Warp drive and dilithium

[blssdwlf]

Actually less convoluted than off-screen or parallel active-passive bypass circuits since it doesn't require re-interpreting or ignoring dialogue.

It's not a matter of re-anything, as the technobabble has no inherent meaning.

Cute, but wouldn't that apply to your re-interpreted theory as well?

What your version does require of us is to believe that a great number of bypass circuits blew after all the excitement was already over.

Nope, my version only requires us to accept that the bypass circuits were damaged when they "blew the whole converter assembly" as said in dialogue.

This never happens in TOS. In "Alternative Factor", the antimatter system is not explicated to remain online with all the crystals drained; in other episodes, only individual crystals or possible microcrystal paddles are extracted when the earlier episodes already established the existence of multiple crystals or paddles in the system.

In "Elaan of Troyius" the matter-antimatter system is still online despite the dilithium crystals going completely offline due to sabotage. There is no 20 minute shutdown-startup sequence as necessary (see "Skin of Evil").

You can bypass the dilithium with a working converter assembly.

This never happens in TOS, either - bypassing categorically fails in "Mudd's Women". We can't tell what could have been achieved had not everything failed.

This never happened successfully in TOS because both times ("Mudd's Women", "Elaan of Troyius") the converter assembly was damaged/destroyed. We can tell it would have worked because that's how they designed it or otherwise they wouldn't have bypass circuits in the first place