TNG "Martian Defense Perimeter"

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-01-23 01:48pm

seanrobertson wrote:Yeah.

The show provides some other pretty sound ways to gauge the NX-01's speed, but those figures still put Qo'nos at ~10 ly from Earth or so. Maybe 12 (great...another thing I need to go investigate! ).

Keep in mind I take this and Enterprise in general with less than total seriousness when it comes to it's place in the StarTrek franchise.

Pretty retarded, I know. I don't know how close Romulus and Earth are supposed to be in ENT, but "Nemesis" gives some indications of the distance, provided you could nail down how fast the Scimitar was (faster than the E-E, but how fast is she? ARGH).

Well, it's kind of conflicting. In one TNG episode (in fact, called "The Neutral Zone"), they went to the Neutral Zone and found a Slower Than Light sleeper ship sent from Earth. I'm not sure when they said it was launched, but it was almost certainly after the Eugenics War but before First Contact (though that episode seemed to have worked on the TOS timeline, not the one established in First Contact). Even if it was pounding along at just short the speed of light, it couldn't have been that far away, by galactic standards. Maybe 350 lightyears at most. I'd put it being launched well after the Eugenics War, since if the devestation was as bad as rumored in TOS, I doubt they'd have the infrastruture intact to build a starship, let alone one carrying trivial people like country music stars and housewives. In another TNG episode, the Neutral Zone and Romulan space is so far away that subspace messages take weeks to get back to Earth, to say nothing of starships. In First Contact, the Neutral Zone was close enough to Earth that the Enterprise was able to listen to the battle with the BorgBox in real time and then rush back to Earth for the end of it. Et cetera.

You would think definitely so!

That makes one wonder about ENT's canonicity. I vaguely recall that Qo'nos and Earth were pretty far apart in TNG, but the specifics, assuming any exist outside of my imagination, escape me.

That's...5 or 6 things I need to go look up. Shit.

Sorry. It just occured to me that if we believe Enterprise, and that's a big if, the Klingons should be close enough for use to detect them by halitosis alone. Of course, Enterprise's First Contact with the Klingons didn't happen quite as it was described in TOS and TNG, where appearantly, first contact with the Klingons was a disaster that lead to very rough waters.

I'll finish that thought later, I've got class... um, five minutes ago.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-01-23 02:11pm

Maybe the sleeper ship got pulled through a wormhole?

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » 2004-01-23 02:15pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Maybe the sleeper ship got pulled through a wormhole?

A bit far-fetched that the same happend to it that happend to V'ger....

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-01-23 02:33pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Maybe the sleeper ship got pulled through a wormhole?

If DS9 is to be believed, traversable wormholes are exceedingly rare.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-01-23 02:40pm

Tribun wrote:A bit far-fetched that the same happend to it that happend to V'ger....

This is Star Trek.

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2004-01-24 04:49pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:Maybe the sleeper ship got pulled through a wormhole?
If DS9 is to be believed, traversable wormholes are exceedingly rare.

Another phenomenon could have done the trick also. A subspace storm (or whatever it was that supposedly pulled the Mars Explorer vessel into the D.Q.), tachyon eddies (which allowed sublight Bajoran Solar Sail vessels to enter the Cardassia System at high warp), or possibly aliens who had nothing better to do than to tow a ship of cryogeneically frozen terminals out into deep space.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-01-24 05:00pm

Matt Huang wrote:Another phenomenon could have done the trick also. A subspace storm (or whatever it was that supposedly pulled the Mars Explorer vessel into the D.Q.), tachyon eddies (which allowed sublight Bajoran Solar Sail vessels to enter the Cardassia System at high warp), or possibly aliens who had nothing better to do than to tow a ship of cryogeneically frozen terminals out into deep space.

But we've got no evidence of any of that stuff. It's therefore not unreasonable that the ship got out there on it's own, which would limit how far it could physically be from Earth.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2004-01-24 06:23pm

Bah —the only thing Martian defences are good for is shooting down NASA and ESA probes.

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2004-01-24 10:50pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:
Matt Huang wrote:Another phenomenon could have done the trick also. A subspace storm (or whatever it was that supposedly pulled the Mars Explorer vessel into the D.Q.), tachyon eddies (which allowed sublight Bajoran Solar Sail vessels to enter the Cardassia System at high warp), or possibly aliens who had nothing better to do than to tow a ship of cryogeneically frozen terminals out into deep space.
But we've got no evidence of any of that stuff. It's therefore not unreasonable that the ship got out there on it's own, which would limit how far it could physically be from Earth.

Tachyon eddies in particular would explain why warp travel can be so inconsistent, for example, how the NX-01 Ent travelled from Earth to Kronos in a far shorter time than it takes in TOS or TNG.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-01-24 10:55pm

Matt Huang wrote:Tachyon eddies in particular would explain why warp travel can be so inconsistent, for example, how the NX-01 Ent travelled from Earth to Kronos in a far shorter time than it takes in TOS or TNG.

Except that we are given their warp speed with a very specific velocity, plus there travel time. We know therefore how far away Kronos is. The sort of warp eddy you describe would be something they they would have mentioned occuring.