp superhighways, it sounds kinda nice, but I can't buy it making a big difference on the sheer scale we see throughout Trek - the old Enterprise warps to the galactic rim and core, to and from Earth on a whim, but Voyager takes an entire lifetime? Particularly with Voyager's advanced Borg sensors post-"Scorpion"
That's Janeway's exact quote. No wiggle room, it's how long it'd take if they maintained their warp 9.975, established earlier in the episode as their "sustainabe cruise velocity" (which leads one to think they can actually go faster for short periods)
As for Sans' talk of subspace field density and warp superhighways, it sounds kinda nice, but I can't buy it making a big difference on the sheer scale we see throughout Trek - the old Enterprise warps to the galactic rim and core, to and from Earth on a whim, but Voyager takes an entire lifetime? Particularly with Voyager's advanced Borg sensors post-"Scorpion"
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