Transwarp Drive really a failure?

[NeroShrimp]

Since Starfleet became aware that Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior's transwarp drive technology, why did they configure the ship with a standard warp drive rather than just replace the chips he removed? It technically wasn't a failed experiment if you think about it. I mean, I'm sure it was tested before successfully.
Unless they just did a bunch of simulated tests rather than actually doing the experiment in space...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

There's a whole school of thought out there that the transwarp drive on the Excelsior turned out to be the "normalized" warp drive found on ships like the Enterprise-D half a century later. This also explains the recalibrated warp scale; a transwarp drive can achieve much higher velocities for a given warp factor, but with the downside that all kinds of weird shit starts to happen if you exceed warp ten.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Oddly enough, if you toss out both of the actually non-canon warp scales, warp speeds in the TNG era are generally slower than the ones in TOS era onscreen.

 

[Shark]

I know that back in the day I assumed it was Scotty's tampering that caused the breakdown of the Excelsior. I also didn't get the impression that the ship, or it's drive technology, was a failure. Though it was kind of odd to see it still in Spacedock in Star Trek IV, but that could have been for any number of reasons. Like others, I just figured the ship was faster and that ships got progressively faster up to TNG. It wasn't until the Star Trek encyclopedia that any official publication stated that the tech was a failure.

I also don't recall it being stated on-screen that Transwarp was a failure, so you can kind of make up your own mind if it was or wasn't. I like to think that it was successful and that such an engine allowed the Enterprise-A to reach the center of the Galaxy in Star Trek V.

 

[Tarek71]

I assume it did work, and that it meant much higher warp speeds were attained. There are well know inconsistencies in warp speeds and travel times. Some TOS, TOS movies and NuTrek have some examples of very high warp speeds to begin with. They got even faster after the transwarp experiments.

I regard all the slower speeds in other episodes and series as wrong and I ignore them.

 

[Unicron]

Going only by onscreen dialogue, the term "transwarp" didn't even show up again until TNG's "Descent" near the end of its run. The Excelsior was not a very popular design initially because it was written to be a rival to the Enterprise in TSFS, so it's probably not surprising that some fans assumed (without any evidence) that the lack of references to transwarp meant the concept had somehow failed. The transwarp drive was referenced in DC Comics' run at the time though, and was assumed to be successful after Scotty's sabotage was undone.

 

[Go-Captain]

This is one of things which seems better left unreconciled. I don't know if speeds were faster in the show, but they were definitely faster in the movies. The issue I have with the idea of transwarp being a failure is, it should have been tested on a smaller scale, multiple times, and the Excelsior should have been the culmination of years or decades of work. If it failed it should have been a hiccup in the process, not a dead end.

TNG definitely has slower warp speeds than in the movies so it does not fit with an even faster drive coming from transwarp, which doesn't fit with what I outlined above.

The only way I can reconcile warp speeds dropping universally is if there was something horribly wrong with what would be the old style of warp drive. Transwarp would have somehow highlighted that bad thing and lead to the lower speeds in TNG. It's a poor concept though, because it requires the addition of information, baseless information. It could just as easily be that the horribly reduced speeds have benefits, rather than being a way to avoid negatives, but it amounts to the same.

 

[Tarek71]

Well in another thread on a different Forum, I suggested that JJ NuTOS super warp and transwarp beaming are the result of years and decades of study of the Borg technology from the ENT episode "Regeneration".

If Voyager traveled as fast as the Nu Enterprise did from the Neutral Zone to Earth, Voyager would have been home in days. If not hours. What are we supposed to believe, that they saw a big scary Romulan ship in 2233 and just tried harder to make ships faster and presto! By the 2260s they have Super Warp?

They had largely intact whole sections of the Borgified 2150s transport. They studied how the Borg got Warp 4.9 out of engines designed for Warp 1.4 and saw how this could be applied to ships already capable of Warp 4, 5, or 7 and over years and decades they achieved phenomenal warp speeds.

Even in Prime TOS and TOS movies, there are very high speeds and short travel times. I don't bother explaining the apparent slowness later. I've decided those later speeds and travel times are wrong and I ignore them.

 

[ihno]

Even in Prime TOS and TOS movies, there are very high speeds and short travel times. I don't bother explaining the apparent slowness later. I've decided those later speeds and travel times are wrong and I ignore them.

I do it the other way around. At least when I watch TNG, VOY and DS9 (the rest is mostly igored by me).

Yes, Janeway's dilemma would have been a joke for Kirk, who could leave the galaxy in 5 minutes (well, maybe 10) in "by any other name" and other episodes.

As for TOS itself I have recently rewatched most of the series and for the first time payed more attention to the details about the "starship" (in opposite to the boring space vessels, that all those loser had to use) or Federation etc. When I was young I watched it dubbed and they have deleted all that (so the stupid audience would not get confused).

Many "newer" fans who started with TNG or even VOY, don't know too much about TOS. Recently someone complained about Star Trek 1. The "The Enterprise is the only ship in range" would be a stupid chlichee, assuming there must be a vast fleet already as he knew it from TNG and DS9. But in TOS there were only 12 starships.

As for the Transwarpdrive: I've asked myself that same question. Removing some parts form the computer could not make the whole research fail. But I accept that it was never mentioned again and Sulu "snailed" his way around the beta quadrant's nebulas, drinking coffee in his chair (what a mission!)

 

[Tarek71]

Well obviously, the other engineers on the Excelsior would have run the diagnostics, found the problem, and replaced the missing parts. Easy breezy.

We should recall that it would take a very, very long time to explore the Galaxy even with JJ Super Warp. Sure, you can get from one point to another quickly, but there are billions and billions of stars, an unknown number of planets, and various other phenomena.

If they divide space by quadrants and sectors and assign ships to each sector, it would take a long time to cover the entire Galaxy, sector by sector, comet by comet, planet by planet and gaseous anomaly by gaseous anomaly. Even with many thousands of ships.

 

[ihno]

Well obviously, the other engineers on the Excelsior would have run the diagnostics, found the problem, and replaced the missing parts. Easy breezy.

Well, an expert like Scott would steal not only from the engine but all the spare parts too of course. It was just a handful of parts as we've seen as he gave them to McCoy but he would never leave spare parts.

And even if he did: We know that everybody in Starfleet who doesn't belong to the main ship of the movie/series is either a corrupt criminal, a pencil pusher or recently deceased unfortunately. Look at the Captain of the Excelsior!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well in another thread on a different Forum, I suggested that JJ NuTOS super warp and transwarp beaming are the result of years and decades of study of the Borg technology from the ENT episode "Regeneration".

If Voyager traveled as fast as the Nu Enterprise did from the Neutral Zone to Earth, Voyager would have been home in days. If not hours. What are we supposed to believe, that they saw a big scary Romulan ship in 2233 and just tried harder to make ships faster and presto! By the 2260s they have Super Warp?

A few things about this:
Firstly, at Voyager's maximum velocity, it would take them two to three decades to fly from Earth to the center of the galaxy; Enterprise-A made that trip in about 2 hours.

The TOS Enterprise travels about 1000 light years in a matter of hours in "That which survives," again vastly exceeding Voyager's maximum velocity.

Kirk's stolen Klingon bird of prey travels from Vulcan to Earth in what appears to be a single day (possibly quite a bit less), covering a distance of 16 light years in the process; at that velocity, Voyager could have returned to Earth in only 16 years.

Also, the IDW comics recently included a storyline where the Enterprise gets stranded way out in the delta quadrant due to one of those "warping out of control" hyperdrive things. Their journey back to the Alpha Quadrant seems to take no more than a couple of weeks.

My personal preference is to separate the TOS and TNG universes altogether and assume that the latter is an alternate reality with a similar background but a very different history (one in which the Khitomer Accords, for example, didn't happen until the late 2340s.

TOS warp speeds have ALWAYS been faster.


Also: I make it a point not to take Voyager seriously if I can help it.

 

[Shark]

And even if he did: We know that everybody in Starfleet who doesn't belong to the main ship of the movie/series is either a corrupt criminal, a pencil pusher or recently deceased unfortunately. Look at the Captain of the Excelsior!

Indeed. Just listen to the commentary track on Star Trek III, there's a reason the seats on the Grissom are pink!

 

[ihno]

And even if he did: We know that everybody in Starfleet who doesn't belong to the main ship of the movie/series is either a corrupt criminal, a pencil pusher or recently deceased unfortunately. Look at the Captain of the Excelsior!

Indeed. Just listen to the commentary track on Star Trek III, there's a reason the seats on the Grissom are pink!

Interesting. I only knew about the male computer voice from the Excelsior.

I just looked at the movie, they're really pink. I guess I have to rewatch the movie.

But I don't have a version with commentary track. Who's commenting and what did he/she say? (I googled to be polite of course but that tells me only about set design).

edit: and where did you get that wonderful avatar? Do you have that in a larger version?

edit2: aah, google told me:
http://www.beyondspock.de/film/star_trek_the_search_for_spock.php

Yes, funny although pink seats was a bit too much.

 

[Tarek71]

Also: I make it a point not to take Voyager seriously if I can help it.

I try to do the same. It's a good policy.

In another thread we were talking about the different ways of seeing Trek continuity. One is that from "Broken Bow" to "Endgame" and "Nemesis" there is one single, linear sequence of events. The "Prime" timeline.

Another view is alot more timey-wimey. And I go by this second one. All on screen installments are not necessarily best seen or interpreted as occuring in the same continuity. Different, diverging, varying, alternate and parallel timelines/universes/quantum realities, etc.

 

[Deks]

I like Voyager, but it seriously took a wrong turn with Warp speeds (mind you, TNG started this trend and took it down from there).

When you take into consideration what kind of society the Federation is supposed to be... not to mention that technical and scientific breakthroughs occur faster and faster the more automated and technological society becomes... 1000 Ly's per day (for example) seems like a very reasonable estimate for TOS.

If the Enterprise - A managed to get to the centre of the galaxy (between 25 000 to 28 000 Ly's away) in maybe a day or less, then we might actually be seeing the culmination of StarFleet's efforts on Excelsiors Transwarp drive.

ST V (as hated as it may be by some people) is actually highly consistent with TOS in terms of speeds and actual plots - unlike TNG and later DS9 and VOY.

It does stand to reason that TNG, DS9 and VOY might be taking place in a different reality compared to one where we saw TOS with its far faster velocities.
Similar histories, but with sufficient differences to accommodate for slower Warp drive in the 24th century.

It just doesn't make sense that a technologically advanced culture like the Federation would be so slow in terms of FTL propulsion.
Matter Anti-Matter reactions are exceptionally powerful... considering their destructive capabilities, and energy manipulation effects... it is exceedingly STUPID that Warp drive would be slow.

I think Warp is actually far faster than what is usually portrayed for drama reasons... but we only seldom get to see it (when the writers need it).

 

[Mytran]

Matter-antimatter reactions may be powerfull, but it doesn't change the fact that the distance between stars is HUGE - or to put it another way:

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space...

Sorry, couldn't resist that

A good way to bridge the gap between TOS and TNG speeds is to use the fannon concept of "subspace highways" - regions of space where (thanks to greater permeation of the subspace realm into our own) conventional warp factors propel a ship faster, sometime much faster than usual. Some of these could be naturally occurring phenomena (like the residue of the Ion Storm which swept the S.S. Valiant up and out of the galaxy), some the result of artificial means (I believe this is what happened in the oft-quoted example of high speed in That Which Survives - an after-effect of the extremely powerful transporter in that episode)

In the 24th century it has become common practise to only refer to the basic speeds which Warp Factors give, hence ships appear to be slower. However, I have no doubt that they would still use Subspace Highways when available - perhaps explaining why it is such a short trip to Earth from "Deep" Space Nine.

 

[publiusr]

That might actually be the case
https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/33897/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnikov_tube

I'd say the Slavers positioned space lanes to help warp ships.

Warp factor one is just the getting on the bus speed?

 

[Tarek71]

It does stand to reason that TNG, DS9 and VOY might be taking place in a different reality compared to one where we saw TOS with its far faster velocities.
Similar histories, but with sufficient differences to accommodate for slower Warp drive...

Absolutely! Actually, to hear Bob Orci & Co tell it, they think that all of the 50-plus time travel installments of Trek involved alternate quantum realities/timelines, not just Nero going to 2233. I would separate the events of "Encounter at Farpoint" to "Nemesis" from TOS-TAS-TOS movies and NuTOS.

It's possible to break it down alot more than that. Dozens of different quantum realities within them.

 

[Wingsley]

The transwarp concept was never approved by Mr. Roddenberry. So when TNG started up, the "official" word from the studio was that transwarp was a "failure". It was Mr. Roddenberry re-asserting his control over the TREK franchise after control of the movies had been given to Harve Bennett.

If you look at it from a 1980's perspective, transwarp was never explained. (David Gerrold even made light of it in his "World of Star Trek" book, quipping "whatever that is.") All we saw was this big boat named Excelsior that was hailed as "the great experiment". It made little sense since the Enterprise had been refit only several years before, and apparently the same technology/general design philosophy was incorporated into other Federation starships of various ship classes (Grissom, Saratoga, Reliant) and yet the Federation would suddenly come out with an entirely new generation so quickly, declaring the Enterprise to be old and obsolete.

After Mr. Roddenberry stepped down from the studio, and later passed away in '91, the TNG office ultimately acknowledged the continuity hole by mentioning transwarp conduits ("Descent") and later showing that the Borg and Voth were using transwarp technology.

For all we know, transwarp is just warp drive for cross-dressers that want to travel really, really fast.