At the end of Star Trek‘s first season episode “The Naked Time”, Scotty has to start the engines cold in order to get the ship away from planet Psi 2000 before the planet’s breakup destroys the ship. Once he does this, we hear the familiar groan of the ship’s engines being pushed to their limits as Ensign Sulu starts announcing the ships increasing speed. Once the ship reaches warp eight, Sulu says that his chronometer is moving backwards.
The only information that we, the viewers, are given is that the ship is traveling at warp eight and that is fast enough to throw the ship into a time warp. However, in later episodes the ship travels considerably faster than warp eight without traveling backwards in time. Specifically, in the episodes “The Changeling” and “By Any Other Name”, improvements are made to the ship’s engines that have the Enterprise traveling at well over warp ten – something that, by the time of TNG, the laws of physics did not allow for.
Also, because they had traveled back in time, Spock tells the captain, “We have three days to live over again” and Kirk’s reply is simply, “Not those last three days”. Why did they not use the opportunity to contact their three-day-younger counterparts, explain what was about to happen, and prevent the whole mess, thereby saving the life of poor Lt. Tormolen?
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