Warp Drive Withering?
- Thread starter Defiler-Of-Redshirts
- Start date
well Tng did have that "weird" warp jump animation.. then warp streaks..
What I also don't like to much in the Disco/Kelvin warp effects is the "Hyperspace exit dump/stop" the ability to exit warp and just stop in orbit/by a ship etc. I mean all the other series you exit warp, and your at impluse, then full stop.. and totally forget the "no warp in a solar system" due to the posibility of hitting something..
Just to much "star wars" effects for star trek FTL.. just saying
What I also don't like to much in the Disco/Kelvin warp effects is the "Hyperspace exit dump/stop" the ability to exit warp and just stop in orbit/by a ship etc. I mean all the other series you exit warp, and your at impluse, then full stop.. and totally forget the "no warp in a solar system" due to the posibility of hitting something..
Just to much "star wars" effects for star trek FTL.. just saying
The TMP warp effect has always been my favorite, and I think the best. I like how it was a big deal. I thought the later movies looked like a cheap scaled down version of that. TFF and TUC in particular look crap.
I actually really like the TNG effect. It gives kind of a cool impression of a visual distortion as the warp drive engages, and almost like the warp bubble "snaps" around the ship. The streaky stars are cool too.
I'm not a fan of the Kelvin warp effect. The DSC effect is kind of like the later Trek movies (entering warp) combined with JJ Trek (traveling through warp) and is pretty unremarkable.
I actually really like the TNG effect. It gives kind of a cool impression of a visual distortion as the warp drive engages, and almost like the warp bubble "snaps" around the ship. The streaky stars are cool too.
I'm not a fan of the Kelvin warp effect. The DSC effect is kind of like the later Trek movies (entering warp) combined with JJ Trek (traveling through warp) and is pretty unremarkable.
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The "No Warp in a Planetary System" seems to be a earlier limitation if we go by in-universe. As sensors get better along with star charts, that limitation seems to be removed.
Deep Space Nine sort of did the 80s era warp effect once. When Defiant comes out of warp near Bajor's sun in "By Inferno's Light", it has that kind of red and blue color streak for a moment. I liked the blue and red color streak from TWoK, and that one DS9 episode reminded me of it.
It's an oddity that exists only in TMP and one episode of DS9. ENT and the other movies had them jumping in and out of earth orbit into warp.
I don't care for the visual effect in those, but I agree, the boom of the ship jumping to warp in the '09 movie was quite powerful, at least through the sound system of the large theater I first saw it in. It was never quite so potent in later viewings.
I've seen it proposed that the "star" streaks actually are specks of space dust being vaporized by the warp field. Though in my novels I've explained the streaking stars as an illusion, the result of the warp field cycling and sweeping the distorted starlight across the field of view over and over again like a rotating prism.
That's my favorite. Though somewhat figurative, it's the only warp effect that actually captures the idea of what a warp bubble is. If it were up to me, it would be the default from now on.
Actually that budget was inflated by creative accounting, since Paramount folded in the development cost of the previous abandoned movie revival attempts and Phase II with the TMP budget. (And at the time, that reported budget wasn't just a record for Star Trek, it was the biggest movie budget in film history up to then. It was actually in the Guiness Book of World Records for a while.)
To me, it seems as if the idea was to show that the jump to warp speed could be done in a shorter time due to improved engine design. I always liked the distorted light effect of the ships at warp in TMP thru VH and that it looked like the Doppler effect. If you watch Enterprise, it seems as if the warp jump is slowed down but still looks more like the TNG or DS9 style effect.
Could the concern over going to warp in a solar system be related to more powerful drive systems putting greater stress on the star ? This could explain why it was not an issue in TOS but became a risk latter on.
Could the concern over going to warp in a solar system be related to more powerful drive systems putting greater stress on the star ? This could explain why it was not an issue in TOS but became a risk latter on.
Even in TMP, it wasn't "cant warp in a solar system," it was simply that Kirk knew it was risky given the status of the drive and what the simulations were showing because the ship hadn't been tested yet.
That's exactly how I always viewed it as well. In fact, if you look close, the vfx almost perfectly support this theory. In the rare instance you see a ship dropping out of warp, usually the streaky stars simply disappear.
I'll certainly drink to that, sir.
*** slapping my own forehead *** I completely forgot about the most unique-looking, unusual warp drive Trek has ever had: the "slipstream drive" in the Voyager episode "Hope and Fear." Although I would have titled it "A Game of Velocity" as a double-entendre to the beginning/ending Janeway/Seven scenes and the slipstream drive itself. Anyway, I loved the visual effect of extreme high-speed swirling energy clouds blowing by both ships like a hurricane. It really conveyed the sense that the two ships were barreling along like bats out of hell.
P.S., you have to admit that the term "quantum slipstream drive" does sound cool. The words themselves somehow make it sound ferociously fast.
P.S., you have to admit that the term "quantum slipstream drive" does sound cool. The words themselves somehow make it sound ferociously fast.
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To me it just sounds like gibberish. A slipstream is a wake of rapidly moving fluid pulled along behind a fast-moving object in a fluid. Slipstreaming as a form of travel refers to following in the wake of such an object to take advantage of that speed boost and reduce the work you need to do to travel. So what is a ship in quantum slipstream drive following behind? And what does the "quantum" part mean? There's a tendency in fiction to stick "quantum" onto everything to make it sound mysterious and advanced, but it's a term that has a specific meaning that usually applies on a microscopic scale rather than a macroscopic one. Okay, maybe it's based in quantum gravity, the elusive unification of relativity and quantum physics, but I doubt the showrunners thought it through that carefully.
(And Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda's use of the term "slipstream drive" doesn't make any more sense, since that was based on riding cosmic-string connections between massive particle ensembles.)
Surely, and I'm open to be taken apart by people who know more about this theoretical propulsion system, the present way of defining going to/dropping out of warp as shown in Discovery, is more fitting of the theory ?
It's the speed of light (at least) so surely seen from outside the ship it would be like seeing a light go off in a room when it goes to warp (it's gone), and when they show ships just instantly materialising somewhere else, that's the opposite effect, ie seeing a light go on (it's here)
If you get my analogy ?
It's the speed of light (at least) so surely seen from outside the ship it would be like seeing a light go off in a room when it goes to warp (it's gone), and when they show ships just instantly materialising somewhere else, that's the opposite effect, ie seeing a light go on (it's here)
If you get my analogy ?
Well, maybe. The TNG-era "stretch" effect was meant to represent the visual distortion of the warp field forming around the ship and bending the light, I think, so there's merit to that version too.
I'm not saying that there isn't merit to how other series' portray the nuances of warp travel, just putting it out for reasoned debate that Discovery's portrayal of warp travel, no matter how unfeasible, is probably more accurate on a theoretical or quantum level.
I don't know about "more accurate," but it's no more fanciful than any other warp-entry effect. A physicist could probably do the math and figure out what it might look like if a warp field formed or dissipated, but just off the top of my head, I would suspect there'd be some kind of visual distortion or puckering effect as spacetime distorted around the ship.
One thing I do recall from the theory -- a ship in warp would accumulate a lot of trapped particles in the front of the warp field, sort of like bugs on the windshield, and coming out of warp would accelerate them forward at relativistic speed, so there'd basically be a lethal blast of cosmic rays directed forward of your ship when you came out of warp, so you wouldn't want to be pointing directly at a planet or another ship.
I'd like to think that the "Star-Streaks" are tiny dust particles getting stretched apart by the warp field and broken down into simpler particles or sub-atomic particles, ergo releasing some of the energy in it's atomic bonds through small scale nuclear fission that DOESN'T have a chain effect due to the vastness of space, ergo the glowy streak that goes by slowly as the vessel is in warp.
