The short answer is that it's not addressed again, beyond the end of TNG. It's also interesting to note that the issues raised in "Force of Nature" are referenced, indirectly, in the last season Voyager episode, "Renaissance Man", when the Hierarchy attempt to trick the Voyager crew into ejecting their warp core because they entered an area that's occupied by people who believe warp drives disrupt subspace. In Star Trek: Voyager, they were so far away from the Federation and getting home was such a huge priority, any non-core regulation artificially limiting their ability to travel was summarily dismissed.In Deep Space Nine, the Dominion War was more important than an environmental concern.Indeed, even The Next Generation writers ignored or found ways around it for the remainder of the season.Īccording to the unpublished VOY Season 1 edition of the Star Trek: Voyager Technical Guide, by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, it was suggested that because of the variable geometry pylons, warp fields may no longer have a negative impact on habitable worlds as established in this episode.īut since the manual was never published, it's not canon. Thus, it is assumed by Paramount Studios and Star Trek fans alike that sometime in the era between the last TOS Movie and the first episode of TNG Federation physicists had made vital discoveries in quantum mechanics that necessitated a recalculation to the current warp factors scene in every series from TNG to DS-9, and Voyager.The episode to which you refer, "Force of Nature", occurred in the last season of The Next Generation at a time when most of the effort in storylines was geared towards Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine: the developers of those shows didn't particularly focus too much on the continuity issues introduced as The Next Generation was wrapping up. This concept fit so well into what had been described during the production of TOS, that the production staff at Paramount saw fit to make this calculation canon by printing it in page 555 in the Star Trek Encyclopedia. Using this system of calculation, Warp-2 would be 8 times the speed of light (2 x 2 x 2 = 8), Warp-3 would be 27 times the speed of light, and so on. The most popular method was the warp-cubed (X^3) calculation. Yet.in many of the TOS episodes, the Enterprise was often noted at traveling at speeds well over Warp-14, usually caused by alien intervention.įor many years, ardent fans of TOS had often used various non-canonical methods of calculating just how fast warp speed was. According to Gene Rodenberry, the "NEW" maximum speed limit for warp travel was set at Warp-10. Unfortunately this new system for calculating warp speeds confused fans of the original STAR TREK series. Warp-10 had become the unattainable maximum speed limit for the galaxy (unless you have alien technology), and was thus dubbed "TRANS WARP" because it's assumed that at Warp-10, you were at all places in the universe simultaneously. To fulfill this request, Michael Okuda, the series special affects and art director created a warp speed chart that could easily be used by the writers in the course of their episodic endeavors. If the Enterprise-D traveled too fast, the Galaxy would become a very very small place, and have limited plot potential for the writing staff. Bret Godfrey HistoryĪs legend has it, back in the pre-production days of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, the creator of the STAR TREK franchise, Gene Rodenberry decided that a speed limit should be in place for warp travel.
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