Voy: Threshold

[drewder]

Looked and couldn't find an existing thread for this one. I feel Chuck is being unfair with this episode giving it a 0. After all it is one of only 5 Emmy award winning episodes of voyagers run so objectively it should be in the top ten right?

[CMWaters]

I'm more amazed that a later series actually referenced it.

[LordFeagans]

I have a special reason to love/hate this episode. I was a senior in high school and a friend of mine, who was a Trek fan, just not a Voyager fan (at the time) asked me "Why don't they just build a warp 10 engine?"

This question stunned me. This is on par with asking why don't the astronauts on the ISS just build an impulse engine. Voyager soon after released this episode, proving why such a question shouldn't be asked or even taken seriously.

Now, I would understand, to some degree, if Voyager broke the threshold after Seven of Nine showed up and helped them build it and have it fail (explain that you really aren't everywhere at once, that navigation is different at transwarp speeds, thus the illusion of being everywhere at once, or have the failure lead to a dangerous mission with a ticking clock to get the warp core repaired before the ship loses power and the emergency force fields preventing the core from breaching fail and explain that the ship just can't handle transwarp speeds, putting the topic to bed permanently). But, we're to believe that an ensign, Tom Paris, Academy Washout turn Chief Engineer, and the fry cook somehow build a transwarp engine from spare parts.

[Deledrius]

"Everywhere at once" is as literal as "the cat is both alive and dead".

The real takeaway from such a thought experiment is that the pure mathematical basis for the theory the system is operating under breaks down at some point and no long applies. You either need a more accurate system, or a different system entirely at that scale (e.g. Relativity, Quantum Physics, and Newtonian Physics are all true, but have issues outside of their domains).

Star Trek does have a built-in response to the Warp 10 barrier: Transwarp. Realistically, this is a new model of Warp that works at the scales Warp does not. Alas, most ST writers aren't physicists, so it doesn't seem this connection was ever made (at least it never made it on screen).

[drewder]

The real problem is that nobody seems to understand that to get to warp 10 you have to travel at every speed up to warp 10. You don't need to break the laws of physics to get home, you just need to go faster. Since their discovery was a new form of more efficient dilithium if it can make them go 100 times faster they'll be home next week.

[pilight]

They couldn't navigate. Doesn't matter how fast you go if you can't control where you end up.

[Madner Kami]

They couldn't navigate. Doesn't matter how fast you go if you can't control where you end up.

As long as you are closer to your goal than you were when you started, you made progress.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

They couldn't navigate. Doesn't matter how fast you go if you can't control where you end up.

As long as you are closer to your goal than you were when you started, you made progress.

Yeah but when you run into other people then they're gonna ask why you chose that spot to go to. With nothing to say except "durr that's just the way I travel," you're gonna look pretty stupid.

[clearspira]

They couldn't navigate. Doesn't matter how fast you go if you can't control where you end up.

As long as you are closer to your goal than you were when you started, you made progress.

If you are literally everywhere at once, then the chances of ending up somewhere within that small strip of Milky Way are nearly infinitesimal.

[TGLS]

They couldn't navigate. Doesn't matter how fast you go if you can't control where you end up.

As long as you are closer to your goal than you were when you started, you made progress.

Yeah but when you run into other people then they're gonna ask why you chose that spot to go to. With nothing to say except "durr that's just the way I travel," you're gonna look pretty stupid.

Well then scan the area, accelerate up to warp Lotsa 9s and then stop once your sensor data no longer has accurate readings of what's in front of you.