TOS warp speed: not really so clear cut

[Vympel]

It's something of a canard that warp speeds in the original series are faster than the TNG/DS9/VOY era - but I'm not so sure that is so. I'm near the end of TOS Season 2, and just watched By Any Other Name. In it, aliens from the Andromeda galaxy take control of the Enterprise so they can take it back to Andromeda, with the help of modified warp engines (the improvements are of course never mentioned again).

Before they reveal their intentions, Kirk notes it'd take the Enterprise "thousands of years" to get to the Andromeda galaxy. If we assume a jump off point from the edge of the Milky Way to Andromeda, as well as 2,000 years (the bare minimum for 'thousands') to get there, that's an average speed of about 1,250c (2,500,000LY).

[Srelex]

Was Kirk reading from a screen or something, or just speaking off his cuff?

[DaveJB]

It's something of a canard that warp speeds in the original series are faster than the TNG/DS9/VOY era

Is it really, though? The warp factors may be higher in TOS, but the behind the scenes technical folk have always been pretty clear that the warp factors were recalculated between TOS and TNG, and that Warp 9 by TNG standards works out to something like Warp 15 by TOS standards.

The only TOS production that I remember giving any explicit evidence for faster warp drive is The Final Frontier (which, for all intents and purposes, might as well be non-canon). Other than that, I don't really remember any TOS episodes or films implying that they might have had TNG

[Patrick Degan]

Was Kirk reading from a screen or something, or just speaking off his cuff?

Speaking off the cuff. Kirk's statement in the script was, doubtless, based on the scale devised for the Writers' bible. Warp 8 was supposedly 512c,. On those terms, it would take nearly 5000 years at Warp 8 to reach Andromeda from where they were. But then, there have been plenty of transits in TOS which don't jibe with whatever scale was set down in the guidelines. For instance, the journey to get back to the Kalandan outpost world in "That Which Survives" from 990.7 lightyears distance, going at Warp 8.4, should have required 1.6 years to achieve and yet it's stated that it will take only 11.4 hours —which would indicate an average of over 314000c that the Enterprise is running at. This would make trips to the Barrier ("Where No Man Has Gone Before", "By Any Other Name", possibly "Is There In Truth No Beauty") within very convenient timeframes feasible and makes the idea of a galaxy-spanning Federation possible but would certainly put Andromeda within reach in only eight years, not three hundred or even five thousand.

[Captain Seafort]

Maybe the problem is one of endurance. Voyager, IIRC, was stated to be capable of something like 20kc, from Paris' statement in "The 37s", but she only averaged 1000c. The trip to Andromeda may likewise be too far to sustain high warp..

[Batman]

That's what I thought initially too. But not only is there a lot more of a discrepancy, but the specifics of the 70 year time frame for VOY's trip home were IIRC never stated. I suspect it included frequent pit stops to refuel and restock because I doubt ANY Starfleet ship carries enough fuel or supplies for a continuous 70,000 ly/70 year journey. Leave alone a 2.5 MILLION ly one. Kirk might have been referring to the time it would take E-Nil to do the trip without her engines giving out had there been the required pit stops available.

[Vympel]

Maybe the problem is one of endurance. Voyager, IIRC, was stated to be capable of something like 20kc, from Paris' statement in "The 37s", but she only averaged 1000c. The trip to Andromeda may likewise be too far to sustain high warp..

That was Warp 9.9. Those sorts of speeds can only be maintained for very short periods. Cruise speeds are much lower.

[Captain Seafort]

That was Warp 9.9. Those sorts of speeds can only be maintained for very short periods. Cruise speeds are much lower.

That's my point. Just as the fact that Voyager can do 20kc, but averages about 1000c, the E-nil is evidently capable of 300kc (or greater), but averages a bit over 1000c (or a bit over 8kc after the Kelvins had fiddled with it).