Time Dilation

[uniderth]

Something...something...something...Subspace.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah... see, the writers could have used a simple calculator to make accurate statements.

Ideally, yes. But making a weekly TV show is a very complicated and rushed operation. A thousand things have to be juggled and put into place on a tight schedule, and so the makers have to prioritize what's essential to get right and what's minor enough to let slide. So sometimes not every i gets dotted. There just isn't time. Armchair quarterbacks have the time and luxury to obsess over every insignificant detail and demand that it be perfect, but actual TV producers only wish they could have that time and luxury.

 

[Deks]

Ideally, yes. But making a weekly TV show is a very complicated and rushed operation. A thousand things have to be juggled and put into place on a tight schedule, and so the makers have to prioritize what's essential to get right and what's minor enough to let slide. So sometimes not every i gets dotted. There just isn't time. Armchair quarterbacks have the time and luxury to obsess over every insignificant detail and demand that it be perfect, but actual TV producers only wish they could have that time and luxury.

Since when is 5 mins on a calculator luxury?
I realize there are time constraints, but calculating distances isn't that difficult... especially if you have the basics laid out at the start of a series for example (which they probably had at the start of TNG).
State a distance and calculate how long it would take to reach a destination at a given speed. Adjust the story to fit with the speed that the technology allows, or stop dumbing down the technology and showcase real exponential advancements that would lead to such speed increases (and keep using them).

Traveling at say 150 000 km /s across SOL to reach the cube is a race against time (would have taken about 27,5 hrs),.. and it would have given the writers a chance to actually showcase orbital starbases, massive planetary and system wide defenses, etc. delaying the cube while the Enterprise gets there (for that matter, it begs the question on where were other SF ships in BoBW were... I doubt all of them were lost at Wolf 359... SF would be nuts to not have any ships in reserve there or around any core worlds at such a time frame - especially since the Enterprise D dealt with the cube for a while before it reached SOL).

Any story will need time to be developed. Having someone double check your story for inconsistencies and apply minor fixers would be prudent before submitting it for final draft, and you can go do something else.

 

[Christopher]

Any story will need time to be developed. Having someone double check your story for inconsistencies and apply minor fixers would be prudent before submitting it for final draft, and you can go do something else.

Ideally, yes, of course that is true. But it is irrational to assume that every ideal can be met, especially in the context of the mad, relentless rush of producing a weekly TV series. Those of us who've never had to do that job can barely comprehend how all-consuming it is, how many hundreds of different things have to be juggled at once. It's a hell of a lot easier to criticize what someone else does than it is to actually do it yourself.

 

[GNDN18]

State a distance and calculate how long it would take to reach a destination at a given speed. Adjust the story to fit with the speed that the technology allows, or stop dumbing down the technology

And the Great Bird said:

Page 280 of The Worship Words

 

[Ronald Held]

As I said in post #14 above, the tech manuals never said ships are limited to 0.25c. That's a common misapprehension based on a misunderstanding of the term "full impulse" as used in the Star Trek Encyclopedia. "Full speed" is a naval term that means the maximum standard speed at which a ship normally operates. The term for its maximum possible speed is "flank speed."

What the TNG Tech Manual actually says (on pp. 75-8) is that normal impulse operations are kept below 0.25c by convention in order to minimize relativistic effects, but that the main impulse engine can drive the ship up to 0.75c before needing to draw on additional thrust from the Saucer Module engines -- although impulse engines are most efficiently below 0.5c.




I learned long ago that trying to get any sense or consistency out of numbers in Star Trek is a futile effort. It's generally best just to treat the numbers spoken onscreen as placeholders. The writers and filmmakers aren't trying to solve math problems, they're trying to entertain people, and the numbers are just a bit of texture meant to create a fleeting impression. So they're rarely thought through carefully enough by the writers to have any real consistency.

Christopher, do you have references for the quoted values of .5c and .75c?