10 TV Show Scenes With INSANE Implications
7. Warp Travel Damages Space - Star Trek: The Next Generation
Maintaining consistency in a fictional universe as sprawling as Star Trek can't be easy, and it gets even tougher when standalone episodes introduce concepts which have major implications for the franchise as a whole.
Case in point, The Next Generation's season seven episode "Force of Nature" has a pair of scientist siblings reveal that warp drive travel is actually damaging the very fabric of space itself.
By the episode's ending, all Federation vessels are limited to a speed of warp five unless in major emergencies, and this message has also been spread to every known species capable of warp travel.
Though the episode was basically a thinly veiled environmentalist commentary, it fundamentally altered warp travel in Star Trek. And yet, save for a few fleeting mentions in TNG's remaining episodes, it's basically been forgotten.
Sure, Star Trek: Voyager introduced a ship with moving warp nacelles which wouldn't cause damage to space, but by and large, Trek's creatives clearly hoped fans would just quietly forget about something that would've changed space travel forever.