What happened to Transwarp drive as shown in ST:III?

[Admiral Bear]

While plodding through my Trek movies 1-10 Blu-ray set a while back, it occured to me while watching TSFS that the Excelsior's Transwarp drive technology was quietly dropped and never seen again until Voyager, 80+ years later in the Trek timeline.

The Excelsior's Transwarp drive clearly worked until Scotty took a few nuts and bolts out to sabotage it, so why wasn't Transwarp ever featured again in the TOS movie era? You would think the Enterprise-A would've had Transwarp, unless the drive was Excelsior class specific.

Also in Star Trek VI, the Excelsior with Sulu in command is clearly missing Transwarp. I can't go any faster, Sir. She'll fly apart. . . Then fly her apart!

Sloppy writing on the part of the writers, or was there a Starfleet Command decision to axe Transwarp?

 

[Amaris]

While plodding through my Trek movies 1-10 Blu-ray set a while back, it occured to me while watching TSFS that the Excelsior's Transwarp drive technology was quietly dropped and never seen again until Voyager, 80+ years later in the Trek timeline.

The Excelsior's Transwarp drive clearly worked until Scotty took a few nuts and bolts out to sabotage it, so why wasn't Transwarp ever featured again in the TOS movie era? You would think the Enterprise-A would've had Transwarp, unless the drive was Excelsior class specific.

Also in Star Trek VI, the Excelsior with Sulu in command is clearly missing Transwarp. I can't go any faster, Sir. She'll fly apart. . . Then fly her apart!

Sloppy writing on the part of the writers, or was there a Starfleet Command decision to axe Transwarp?

Scotty being Scotty, I'm sure it was more than just the few nuts and bolts. When it comes to such experiments, it is very easy to screw up years of research and testing in a matter of minutes, and if no one knows the source, it could take many years to trace it back. I'd imagine something like Transwarp would be immensely complex, and so at some point I figure Starfleet felt it better just to can it rather than waste more time and resources on it.

 

[Mr Silver]

From what I understand, this was not Transwarp, as in "Infinite Velocity" (as seen in VOY: Threshold) but merely Transwarp in the sense that Starfleet were trying to improve their existing Warp Drive

It likely failed, although by the 24th Century they had likely succeeded, thus the Warp Drive scale was redesigned with the new Warp Drive speeds in mind

 

[Boxyno1]

From what I understand, this was not Transwarp, as in "Infinite Velocity" (as seen in VOY: Threshold)

I think Admiral Bear was refering to another episode of Voyager in which they find or build (I can't remember, haven't watched the episode in years) a transwarp drive and put it to test, but they fall out of it and crash land on a planet.

(Can a Voyager fan please identify the episode for me, my knowledge on that series is weak)

 

[Mr Silver]

(Can a Voyager fan please identify the episode for me, my knowledge on that series is weak)

Sure...

The episode is called "Timeless" and the Transwarp Drive your thinking of is actually "Quantum Slipstream Drive" (something similar but nonetheless a different system)

 

[Boxyno1]

Oh right, there are so many different types of warp drive that I lose track of them. Was it a transwarp drive they use in Threshold then? If so, the Excelsior could go warp 10 then? Am I wrong?

 

[James Wright]

(Can a Voyager fan please identify the episode for me, my knowledge on that series is weak)

Sure...

The episode is called "Timeless" and the Transwarp Drive your thinking of is actually "Quantum Slipstream Drive" (something similar but nonetheless a different system)

I can barely remember that episode, what happened to Tom Paris?

 

[Gorn Captain]

The car companies killed it because of pressure from the oil industry. Oh wait.

 

[kes7]

(Can a Voyager fan please identify the episode for me, my knowledge on that series is weak)

Sure...

The episode is called "Timeless" and the Transwarp Drive your thinking of is actually "Quantum Slipstream Drive" (something similar but nonetheless a different system)

I can barely remember that episode, what happened to Tom Paris?

"Timeless" is a whole different episode than the one you're thinking of, which is called "Threshold." It's best to forget about "Threshold." Even the VOY writers "de-canonized" it.

But I'll remind you what happened ... after hitting Warp 10 ("infinite speed") Tom Paris "evolved" into a salamander, along with Janeway, and made little lizard babies with her -- which they promptly abandoned on an alien world.

No, I'm not kidding.

I personally regard that episode as a weird dream either Kathryn or Tom had after eating too much of Neelix's cooking. In any case, it was a totally different episode than the failed slipstream flight.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I seem to recall reading (encyclopedia, maybe?) that the Excelsior was called "The Great Failed Experiment" or something like that, at least in a behind the scenes way to explain why transwarp didn't catch on.

 

[FormerLurker]

Called so because of Kirk calling it "The Great Experiment" in dialog in STIII.

 

[KarmicCurse]

It was clear in the movie it had never been tested yet.
"She's supposed to have transwarp drive."
"I'm looking forward to breaking some of the Enterprise's speed records."
I've always assumed it was quickly repaired, but it doesn't work in practice.

 

[Timo]

Or then it worked just fine, and was installed on all starships built after that date.

...At which point Starfleet R&D began researching for the next transwarp (that is, faster-than-regular-warp) technology. Which they found in 2316, and implemented by 2340. At which time research on the next transwarp was already well advanced, so that it could be installed on the E-D in 2360, and put to operational use in 2363.

I wonder what Scotty's sabotage really amounted to in the end. Did the ship just bolt and refuse to engage transwarp because parts were missing? Or did the absence of those components mean that the keypress that should have engaged transwarp in fact created six thousand tons of slag metal in the engine room and cracked each and every warp coil? To repair the ship, did Starfleet summon for a brat who purged the "good morning" virus from the computer and a bored and somewhat overweight electrician who plugged back in the half a dozen memory chips? Or did they send in a decontamination army of thousands to tame the raging plasma fires, with just a hundred or so at a time fitting inside the engine room inferno and working till a fatal radiation dose required them to be dragged out and the next hundred sent in?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kibbin]

It probably worked, just not in the Borg/Threshold sort of way. Neither of which had been encountered at this point. In other words the test was a succsess. The warp scale was redesigned with the higher warp speeds in mind.

Also Timo, as much as Scotty hated the Excelsior and what not, I don't think he would have set something in motion that would start raging plasma fires, possibly endangering lives.

 

[Mr Silver]

Or then it worked just fine, and was installed on all starships built after that date.

Thats possible, but many explanations go by "The Great Experiment Failure" way of thinking and not that it was a success...

I personally feel that Scotty merely sabotaged the ship and not the Experiment itself, rather they repaired Scotty's sabotage and then went ahead with the tests, obviously they failed and Starfleet accepted that the new "Transwarp Drive" needed to be thought out more, so they researched it and eventually completed it in the early 24th century, leading to the new "Warp Scale" (Warp 1 to 10 with 9.99 being the fastest speed reachable (Prometheus) and then Warp 10 being classed as (theoretically) maxium or "Infinite Velocity")

Post-Failure, Excelsior was refitted with a standard Warp Drive and commisioned to ordinary service, where Sulu was placed in command

 

[Timo]

Why wait until the 24th century to redefine the warp scale? It could have happened in 2285 already, right after the splendid success of the first flight of the Excelsior. Or, for all we know, some time before ST:TMP.

After all, no TOS movie ever uses warp factors higher than ten. And the only time ten is used, in ST:TVH, it is related to time travel - which would be perfectly valid terminology if warp 10 meant infinite speed (higher than that and you get to B before you even left A!). Indeed, warp 10 is used in that exact sense in TNG "Time Squared".

Moreover, our heroes hit warp 7 in ST:TMP on a mission of crucial importance and tight schedule. Surely the expensive refit didn't make the ship slower than in TOS, where she easily did warp nine, and could push warp 10 or beyond when coerced? This may well be the "new" warp 7, which is faster than the old warp 9...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr Silver]

Why wait until the 24th century to redefine the warp scale? It could have happened in 2285 already, right after the splendid success of the first flight of the Excelsior. Or, for all we know, some time before ST:TMP.

After all, no TOS movie ever uses warp factors higher than ten. And the only time ten is used, in ST:TVH, it is related to time travel - which would be perfectly valid terminology if warp 10 meant infinite speed (higher than that and you get to B before you even left A!). Indeed, warp 10 is used in that exact sense in TNG "Time Squared".

Moreover, our heroes hit warp 7 in ST:TMP on a mission of crucial importance and tight schedule. Surely the expensive refit didn't make the ship slower than in TOS, where she easily did warp nine, and could push warp 10 or beyond when coerced? This may well be the "new" warp 7, which is faster than the old warp 9...

Timo Saloniemi

Those are some excellent points

Perhaps the Warp Scale was redefined prior to TMP, along with the new Warp Drive systems, in that case perhaps Warp 9 was the best obtainable speed (in VH, Sulu said "Warp 9" and once in the Sun's EM Field, he began to count 9.2, 9.3, etc, (which suggests that 9.9 is the absolute maximum when assisted by the gravitational and EM field of a star) and then "Maximum Warp", this suggests that Warp 9 was maximum speed and that the Warp-O-Meter went off the scale when they hit the slingshot, likely a result of "Time Warp")

The Excelsior might have been an attempt to go beyond Warp 9 (like the 9.975 and 9.99 factors we've come to known in 24th century settings), however this failed, therefore they went back to the drawing board and eventually managed to make it succeed and thus were able to normally go above Warp 9, but only in fractions not whole factors

 

[Timo]

...To be pedantic, while Sulu did count up towards warp 10 during the trip to the past, he also stated that warp 8 was the maximum during the trip back (with the higher load and possibly the lower-quality dilithium). So the "breakaway speed" suggested there would not exactly be defined as warp 10 - it would just happen that the first breakaway speed had the value "warp 10" (or perhaps warp 9.9), while the second did not. But that's just nuances.

The Excelsior was built to be faster than the Enterprise, and the Enterprise had already hit warp 14.1 in front of our very eyes, so transwarp would have to be faster than that. OTOH, the Enterprise had also done time travel, which might count as "faster than infinite" (you're there before you started). And OTTH, the competition might be about speeds the ships were built for, in which case warp 14.1 wouldn't count because it was an unsustainable accident. So we have many possible ways for picking an explanation to the enigmatic line "All speeds available through transwarp drive"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Leathco]

My theories...

First up, I think time travel could have been done easier in the Enterprise. Our heroes were in some random Klingon ship, not the ship that set speed records for the Federation.

Secondly, I thought the Excelsior transwarp system failed completely. I remember reading somewhere (online? book? not canon, oh well) that Scotty actually accedentally SAVED Excelsior from exploding when she engaged transwarp once they had ran further tests. Excelsior was due to be mothballed until Starfleet realized that the ship still had the latest tech and designs, so they retrofitted her with standard warp engines.

I figure Warp Speed has slowly crept up, moving slightly faster during the time between TOS and TNG, and the scale change was done sometime after The Voyage Home, which mentioned the "impossible" warp 10, unless they were on the old scale, which means warp 10 might be possible, but really pushing it for an old, rusty, battle damaged Bird of Prey.

 

[Mr Silver]

I think time travel could have been done easier in the Enterprise. Our heroes were in some random Klingon ship, not the ship that set speed records for the Federation.

Thats another good point, considering the Klingon Ship started to fall apart just past Warp 6, they were lucky it held together,

It would have been easier for them to "Time Travel" in The Enteprise the "Slingshot Effect" way, we've seen it done before in two episodes of TOS (this was the more fragile Connie-Pre Refit) so it would probably have been a smoother ride in a Connie-Refit class Starship and the Dilithium Crystals would not have necassarily been rendered inert