With six decades of stories creating the building blocks of the universe’s canon, Star Trek is surprisingly cohesive. From the thematic elements in the disparate films and series to the sci-fi specifics that captivate diehard fans, it gets more right than wrong. However, one Star Trek: The Next Generation story left a plot hole open for three decades until a throwaway line in Lower Decks closed it.
In the first two phases of Star Trek, the storytelling wasn’t serialized, so some ideas introduced in episodes would be forgotten. However, because the universe kept going from series to series, writers could pick up those ideas and run with them. Newer shows would pick up the batons dropped by earlier series, using them to tell a deeply emotional or thrilling story. However, in the case of a theory introduced in TNG about warp drive travel damaging subspace, Star Trek: Lower Decks picked up the idea for gag. In doing so, it helped iron out the hole TNG Season 7, Episode 9, “Force of Nature” left open.
Just watched “Force of Nature” not long ago. Suggesting the subspace data was “falsified” or otherwise incorrect later doesn’t dismiss the rift generated by Serova’s sacrifice. That it takes nearly 10 centuries from the time period of the episode to introduce a better propulsion system seems fitting, at least.
It also doesn’t dismiss the fact that Voyager was specifically built to fix the problem.
And there’s also the matter of the fact that science is about confirmation as much as it is about discovery. The Federation would absolutely gather their own data to confirm this before doing something like design and build Voyager with the moving nacelles.
Hmm, so, like. Voyager got started around the time TNG was wrapping up, along with DS9. Voyager as a ship’s folding nacelles were meant to address that.
(Don’t ask me how. Makes no sense to me. But the folding-to-warp is interesting…)