Grand Unification Theory (Part 3)

A wormhole is a wormhole.

So, I covered that the difference between subspace and any other "____space", is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.

I merged transporters and transwarp, seemingly for the hell of it.

Now, let's tackle wormholes, and you can start to see where I'm going with this.

Well, let's go with the standard description of a wormhole that you've probably heard a jillion times by now, but in the off chance this thing is in front of the eyeballs of  a newbie, let's do it anyway....

If you imagine space as a piece of paper bent into a "c", and you want to get from the top to the bottom of that "c", then, you can either go around the curve, or, stab a pencil through the paper (making a "¢") , and zip down in a straight line that way.

The pencil represents the wormhole.

So called, because in the earliest formation of the idea, the bent paper was instead an apple, and the pencil, a worm munching through to the other side.

So, basically, it's a magic shortcut tunnel through space that gets you there as quickly as if you had warp/hyperdrive.
Or, even faster.

And, ever since TNG's "the price", Trek has been infatuated with the things.

And, leave it to good old Voyager, episode writers just couldn't resist trying to top wormholes with a zoo of even faster space tunnels, and more "impressive", names.

Well, they're all bullshit.

First, let's look at one way to conceivably construct a real wormhole.

Well, to manage/direct this construction project, it would take already having some kind of FTL drive, or, at least FTL communication, but, you could create a black hole (no small feat in itself) at the one end of space you want to depart from, and another at the point in space you want to end up, and manage to have the singularities touch each other, and theoretically, the infinities of the singularities would cancel out, and make a safe tunnel to pass through.

Of course, Stephen Hawking says vacuum flux would either rip you apart, or prevent the wormhole from ever forming to begin with....but in Trek, they've pulled it off, so let's go with it.

Anyway, DS9 describes the Bajoran wormhole as "a tunnel through subspace".

Well, there you go, now we know.
Subspace is singularity-land.

Which, given my description of "dimension zero", actually sounds about right.

So, given that a wormhole is "a tunnel through subspace", and given what I've said about all the other "____spaces", being a bullshit re-labeling of subspace, then, a tunnel through those bullshit spaces must also be bullshit, and they're all just fancily renamed wormholes.

Borg temporal vortex?
A wormhole.

Transwarp corridor?
A wormhole.

Quantum slipstream?
A wormhole.

Spatial flecture?
A wormhole.

Vaadwaur underspace corridor?
A wormhole.

Course...if slipstream is a wormhole, and it's also a big transporter...then, the transporter...is a mini wormhole?
Well...yeah, if the "annular confinement beam", is a fuckin' tube through subspace.

Course, at that point, I don't know why you need to atom-smash the person, when you can just zip them whole-bodied down on a wormhole...

To stubbornly and blindly maintain Roddenberrian tradition, I guess.

Anyway, in Classic Trek, Gary Seven's (from "Assignment: Earth") magic vault is described as being like a kind of transporter, but...the smoke tunnel we see him step out of is more visually consistent with Voyager's various magic tubes.

So, yeah, I'm totally going with transporters at least having a wormhole ingredient.

The only point to the matter-conversion part of it I can see anymore is magical medical rescues for crappy writers.

And, I've shown in excruciating detail where that leads.

I hope JJ-verse dumps it, and admits to it being  a wormhole-o-matic and gets it over with.

Oh, here's (for me) the absolute clincher on the transporter having a wormhole component.

Classic Trek's "mirror, mirror".
A transporter malfunction sends Kirk, Mcoy, Scotty, and Uhura to the mirror universe.

When's the next time Trek goes back there?
DS9's "crossover".
How do they get there?
A warp-drive-fart inside the Bajoran wormhole.

If a transporter penetrates subspace, and does every single thing a wormhole can...how is it not a wormhole, exactly?

Okay, so, that's transporters, next up, warp drive itself.

In "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", a malfunctioning warp drive makes a wormhole.

Of course, this wormhole is "unstable", and starts scrambling everyone's atoms, and voices (vacuum flux mayhaps?).
But....aside from that little hiccup...I don't see where it was too much different from warp.
They seemed to cover the same amount of ground as if it had been a "proper", warp field.

Indeed, when you think of what warp is supposed to do...bend space around the ship so that the destination becomes closer relative to it...gee, wouldn't the connecting point between those ends of space...kind of be...a wormhole in everything but name?

I'm actually seeing less of a difference there, than between transwarp and quantum slipstream.

In fact, the whole deal with juggling around "warp bubbles", is goddamned cumbersome in comparison to a straight-out wormhole.

Why do they bother with it?
Like the transporter being an atom-splitter, probably "Roddenberrian tradition".
Or, at the very least, an inability to backtrack with existing canon.
Well...JJ-verse has no such baggage.
Dump it.
Upgrade.

Okay, even within Roddenberry-canon, you can dump it.
I mean, look, you've got the whole deal with "instability", that artificial wormholes either collapse, or scramble your atoms.
Well, okay if the latter's really the case, and the transporter is a mini-wormhole projector, then, I could see how having an atomic un-scrambler to compensate would be handy, and why it's part of the system.
Just...not for the reasons we were always told.

BUT...other alien cultures manage the whole wormhole deal just fine.
Whatever the wormholes are called.
How hard would it be, for some generic Starfleet schmoe to tricorder scan/hack the info out of the alien's database, look it over, go "oh, that's how it's done", turn a few screws, and crack the problem?
They do it with other shit.
All the time.

Shit, the transporter's molecular scanners would seem to be that very magic compensation system!
And, for awhile at least, it was on the frigging Excelsior!
They had it!

Then, they bullshitted it back to warp.
Why? Search me.

The reasons for not doing it never really washed.

What, you'd get across the galaxy too fast?
Who says just because it's a wormhole, it has to make it across the galaxy?
We're just talking about making the techno-babble comport with updated science, so that things look less stupid.

And...even if you could now jump to all four quadrants of the galaxy, or even to other galaxies, so fucking what??

The format would still be "planet of the week".

Hell, it wasn't until my teens when I understood Trek was stuck in our galaxy.
I always thought Kirk explored the universe.
The whole fucking universe.

Didn't "ruin", a damned thing for me before or after figuring this out.

No, this is a story handcuffing that's not only bullshit, but when you nitpick the fuck out if it, is a wasted effort, because they have wormholes anyway, and the real labor on their part has been obscurantism to keep you from seeing it.

But, it's obscurantism that just gets in the way, it's white noise, it's mosquito buzzing, so, pppt, out it goes.

Warp, transporters, all of it.
Wormhole-o-matics, the whole lot.

A wormhole, is a wormhole, is a wormhole, is a wormhole.

And they're nifty and handy enough, without having to be "improved",

So kiss the fourteen years of TNG and Voyager babble goodbye too.
Especially the fuckin' Voyager babble.

A wormhole is a wormhole.
This is going to be important when we get into the other crossover universes.
And speaking of...

Up next, we finally bust out of Trek a little, with "timelines and universes".