Whatever happened to Trans-Warp drive?

[MarsWeeps]

So we know the Excelsior was supposed to have Trans-Warp drive but does anyone know how it differed from normal warp drive?

Scotty pulled some computer discs to prevent it from working in ST:III but then we never heard anything about it after that.

I'm pretty sure there wasn't any canon explanation for why we never heard of it again (unless it was mentioned in DS9 or Voyager episodes that I haven't seen) but what are some of the other theories?

 

[T'Girl]

We do know that at some point after the Excelsior's experimental drive was fielded, the warp drive factor numbers were pretty radically changed. What was aboad the Excelsior might have become the standard warp drive that we see in TNG, DS9 and VOY.

YMMV.

.

 

[F. King Daniel]

FASA's old Trek manuals took "Trans Warp" to literally mean a combination of the transporter and warp drive. Something about beaming a warp field further out.... or somesuch technobabble.

"Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" said it was based on Spock's interphase escape in "The Tholian Web", which threw the Enterprise quite a distance.

Fan blueprints from the 80's suggested harnessing the wormhole effect from TMP - which the wormhole-like visuals from "Descent" and Voyager seem to corroborate.

 

[Phily B]

I always took it as there was either a design flaw, they improved the efficiency of current warp engines or transwarp just became standard warp engine therefore no reason to call it transwarp any more.

 

[Anwar]

The term "Transwarp" applies to anything that's more powerful than standard warp drive.

The Excelsior's Transwarp worked, and became the new standard Warp Drive.

From then on, whenever they encounter any FTL faster than their standard, they'll call it transwarp.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I always thought Transwarp was considered a failure and abandoned. Look at how easy it was for Scotty to sabotage in ST III...

 

[7thsealord]

I always thought Transwarp was considered a failure and abandoned. Look at how easy it was for Scotty to sabotage in ST III...

Well, how often was TOS's "standard" Warp Drive part of one problem or another? Quite a few times, as I recall.

 

[Forbin]

I always thought Transwarp was considered a failure and abandoned. Look at how easy it was for Scotty to sabotage in ST III...

If you pull the spark plugs out of a new engine it stops working too. Is the engine then a failure that the manufacturer should abandon?

 

[Mr Silver]

So we know the Excelsior was supposed to have Trans-Warp drive but does anyone know how it differed from normal warp drive?

As other posters have already explained, "transwarp" is a term that means anything faster than conventional warp speeds. I think it's pretty unlikely that the Excelsior was experimenting with instantaneous warp travel. I would say it's more likely that they had discovered methods of travelling at faster than conventional speeds, but coudln't do so with the current warp engines on offer and required the building of a specialist warp engine and an entirely new ship designed with the type of engine in mind.

Scotty pulled some computer discs to prevent it from working in ST:III but then we never heard anything about it after that.

I'm sure he did a lot more than just pull some chips out, otherwise the crew would just replace the missing parts and reset everything before catching up with the Enterprise. Even if the transwarp drive failed at this point, they still had conventional warp and could have got to Genesis just before Kirk was about to "surrender" to the Klingons. It seemed as if Scotty infected the transwarp computer with a virus, hence it's "good morning captain" and other malfunctions.

I'm pretty sure there wasn't any canon explanation for why we never heard of it again (unless it was mentioned in DS9 or Voyager episodes that I haven't seen) but what are some of the other theories?

The popular consensus seems to be that the "transwarp" experiments in 2285 initially failed, but eventually succeeded and this birthed the redesigned warp scale that we see in the 24th century trek series'.

FWIW, I don't accept "Threshold" as part of my personal canon because it was not only a bad episode but contained an enormous plot hole. Since the EMH had devised a treatment that could revert DNA back to it's original parameters, why did they not just modify Voyager with the transwarp drive, warp back to the Alpha Quadrant and then treat everybody before they start transforming? For this and many other reasons, I don't acknowledge the concept of instantenous warp travel and in my opinion, the fastest propulsion methods we've seen to date are - Quantum Slipstream, Borg transwarp conduits, Barclay's subspace drive and the Voth's transwarp drive.

 

[USS Excelsior]

And the Enterprise A traveling to the centre of the galaxxy and that Klingon ship that followed them.

 

[7thsealord]

And the Enterprise A traveling to the centre of the galaxxy and that Klingon ship that followed them.

Spock's previously-never-heard-of half-brother obviously knew a short-cut.

 

[Mr Silver]

And the Enterprise A traveling to the centre of the galaxxy and that Klingon ship that followed them.

Spock's previously-never-heard-of half-brother obviously knew a short-cut.

I have no idea what either of you are talking about...

 

[cblmc1296]

And the Enterprise A traveling to the centre of the galaxxy and that Klingon ship that followed them.

Spock's previously-never-heard-of half-brother obviously knew a short-cut.

I have no idea what either of you are talking about...

That's OK...I suspect the folks behind that film didn't always know what they were talking about either.

 

[F. King Daniel]

They were just watching TOS, where trips the the rim and centre of the galaxy are no big deal at all. One wonders why the TOS Enterprise's warp 8.7 was so much faster (1000 l.y. in 11 hours) than Voyager's warp 9.975 (75,000 l.y. in 70 years!)

One wonders why transwarp, and the TNG warp scale, was a massive DOWNgrade

 

[C.E. Evans]

I like to think that that the recalibration of the warp scale was the result of a re-evaluation of what transwarp really was. The Excelsior may have been able to reach speeds of Warp 20 on the old scale, but that was no longer considered a true transwarp velocity (I think Warp 20 works out around Warp 9.999 or thereabouts on the TNG scale).

 

[Anwar]

They were just watching TOS, where trips the the rim and centre of the galaxy are no big deal at all. One wonders why the TOS Enterprise's warp 8.7 was so much faster (1000 l.y. in 11 hours) than Voyager's warp 9.975 (75,000 l.y. in 70 years!)

One wonders why transwarp, and the TNG warp scale, was a massive DOWNgrade

None of the TOS writers ever considered a plot where a ship couldn't get home fast if they get sent somewhere else in the Galaxy.

Then again, the TOS Consitution was a magic ship: it could do whatever the plot required it to do speed-wise and weaponry-wise. They never gave it limits.

 

[F. King Daniel]

When imposing limits, they should have at least tried to remain consistant with the majority of what went on before. Stranding Voyager in another galaxy wouldn't have made much of a difference to the plot.

 

[Anwar]

TOS wasn't consistent with itself, so I doubt anyone would mind if later Trek didn't stick to a single instance of super-warp speed. Especially when Roddenberry himself said that the Warp Drive went as fast as the plot demanded.

 

[USS Excelsior]

Then again, the TOS Consitution was a magic ship: it could do whatever the plot required it to do speed-wise and weaponry-wise. They never gave it limits.

As well as the NuEnterprise that can make it to Vulcan at the same speed that the Dauntless can travel with Slipstream Drive, approximately 15 light years.

 

[{ Emilia }]

I think what happened was that the writers realized that they made up some stupid new technobabble that made no sense at all so they pretend it never happened.

Apart from Voyager. But Voyager was stupid.