Did they exceed Warp 10? I thought Paris only hit the limit, not crossed. I'd rewatch to check, but... Then I'd have to watch the Warp 10 episode, and I'm not doing that again.
Warp 10 and 10+ are the same thing, as you essentially are everywhere and everything at once. The tricky part is parking in your own corporeal form in your own time as far as I’ve come to understand it.
In an early episode on TNG, Riker describes time warp as exceeding warp 10. Which makes sense - at warp 10 you arrive at your destination at the same moment that you left your origin, so at warp 10+ you arrive earlier than you left.
You can't reach warp 10, let alone exceed it.
Didn’t they also say the same thing about the speed of light? Frankly it’s whatever the writers decide meets their plot points.
Probably. I'm just going by the officially published technical manuals that go over the in-universe physics in detail.
Warp 10 represents going infinitely fast. It's not a speed limit in the usual sense, as you can always keep going faster than you were before. It's an exponential scale. The jump from 9.9 to 9.99 is a bigger difference in speed than the jump from 9.8 to 9.9. while the change in warp factor gets smaller with higher numbers, it actually represents a larger difference in speed. Always chasing, but never reaching, warp 10.
It's a hard thing to convey to the audience watching the show, so I think they sometimes abandon it in favor of linear speed when they want to stress high speeds without confusing people.
They did so in TOS, TAS, and TNG before the "warp factor" system got retconned for VOY.
warp speed is always a plot device in Trek. There's never any consistency.
I get what you mean and don't want to ummm acshually you, I just wanted to mention in TNG how they discovered high warp speeds were essentially causing damage to the universe and this resulted in the federation limiting warp speeds. I believe they even had to request permission to use a higher warp speed in a later episode, though I could be misremembering. I know they kept to the speed limit except in case of truly emergency situations
I don't think it was really retconned per se, but they did refactor the warp scales throughout that time. Like Warp 4 during Archers time may have been slower than Warp 4 during Kirk's era, which itaelf may have been slower than Warp 4 during Picard's.
When they try to justify the handwavium speeds above warp 10 they'll throw in terms like "multi-warp," "transwarp," or I think there might be another superwarp term too.
Admiral Riker's orders to the helm of the "Future Enterprise": "Warp 13, engage!"
Nonsense, poopy pants! All you have to do is toss the law of conservation out the window and generate infinite energy. 😤
It's like the exceptions for crossing the streams.
BEHOLD MY SALAMANDRISM
