Transwarp

[Wingsley]

It seems, at least to what I recall from TNG, VOY and ENT, that the word "transwarp" has multiple meanings. It can imply a form of space travel/propulsion, a form of interstellar beaming/communication, or a form of controlled wormhole.

The Voth (VOY "Distant Origin") seemed to have mastered an extremely advanced form of propulsion, much faster than ordinary warp drive, but still very similar.

The Borg and others seem to either create or harness a system of wormholes ("transwarp conduits") or doorways into some other dimension that facilitates arrival at distant destinations. How this works seems extremely convoluted to me; it isn't clearly a wormhole and it isn't clearly some kind of hyperspace trick that results in miraculous travel.

The interstellar beaming and communication concept seems to be like a micro-wormhole, allowing a message or transportation of someone or something over interstellar distances with great precision. This begins to sound a little like the Iconian "gateway" (TNG: "Contagion").

What these concepts have to do with each other, if anything, is completely unclear. I assume that the Voth's propulsive form of "trasnwarp" is simply fifth-power warp drive. I don't think this is what Captain Styles' Excelsior "great experiment" was all about. I suspect the "great experiment" had more to do with the Borg conduit/hyperdimension-style technology, and the Federation was premature to experiment with it.

The scary thing about the Borg-style conduits/hyperdimension technology, if sound, would seem to make them into an even greater threat. Wouldn't this kind of hyper-dimensional travel have no limits? I don't see what could keep the Borg from quickly and easily invading other galaxies.

I looked over the Memory Alpha article on transwarp, and it seems to me to be a word with multiple unrelated meanings.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Yup. Pretty much.

Even quantum slipstream drive can be considered a form of transwarp, so there's more than one way to approach the term, IMO. As far as the Borg transwarp conduit system, I like to think that it's something that changes periodically, with some exit points (like to Sector 001) coming and going over time.

 

[Wingsley]

It also looks to me like the Borg ship in "The Best of Both Worlds" must've used a Voth-style transwarp propulsion to keep racing around without ever showing signs of strain.

 

[MacLeod]

As you say Transwarp drive is not celary defined, at it's basic level it seems to be faster than what the current warp drive system is.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Most of the forms we saw seem to involve entering a different realm altogether.

The Borg conduits we saw had constructed parts on the inside, so that would indicate they were Borg-made, or at least Borg-enhanced.

 

[at Quark's]

Transwarp simply would mean 'beyond warp'.

In my opinion, it is a general designation for any technology that is significantly superior to warp in terms of velocities attained.

Perhaps it can be compared to the term 'supersonic', which only tells us that a vehicle can go faster than sound. It doesn't say anything about how that is achieved. So one 'supersonic' technology (magnetic rail propulsion) can be completely unrelated to another (jet engines with afterburner) supersonic technology. I think it would be the same with transwarp.

The difference being that 'faster than sound' is of course much more defined than 'faster than warp', as we know that warp 9.9999.... approaches infinite speed while still being just warp.

So I would say that transwarp would be any technology that makes speeds accessible and practical that are significantly beyond the current limit of what Federation technology
can provide without requiring prohibitive power input or causing other insurmountable technical problems.

 

[Wingsley]

I suppose you could say that "transwarp" is like "kleenex", as it applies to anything weirder than "just plain warp". This viewpoint reminded me a little of this video:

(WARNING: do not watch if you don't like to see someone loosing it while you die laughing.)

New York Times video: Xerox

Sorry, but I do not know how to embed a video on this BBS.

I prefer to think that "transwarp" is an actual spaceflight term, but one with multiple diverging meanings.

 

[MacLeod]

Well for youtube use the tags [ yt ] insert link address here [ /yt ] . Just delete the spaces

 

[Wingsley]

^ Thanks, MacLeod. I didn't know about that.

Unfortunately, the video above is on Vimeo.

 

[timelord1010]

I think the Borg are a greater threat with Time Travel than with transwarp technology. Instead of traveling to Earth and then traveling back in time like they did in the movie First Contact, it would have been devastating if they would have time traveled before entering Federation space and then the Federation wouldn't know what hit them.

But then where are the temporal police we have seen in Voyager and Enterprise during this movie?

As for transwarp, it's a definition of speed, like trans sonic, and you can use different technology to get to that speed. You didn't mention the space jump Barkley made the Enterprise-D do in TNG episode Nth Degree. I really liked that better than Warp Drive. This is what Star Blazers and New Galactica do instead of racing around the Galaxy.
I think this is much better than Trans Warp.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think the Borg are a greater threat with Time Travel than with transwarp technology. Instead of traveling to Earth and then traveling back in time like they did in the movie First Contact, it would have been devastating if they would have time traveled before entering Federation space and then the Federation wouldn't know what hit them.

But then where are the temporal police we have seen in Voyager and Enterprise during this movie?

Maybe they're the ones keeping further incursions from happening. If they do their jobs right, nobody will ever know what things are supposed to happen and what things aren't.

 

[Wingsley]

My own theory on what "transwarp drive" means:

In Goldstein & Goldsteins 1980 "Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology" (1980), there were several suppositions made about the history of spaceflight, the Federation, and propulsion. Much of this was ignored by subsequent canon stories. But there were some compelling ideas there:

1: starship technology, especially warp engines, evolved in a multi-generation process. There were milestones reached, and each milestone represented a new plateau for starship construction and what these newer ships could achieve and how it had a profound influence on Starfleet and the Federation.

2: Both the "original" Constitution-class starships and the "refit" class represented two such major milestones, each making major strides in pushing Federation starship technology to new levels.

3: The final chapter proposed a new, then-"next" generation of super-starships, much larger and propelled literally by "SuperWarp" (fourth-power) drive.

All of this was swept under the rug by canon, but my thinking evolved on it ever since. As far as I'm concerned, the fourth-power "SuperWarp" was what the fledgling TMP refit was all about (fanon calls it "linear warp drive"). This became the basis for TMP and TNG-era propulsion.

The transwarp experiment in Excelsior was either a Borg-style conduit/wormhole travel or an early attempt at quantum slipstream (VOY: "Hope and Fear", the impostor NX-01-A Dauntless). What that experiment failed, Excelsior and her ilk simply continued to develop linear warp drive.

The Voth achieved true fifth-power TransWarp Drive; this would be an extremely sophisticated evolution of linear warp drive, rising technology to another plateau.

 

[T'Girl]

The Time Cops would have stepped in as soon as the Borg arrived in the past, if Picard was going to fail hours later.

But since Picard was "historical" successful, the Time Cops stood to the side.

Tough love for those folks who died in the missile silo corridor, maybe they weren't historically significant.

 

[JES]

The Time Cops would have stepped in as soon as the Borg arrived in the past, if Picard was going to fail hours later.

But since Picard was "historical" successful, the Time Cops stood to the side.

Tough love for those folks who died in the missile silo corridor, maybe they weren't historically significant.

It is likely that the events making up the First Contact incident happened chronologically before the DTI or Starfleet had invented anything to stop such temporal incursions, due to the fact that the Borg did this in 2372 (or was it 2373? I can't remember), way before Starfleet even had built the Premonition (not that would've helped, since anything not chronologically protected would have been instantly changed/erased, just like Earth was).

In other words, if Picard and his crew had failed, that literally would have been history.

 

[Timo]

But supposedly the Time Cops would be altering/restoring the past quite regularly. Why would it matter whether this past had been altered "before" the founding of the DTI or not?

The organization cannot be dependent on having a stable history of its own, or else every two-bit time-tampering villain would be safe from their policing actions: just alter history, and you both get the alteration you wanted and wipe the DTI from existence!

Somehow, the DTI (or some sort of a strike force element of it) must exist in a bubble that cannot be harmed by time tampering. The books describe them as having PADDs that tell them whether the history they currently believe in is suddenly different from what it used to be ("Hey, this says only President Kennedy should have died at Dallas - perhaps we should save Jackie?"; "Apparently, there used to exist a planet called Vulcan - let's go restore it. Seems it ought to be around 61 Eridani. Oh, wait, 40 Eri A! My mistake!"), but what help would that be against foes that undo the very existence of the Federation?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Perhaps they are only able to prevent time villians from as certain year forward. The origin if the villian, not the time they are messing with. The Borg attack on Earth was from 2373 or so, so maybe that is before Temporal Investigations and the TimeFleet started to operate using time travel themselves (outside of incidents with Kirk and the like). It seems the 26th century is the last century were temporal invaders don't have the DTI or Timefleet after them.

 

[JES]

^^ Exactly what I meant. The Borg made their incursion way before the DTI had any of the equipment necessary to go after them. If that weren't the case, then the Enterprise would have been joined by a time ship to make sure that Cochrane's flight happened on schedule.

 

[Nebusj]

^^ Exactly what I meant. The Borg made their incursion way before the DTI had any of the equipment necessary to go after them.

Why even have timecops who can't travel in time?

 

[Ithekro]

Time cops that can make sure what changed and what didn't change. They can travel in time, but it is difficult. Using Kirk's slingshot trick around a sun or black hole. The problem is they don't have temporal sensors yet to detect the problem as it happened before it effect them in the future.

 

[Timo]

Perhaps they are only able to prevent time villians from as certain year forward. The origin if the villian, not the time they are messing with.

How does that work if the villains come from multiple different eras? Wouldn't each group of time bandits pay for one member to join them from a time before the founding of the DTI, thereby gaining full immunity?

I don't see why a specific time machine should stop working at dates preceding the general invention of time machinery. I mean, surely somebody else somewhere else invented time machines earlier on, so that angle is already covered - and the specific machine sitting in the DTI hangar isn't obliged to bow to any particular "theory" or "history of invention", it's just something cobbled together for a purpose.

As for "waiting for a problem to affect the DTI", it's a recipe for disaster, because any villain worth the title would make sure that the problem is of the sort that erases the DTI from existence in the first place!

Timo Saloniemi