Back in February I discussed an odd phenomenon where Star Wars fans were insisting somehow that the asteroid collision in The Empire Strikes Back didn't "really" destroy the bridge and kill the captain.
Well one thing you get used to is SW fans not being big fans of logic (and that's not a Vulcan pun!). After all, many of them still insist that the Millennium Falcon can travel millions of times after than the speed of light because at the end of Empire we can "clearly" see it traverse an entire galaxy on screen before our very eyes. (Forget the actual dialogue discussing Han Solo's "fast" ship being capable of Warp 1.14†)
† That's Warp 1.14 in TOS speeds, of course, using the famous cubed rule (1.14471424255333 being the solution to 1.51/3). TNG warp speeds don't have such a simple equation, but this website says it would be Warp 1.13.
So speaking of Star Wars fans and the warp factors seen in Star Trek, you'll perhaps be surprised to learn that starships cannot move at warp. "Warp strafing" and other such maneuvers don't exist and therefore in a battle with a Federation starship the Rebels or the Empire would be able to pick them off like nothing without breaking a sweat. (This is typically how all Star Trek versus Star Wars arguments wind up, though it's worth noting SW fans much more than ST fans devolve into this, almost like "war" is right there in their franchise's name or something).
As you probably suspect, we have Star Trek Voyager to blame for all of this. That same website from my previous post comes back into play again...
The claim that warp maneuvering is impossible isn't quite as bad as some of the other common anti-Trek claims, because they are actually going by what a character said in one of the episodes. In the episode "Fury"[VOY], we get a glimpse into a (slightly rewritten) past.
It's probably worth mentioning that VOY has trouble with all the "back into its own past" episodes for continuity. A sixth season viewer would assume Carey was long dead. And as the (tragically now offline) firsttvdrama review of "Endgame" mentioned, it turns out there was a secret tractor beam that...well, continuity is for pussies.
"Fury" is probably one of the worst examples of Star Trek Voyager to try to bring up to discuss the realities of the Star Trek universe as a whole, but damned if SW fans didn't latch onto it like a space baby onto the impulse reactors of the Enterprise-D...
Janeway: "Tom, what's the first thing they teach you about maneuvering at warp?"Tom: "'Faster than light, no left or right.' When possible, maintain a linear trajectory. Course corrections could fracture the hull."Janeway: "Exactly. We'd have to drop to impulse every time we made a course change."Voyager ends up engaging in a number of warp mini-jumps, dropping to impulse to turn before jumping again. The region of subspace vacuoles required 200 such course changes."Well, okay," you say, "sounds like Federation starships can't turn at warp without tearing themselves apart."Based solely on that episode, I would agree. However, that is one of hundreds of hours of Star Trek, and the rest of Trek disagrees.
The first thing I thought of was the DS9 episode "Treachery Faith and the Great River", which also comes up here. It's not a great argument though, since Odo destroys a Jem'Hadar warship with a Runabout using phasers at warp speed which breaks existing continuity on about 40,000 levels (and that's not a Warhammer pun!). They do show the Phoenix changing course at warp, and the Enterprise-D separating in "Encounter at Farpoint" with the stardrive swinging around at warp speed (the moving starfield effect was skipped, a clear goof, that at least meant when the footage was reused at impulse in "The Arsenal of Freedom" it didn't introduce a new headache).
They then go into a lengthy discussion of strafing at warp which I don't particularly care about, since unlike Star Wars fanboys I'm not going to get into the minutiae of interstellar combat while simultaneously handwaving every piece of technology in my universe. Priorities, I know...
Bonus Star Trek v. Star Wars nitpickery: The two franchises go head to head in...ramming each other head to head...
Bonus STvSW item of note: the site manager is a conservative who regrets that Gab doesn't have enough sci-fi discussions yet.
If you need me, I will be back at @Minds, STvSWdotnet. I also have a Gab account set up now, STvSW, but Gab seems to have little in the way of sci-fi content. https://t.co/vskQMhYj4y
— ST-v-SW.Net: Trek. Wars. Pew-pew. Now on Minds. (@STvSW) January 27, 2021
