Why is ship speed only a problem for fans with ST and STiD?

[Turd Ferguson]

For the past seven years, there's been a lot of nitpicking about the speed of Starfleet ships, most notably, the U.S.S. Enterprise. Most complaints stem from the fact that it seems to take no time at all for the Enterprise to make it from Earth to Vulcan and literally minutes for the ship to make it from Kronos to Earth in Into Darkness. Some would say that the ship really isn't going that fast, and that they're just skipping over the boring parts of the journey.

However, I recently rewatched Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and realized the same thing was occurring in the Original Series movies (if not for the worse). Check it out.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - V'Ger is creeping around the galaxy, scanning and vaporizing ships.
When attacked, three Klingon cruisers haul ass at (assuming) impulse power. The V'Ger cloud is going much slower than impulse. And, after Epsilon 9 is vaporized, it is reported that V'Ger will reach Earth in 53.4 hours. From the border of Klingon space. Traveling at a snail's pace.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Admiral Kirk and crew take the captured Klingon Bird of Prey from Vulcan to meet their fates on Earth. We know they're not traveling at warp, because they don't do that until they prepare for time warp.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - The Enterprise-A creeps from Nimbus III to the center of the galaxy in literally half an hour. At impulse.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country - The Enterprise-A intercepts Chancellor Gorkon's ship at impulse and even Kirk admits later on they're 1,000 light-years from Federation Headquarters.

So, if you took the journeys that Shatner's Kirk took aboard the Enterprise and Enterprise-A, and adjusted their speed from impulse to warp speed, it seems that the time to travel from location to another location would be similar to the time it takes Chris Pine's Enterprise to travel on its journeys. So, my question is, why is it only a problem in the JJverse and not the Prime Universe?

 

[shapeshifter]

Because Canon Violation!!1

 

[Rahul]

Ugh, seriously?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The answer is relative speed. V'Ger is travelling faster than light. But the klingon ships are inside V'Ger's warp bubble - thereby move with impulse speed relative to V'Ger.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Just because we don't see a warp jump doesn't mean there is none. Warp speed is already well established in canon at this point. How else are they supposed to travel to Eartch? We don't see a lot of the travel in any way, much like in Star Trek 3 where the travel to Vulcan was cut for time.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Again, they are clearly at warp. They are passing the "Great Barrier" with impulse. But it's never exactly clear how big that is. The biggest problem is that they are traveling to the center of the Galaxy. But keep in mind this was before Voyager, so the exact layout of the galaxy wasn't as clear defined then. It's wrong in retrospect, but it was right at the time - in the original series the Enterprise repeatedly left the Galaxy. At this time "super-speed" was kind of canon. Also, Star Trek V is the least disliked original series movie for a reason.

Star Trek VI
Of course they meet at Impulse. Otherwise triangulating would be a bitch. Try meeting with two ships from different direction at millions per miles a second. They would be far out of beaming distance. No, they traveled by warp to their meeting point (as was shown), hung around at impulse until the other one arrived, and then hung around together a bit before they wanted to travel to Earth.

 

[Rahul]

Now for the new movies:

Star Trek 2009
There's actually a clever timejump when they travel to Vulcan: The Enterprise leaves, Kirk is knocked out, wakes up in sickbay (even with a new uniform!), and the Enterprise arrives at Vulcan. On the journey back i is repeatedly implied traveling takes a while (that's why the Enterprise doesn't meet up with the rest of starfleet to travel to Earth, but goes directly there - the whole point of the Kirk-Spock-conflict). It was still critizised by fans, because literally everywhere else any kind of spacial relations are completely bonkers (seeing Vulcan in the sky from Delta Vega - with both Vulcan and Delta Vega having an atmosphere and earthlike gravitation -> twin planets?), and "a supernova threatening to destroy the galaxy".

Into Darkness
was where they completely dropped the ball. Instant travelling to Kronos and back. Then they were in moon orbit(!), had an engine failure, and fell on Earth(!!!) in minutes - in real life traveling between Earth and the moon takes days! Even with engines. Just ask the Apollo crews. But basically everything in Into Darkness was garbage, so that doesn't really bother me like other things from this movie. People (me) were much more annoyed with the beaming-to-Kronos (a planet at the border of known space, well outside federation territory - aka making it possible to beam ANYWHERE in known space - rendering starships completely obsolete!), and the instant communication over the whole universe (Kirk phones Scotty from the klingon border to Earth - that renders the whole Kirk-Spock-conflict in Trek09 obsolete, because the problem there was they couldn't warn anybody OR call the fleet.) But again, there are bigger scientific problems with Into Darkness, like superblood that literally wakes up people from death - bloodtype notwithstanding - and that even works with tribbles (who have human blood now?) Proving again that the two new movies have more continuity errors in themselves than the prime universe during it's entire run. Basically everytime they disregarded one of the old narrative rules, like beaming through shields, or the difference between various transportation technologies, or why the Enterprise can eject their warp core in Trek09 and still fly, but is completely helpless and without electricity once the same wapr core stops working in Into Darkness...

The Force Awakens
This was were JJ Abrams finally showed he has no idea about how big space is. With Starkiller base's Laserbeam travelling faster than light to different star systems, but ALSO faster than light sideways, because it was instantly visibly in the skys on completely different planets in other starsystems! (Finn looking up in the sky). Also, in the final scenes, Rey finds the location of Luke, goes to Hyperspace, and is immediately there. This is not a Star Trek problem. THis is a JJ- Abrams problem. A major one.

Star Trek Beyond
The first new movie an actual Star Trek fan makes. And lo and behold! They seem to get space travel right. They got a nifty new special effect. And it takes time. Because space is vast. Man, that wasn't so difficult, was it?

 

[drt]

seeing Vulcan in the sky from Delta Vega

I always felt this was more of a telepathic vision (similar to how he felt the death of Intrepid in "The Immunity Syndrome"), not that he could actually see Vulcan destroyed visually.

 

[F. King Daniel]

This chart doesn't include "That Which Survives", where Kirk's Enterprise covers 1,000 light years in 12 hours at warp 8.4.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

This chart doesn't include "By Any Other Name", where Kirk's Enterprise covers 1,000 light years in 12 hours at warp 8.4.

Do you mean "That Which Survives"?

 

[F. King Daniel]

That's the one! *hands in Trekkie card*

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That's the one! *hands in Trekkie card*

*hands it back*

 

[angry apple panda]

An aside about TMP:

It is said by Spock that V'Ger "has knowledge that spans the universe." I kind of always assumed that V'Ger was way more powerful than was apparent, and had been traveling the universe instead of the galaxy. If V'Ger was bored in our universe by the time of the film and needed to evolve to a higher plane of existence, it would seem to me that V'Ger had explored the majority of the universe. Otherwise, V'Ger would have probably traveled beyond the galaxy to "evolve."

So, in order to explore the entire universe, it needed to be able to travel at literally Ludicrous Speed, or possibly time traveling to have enough time to explore most of the universe in a few hundred years. I always assumed that V'Ger was going at a slower warp speed in the Milky Way as part of a massive slow down from going at Ludicrous Speed beyond the border of the galaxy.

I know, it's kind of a huge stretch.

V'Ger probably finished exploring the Milky Way and then said, "Eh, they're all the same!"

 

[Mudd]

All of Star Wars proves that no one in Hollywood cares "how big space is," least of all George Lucas.

 

[Kemaiku]

Warp factors are like electrons, probability concentrations. When they're where you want them to be and behave how you want? fantastic!

The other 99% of the time, it's a quantum mechanical crapshoot.

 

[fireproof78]

Now for the new movies:

Star Trek 2009
There's actually a clever timejump when they travel to Vulcan: The Enterprise leaves, Kirk is knocked out, wakes up in sickbay (even with a new uniform!), and the Enterprise arrives at Vulcan. On the journey back i is repeatedly implied traveling takes a while (that's why the Enterprise doesn't meet up with the rest of starfleet to travel to Earth, but goes directly there - the whole point of the Kirk-Spock-conflict). It was still critizised by fans, because literally everywhere else any kind of spacial relations are completely bonkers (seeing Vulcan in the sky from Delta Vega - with both Vulcan and Delta Vega having an atmosphere and earthlike gravitation -> twin planets?), and "a supernova threatening to destroy the galaxy".

Into Darkness
was where they completely dropped the ball. Instant travelling to Kronos and back. Then they were in moon orbit(!), had an engine failure, and fell on Earth(!!!) in minutes - in real life traveling between Earth and the moon takes days! Even with engines. Just ask the Apollo crews. But basically everything in Into Darkness was garbage, so that doesn't really bother me like other things from this movie. People (me) were much more annoyed with the beaming-to-Kronos (a planet at the border of known space, well outside federation territory - aka making it possible to beam ANYWHERE in known space - rendering starships completely obsolete!), and the instant communication over the whole universe (Kirk phones Scotty from the klingon border to Earth - that renders the whole Kirk-Spock-conflict in Trek09 obsolete, because the problem there was they couldn't warn anybody OR call the fleet.) But again, there are bigger scientific problems with Into Darkness, like superblood that literally wakes up people from death - bloodtype notwithstanding - and that even works with tribbles (who have human blood now?) Proving again that the two new movies have more continuity errors in themselves than the prime universe during it's entire run. Basically everytime they disregarded one of the old narrative rules, like beaming through shields, or the difference between various transportation technologies, or why the Enterprise can eject their warp core in Trek09 and still fly, but is completely helpless and without electricity once the same wapr core stops working in Into Darkness...

The Force Awakens
This was were JJ Abrams finally showed he has no idea about how big space is. With Starkiller base's Laserbeam travelling faster than light to different star systems, but ALSO faster than light sideways, because it was instantly visibly in the skys on completely different planets in other starsystems! (Finn looking up in the sky). Also, in the final scenes, Rey finds the location of Luke, goes to Hyperspace, and is immediately there. This is not a Star Trek problem. THis is a JJ- Abrams problem. A major one.

Star Trek Beyond
The first new movie an actual Star Trek fan makes. And lo and behold! They seem to get space travel right. They got a nifty new special effect. And it takes time. Because space is vast. Man, that wasn't so difficult, was it?

It felt very gracious until Abrams Trek, which, has its problems, to be sure, but there could has much implied time and warp jumps as other films. It's not perfect, but I think the edit implies faster speed than necessarily.

Also, the concept of blood based therapies is something used now. So, Khan's "magic blood" (ridiculous term but fine) is more realistic than warp drive or transporters.

I always felt this was more of a telepathic vision (similar to how he felt the death of Intrepid in "The Immunity Syndrome"), not that he could actually see Vulcan destroyed visually.

I had this impression as well. I thought it was left more open for interpretation, but obviously, mileage varies quite a bit.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Ugh, seriously?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The answer is relative speed. V'Ger is travelling faster than light. But the klingon ships are inside V'Ger's warp bubble - thereby move with impulse speed relative to V'Ger.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Just because we don't see a warp jump doesn't mean there is none. Warp speed is already well established in canon at this point. How else are they supposed to travel to Eartch? We don't see a lot of the travel in any way, much like in Star Trek 3 where the travel to Vulcan was cut for time.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Again, they are clearly at warp. They are passing the "Great Barrier" with impulse. But it's never exactly clear how big that is. The biggest problem is that they are traveling to the center of the Galaxy. But keep in mind this was before Voyager, so the exact layout of the galaxy wasn't as clear defined then. It's wrong in retrospect, but it was right at the time - in the original series the Enterprise repeatedly left the Galaxy. At this time "super-speed" was kind of canon. Also, Star Trek V is the least disliked original series movie for a reason.

Star Trek VI
Of course they meet at Impulse. Otherwise triangulating would be a bitch. Try meeting with two ships from different direction at millions per miles a second. They would be far out of beaming distance. No, they traveled by warp to their meeting point (as was shown), hung around at impulse until the other one arrived, and then hung around together a bit before they wanted to travel to Earth.

Ok... I'll give you TMP. Of course, that would also mean Epsilon 9 was traveling at warp too

But, the others I can't agree with. Starting at the end of The Wrath of Khan, every time a ship is at warp, you see the "blur with trails of light" effect. The only time we see this in effect in IV, V, and VI is when...

IV: The Bird of Prey starts its time warp, when the Bof P leaves Earth's atmosphere, and when the Enterprise-A leaves Spacedock

V: When Chekov orders warp to escape the Klingon torpedo

VI: When the Enterprise and Excelsior are on their way to the Khitomer Conference

Any other time, they are at impulse. Hell, even at the beginning of VI, Sulu says they're heading home under full impulse from the Beta Quadrant.

 

[Richard Baker]

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to film a 'racing towards incredible danger' scene when it would take you over three weeks to get there?

Dramatic music as the ship leaps to warp speed. Everyone leaning forward in their chairs, staring at the viewscreen.
An hour later, they finally sit back some, look around, stretch a bit.
An hour later they start swiveling their chairs and begin chatting with each other.
Dinner time, the main cast heads off to dine, relief crew takes their places.
Several days later- the captain is reading a book in his cabin, the engineer is building a model sailing ship out of toothpicks and the science officer is coming up with new and exotic names for gaseous anomalies.
A week later they are holding a talent show and bake sale.
Two weeks later the captain wakes up, stretches and begins a casual walk down the corridor. He meets up with some of the senior staff,, they have breakfast, captain asks the engineer hows that model ship coming along, they chat some more.
A beeper goes off, they put their plates away, walk out the door and after poking around in the gift shop a while head to the bridge.
Cue dramatic music- they all sit down. lean forward in their chairs, the ship breaks out of warp into a large battle scene with explosions everywhere....

 

[The Wormhole]

Ships do travel unreasonably fast in the Abrams Trek movies, or rather in Abrams movies in general. TFA also had the problems of everything being a short jaunt from wherever the point of origin is. The guy just doesn't get space travel.

 

[ancient]

It's a problem in other movie sometimes, but the problem is amplified in JJ trek. One should not be able to warp from Earth to Vulcan in 15 seconds.

 

[The Wormhole]

^^To say nothing of Earth and Qo'nos in two or three minutes.

 

[Rahul]

All of Star Wars proves that no one in Hollywood cares "how big space is," least of all George Lucas.

Oh, George Lucas abso-fuckin-lutely get's how big space is! The only gross scientific mistakes he made was in Episode II, where they flew in the asteroid field of Geonosis. Real life asteroid field aren't that dense, the asteroids are much further apart, otherwise their gravitational pull would pull them straight up together again.

Really, George Lucas never cared much about showing the specifics of space travel. But he absolutely knows them! His prequels have plenty of narrative problems. But regarding all the technical stuff they are pretty spot on.

 

[ancient]

No one aside from Michael Bay gives less of a shit about accuracy than JJ Abrams.