Is our galaxy actually millions of light-years wide?
What's the worst canon decision in the history of Trek?
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
- Start date
Nope; Less than one-tenth of a million light-years.
That's less than 100,000 light-years. Is it that Voyager was flung almost from one end to the other?
Voyager was only (at most) 70, 000 light-years from Earth.
Yup. And since Kirk's old TOS Enterprise could cover 1000 light years in 12 hours, well...
Voyager should have lasted 35 days.
Voyager should have lasted 35 days.
Related to that, I'll add the decision to make Warp 10 the definitive limit that can not be exceeded, which resulted in the newest most advanced starships always listing their top speed as something like warp 9.9998 as their attempt to be faster than the other ships but below warp 10. Then again, I guess if there hadn't been a limit on how far warp could go, we'd probably get something like a speed demon of a ship cruising at warp 45. Maybe they should have just left warp drive as warp drive and not have had various warp factors?
Beverly ordered her ship to Warp 13 in All Good Things...
Which makes it all the sillier a few years later they say warp 10 is the absolute limit that can not be exceeded. And that that limit has been adhered to ever since (and IIRC, still is).
My head canon is that after a few years of "warp 9.999" this and "warp 9.9999" that, they revamped the warp scale to allow for higher numbers.
I meant that imposing a Warp 5 speed limit in the TNG episode "Force of nature" was, to me, one of the worst canon decisions of the TOS-ENT era of Trek (which means the era encompassing TOS/TNG/DS9/ENT), and its not one that gets mentioned a lot (probably because they realized it was a stupid thing to do fairly quickly). I didn't meant the NX-01 being a Warp 5 ship, I meant the artificial limit put on Warp drive near the end of TNG in that episode (supposedly becaue anything over Warp 5 was "destroying space"), although I now get why that may have been confusing if you're not familiar with the TNG episode in question.
I know the episode, I just thought you were saying the warp limit in TOS and ENT was Warp 5.
I could not possibly disagree moer.
I subscribe to the map in Star Trek Continues that shows the galactic barrier not as something encircling the rim, but enveloping the whole galaxy; so the Enterprise could've gotten there by going relatively "up" or "down".
Then they all turned into salamanders and we faded out. TNG had a weird finale...
I subscribe to the fan theory (possibly explicitly stated in some EU content?) that the folding nacelles of the Intrepid class was an early design that compensated for that, and later designs could do that without the moving nacelles. It seems very Star Trek to me: a few years after the "allegory for climate change" episode, the Federation has fixed it, because they value science and knowledge and have the political will, while we in the present with actual climate change...
<conspiracy mode ON>
Perhaps Kirk reaching other galaxies or at least the galactic rim and stuff means where Voyager would take 70 years to cross the galaxy means that ships actually got slower over time. I mean, in the 22nd century the Klingon homeworld was only 4 days away at only warp 4.5, something that probably isn't true anymore in the TNG/DS9/VOY era (warp scale). If so, the warp scale recalibration might have been an attempt to not cover for faster, but for slower speeds, but to sell it as 'a more advanced understanding of the nature of warp', thus hiding from the gullible public that in fact, technology was retrogressing rather than advancing ....
By late TNG, it probably became increasingly hard to reach the higher values even on the reduced TNG scale, and the 'warp 5 policy' probably was another desperate attempt to conceal the truth from the public. ('Even though of course we could go a lot faster than warp 5, we really shouldn't'.)
<conspiracy mode OFF>
Perhaps Kirk reaching other galaxies or at least the galactic rim and stuff means where Voyager would take 70 years to cross the galaxy means that ships actually got slower over time. I mean, in the 22nd century the Klingon homeworld was only 4 days away at only warp 4.5, something that probably isn't true anymore in the TNG/DS9/VOY era (warp scale). If so, the warp scale recalibration might have been an attempt to not cover for faster, but for slower speeds, but to sell it as 'a more advanced understanding of the nature of warp', thus hiding from the gullible public that in fact, technology was retrogressing rather than advancing ....
By late TNG, it probably became increasingly hard to reach the higher values even on the reduced TNG scale, and the 'warp 5 policy' probably was another desperate attempt to conceal the truth from the public. ('Even though of course we could go a lot faster than warp 5, we really shouldn't'.)
<conspiracy mode OFF>
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In TAS they go as fast as Warp 35, I think. I remember that it was a ridiculously high number.
Then, how do you explain his confirmation of 'not being sorry' to save the Booralans, even after prohibiting it at the beginning of the ep?
By that time it was a fait accompli. What could he have said that he wished they were all dead?
So you're saying he's being a hypocrite there? I suppose you could interpret it that way. (Even though it wouldn't be my interpretation.)
I agree. It's a matter of interpretation.
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