From the Azati Prime topic:



I don't know if it's just you, but I honestly don't see how what's seen in this episode throws continuity out the window or proves that this show is in a different timeline. For example, just because there is a Federation/Sphere Builder War in the 26th Century doesn't change what we already know about the 23rd & 24th Centuries. We don't know the timeline of the SB's plans, or if the 26th Century incursion is their 2nd (or 5th or 9th) attempt at it. We may not have seen Xindi on TNG, DS9 or Voyager, but we never saw Andorians or Tellarites on those either, and yet we knew they were key members of the Federation.

Hell, the number of species in the Federation are stated at being 150+, and I don't know if any fan could definitively name more than 30 of them. Just because Xindi aren't featured doesn't mean they don't exist.

I just don't see a conflict in the canon here.

http://www.geocities.com/therinofandor/UFP1.html lists most of the UFP members. Still some room, though.

Is that list canon or fanon?

All canon, I think (apart from the animated bits). Races named but not seen are not pictured; those seen and not named are not named. Also, only Federation members (I guess including anyone we've seen in Starfleet who we don't know for a fact are not Federation- Klingons, Ferengi- and anyone seen in the Council) are included.

I don't think all of those being Federation worlds are canon. In fact, many seem to be from animated or comics. And many seem to be ones I'm pretty sure were NOT Federation members: Halkan, Coridan, Cappellan and El-Aurian come to mind. Many of those, the name seems to come from toy merchandise, and several the picture was from toy merchandise. I think there's a whole lot of fanon there.

You know, technically, the Xindi are now canoncially "going to be" members of the Federation in the 26th or so century.

Edited to revise history instead of making this a seperate post:
If they are in the Federation IN the 26th or so century, it would logically follow (at least I thought) that they would join BY the 26th century. After all, you can't be a member until after you join.

Well, change that to by the 26th Century. Maybe even by the 22nd.

One thing I liked from the Shatner books (even though they aren't canon) is how he explained the mirror universe as being a direct result of First Contact. That the humans knew about the Borg and developed more militarily instead of for exploration. Neat stuff.

And also, the Borg tried to assimilate Spock, but realized he'd been assimilated already. The cool thing was, was that they explained it by his mind meld with V'Ger.


Which of course completely ruined the whole Khan plotline. Since he had taken over the world in the mid 90's. I forgot how they wanked that.


I agree, though I don't think they should have gone beyond the Constitution Refit tech. The ships shown in the Trek movies should have been good enough designs instead of using some kind of TNG/VOY design. But this is a dead horse, so I'll stop beating it

Well, according to Greg Cox's fantastic The Eugenics Wars duology, the whole Khan-runs-a-quarter-of-Earth scenariou was played out as more of a behind-the-scenes operation.

An anology: the Mafia might "control" a quarter of the major businesses in the United States, but 98% of the population would never know it.

If the books were written today, Eugenics folks would probably be the secret leaders of al-Queida, etc. In TEW, Claire Raymond (from TNG's The Neutral Zone) is actually killed by a Eugenics terrorist attack.

Yeah, but does that really jive with Quantum's assertion that his ancestor was in a "front" in the Eugenics Wars? I mean, do secret wars have literal fronts? I haven't read the books, but I'd think they'd be more like James Bond stories than traditional wars.

My feeling has always been that there's enough continuity issues within and among the series themselves without bringing reality into play. I mean, our future cannot be the one depicted in Star Trek. We have better communicators than Kirk did already, for one. There's virtually no chance there are real, actual Klingons out there, for another. That's not meant to be a complete list, but those are biggest ones for me.

Maybe the "front" referred to is in one of the kind of wars we are having right now, except it won't be recognized as part of the Eugenics wars for many years to come. Or something.

Or it was a battle that never made the news.

The cold war covered most of the globe in one way or another and included both ’James Bond type’ actions and actual warfare. However, the actual battles were almost exclusively fought in third world countries like Vietnam, Nicaragua and most of the former European colonies in Africa. In hindsight it is clear today that although these conflicts always had local reasons as well as global ones, they were in fact part of the larger Cold War. I don’t known if anyone will ever refer to e.g. the conflict in Nicaragua as simply ‘a front of the Cold War’ but it might happen and as such I think that this is a clearer example of what could possibly be the background of the Eugenics wars ‘fronts’ than the so-called War on Terror. This conflict, while having a large geographical extension, is not characterised by clearly defined groups of allies. The picture is still very muddled on the best of days.

How come in TOS season 2
(Metamorphosis) Kirk said Zefram Cochrane who invented warp drive was from Alpha Centaurie (sp) but in TNG (first contact) he was from earth? whats with that?

The TNG film plugged a glaring hole in TOS episode, as far as I'm concerned. Without warp drive, how could Zephram Cochrane get to Alpha Centauri in the first place?!

He may have been a native Alpha Centauran.

It was always implied that he was human. And a human colony on Alpha Centauri has the same transportation problem. That's bugged me about that episode since 1973, when I first saw it.

Which would have made the Prime Directive awfully hypocritical.

I thought the consensus (and I admit I haven't seen the TOS episode) was that Kirk called him Zeframe Cochrane "of" Alpha Centauri, which could mean that he settled there after he invented warp drive, and became famous as the guy from there.

I expect by "native", nelamm means to suggest he was a human born there, rather than an alien from there. But yes, how does he get to Alpha Centauri in the first place without warp drive? Maybe he took a loooooong trip there, invented it, and came back and said, "look what I made!" But that, of course, contradicts the movie.

There is this: Many aliens on TOS looked identical to Earth humans. So it may have been intended that Cochrane wasn't from Earth at all.

More likely is that Alpha Centauri was chosen deliberately: It's the closest star to Earth, so they may have meant to imply that humans had made it there pre-warp. (But perhaps not pre-faster than light travel- they probably didn't think this out as far as considering that they'd make a movie thirty years later.) So wipe out that line: Replace it with "The Zefram Cochrane? Of Montana?" And ignore the fact that the two Cochranes resemble each other not at all.

I have to confess that I like the new & improved, a phrase which here means "more entertainingly flawed," Zephram much better. Way more fun than the guy that Kirk meets. Great taste in music. And with enough angst to connect to the original episode plot line.

Perhaps the TOS version reflects a much (centuries) older Cochrane, alone for so long. It's nice to think that within a few months after "Metamorphosis," Cochrane had built a jukebox and he and Hedford/Companion were boogying to "Ooby Dooby."

Alpha Centauri could have been colonized by sleeper ships from Earth before the invention of warp drive. They had the technology since the 1980s with Khan. Anyone know the math re whether it's possible to travel 4 light years in a hundred years at sublight speed?

I perfer the explanation that Cochrane was from Earth and later immigrated to Alpha Centauri.

I’m leaving the whole Cochrane debate at this: Alpha Centauri was mentioned in TOS but they decided to change it - probably realising that having humans colonise another solar system (albeit a close one) within such a short period after WW3 didn’t make much sense (and gave a heap of problems with respect to First Contact). I suppose that they hoped that we’d just leave it at that (not that we ever would). I can easily believe that most of the (many) inconsistencies of ST are simply things that have been swept under the rug (which is a pity since I like nitpicking – it’s just not fun when you have the sneaking suspicion that there are no deeper motives behind the plot point you’re dissecting).

"Zefram" sounds not-quite-human, so there is that.

Well, I guess I could be honest and admit that 90% of First Contact's audience (even many of the Trekkies) had never heard of Cochrane before.

Okay, going along with First Contact, a fellow trekkie posed me this question..."how far is the neutural zone from earth?" I looked, and finding this map... http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/history...162/map_8_3.jpg
I concluded that it was about 15 light years...yes?

Then my colleague asked, "Well, how could Enterprise have ever made it from patrolling the neutral zone to Earth in time to go back with the borg in First Contact?" Good question...how many light years are traveled when you go warp 9?

According to Q Who, going warp 9.2 it would take 2 years, 7 months, 3 days, 18 hours..,
I wondered about the warp speed calcs that they used for Voyager, but i couldn't find the time Janeway said it'd take...just the 70,000 light years part, but even if that fits better, it's still major indiscrepency in the world of Trek...

I know i have too much time on my hands...you don't need to tell me.

It couldn't take years to travel 15 light years at Warp 9. The impression I always get from episodes is that, at normal warp speeds, it takes a couple hours to do a light year. So 15 light years would take maybe a day, at normal crusing speeds. But if you push it to Warp 9.9, 9.99, etc, because the Borg are attacking, you could probably do it in a couple hours.

Don't do math. Math can only cause trouble when trying to calculate warp speeds. The writers are never, ever consistent with that sort of thing. And any map you find is not canon, so I can't even say that's the correct distance to the Romulan Neutral Zone. (I can't see the one at that link, by the way)

Star Trek geography will make your head explode long before it gives you any useful information.

Supposedly, the maps used in the recent book were snuck into the background of some scenes that were filmed, so it comes close to canon. I stress close.

Haha...that was a typo. It was two months... I dunno how that happened. Sorry! And I know trek math is an easy nitpick to use, but it was my first real nitpick and I was excited.

Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away or so at 10 percent the speed of light (which would mean it would be traveling about 1860 miles a second - pretty fast still) a ship would reach it in about 43 years.

Fast enough for a human lifetime but slow enough to not get caught up in sticky Einstein relativity problems, like getting to Alpha Centauri and because you travelled so fast everyone who was not moving so quickly is waaaaay older than you, or dead.

FYI: Voyager I is the fastest human made object (V'ger! Yaaay!). It is curently cruising at over 65,000 miles per hour.

Here's a bit of a minor (major? you decide...) continuity gaffe that's bothered me for a while.

In STIV:TVH, when Kirk and Co. are in downtown San Fran, there's a mildy amusing moment where a taxi driver chides Kirk for not paying attention to traffic as he crosses the street. Clearly the intent of director-Nimoy is to show how strange and confusing street traffic is to someone from the civilized future, no?

But of all the people in the 23rd century, who is most likely NOT to be confused by traffic, and to realize the dangers of crossing "in between" and not "at the green?"

Think about it for a second... could it be... maybe:
1) Kirk, who prevented the rescue of the love of his life (Edith Keeler) from being run down by a milk truck?
2) McCoy, the doctor who was prevented from saving a life?
3) Spock, who had to convince his friend to let his love be run down?
4) All of the above

I know, it's a lot of effort to waste, nit-picking a sight gag, but that's the kind of trauma that I would think would stick with a fella...

I'm confused by the connections between the anomoly and Trellium-D.

I loved the weirdness in "The Xindi" where the direction of gravity in the cargo bay kept changing. They kept up the weirdness in a couple more episodes, including the idea that the anomoly also causes physical deformity, then dropped it.

My understanding is that Trellium-D shields against the anomolies but has the side-effect of turning Vulcans into zombies. So while the Enterprise acquired some Trellium-D, they didn't use it because of T'Pol. So if they didn't use it, why did weirdness stop? In later episodes, the anomoly is treated as localized disturbances (near to the spheres?) that the Enterprise could avoid. Did the Enterprise just not have the ability to detect anomolies early on?

I think it was that the ship and crew became more experienced at avoiding and detecting the anomalies. That's why they started charting the spheres- doing so gave them a more detailed picture of what to expect, anomaly-wise. However, the effects of the anomalies didn't stop at that point; when Enterprise ran into them late in the season, they still gave us the air-bubble-in-the-walls effects.

Not to mention the occasional brain-eating parasite.

47th is right-- charting the spheres helped them figure out where and when anomalies would crop up, so they could (most of the time) get around them.

I have another trellium-d question. I seem to remember that at one point they lined one of the shuttles with it in order to go through the outer cloaking barrier and get closer to the spheres. In 'Chosen Realm' Trip and Travis went to collect data from one of the spheres and Trip mentioned something about getting the data back to T'Pol. The impression I got was that T'Pol couldn't go herself because of the trellium lining the shuttle. But in 'The Council' T'Pol herself went in a shuttle to investigate a sphere up close. Was this a continuity error or did I miss something?

There are two shuttles, but who knows.

It seems likely that they only lined one shuttle. They had quite a bit of trellium-d left over.

Who knows which shuttle she took, but it was my understanding that it was long term exposure to trellium-d that did damage. It took her a while on the Vulcan ship to really lose it. Not to mention that the EV suits were available if they were in the insulated shuttle. They didn't think it was going to be a long wait, after all.

The two shuttles were available because they approached the Council in Degra's ship/shuttle.

Of course, she had been injecting it anyway, but the crew didn't know that.

At the end of TUC, Uhura suggests that to find the cloaked ship, they use the equipment they were carrying to catalog gaseous anomalies. They seem to have forgotten that it was the Excelsior that was doing that: The Enterprise was on the diplomatic mission, no more.

Interesting point. I've always assumed the Enterprise is always stocked for scientific missions, and would have that equipment anyway. But you're right that there's a specific point made about Excelsior scanning anomalies, almost like it's there to establish the later scene even though it's a different ship.

My best guess is that there was a rewrite. Maybe in an early draft, it was the Enterprise that saw the explosion of Praxis. Then when they decided to give Sulu his own ship, they wrote that scene for Excelsior and just never disconnected the establishment from the payoff.

I remember hearing that an earlier draft of the script (cut of the film?) wrapped up the old series by having them die. Reaction was negative, and the ending was changed.

My interpretation of the continuity error was that in an earlier script, Captain Sulu and his crew saved the day. When the Enterprise was de-blown-up, the geezers got the plot - but not the backstory.

They couldn't have been killed, because Spock and McCoy survived to TNG. (And later, of course, we see that all the others survived until later as well.)

That's true, nelamm, but Scotty showed up in TFF even though he was supposed to be trapped in the transporter in the ship that crashed on the Dyson's Sphere (Relics). Continuity wha?

There's very little established about the time that Scotty wound up in that transporter, so one assumes it had to be after the opening scene of Generations.

Which brings up the interesting continuity issue: Scotty saw what he believed to be Kirk's death at the beginning of Generations. Later, he winds up in the transport buffer of that ship and is rescued by Picard. When told he's being rescued by the crew of Enterprise, Scotty seems to think Kirk came to his rescue. But Scotty's supposed to think Kirk's dead. There's a continuity problem you can hang your hat on.

Of course, the episode came before the movie, so that would explain it.

Yeah, but knowing why it happened doesn't change the fact that it is, indeed, a big honkin' continuity error.

Didn't Scotty's transporter buffer have a marginal degree of pattern degredation? Maybe the memory of Kirk's death was what was lost.

Well, Scotty saw Spock die and helped bring him back to life. It's not entirely out of the range of possibility that Scotty thought Kirk could resurrect himself at some later point in time.

Or maybe all that whisky affected his memory.

So...200 years after "Empress Sato" has conquered the known universe with the Defiant...and the technology hasn't improved at all? Reverse engineering in the Mirror Universe must REALLY suck.