The Space Map in The Chase

[MAGolding]

In "The Chase" Professor Galen shows Picard the route he intends to take.

GALEN: The Vulcan ship will take us as far as DS Four. An Al-Leyan transport is scheduled to arrive at the station three weeks later. They'll take us as far as Caere, and then we'll use the shuttle to get us to Indri Eight, our first stop.

As Galen speaks, his fingers move across the star map on a screen. I would love to see images with the course traced out on the star map.

But it seems obvious that Galen's fingers seem to trace a journey of tens of thousands of light years across the galaxy before he says: "Indri Eight, our first stop" indicating that the total length of the planned journey might be as long as the journey of the Voyager back from the Delta Quadrant that was predicted to last for 75 years!

Or is it obvious?

This is the cover of Tales of Known Space by Larry Niven, 1975.

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/8/8b/TLSKS1975.jpg

Take a good look at the cover painting by Rick Sternbach. It looks like we see about the entire approximately 100,000 light year diameter of the Milky Way galaxy, and a bunch of stars that seem to be spread out over an approximately equal distance. Thus even those stars that are closest together on the map should be thousands or tens of thousands of light years apart.

But when we look at the names of the stars, we see they are all within a few tens of light years of Earth, so that none are more than about 50 or 60 light years from any other.

Fortunately there is an essay on page 239 "About the Cover" by Rick Sternbach.

and an interesting "About the Cover" note by Rick Sternbach (in which he admits that the starmap on the cover would be no more than 0.001 inch across if it were to the same scale as the Milky Way painting, and that he has hidden "fourteen black holes, two Puppeteer-built General Products spacecraft hulls, egg-shaped Jinx, and ... there. The Ringworld, too, of course."

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?34333

So Sternbach says that the cover contains two pictorial elements on two different planes and two vastly different scales. One is the painting of our galaxy as seen from about 100,000 light years above the plane of the galactic disc, and the other is a close up image of some of the stars mentioned in various Known Space stories.

You could never see the cover image in real life, because the galaxy is painted as it might be seen from a "height" of about 100,000 light years "above" the galactic plane, while the stars shown are all on the galactic plane about 100,000 light years "below" the vantage point that the galaxy as a whole is viewed from, and would make a dot only about 0.001 of a inch across if on the same scale as the galaxy.

So the cover image of Tales of Known Space is a sort of space map of a tiny region of the galaxy about 60 light years wide, showing a few of the dozens of stars in that region, but instead of showing black space behind that space map there is an image of the entire galaxy inserted as a mere decoration that is not part of the space map at all, just a decoration.

So perhaps the image of the entire galaxy in the map Professor Galen uses in "The Chase" is not actually part of the map at all. Perhaps Galen is using a space map program that always decorates the space maps with an image of the entire galaxy in the background, no matter what scale the map is at. Thus the map might be 50 or 150 light years in diameter but use the image of the entire 100,000 light year wide galaxy as a background decoration.

Thus the voyages in "The Chase" could be short enough to be made in the duration of the episode instead of taking decades at TNG warp speeds..

 

[at Quark's]

Interesting theory. But it lacks an in-universe believable reason why they would use maps with a background like that. I mean, these are probably supposed to be utilitarian maps for professional navigators, not some touristy maps with a nice theme and side pics. Also, most star charts we see onscreen that show us the local stellar neighbourhood, don't show any decoration, just a grid.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Nice try and cool details about the map, but in a universe/multiverse where all of these somehow happened

Professor Galen crossing the galaxy doesn't seem that weird.

 

[at Quark's]

An alternative explanation (and we only need to ignore all of DS9 and even some eps of TNG itself for this to work) could of course be that in reality, Voyager was a ship with really crappy specs. Her crew being too stubborn and proud to admit that, they formed the mythos of despite being one of the fastest and best ships in the fleet, they still would need 75 years to return, whereas in actuality any decent ship like the Enterprise could have done it in a few months.

(I'm not saying it is the explanation that best fits all we are told though )

 

[MAGolding]

Nice try and cool details about the map, but in a universe/multiverse where all of these somehow happened

Professor Galen crossing the galaxy doesn't seem that weird.

That map isn't very good evidence. Considering how many times it is said that crossing the galaxy would take decades, and how many times is is said that the Bajoran Wormhole is the first stable one known, we can be certain that Galan could not have traveled as far across space as his fingers seemed to indicate in the map in "The Chase".

Also it is clearly inaccurate. It puts Bajor thousands of light years farther from Earth than it's true position. Andit puts the place where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant thousands of light years farther from the line between the Gamma and Delta Quadrants than it is.

 

[F. King Daniel]

That map isn't very good evidence. Considering how many times it is said that crossing the galaxy would take decades, and how many times is is said that the Bajoran Wormhole is the first stable one known, we can be certain that Galan could not have traveled as far across space as his fingers seemed to indicate in the map in "The Chase".

Also it is clearly inaccurate. It puts Bajor thousands of light years farther from Earth than it's true position. Andit puts the place where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant thousands of light years farther from the line between the Gamma and Delta Quadrants than it is.

You'd be surprised how these places move around on maps seen on-screen, let alone in licensed books.

 

[Timo]

Galen's map, a reuse of a graphic from way back in "The Emissary", is heavily overlaid with assorted amber rectangles. The scale of these is already vastly greater than that of any galactic empire so far hinted at. So it makes quite a bit of sense IMHO to interpret the rectangles as zoom-in windows...

Galen is interested in specific destinations, but he is traveling across what are supposed to be great distances for humans. Zooming in on multiple locations, in separate windows, seems more sensible than selecting a single zoom-in that encompasses all the destinations but also the irrelevant empty space in between. Hence the six or seven windows that expand from what in fact is just a single dot at the very middle of them, on the Zero Meridian of the galaxy on the background.

(The other rationale for the rectangles fails to cover the distance issue but otherwise fits the, ahem, picture: a man like Galen would love to use a "historical" map for daily navigating, with the borders of vast ancient empires drawn boldly over the current pettiness of the scene. A bit like taking a tour of Europe with a map depicting the Roman Empire about AD 117 - it's not as if time-variant things like "roads" would be relevant to a space traveler, or as if stars would move much.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nakita Akita]

In "The Chase" Professor Galen shows Picard the route he intends to take.



As Galen speaks, his fingers move across the star map on a screen. I would love to see images with the course traced out on the star map.

But it seems obvious that Galen's fingers seem to trace a journey of tens of thousands of light years across the galaxy before he says: "Indri Eight, our first stop" indicating that the total length of the planned journey might be as long as the journey of the Voyager back from the Delta Quadrant that was predicted to last for 75 years!

Or is it obvious?

This is the cover of Tales of Known Space by Larry Niven, 1975.

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/8/8b/TLSKS1975.jpg

Take a good look at the cover painting by Rick Sternbach. It looks like we see about the entire approximately 100,000 light year diameter of the Milky Way galaxy, and a bunch of stars that seem to be spread out over an approximately equal distance. Thus even those stars that are closest together on the map should be thousands or tens of thousands of light years apart.

But when we look at the names of the stars, we see they are all within a few tens of light years of Earth, so that none are more than about 50 or 60 light years from any other.

Fortunately there is an essay on page 239 "About the Cover" by Rick Sternbach.



http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?34333

So Sternbach says that the cover contains two pictorial elements on two different planes and two vastly different scales. One is the painting of our galaxy as seen from about 100,000 light years above the plane of the galactic disc, and the other is a close up image of some of the stars mentioned in various Known Space stories.

You could never see the cover image in real life, because the galaxy is painted as it might be seen from a "height" of about 100,000 light years "above" the galactic plane, while the stars shown are all on the galactic plane about 100,000 light years "below" the vantage point that the galaxy as a whole is viewed from, and would make a dot only about 0.001 of a inch across if on the same scale as the galaxy.

So the cover image of Tales of Known Space is a sort of space map of a tiny region of the galaxy about 60 light years wide, showing a few of the dozens of stars in that region, but instead of showing black space behind that space map there is an image of the entire galaxy inserted as a mere decoration that is not part of the space map at all, just a decoration.

So perhaps the image of the entire galaxy in the map Professor Galen uses in "The Chase" is not actually part of the map at all. Perhaps Galen is using a space map program that always decorates the space maps with an image of the entire galaxy in the background, no matter what scale the map is at. Thus the map might be 50 or 150 light years in diameter but use the image of the entire 100,000 light year wide galaxy as a background decoration.

Thus the voyages in "The Chase" could be short enough to be made in the duration of the episode instead of taking decades at TNG warp speeds..

Maybe upon close-up he is using a smaller map.
You know like when people used to use the big fold up ones in their car that was say only one Europesn country or one US state for example, opposed to looking at something on a globe of the Earth?
Sorry, a can only vaguely recall what he was pointing to in the episode.

 

[MAGolding]

You'd be surprised how these places move around on maps seen on-screen, let alone in licensed books.

Except that I get my info about where Bajor is and where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant from various episodes, not from different space maps.

 

[Timo]

I sort of doubt this should ever amount to an "argument"; certainly it should not be grounds for a "disagreement".

Trek map discrepancies come in basically two categories, gross and petty, regardless of whether we talk about onscreen evidence or fan maps. It doesn't depend on the nature of the source material that we have to ignore the idea that the folks of the Star Trek universe wouldn't agree on how many arms the Milky Way has, or the idea that Sarpeidon and Vulcan are located in different galaxies altogether... On the other hand, when Ferenginar wanders a few lightyears this way or that on onscreen maps, who really cares?

Discrepancies of relevant size, ones that really would require arguing about, are quite rare. We don't really have an onscreen map that would depict what King Daniel's shows: the absolute distance of Bajor from Earth (that is, relative to the galactic background). Onscreen maps showing Bajor never show Earth and vice versa. And the one onscreen map approximating the above, the VOY route map seen on the show's seventh season, depicts the "home" end of things rightly as a single dot, surrounded by a tiny ring and a box that never suggest any specific scope to the familiar Alpha/Beta empires and locations (save for "tiny", but that much we knew already anyway).

But King Daniel apparently zooms in to Alpha/Beta targets of interest. I'm certain Galen would have to do the same, for a vast range of possible scales to said targets: it doesn't matter whether the UFP is 80 ly across, or 8,000, for the zooming to be vital.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Except that I get my info about where Bajor is and where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant from various episodes, not from different space maps.

Source? I don't recall them ever giving coordinates or anything like that, just showing a progress map in astrometrics.

 

[MAGolding]

Source? I don't recall them ever giving coordinates or anything like that, just showing a progress map in astrometrics.

As Cyrano Jones said:

JONES: If I did, what would happen to man's search for knowledge?

I get my knowledge of Bajor's location and where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant from dialog in episodes of TNG, DS9, and VOY. From dialog, not from coordinates or maps.

From dialog, I will tell you that Bajor should be between approximately 120 and 480 light years from Earth, and the place where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant was very close to the line between the Delta and the Gamma Quadrants.

And people who put Bajor thousands of light years from Earth or put Voyager's line of travel thousands of light years from where it should be have probably heard the same dialog as I have but apparently didn't notice the implications.

 

[F. King Daniel]

As Cyrano Jones said:



I get my knowledge of Bajor's location and where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant from dialog in episodes of TNG, DS9, and VOY. From dialog, not from coordinates or maps.

From dialog, I will tell you that Bajor should be between approximately 120 and 480 light years from Earth, and the place where Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant was very close to the line between the Delta and the Gamma Quadrants.

And people who put Bajor thousands of light years from Earth or put Voyager's line of travel thousands of light years from where it should be have probably heard the same dialog as I have but apparently didn't notice the implications.

Episodes/quotes please?

 

[Timo]

The thing is, Bajor is considered "local" in multiple references (the bit about Regulus being mere 300 years away should probably be brought up here), and this is contradicted in none - but there's little to say that the Caretaker was located close to Gamma, and a very blatant graphic to contradict that.

So, which bit to ignore? The graphic, or the implication from TNG "The Price" that the two Ferengi ended up in a location "nearly 200 ly away" from the previous Gamma spot? The latter is IMHO the better bet - after all, the Ferengi did try and make further use of the wormhole, and may well have ended up deeper in Delta off screen. Or Data could have been in error, or meant something other than the obvious. Trek is a visual medium first and foremost, and that map is there for everybody to see...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

The thing is, Bajor is considered "local" in multiple references (the bit about Regulus being mere 300 years away should probably be brought up here), and this is contradicted in none - but there's little to say that the Caretaker was located close to Gamma, and a very blatant graphic to contradict that.

So, which bit to ignore? The graphic, or the implication from TNG "The Price" that the two Ferengi ended up in a location "nearly 200 ly away" from the previous Gamma spot? The latter is IMHO the better bet - after all, the Ferengi did try and make further use of the wormhole, and may well have ended up deeper in Delta off screen. Or Data could have been in error, or meant something other than the obvious. Trek is a visual medium first and foremost, and that map is there for everybody to see...

Timo Saloniemi

I would say, that since we don't have, and probably never will have, any official frame story explaining how knowledge of events centuries in the future of an alternate universe comes to 20th and 21st century Earth, we don't know how thorough that knowledge is, or if it includes visual elements as well as story elements, in that frame story that will probably never be told. It is perfectly possible that only mission logs, mission reports, and personal diaries have been sent back in time, without any visual records. Therefore I say that dialog is likely to be more accurate than visuals.

So I think that Voyager Voyager appeared in the Delta Quadrant very close to the line between the Delta and Gamma Quadrants, and followed a course back to Earth that was almost parallel to the line between the Delta and Gamma Quadrants, at least until their first big shortcut which might have taken them farther from the line between quadrants.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Here's Voyager's path home, as seen on-screen in Astrometrics ft. the Bajoran wormhole.

 

[Timo]

And people always lie, even if 99% of our claims are merely lies of omission and not outright sinister untruths. Spoken word can be interpreted in many ways; graphics, not so much.

We have no good reason to think the VOY heroes ever went close to the Gamma Quadrant, not when it comes to dialogue - after all, none of them ever refers to the proximity of Gamma!

That "False Profits" would take place where the two Ferengi ended at the conclusion of "The Price" is dubious to begin with. What the heroes have to say:

Neelix:" And this Barzan wormhole, it's the same one we've discovered now?"
Kim:" Apparently, but we've confirmed what nobody knew at the time. The wormhole is fixed in the Alpha Quadrant. But in the Delta Quadrant, it jumps around. It turned out to be worthless."
Tuvok: "But the Ferengi were not aware of that, and during a nefarious attempt to secure the wormhole for themselves, they were pulled into it and deposited in the Delta Quadrant."

What Tuvok describes did not happen in "The Price". There was no "being pulled into it" included in Data and LaForge's eyewitness report, because they saw nothing of the sort happening.

As Kim refers to there being better knowledge today than at the time, we may assume that the event Tuvok describes is included in this better knowledge, and gained through the investigations of the VOY rather than the TNG heroes. The "pulled and deposited" part would be a Ferengi experience they underwent after the TNG episode concluded, and is why they now sit thousands of lightyears, rather than hundreds, away from the Gamma border.

Timo Saloniemi