There's a silly sort of irony that the transporter as a narrative device was created in the first place to save money on otherwise having to create props/sets for shuttlepods that would bring our intrepid "away teams" to the surfaces of exotic planets.
Then they went ahead and created shuttlecraft anyway, because it served a narrative purpose in the TOS episode "The Galileo Seven".
Then the writers started finding other excuses to use shuttles, which made no narrative sense whatsoever.
The thing is...at some point they were a Sunk-cost. You made shuttles already, may as well use them, they're a neat prop and, to a degree, it gets your characters alone and off the ship but not on an expensive 'planetary' set.
Star Trek has been a budgetary cluster-fata since Day 1. When they thought it was going to be a pokey little 'Wagon-Train Through Space' show and threw them a few bucks here and there and somehow they just kept getting more and more budget.
Still not a lot! But more than they were supposed to.
And the Trek team just kept on finding ways to do more with less and then get more but maintain that ethos.
"Well dammit Jim! I'm a Director not a Producer! We built some Shuttles we'd better goddamn use them!"
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Warp drive makes zero sense, transporters are impossible, so heck why not shuttles.
The thing is...there is nothing wrong with that.
Like when people were watching Game of Thrones and complaining about unrealistic travel times and time glitches.
Star Trek just does away with all of that nonsense with technobabble unless they need a bottle episode and everything happens aboard ship during transit.
I mean, if I was Captain I'd just be driving the Enterprise like I stole it! Warp 9 all the time and no sleep till Brooklyn!! And if it wasnt for those meddling space aliens whining about Warp drive tearing apart the fabric of space-time or some such nonsense I'd have gotten away with it too!
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It's just that the power required to create such a drive is far beyond what we can do today
No.
Warp drive does two things:
- Go really fast.
- Time travel.
Let's say you want to go to Wolf 363, which is about 100 light years away.
So, are you arriving what it looks like on Earth, which means you've travelled 100 years in the past, or are you arriving what it looks like right now on Wolf 363, which means you've travelled 100 years in the future?
So then, now you're there. So, you want to make to back to Earth when they had Galaxy class ships and not when they had Constitution class ships. If you did the first choice, you have to travel 100 years ahead. Or, if you did the latter, you basically have to stop time while go back to Earth.
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You don't really worry about relativity with a warp drive. It's more like a short cut across space. You are traveling faster than light. Imagine we had instantaneous communication. You send a message saying you will be there in 10 minutes, then you get there in 10 minutes. Don't worry about relativity because those laws are being broken.
You don't really worry about relativity with a warp drive. It's more like a short cut across space. You are traveling faster than light. Imagine we had instantaneous communication. You send a message saying you will be there in 10 minutes, then you get there in 10 minutes. Don't worry about relativity because those laws are being broken.
Its more like the 'Suggestion of Relativity.'
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This Post Has Been Distilled for the Eradication of Seemingly Incurable Sadness.
If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a Fire Exit. - Mitch Hedberg
