posted
A bit late now, but doesn't Q Who get the warp scale wrong? Q throws the ship 7000 light years away from the Federation, and Data says it will take two and a half years to get back at maximum warp. At that point in the series, maximum warp could have still been warp 9.2 (as it was in Farpoint), or warp 9.6 (like it was for most of the series. In either case, it doesn't fit. Going by that scale, Voyager, a much faster ship, should have been home in less that thirty years. (And that's assuming that Data meant maximum maximum warp, rather than just "the hieghest speed we can maintain for a couple of years").
It was a rather strange mistake actually. Assuming they were using Okuda's warp scale then (and there's no reason to assume they weren't), there was no plot reason for them to make warp drive to fast. In fact, wouldn't the plot have worked better if it would have taken them longer to get back?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
quote: In fact, wouldn't the plot have worked better if it would have taken them longer to get back?
I believe, at the time, that the Borg were being introduced with an eye towards making them the main villain of TNG; to replace the Ferengi who had been, shall we say, less than impressive. I suspect the encounter took place in a relatively close area to aid in this development.
posted
Well then, why didn't they change the light-speed reference?
The most likely explanation is that they hasn't actually hammered out the warp-scale by that point.
On a related note, where'd the original idea for the Borg coming from the Delta Quadrant actually come from? It's mentioned in "Vendetta" (the novel), but I don't think it was mentioned on screen until Decent, so at what point was it deceided upon? And were they suppossed to be in the Delta Quadrant in Q Who?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
posted
Well, logically they COULDN'T have been in Delta in "Q Who?", since 7,000 ly gets you nowhere near Delta yet. Or then the Federation was supposed to be more than twenty thousand lightyears wide, so that its border would already be very near Delta and a hop of 7,000 ly would be sufficient - but that would not jibe with much of the other data.
And of course there would not BE a Delta quadrant until "The Prize", where it would be invented. And even there, things would be fuzzy - a shifting of the wormhole mouth by mere 200 ly would move it from Gamma quadrant to Delta, which would be an odd coincidence and wildly at odds with the idea that the Delta end would be along the homeward journey of the Voyager.
So I think the Borg being in Delta was indeed something only invented for "Descent" and even there only used as an obscure non-dialogue background detail. Okuda probably was the sole person responsible for that, typing "Delta Quadrant" in one of his 'grams without telling anybody. He then put the relevant information in the Encyclopedia, and voila, suddenly the Borg WERE in Delta.
posted
Actually, the Okuda scale is so slippery in the 9.6+ region that a call of 2.5 years doesn't mean they were explicitly ignoring it, just that they weren't using terribly great precision reading off the graph.
According to the most accurate formula we have:
9.6 = 3.5 years 9.8 = 2.9 years 9.9 = 2.3 years
My interpretation: either Data meant 3.5 years (and the historical records are glitched) or he meant "if we burnt out the engines and fried the crew with radiation, the hull of the ship would coast into the Federation in about 2.5 years"
Is there any ambiguity in the distance, such as 7000 LY from their previous location but 2.5 years from the Federation? That could change the distance by a few thousand LY easily.
OnToMars
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Member # 621
posted
"My interpretation: either Data meant 3.5 years (and the historical records are glitched) or he meant "if we burnt out the engines and fried the crew with radiation, the hull of the ship would coast into the Federation in about 2.5 years"
Translation; Data would make it back peachy clean in 2.5 years. Selfish bastard.
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posted
From what I recall, Data said "At maximum warp, in two years, seven months, blah blah we would reach starbase 185."
At most, the distance can be 7,000 light years. More likely, it's smaller than that. Which just mucks up the speed value even more.
"According to the most accurate formula we have:"
What formula is this? Looking in the encyclopedia, warp 9.6 is listed as being 1,909 times the speed of light, and it says it would take 52 years to cross the Federation (10,000 light years) at that speed. If it takes 52 years to cross 10,000 light years, then it can't take 3.5 years to cross 7,000.
Although, going by that, I don't see where Voyager's 70,000 light years from home in 70 years value came from. Unless they were using warp 9.975...
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
posted
"So I think the Borg being in Delta was indeed something only invented for "Descent" and even there only used as an obscure non-dialogue background detail."
The only problem with that is that Vedetta puts them in the Delta Quadrant, and that novel came out while season 4 was airing.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
posted
Whether or not they were in the Delta Quadrant is moot anyway, since the Borg had already made it deep into the Beta Quadrant. Remember, the first time we saw any evidence of the Borg way of operating (whole sections of worlds just carved away) was at the end of the first season. Outposts on both sides of the Neutral Zone had been carted off.
Maurice Hurley, who wrote the screenplay for that episode (The Neutral Zone), had intended it to be the first part of a multi-part episode introducing the Borg. The writers'strike in 88 blew that idea out of the water. If the Borg had already made it to the Neutral Zone (within spitting distance of the Alpha Quadrant), then Q could have thrown them to somewhere in the Beta Quadrant and the ship still could have met the Borg.
Of course, this doesn't alter the fact that the warp speed chart is goofy, but then again they never did work out a single formula for the modern scale, did they?
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Member # 709
posted
maybe Starbase 185 is still a ways from where they were, or even worse for them, a long way from Earth. I remember Kasidy saying that Cestus III was six months from deep space nine.. the federation is supposedly a pretty big place. But Deep space nine was close to earth when they needed it to be.. and ferenginar.. and cardassia.. and kronos.. and romulus.. and breen.. strange for being such a faraway place
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The formulas are off at 9.6 since the "official" dip at that point (if you plot it you end up with a plateau rather than a nice curve). In the grand scheme of things, though, it's pretty close - the Berry-Shields equation comes up with W9.6 = 2018c, but is much closer to values on either side.
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