10 Star Trek Questions That Always Confused You
4. What Exactly Is The Warp Speed Limit?
In Star Trek: Voyager, the audience was treated to one of the most bizarre episodes in the canon. Threshold depicted Tom Paris breaking the Warp 10 barrier, travelling so fast that he was said to occupy every inch of the universe at once. While that is QUITE the jump from Warp 9.9, what exactly do these numbers mean? And more importantly, why was the original Enterprise able to reach speeds far higher?
Gene Roddenberry, by the time that Star Trek: The Next Generation was in production, had decided that Warp 10 was infinite velocity. However, this was based on a new warp scale for ships of the 24th century. In the 23rd century, the Enterprise, the Orions, and more all travelled at speeds that were higher than Warp 10. Spock even comments in Journey to Babel that the Orions travel at this speed as the captains do not care about the crew.
The Warp scale was designed when Starfleet entered a new period of heavy cruisers. The Excelsior, having been fitted with a Transwarp drive, was among the first to receive the new scale, while the Ambassador and Galaxy classes adhered to the revised speeds.
All Good Things, however, seems to operate on a system all of its own!