What canon would you like to have seen broken in Trek?

[Praetor]

Well said, Praetor.

However, I think TOS, TNG, and DS9 kind of go together. We certainly see TNG has the continuation of "the mission" from TOS. And TNG dovetailed a few episodes with DS9 rather nicely.

I really wish VOY never made reference to anything from TOS or TNG. It would have been easier to swallow all the breaches of canon. And I would have liked ENT not to have been called Enterprise at all. "Starfleet" would have been a better name. It's the beginning of the Federation. And the ship? Call it Centauri or Orion... don't use "Enterprise." Pull it completely out of the supposed Star Trek timeline. Because there was just way too many liberties taken... especially with the Borg.

Well, my main thing is, if you let each series be in a slightly 'altered' continuity of the same basic timeline, it lets us ignore anything that seems 'off.' I'm not a strict advocated of the completely broken continuity - in fact, I like to link the series as much as possible. But there are some things that just seem unreconcilable.

I would like everybody to have admitted right from the beginning that Vulcans are not "emotionless." They aren't. They never were. Just about every Vulcan we've ever seen has displayed some emotion or other, even if it was merely smugness. (Don't get me wrong, I love Vulcans, but golly they do tend to be smug. It's one of the things I enjoy about them.)

They suppress their emotions and attempt to use logic to guide them through life, but that's not the same as "emotionless." They in fact have to work really hard to follow the Vulcan Way. So emotionless they aren't.

And yet, we whenever we have a Vulcan do something emotional - e.g., Spock becoming friends with Kirk (how can you consider somebody a friend if you don't feel emotion?), T'Pring chosing the other guy over Spock, Solok acting like a total jerk - none of the other characters seem to notice this. They act like the Vulcans are being logical when they aren't.

If nothing else, perhaps this would have spared us all those scenes when Spock acts logically and McCoy gets pissed off and says, "You don't feel anything, do you Spock?" even though he must have known by then that Spock did feel things. I liked McCoy, but even as a kid, I really disliked those scenes. A lot.

Agreed.

(But you know I think McCoy was trying to make realize he was being a hypocrite for pretending to be full Vulcan when he was only half Vulcan. )

 

[Unicron]

It's actually canon that having an odd number of nacelles is bad for a whip?

I don't know that's ever been stated onscreen, but that was the only genuine "rule" that Gene Roddenberry created when it came to how he wanted starship design to work. Gene felt that the nacelles had to be codependent to create a stable warp field, and that therefore you couldn't achieve that with an odd number of nacelles. It would be like building a helicopter without a secondary rotor to balance the main rotor's torque. Of course, engineering was not Gene's speciality so he never really wrote many details as to why this was the most optimum or most necessary arrangement. Just going by what's onscreen, there's not much if anything to suggest that paired nacelles are codependent and a necessity over odd numbered arrangements.

As for the no cloaking, they at least gave us the reason that the Romulans would've gone to war with the Feds over the issue and the Feds were sensible enough to not fight a bloody war over something that's not really that effective anymore anyways.

It was never really stated that the Romulans would go to war, though, only that the rule banning cloak development in the Federation was due to the Treaty of Algeron. Since the details surrounding that particular stipulation haven't been developed (at least not canonically), it seems a very one-sided concession. It would make sense if the cloak was primarily used to be sneaky and to launch surprise attacks out of the blue, which is why Gene didn't want the good guys to have them, but since they've been portrayed more as futuristic stealth tech that is not without its own flaws, I'd just as soon ditch the idea. Besides, it also seems as if the Romulans have little power to directly enforce this limitation, since the Fed-Klingon alliance allowed them to easily sidestep it and ask the Klingons for a cloaked ship when necessary. It's a loophole they couldn't possibly close without warring against both powers, and that would be stupid.

 

[Anwar]

The events that led up to the Treaty of Algeron seemed to imply war or at least increasing hostility (The Tomed Incident) making the possibility of war a real threat. And back when the Treaty was made, there wasn't much in the way of a real alliance with the Klingons. That didn't really happen until the 2340s-2350s whil the Treaty was made back in the 2310s. Thus at the time the Feds had no Klingon backup and when they did, the Romulans had been in isolation for 40 or so years so they didn't have to worry about it then. It wasn't until the Romulans re-entered the Galactic scene in 2364 that people started wondering about them and the threat again.

 

[hellsgate]

I'd like to see a few of the rules bent (but not broken,) in the TNG Relaunch era. Standard Klingon/Romulan Cloaks aboard certain "Starfleet Diplomatic Corps" / "A.Q. Alliance"-approved Starfleet ships, under ~very~ specific criteria with Talos 4-style death sentence for 'unauthorized deployment of cloaking technology'.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It's actually canon that having an odd number of nacelles is bad for a whip?

I don't know that's ever been stated onscreen

There have been ships with three nacelles (the alternate Ent-D from "All Good Things"; the Rigel class from BOBW II) and one nacelle (the Freedom class, also from BOBW II; the scouts from ST:TMP) so I think that canon has been fairly thoroughly shot down.

 

[Myasishchev]

^I'd go further than that and just have cloaking devices be standard equipment on starships that would reasonably be expected to take part in reconnaissance, anti-warbird operations, or a counterattack on targets of interest in the Romulan Empire.

 

[Blackster]

For me, it'd be pretty much the whole of The Final Frontier - all that guff with Sybok and the fact the Enterprise reaches the Galactic Core in a few hours, whereby it'd probably take DECADES to cross the quadrant to get there in reality.

Just a stupidly ill-thought out movie the events of which should be erased.

 

[Cyke101]

Never mind the salamanders: I hate the whole idea that Warp 10 is the be-all, end-all of FTL travel. I'm fine with Warp being as fast or as slow as it is, but taking 75 years to cross the Milky Way at Warp 9... and then simultaneously occupying every point of the universe at Warp 10... just doesn't seem right on any sort of scale. As if there was nothing in between? As if it wouldn't be possible to simply travel from galaxy to galaxy in a decent amount of time?

Even the writers cheating and saying the Enterprise is passing Warp 10 only seems to make matters worse. How does one pass what is essentially omnipresence?

On a tangent, someone (Timo?) brought up the theory that Transwarp is simply warp that's faster than what's established. TNG/DS9/VOY warp speeds could be so fast compared to TOS/Movie scale that it would be considered Transwarp. Standard warp in the future could be the same as Transwarp conduits in TNG/VOY. I like that theory and it also does away with (and/or rebrands) the whole Warp 10 idiocy.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

and the fact the Enterprise reaches the Galactic Core in a few hours, whereby it'd probably take DECADES to cross the quadrant to get there in reality.

FWIW, in the novelization, Sybok helps alter the ship's engines so it can get to the galactic center fast.

 

[Myasishchev]

Never mind the salamanders: I hate the whole idea that Warp 10 is the be-all, end-all of FTL travel. I'm fine with Warp being as fast or as slow as it is, but taking 75 years to cross the Milky Way at Warp 9... and then simultaneously occupying every point of the universe at Warp 10... just doesn't seem right on any sort of scale. As if there was nothing in between? As if it wouldn't be possible to simply travel from galaxy to galaxy in a decent amount of time?

Even the writers cheating and saying the Enterprise is passing Warp 10 only seems to make matters worse. How does one pass what is essentially omnipresence?

On a tangent, someone (Timo?) brought up the theory that Transwarp is simply warp that's faster than what's established. TNG/DS9/VOY warp speeds could be so fast compared to TOS/Movie scale that it would be considered Transwarp. Standard warp in the future could be the same as Transwarp conduits in TNG/VOY. I like that theory and it also does away with (and/or rebrands) the whole Warp 10 idiocy.

AGT basically makes the old wasteland between Warps 9 and 10 obsolete. Obviously the particular events of the future aren't canon, but we have to presume the underlying physics of AGT are identical with the physics of the 24th century. Hence there are, necessarily, new warp transitional thresholds beyond 9 and before "infinite velocity" 10.

Threshold, by contrast, has been all but stricken from canon because it is so, so awful. I don't think we'll ever see a reference to that kind of warp again.

Perhaps we can say Threshold isn't canon because Warp 10, as presented, would collapse the universe. If point A, the starship, is equal to points B through infinity, then points B through infinity are also equal to each other. Salamander people would be the least of our worries.

 

[ambessalion]

The Temporal Cold War in ENT and the that whole hoopla in the Delphic Expanse....

 

[Blackster]

and the fact the Enterprise reaches the Galactic Core in a few hours, whereby it'd probably take DECADES to cross the quadrant to get there in reality.

FWIW, in the novelization, Sybok helps alter the ship's engines so it can get to the galactic center fast.

They should have put that in the film. One line would have sufficed as an explanation.

 

[Cyke101]

Never mind the salamanders: I hate the whole idea that Warp 10 is the be-all, end-all of FTL travel. I'm fine with Warp being as fast or as slow as it is, but taking 75 years to cross the Milky Way at Warp 9... and then simultaneously occupying every point of the universe at Warp 10... just doesn't seem right on any sort of scale. As if there was nothing in between? As if it wouldn't be possible to simply travel from galaxy to galaxy in a decent amount of time?

Even the writers cheating and saying the Enterprise is passing Warp 10 only seems to make matters worse. How does one pass what is essentially omnipresence?

On a tangent, someone (Timo?) brought up the theory that Transwarp is simply warp that's faster than what's established. TNG/DS9/VOY warp speeds could be so fast compared to TOS/Movie scale that it would be considered Transwarp. Standard warp in the future could be the same as Transwarp conduits in TNG/VOY. I like that theory and it also does away with (and/or rebrands) the whole Warp 10 idiocy.

AGT basically makes the old wasteland between Warps 9 and 10 obsolete. Obviously the particular events of the future aren't canon, but we have to presume the underlying physics of AGT are identical with the physics of the 24th century. Hence there are, necessarily, new warp transitional thresholds beyond 9 and before "infinite velocity" 10.

I can dig that. Now that I've had more time to think about it, I think one of my major problems with Warp 10 being infinite velocity was the central arrogance that Starfleet and similar powers were so close to reaching infinite velocity, when in reality space is so big that there had to be an area between 9 and 10. Let's harp on about how amazingly fast we are and how close we are to attaining Warp 10... but we'll get outrun by the Borg first (before their transwarp drive was even established in canon)!

Threshold, by contrast, has been all but stricken from canon because it is so, so awful. I don't think we'll ever see a reference to that kind of warp again.

Perhaps we can say Threshold isn't canon because Warp 10, as presented, would collapse the universe. If point A, the starship, is equal to points B through infinity, then points B through infinity are also equal to each other. Salamander people would be the least of our worries.

I can prioritize. I accept the death and destruction of the universe. But salamander people? I'm calling BS on that!

 

[Myasishchev]

^Well, due to the asymptote of the warp curve, Warp 9.9999 is like a hundred times faster than Warp 9.999, and Warp 9.99999 is like a thousand times faster than Warp 9.9999 (I'm mathematically disinclined, so I don't know the exact numbers and find it difficult to parse the equation). So, I think, even Warp 9.999...9 is still infinitely far from Warp 10 and technically there's an infinite number of values to reach before hitting the Salamander Barrier. At the same time Warp Five Nines, engage! sounds silly, and it makes little sense that the only warp factors there are would all be bunched up in the infinitesimally small slice of the curve explored by our heroes.

I'd still take the current system over slipstream drive, though. Too fast.

 

[Sovereign_One]

How is slipstream drive too fast?

 

[Anwar]

Wasn't it explained that every once in a while they just redefine the warp scale? The Transwarp experiment of TOS worked, and gave rise to the Warp Drive used in TNG+ which had a redefined scaled. Then in AGT they redefined it again.

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: slipstream--1.6 million times the speed of light is a bit too fast for dramatic purposes. Only ship in the sector? Who cares, we can cross the neck of the Federation in thirty seconds. Also the fact that it's like three orders of magnitude faster than what previously registered as "fast" is a little extreme. It's like the Wrights graduating from the Kitty Hawk flyer to a scramjet powered spaceplane.

It's also just one more piece of evidence that Voyager was totally oblivious to how the ramifications of their stories did screw or could screw things up.

Anwar: yep. The Cochrane model, like relativity before it, wasn't an accurate model. The new Warp 10 model is a better approximation, but still not accurate in light of findings apparently made between Nemesis and the AGT future. So, like real scientific models, warp theory gets amended.

 

[Anticitizen]

In the dreaded Final Frontier movie we see the birth of Spock and his father looks at him and says disapprovingly, "so human." If he thinks that's a bad thing, why did he marry one us? Sheesh.

I mentioned this in another thread, but the whole treatment of Vulcans has been inconsistent. Sometimes we're led to believe that their emotionless, logical mindset is natural to them, such as in the scene you mentioned... other times, we've been told that they're born emotional and that their stoicism is a matter of discipline that they developed to end their warlike ways. The latter seems to be the truth - after all, the Romulans were just Vulcans that rejected stoicism. So then, why, is a big deal made of Spock being half human? 'This consciousness calling you from space... it touches your human blood, Spock.' Is Spock somehow less logical than other Vulcans because he's half human?

 

[Anwar]

Possibly the Vulcan physiology makes it easier for them to suppress emotion (different Neurochemistry, better control of it?) and being half Vulcan makes that biological control harder?

 

[Unicron]

The events that led up to the Treaty of Algeron seemed to imply war or at least increasing hostility (The Tomed Incident) making the possibility of war a real threat. And back when the Treaty was made, there wasn't much in the way of a real alliance with the Klingons. That didn't really happen until the 2340s-2350s whil the Treaty was made back in the 2310s. Thus at the time the Feds had no Klingon backup and when they did, the Romulans had been in isolation for 40 or so years so they didn't have to worry about it then. It wasn't until the Romulans re-entered the Galactic scene in 2364 that people started wondering about them and the threat again.

Fair enough.