I totally meant for that DS9 box to be waaaay bigger than the other DVD boxes. Yup. I didn't just screw up, never. How about a like on the video, eh? I have a kid to feed.

Old Warp scale=Imperial System New Warp scale=Metric System. Starfleet saw that their scale was not the same as everyone else's so they adopted the scale others used .

Okay, the reason the warp scale was reclassified was because of power utilisation. The most efficient speed (power wise) is DEAD ON a warp factor in the newer scale. As you increase speed from warp 5 to warp 6 (for example) you use more and more power until you hit warp 6 then the power usage drops significantly due to the phase alignment of the warp fields. The most inefficient warp speed is warp 3.99999, 4.99999, 5.9999 etc... The old scale didn't take this power usage into account and different warp factors had wildly different efficiencies. In order to increase the power efficiency of ships with the old scale , they would have had to memorize strange warp factors like warp 2.2653, 3.6543, 6.9274 which was obviously crazy, so they decided to reclassify putting each integeric warp factor at the most efficient points in the power curves.

I suspect that other civilizations seeming to use the same warp scale as the Federation is actually a product of the universal translator. Other civilizations may not use the Federation warp scale, but universal translators make it sounds as if they do.

Wrong, Wrong, wrong, Sulu says "She's supposed to have Trans Warp Drive". Then Scotty retorts, "I, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon."

This is a good theory. Maybe Starfleet thought they've built an actual transwarp drive, then, upon tests, they realize the ship is damn fast, but ultimately behave just like any other warp drive, but way faster. For example, the french version of the movie calls the old warp : exponential speed. And the new warp : hyperexponential speed. This makes no sense obviously, except for one thing : the main idea of this movie is just to show a brand new tech that allow to travel so fast it renders the previous warp drives obsoletes. The Captain of the Excelsior even says that to Kirk, stating that the Enterprise will be decommissioned after that.

Making "Warp 10=infinite" makes sense if that's how the tech works. I don't think Starfleet did this arbitrarily. I think it naturally arose from the new "transwarp" tech pioneered by the Excelsior project and fitted onto every subsequent starship class. The TNG Technical Manual goes into this by describing the warp factors as a series of power thresholds. These thresholds are very likely dictated by the tech they are using, not by a desire to recalculate the speed chart.

Not spoken in the movie? Uhura: Would you look at that. Kirk: My friends, the great experiment: The Excelsior. Ready for trial runs. Sulu: She's supposed to have transwarp drive. Scotty: Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon. Kirk: Come, come, Mr. Scott. Young minds, fresh ideas. Be tolerant. ........... STYLES: Status! FIRST OFFICER: All automates ready and functioning. Automatic moorings retracted. All speeds available through transwarp drive. STYLES: Incredible machine. Helm, one-quarter impulse power. ............ Captain Styles: [about Kirk] If he thinks he can get away with warp drive... he's really in for a shock. [to his crew] Captain Styles: Prepare for warp speed! Stand by transwarp drive! ......... STYLES: Prepare for warp speed! Standby transwarp drive! FIRST OFFICER: Transwarp at your command, sir! COMPUTER VOICE: Full power available. STYLES: Execute! .......... COMPUTER VOICE: Transwarp drive maximum velocity in five, four, three, two, one... (U.S.S. Excelsior slows to a halt) ........... KIRK: Scotty, as good as your word. SCOTT: Aye sir. The more they over-think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. ...Here, Doctor, souvenirs from one surgeon to another. I took it out of her main transwarp computer drive. McCOY: Nice of you to tell me in advance.

Warp speeds is merely the speed of plot= how ever fast it needs to be

I didn't know this was a "theory". I thought it was something like the official explanation. Didn't the TNG technical manual actually have a reference or footnote to the idea that the TNG max-warp-10 scale was based on the Excelior's transwarp drive to explain the difference between the linear scale in TOS and the geometric scale in TNG? I don't have an old tech manual handy to verify, but that's the explanation we all thought back when TNG was still on air.

I just assume that the term 'transwarp' is used to mean 'better warp than we have' rather than a specific type of engine, so the TNG ships have transwarp compared to TOS, and the Borg have transwarp compared to Voyager.

Sulu: She's supposed to have Transwarp Drive... Scotty: Aye, and if my Grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon... Best bridge banter ever...

That one episode of Discovery Burman and Lorca were traveling to the Emperor's Flagship, the dialog and time it took to travel 27 million Kilometers at warp 1 was spot on, 1 minute 31 seconds.

Maybe the fairy dust magic that is the Universal Translator just converts whatever speed the aliens that they're talking to that week says into the Federation's scale. So the Romulans, Klingons, Borg, etc all have their own scales but we never hear it because we just hear the Federation dub of what they're saying.

In ST3, the phrase "Transwarp Drive" is also used in dialog. Specifically, when the Enterprise is stolen and the Excelsior is sent to chase after them: *Enterprise jumps to warp* Captain: "Prepare for warp speed, stand by transwarp drive." Crewman: "Transwarp at your command." Computer: "Full power available." Captain: "Execute." *Engine sputtering and groaning* ... Computer: "Transwarp drive, maximum velocity in five, four, three, two, one..." *Engine sputters and stalls*

My understanding was always that while the transwarp drive failed in its intended task that some of the new elements of the transwarp engine were retained in the then retrofitted standard warpdrive on the excelsior and subsequent ship classes (plus any compatible older classes). Those new components would still give an ENOURMOUS boost in speed, especially for a ship like the excelsior that probably had a oversized warpcore to begin with just to supply power to an even more demanding transwarp drive.

Before I watch this, I should note that my thoughts on this was that the excelsior "transwarp" isn't the same as the Voyager idea of transwarp. For a long time, I've gone with the idea that the Excelsior "transwarp" was a new type of engine that was still a warp drive, but so much better that they could reach previously unheard-of speeds. It's relationship to the engines of the TOS and TMP era engines is (IMO), not unlike that of the the NX-01's "warp 5 engine" and it's predecessors from as far back as the Phoenix era. The Excelsior may or may not have succeeded, but it (again, IMO) definitely took a good long while to really work it all out, at which point, the various scientists & engineers realised just how much better this kind of engine could be, necessitating the whole "la nouveau warp-scale" shenanigans. Now I've got that out the way, it's time to watch the vid. EDIT Hmm. I went into this thinking "yeah, I already know this", but your ideas make a lot of sense. Also, *love* the new intro. Less is more! :)

The warp restructuring seems a lot like a metric conversion: going from arbitrary units to base-ten units defined by an observable, physical reality or principle. Not quite the same, since they share the same unit name with the older measure, but pretty close.

So the original warp scale was the warp factor cubed. The new warp scale is the warp factor to the 10/3 power, with some extra math derived loosely from trigonometry to arrive at infinite speed at warp 10. Note that the deviation happens only as you add digits after the "9". When I was in high school, I used the numbers from the TNG technical manual to figure it out (mainly to see if I could). It actually enhanced my understanding of precalculus. Yes, I was (and still am to a degree) a proper geek.

My mother bought me a Playmates Excelsior class ship model when i was a kid. I remember that the box said transwarp drive. I built the ship and hung it from the ceiling with fishing line.

This is how I feel when you hear a human tell an alien to turn something ‘clockwise.’ Why isn’t that aliens going “WTF LoLzzz clocks don’t turn...”

im sorry but you are WRONG lore reloaded, transwarp drive is mentioned in the original theatrical cut and VHS versions of Star Trek 3 : The Search For Spock. Its mentioned at least once by the captain and twice by the helmsmen of the excelsior. I went back and re-watched those scenes from the VHS version for verification. Its mentioned once 43 minutes into the film and then twice more 46 minutes it and Scotty mentions in 47 minutes in. IM NOT CRAZY DAMNIT!!!

And I'm obligated to make a comment of "lets do the time warp again!" Thank you, that is all

Are you sure about Star Trek 3? I swear I remember someone (Sulu maybe?) saying "I hear she's got transwarp drive."

I thought the time dilation only applies when they’re going at a speed that’s close to, but still slower than, light. That would explain why maximum impulse is a small fraction of light speed and why hitting .7 C on that Saturnian shuttle run from “Chain of Command” was such a big deal.

I seem to recall that the TNG Warp Drive is based on the Alcubierre theoretical FTL engine. If that is the case, then there would be NO time dilation as the warp bubble allows the ship to move across spacetime on a flat plane as if it had zero mass. Time dilation is typically caused by gravitational force on objects of mass, with the the amount of dilation proportionate to the speed of the object. In fact, the bigger issue would be dealing with time dilation at impulse speeds: Accord to the TNG Technical Manual, normal impulse engine speeds are 1/4 the speed of light.

Starships in Trek always move at the speed of plot. This is because of the standard Federation starship power distribution system, the EPS - Extreme Plot System.

In the JJ Abrams Star Trek, Transwarp is a portable device one can use to teleport over vast distances. Kahn used it to teleport himself from earth to a Klingon planet.

The Starbase 001 we have come to know from Search For Spock was seen under construction in the last few minutes of the season finale as the camera zoomed in on Earth during that award ceremony

The meetings between the Admiral and Barclay give me life!!! 😂😂😂

The Barclay scene is *pure friggin' gold.* Good job, Lore Reloaded.

I like this explanation on the warp speed change; it could also help explain how the damage to space was increased (as seen in TNG) dramatically to be visible

@Lore Reloaded the Imperial system vs the Metric system. Basically Starfleet used something akin to the Imperial system that the US uses today & everyone else used the "Metric" system of warp. Then in TNG and onward, Starfleet switches to the "metric" system...

With the other powers, could the universal translator translated what they said into the new Star Fleet warp classification?

Pretty much the same conclusion I had come to; the Transwarp drive on the Excelsior isn't transwarp, as we know it in the later shows, but simply a project name for a new, faster warp drive. And that had become the standard warp drive by the TNG era. And the move to the new scale system totally makes sense for that reason. Although Constitution classes unable to be fitted with that type of drive? See Star Trek 6, where the Enterprise A has a lovely Enterprise D style warp drive/engine room. Come to think about it, that almost makes perfect sense, as to why it has that.. well... disregarding why the brand new flagship Enterprise D then has an 80 year old warp coil (we all know production reasons come in to this, but it's fun to dissect anyway).

I could buy that a new scale with a upper maximum warp 10 was created for transwarp drive. Once transwarp became standard everyone dropped saying trans and just called it warp again. Would be nice if there was some exposition on this on alpha canon. To me it sounded like Excelsior’s Capt had already transwarp test launches. If transwarp hadn’t been tried at least once he shouldn’t be so confident. Also Scotty wouldn’t need to sabotage it.

Didn't the Borg have Transwarp? How would this reconcile with their version?

Seriously? Me and my friends discussed how this had to be what happened YEARS ago. At this point I figured that just about everybody into Trek believed this theory. Also here's something. Most Beta canon info you can find on the Oberth class (older than the Constitution class but still in the fleet even after the Dominion War) lists them as having very slow top warp speeds (in the TNG warp scale). I think this indicates that this class still uses the old warp drive they were originally designed for. It would make sense that for allegedly non-military science and survey ships such as these, retaining the older type of warp drive wouldn't be a big deal since almost any mission they could reasonably be expected to be tasked with, the extra speed from modern warp drives would be meaningless, especially weighed against the almost certainly far higher cost and complexity the new warp systems would have. This could also mean that in TNG-DS9 era, most civilian/corporate commerce ships would still have the older, cheaper, less complicated, but slower class of warp drives and generally only military/psuedo-military organizations like Starfleet have the need and resources to spring for the newer hot rod warp drives. Also, wishful thinking here but maybe the next revolution in warp drive designs will be creating warp plants that don't immediately get knocked offline every time someone fires on the ship when it's shields are up.

"Time Warp" may have been a legacy from the original pilot which if I recall correctly, they told the illusions of the Talosians, "We broke the time barrier," or something similar. In one sense the movies carried over the major series concept of the deus ex machina nulification device which was effectively to just mostly forget about it. On the other hand it could be argued that "transwarp" wasn't a desus ex machina but a use of technobabble to give the suspense of "we can't run away" if only for a moment. Never the less, you point is extremely valid but for a different reason. Warp speeds were generally integer values (with some exceptions but it always was in a condition of pushing the engines). Later attempts to retrofit the history specified "barriers" and defined star ship design in integers as well. The different scale (which is also used in a mostly integer fashion, at least for the slower speeds) implies a completely different optional speeds for the engines, which in turn implies a different engine. Most of the basic races used more or less the same warp technology (an exception is the Romulan ships based on energy from a quantum singularity) but that's not really enough to suggest that they had the same power curves as that of the Federation. Cl;early there was an order of magnitude One last thought and probably a controversial one; the term "trans warp" basically means "beyond" warp. Any engine capable of going beyond the current parameters would be considered "transwarp" until it became common and then the parameters of the new technology would be considered standard. So you can't compare the terms from one era to the other.

Coming from night shift and seeing a Lore Reloaded video. Love it.

I hate the transwarp ten thing from voyager that whole idea makes no sense honestly. Also in TNG they had ships able to do warp 13 in the ep all good things.

MatPat made a Star Trek video once and I disliked it...

I don't think the warp scale changed at all. This all comes down to fans deciding that the warp scale had changed, so they could explain away the inconsistencies in TOS. As for Transwarp. Yes, I think they scrapped it. Kirk called it "the great experiment", Captain Styles commented that they were going to break some of Enterprises speed records. This says that Transwarp had never been tested, or else that other ship would have already broken those records. And the scale wouldn't have to change anyway. As warp speed increase, the relative speed increase at an exponential rate. So, going from warp 4 to warp 5 is not the same as going from warp 8 to warp 9. Once speeds could be reached above warp 9, this becomes even more extreme.

The whole warp-scale change is probably the true reason why there is no post-Voyager show. I mean, just imagine the dialogue: "Helm, take us to Risa, Warp 9.999999999999999." "Excuse me, Captain, how many nine's was that? I lost count."

I turned this off when you said that Transwarp Drive was not spoken on screen.

Canada switched to Metric in 1970-1971, it caused a *lot* of problems and the nationwide population wasn't even that big back then, never mind a space faring culture with tens of billions of inhabitants.

Loved this video. Probably the best explanation of the concept that I’ve heard!

Stardates are a form of time keeping that somehow takes time dilation into account. The new warp scale was put in place for higher speeds, as apposed to the old warp factor as a multiples of C. No one will oder “Ahead at warp factor 14,357.” It’s like giving speeds in Mach speed or C instead of MPH/KPH.

I liked the skits with Brockley ...um, I mean Barclay.. you should do more of those. they are hilarious. Great vid um 13th comment yeah

Broccoli! Bring me a copy of Starfleet Academy course catalog and a gallon of white out.

The captain of the excelsior say "if he tries to escape we'll go Transwarp" as the enterprise is leaving space doc

Ok, I absolutely love your Admiral impression. It's totally epic. "I need bacon" is something hopefully said by someone at some point in Starfleet history.

9.999... repeating is equal to 10, by the way. The more you know. Edit: some people in the comments are saying that this is false. Just look up "0.999..." on Wikipedia, because it is not.

Oh, also there is a slight problem created during the time warp scene in Star Trek IV - they seem to already be using the NEW scale, as after they reach warp 9 Sulu starts counting in decimals. (I suppose this could indicate that the Klingons already had transwarp well before the Federation) This scene does also support the idea that space effects how fast you actually move in warp, as otherwise you would expect them to have zipped by the sun in the blink of an eye. Perhaps the closer a ship is to a gravity well, the less effective its warp drive becomes?

4:01 through 4:21 is just pure gold. I love that Admiral.

Really enjoyed this and the presentation was great thank you for your hard work 😁

I always imagined that whenever an alien species speaks about scales, the Universal Translator translates it to scales that make sense from an Earth-centric view. A year wouldn't be the same for every species, nor would a minute. Yet, we hear aliens who just made first contact talk about years and minutes in ways that the humans understand. I imagine the same thing happens for warp factors.

I can understand why they redid the warp scale to a point. The old scale is very simple-minded. Cube of the warp factor is your speed. The new scale is logarithmic, and while it's a weird, awkward factor (~10^(log 1.9945) roughly, from memory), but by virtue of being logarithmic, it handles large numbers much better, and reflects that at higher speeds, the exact velocity you're going becomes less and less relevant, since minor changes won't matter much. The system is perfectly consistent up to about warp 9 Past that point it becomes a mess. Basically, every doubling of warp factor is a 10x increase in speed. Exact values are marginally different, but for illustration: warp 1 = 1c warp 2 = 10c warp 4 = 100c warp 8 = 1000c Seems sensible enough. The mess comes about because of that warp 10 = infinite definition. Incidentally this might also explain why in the last episode of TNG they were going warp 13. Most obvious answer is that they removed that 10 = infinite thing, and just extended the scale upwards. This puts warp 13 as roughly 5,188c, which from memory would otherwise be something like warp 9.99 or the like. Compare this to the original scale where warp 1 = 1 warp 2 = 8 warp 4 = 64 warp 8 = 512 warp 10 = 1000 warp 11.5 = 1520 (approx equal to the 1516c of the new scale warp 9) You can sort of see the advantage this has, but ironically most of the advantage would be represented at speeds that in the new scale are all in the 9-10 region, which undermines the advantage. A secondary reason from secondary sources (TNG technical manual) is that the warp factors in the new scale align with what the most energy efficient speeds are. For instance, travelling at warp 3 is actually more energy efficient (and faster) than travelling at warp 2.5. While this isn't a canon source, it would make for a good reason to change the warp scale. If the efficient speeds to travel at are aligned with the integer warp factors in the new scale... Well, very few of those line up properly in the old scale. The advantage of that is fairly obvious; In the old scale you may have had to remember that the most efficient warp factors to travel at are, say, warp 2.1, warp 3.4, warp 4.5, warp 6, warp 7.3, etc. Where in the new scale you know that any integer warp factor is good, fractional warp factors are bad unless you desperately need the extra speed or to arrive somewhere at a very specific time....

Great idea. I like it. Good job as always.

My headcanon had been that Transwarp is a blanket term for “not warp, but better”. What happened is that improvements in conventional warp had surpassed whatever the Excelsior had by the TNG era, so it stopped being used.

You actually found a sensible in-universe explanation for the revised warp scale? Now that's impressive.

From what I've understood, transwarp drive from the Excelsior and transwarp drive a la Borg are completely unrelated. The Constitution class ships had to accelerate through each warp factor until reaching their desired speed. The 'transwarp' drive was designed to just go to the desired warp factor right away.

The problem is the "Transwarp Is Still A Thing" theory is that it doesn't solve the problem of confusing the Warp Factor scale you mentioned. If its confusing to change the warp speeds, how is not confusing by adding Transwarp to it? In your scenario, wouldn't the admiral still potentially confuse Transwarp 8 with original Warp 8? Wouldn't all the officers still need to be retrained to understand the new Transwarp Factors? Throwing in Transwarp does not avoid this problem.

There is no time dilation because the the warp drive warps the space around the ships which never really travel faster than impulse.

Fun Fact, I read in the original TNG tech manual ( way back when the show fist aired ) that It was theorized the Galaxy class was supposed to got Ultrawarp, a step ahead of the failed transwarp excelsior experiment.

I’m surprised no one has commented on the scale differences. The differences between warp factors in TOS were equal. For example, the difference between warp factors 5 and 6 were the same between 1 and 2. In TNG, 2 was doubled 1, 3 was double 2 and so on. It was exponential from one factor to the next. The reasoning for this is likely one of two reasons - 1 - the new drive was more efficient and instead of staying warp 1500, we will go with warp 9.5. The other likely reason is that it standardized speed across the galaxy. As to the confusion, it would be like if the US went to the metric system, would take a bit of time but would be worth it. As for the trans warp name- my guess is the trans was dropped when they realized it wasn’t actually transwarp like what the borg uses (transwarp conduits), but a much more efficient and faster system what they were using.

I had to pause @ 5:29 to comment. Yes, Transwarp IS mentioned in the movie before the graphic is displayed.

Trans warp was stated multiple times in Star Trek 3. It was not only seen on a console, the captain of the Excelsior states “prepare for warp speed, standby transwarp drive” or something like that. And Scotty states his grandmother would be wagon if she had wheels in response to Sulu stating “she’s’s supposed to have transwarp drive.” Scotty also mentions that he sabotaged the excelsior by taking components out of her main transwarp computer drive as the enterprise speeds away at warp....

Star trek's warp scale has always been... warped. Mr Scott's lines I enjoy: "I can't break the laws of physics!" "Synthetic alcohol, synthetic commanders." "She's giving it all she's got!" "My poor baby!*" The more you learn the more you lore. Go to the (great) link.

I've always agreed with this. When I saw Search for Spock I assumed that Transwarp would be repaired and used in future movies. When it was never mentioned I wondered what happened and assumed it was an error. In 1987, as soon as I realized that there was a new warp scale, I assumed it was Transwarp technology and they just called it "warp" - error fixed. I even thought it was an elegant solution, since we do this in real life by commonly using old terms to refer to new technology - we all own "phones" nobody actually calls them "smart-phones" or even the more accurate "hand held computers".

Transwarp drive was mentioned more than once in the movie "all speeds available through Transwarp Drive." "Prepare for warp speed, standby Transwarp Drive."

That DOES make a ton of sense. Great video, Lore! And you used a Steamrunner in your graphic! Awesome!

they did an entire Voyager episode about transwarp, where the crew tried to figure out where it went wrong, and unsuccessfully experimented with it. It had some stupid consequences, but the episode did say transwarp was a failure. In prime canon.

The way I've heard it, the old scale was based on thrust speed, but the new scale was based on effective speed. (EG: 747 at 300 knots [thrust speed] in a 200 knot jet-stream will only move at 100 knots [effective speed]) This was supposedly done to reduce the miscommunications that lead to missed rendezvouses (and to reduce the rendezvouses that were *TOO* close)

I think the weird thing about the warp factor is that they had the 1-10 scale all the way back in the mid 22nd century when Enterprise takes place, then it's changed in the 23rd century to a completely different warp scale, while in the 24th century they go back to the original warp scale. The only way that makes sense in my head is that the original scale that is used in ENT already is based on warp drive characteristics, which were of course still being experimented with during that time, so a metric that is in direct correlation to the drive characteristics makes sense. When they got into the 23rd Century however they realized that drive based warp factors involve a lot of commas and uneven numbers and wanted to simplify the system. Since Speeds higher than Warp 10 were considered unsafe in TOS and Warp 10 is 1000c, you'd have a good idea of what each warp speed is since it has to lie between 1 and 1000c. But then you move into the 24th century and warp speeds start increasing. It's normal for ships to have top speeds above the 1000c mark and Starfleet Command Realizes that ships will start to have greater and greater TOS warp factors. And since humans are bad with large numbers and their cubic values in particular (QUICK WHAT'S 13^3?) they change it back to the old system which is based on something that can be measured from the warp drive itself and doesn't rely on an arbitrary assigning of speeds. And due to the ENT scale being based on warp drive characteristics, it makes sense for other species to measure it in a similar way (or the universal translator just translates their measurement into the Starfleet equivalent, like a satnav automatically calculating your mph from a given kph value when you are not in imperial system lands) But hey, that's just a theory!

The point of calling it 'time-warp factor' is to make clear that one of the big 'advantage's to using a warp drive system from faster than light travel, is you avoid the negative consequences of time dilation that occur at near light speed. In this way, warp drive doesn't represent a ship traveling at high speeds, rather a ship sitting virtually stationary within a bubble of space-time which changes its position. As Scotty says, think of it as space that's moving, and not the ship.

In Star Trek III Sulu said, "She's supposed to have Transwarp drive." To which Scotty replied, "Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon."

The starbase where the Enterprise escaped might have been Starbase 001. Don't forget that Search for Spock took place about twenty years after the events of Discovery, which also showed that starbase all but destroyed. As for why the transwarp drive was abandoned, I think maybe the drive system on the Excelsior was the only prototype, and suffered irreparable damage when the crew try to activate it with Scotty's intentionally detrimental modification, setting the project back significantly.

The movie era transwarp drive is just a normal warp drive piloted by someone high on shrooms. It was their effort to recreate spore drive technology, _and_ enlist more space hippies into Starfleet.

Actually the word transwarp is spoken a couple of times in Star Trek 3. Sulu states that Excelsior is "Supposed to have transwarp drive." Also the helmsman of the excelsior mentions "All speeds available through transwarp drive."

love your admiral/ broccoli convo.

You my fine Sir, are the reason why i became a Star Trek fan all over again. Thank you very much for your hard work you put into your Videos. Live long and prosper.

If you remember, much of Starfleet's manuals were written by Scotty. So perhaps they had no idea that part of why it failed was the damage Scotty did to the Transwarp drive. Plus, while they had transwarp drives, the issue would be they didn't have the conduits to make it work properly.

Yes, I think you are exactly right and i have thought so pretty much ever since TNG premiered. The standard understanding of warp speeds, as presented in the Star Trek Technical Manual, was that speed equaled the speed of light times the cube of the warp number. That still isn't really fast enough, but its what we've got. In the first few episodes of TNG, there were enough references to distance and time that I was able to determine that speed was now lightspeed times warp number to the fourth power, at least for the warp factors they were using then. When the warp 10 equals infinity came in, I don't know, but I have no doubt that Excelsior and every ship that came after used transwarp drive, and, for some reason, they kept the old terminology. A problem with this theory is that there were occasional story elements in TNG and its associated series where someone was described as working on transwarp drive. Oh, well. By the way, transwarp drive was explicitly mentioned in the dialogue of STIII. When Enterprise returns to Starbase 1 and they see the Excelsior, Sulu comments that she is rumored to have transwarp drive, and Scotty poo poos the idea. Later, when Captain Styles is preparing the Excelsior to chase Enterprise, he specifically orders the use of the transwarp drive. What they should have done of course, but for some reason Gene and his writers didn't think of it, was establish explicitly that Enterprise D had transwarp drive, and use appropriate terminology, "Transwarp factor three," etc. and occasionally have a story where they encounter a ship that was still using old fashioned warp technology. That would have solved everything.

The supplementary material talks about how integer warp factors are supposed to be more efficient than fractional warp factors, so that would be one reason why every race uses the same warp scale: it's a mathematical relation to the underlying physics and there is only one natural scale. That would also help explain why the scale changed, if the type of engine changed, because otherwise there would be no way you could change the scale, it depends on the physics.

In the Star Fleet Tech Manuel they discuss time dilation. Impulse engines at full impulse will experience time dilation because at full impulse you approach the speed of light, but the warp field prevented time dilation.

I once read a great article on the 2 warp scales, and how TOS cannon showed that the Enterprise, in the episode That Which Survives, would traverse 990.6 LY in 8 hours at warp 8, which is about 660,000 times the speed of light. In this article, several explanations were offered, however, the math done showed that the two scales were virtually identical up to about warp 8. However, past this, the azemtotic TNG scale took off. For example, TNG warp 9 was somethign like TOS warp 12 and TOS warp 14.5, which was Enterprise's max on-screen speed achieved in the aforementioned episode, would be about TNG warp 9.5, something like that. The idea, for example, that the TOS warp factor was a simple cubing simply doesn't work for on-screen canon, in any way. It was also rpoposed that when giving a warp speed, there would also be what was called the Chi factor, a value of about 1200 or so, that was factored into the calculation. For example - warp factor 8 = 8 x 8 x 8 + 1289 = 660,000. An interesting take, anyway. Oh, and just to throw in a monkey wrench - TW drive is supposed to be a controlled version of what happened to Defiant and what Enterprise did in The Tholian Web - drop into an empty dimension where time flows different and then re-emerge into ours, having moved faster than standard FTL would get you.

That's my head canon on it too. It was indeed a new and faster type of warp drive to go with the new warp scale but not the same transwarp like the Borg and Voth use. I'm going to say transwarp for the Excelsior is just a term used for warp that exceeded the current warp abilities and scale which would make sense why it's called transwarp for the Borg and Voth.

Alot of comments, so this might have been said, however my understanding was that TOS scale warp was C x Warp factor. This is why you could have Warp 13, and other warp levels beyond 10. Transwarp was the change from simple multiplication to a more exponential or algorithmic calculation do the the advancement in propulsion systems. To keep from the scale needing to change they have created a scale where theoretically you couldnt exceed it without breaking the laws of physics. Once this was established transwarp was adopted to all future designs and refitted to frames that could handle it. After this update, it was then just called warp drive again because their was no need to differentiate between the two as the old drives were decomissioned. Meaning that TNG, DS9 and Voyager all actually had transwarp drives, but that name had been phased out almost 60 years before. Similar to the way we have diesel engines and gas engines and steam engines, but are all commonly addressed as engines.

I know I'm commenting on this video 9 months later but today I'm catching the tail end of "By Any Other Name", 02x22 of TOS, and for those that don't remember in that episode a group of aliens capture the Enterprise and modify it to go beyond Warp 10, I believe the only number they mention by name is Warp 11, on the TOS era Warp Scale. If I remember correctly this is not the only time the TOS Enterprise has been modified to go beyond Warp 10 either. For some reason the episode reminded me of this video and now I'm wondering if any information Starfleet might have gained from those incidents were used in the design of the vertically orientated Warp Core and/or Transwarp Drive later on in the Excelsior.

James T. Kirk: My friends, the great experiment...the Excelsior, ready for trial runs. Hikaru Sulu: She's supposed to have transwarp drive. Montgomery Scott: Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.

One explanation I saw was that the 'old scale' was warp power 'input'.. stick so much power into a drive and you get warp 12, 13, 14... but your power OUTPUT never got past 10. -- Later they switched the official scale to warp power 'output' which I guess related better to how fast a ship was REALLY going. They must've re-scaled it again at some future date because during one of the later episodes in the TV series a ship in a TNG future scenario is said to be going warp factor 13. -- Either they switched back to warp input, or they re-scaled things again because too many ships were dealing with warp factor 9.9, 9.95. 9.98 and all those numbers bunched up near 10 just got awkward to work with.

In the undiscovered country at kitamer the federation talks about dismantling the fleet. It's possible that part of the accords called for decommissioning a number of ships. Starfleet chose the older constitution class

In Geoffrey Mandel 1980 Star Trek maps book, he has a whole thing explaining that as a warp drive gets near large GRAVITY WELLS it begins to exceed the normal warp velocity based on the cube of the factors. Up to 1500 times faster. Also if it's not careful the ship could enter a time warp and be thrown out of the space-time continuum. The average could range from 1 to 1296x the warp velocity. Or as the writers liked to do make it the speed of PLOT

One could explain the lack of Ambassador-class ships as being due to mission profile: Most of the Starfleet ships we see in TNG other than the Enterprise tend to be Excelsiors, usually acting as glorified couriers, and Oberths, usually acting as ship-sized red-shirts - I mean, science vessels. Perhaps there were particular mission types that the remaining Ambassadors tended to be sent on, that didn't typically intersect those of the Enterprise?

I like this theory. I'll buy it. Also, the failure of the transwarp project doesn't make sense from another perspective. Barclay: 'Sir, the Excelsior Transwarp Project is a complete failure.' Admiral: 'Good news. I want you to build a hundred billion Excelsior class ships.' Barclay: 'But sir!...' Admiral: 'DO AS YOU'RE TOLD MURDOCK!' Barclay: 'Sir, my name is...' Admiral: 'I PITY THE FOO WHO CONTRADICTS ME!'

From what I understand, warp velocity is either unlimited or has a higher ceiling than simply 'warp 10'. The TNG scale may be representational of what's achievable with warp drive alone according to the limits of subspace and the drive itself, and the ceiling could be a side-effect of one or the other. That said, transwarp is likely one of many different technologies that can bypass the limits of subspace (like a transwarp conduit) allowing higher warp velocities without hitting that warp 10 ceiling. The fact that they still have a ceiling in their warp factors means they probably don't have transwarp drive, and they also probably aren't using any 'subspace hacks' to bypass the limitations. It may have taken a (failed) project like the Excelsior's 'transwarp' for them to even realize what the limits of subspace were, and they just made improvements on standard warp knowing this. So I think it would have failed regardless of it's operational status.

LOL! Watching these videos is really making my day.

In the first episode of TNG "encounter at farpoint" when Picard is on trial for humanity, Q said something about it being a Pity that the Federation stopped working on the Transwarp drive and that they were "so close to profecting it."

Okay, admittedly that makes sense. I was ready to fight you on this because your theory is pretty reasonable.