As a less dedicated Trek fan who doesn't know where Kronos is, I wouldn't have been fazed if they'd gotten there in an hour.
OTOH, I would have preferred if they didn't actually have an address and had to keep stopping to ask for directions.
My point was that I didn't want the humans to have any vulcan database, alien guide, etc.As a less dedicated Trek fan who doesn't know where Kronos is, I wouldn't have been fazed if they'd gotten there in an hour.
OTOH, I would have preferred if they didn't actually have an address and had to keep stopping to ask for directions.
They DID have to ask. They asked the Vulcans who happened to be on earth anyway.
But they didn't just give them the coordinates, Archer didn't ASK for T'Pol's companionship, you know?![]()
Trouble is, if this is supposed to be the Early Days of Star Fleet, when ships were small and cramped and slow and space full of unknowns, it's a bit contrary to the spirit of the thing to have the destination be so blasted close. Columbus's first voyage to the New World took 33 days after the layover in the Canaries; shouldn't a voyage to the heart of a star empire take more than one-eighth as long? Doesn't it better capture the spirit of space-is-even-bigger if it takes longer to get there?As a less dedicated Trek fan who doesn't know where Kronos is, I wouldn't have been fazed if they'd gotten there in an hour.
While it is always dangerous to put a ruler up to a piece of science fiction and see if the numbers make sense, this particular choice put Kronos closer to Earth than Alpha Centauri is.)
Still, four days is what you get at the known maximum speed, which gives you the maximum distance regardless of varying-quality-charts or tips-from-locals or other such factors. If that's along a non-straight path, all the worse.
What we have to do here is one of the following:
a) Assume that one figure or another stated on screen was dead wrong. Not my preference.
b) Assume that the figures we hear are, umm, deceptive. Say, warp 4.5 may be a different speed at different times. Perhaps the speed steadily increases as long as the engines are running at warp 4.5, and will be tenfold just a couple of hours after Archer's statement? That would be consistent both with the Neptune-and-back reference and the idea that Klingons live far away, although it would require further handwaving for consistency.
c) Assume that the layout of the Trek universe is different from ours, and that stars are much, much more closely packed there. Again, not really my preference, as it solves little for the further problems it causes.
Timo Saloniemi
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