this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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Writers are not physicists, and the TOS Enterprise also had a few minutes above warp 10 at some point. It's whatever a set of 2-4 writers and 3-5 producers decided that week, and retconning the awkward bits later.
it is actually not, they had detailed manual for that. star trek was inconsistent or vague about lot of stuff (for example how their economic utopia works), but they usually tried to have their technobabble consistent.
they changed how the warp speed works between TOS and TNG.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor#Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series
(not saying there weren't exceptions, for example there were some really random numbers flying in the equinox double episode.)
Then tell me what Tom Paris did in the Cochrane shuttlecraft ;)
That's my point. It's a standard until it's not for a convenient plot reason.
TOS:
from TNG forward:
the lizard babies episode, however absurd, is in line with this.
Cool.
Now tell me about all the newfangled quantum slip stream, etc. that varied writers came up with since TNG in Disco and whatever. Ones that avoid the TNG warp 10 limit.
not relevant to your original claim, which was answered and set straight.
warp number higher than 10 in the TOS is not a proof of "set of writers doing whatever they felt like". (shown above). whatever technology other than warp someone came up with 30 years later can hardly have an effect on the warp number in TOS.
No, you're not understanding. Warp 10 is a symptom of the overall issue.
The rare occasional exception meant that despite the Warp 10 "limit," writers still wrote exceptions because "woah, too fast!" is still a solid Trek plot. Eventually, even the Warp system proved too confining. Wormholes were suddenly everywhere. DS9 was based on that premise. Voyager especially are where writers really pushed back against 1987 made up rules based on what seemed to make sense at the time.
So, to get back to the losey-goosey TOS era of self-defined techno babbel, the entire warp system was effectively depreciated and new systems brought in with new shows. Magical tardigrades making ad hoc wormholes and the like.
Star Trek does not have to obey laws of physics. Everything is whatever humans want it to be. Because it's scifi. It's a story, not science.
you are the one who don't understand. you said something, it was not true, i showed you why. end of story.
there could be warp above 10 in TOS and it did not contradict anything, because it was within the parameters they set.
they decided to change that in TNG and they stayed withing the changed parameters. they made one bad warp 10 story in voyager that was still within these parameters - it still did not contradict anything.
they introduced some other means in the future, like slipstream and fucking fungi drive, which are just irrelevant to the warp factor.
in fact the only one i can think of that was out of line was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_No_One_Has_Gone_Before - but again - not really relevant to my comment "warp 10+ in TOS was fine and not a contradiction"
if you are arguing just for the sake of arguing, go find another sparring partner
I never was making that claim, just that the person I replied to say going above 10 was dangerous
Sure, but I'm saying that any thought or concern about a canon transwarp limit is at risk of being dashed by the whims of people looking for a plot device.
Oh for sure, warp factors and the limits thereof can be bent to fit a particular story
At some point in the cannon they decided warp 10 is the transwarp limit. They ignored it a couple of times.
they changed that between TOS and TNG.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor#Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series
Like I'd trust a clanker! /s