Slipstream (science Fiction) - Usage in Star Trek

Usage in Star Trek

Quantum slipstream was a starship drive used in two episodes of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager. It first appeared in the season 4 finale, "Hope and Fear". Similar to the Borg transwarp conduits, the slipstream is a narrowly-focused, directed field that is initiated by manipulating the fabric of the space-time continuum at the quantum level using the starship's navigational deflector array. It works by focusing a quantum field through a deflector dish to generate massive changes in local space curvature. This creates a subspace tunnel, which is projected ahead of the vessel. Once a ship has entered this tunnel, the forces inside propel it at incredible speed. In order to maintain the slipstream, a ship has to constantly modify the quantum field with its deflector dish; however, the calculations involved are too complicated, and the time available too short for 24th century Starfleet computer technology. When this technology was discovered by the crew of the lost and stranded USS Voyager, it was hoped this could be used to allow the starship to travel at even greater speeds: the first test of this drive allowed the ship to travel 300 light years in minutes.

However, in the episode "Timeless", the technology proved to be dangerously unstable, resulting in the loss of all hands (save for Harry Kim and Chakotay) of the Voyager in an alternate timeline. With the shipboard computer unable to map the phase variance in the slipstream fast enough to calculate deflector corrections, Harry Kim and Chakotay offered to take the Delta Flyer ahead to map the slipstream and send the data in advance to Voyager. A miscalculation caused Voyager to fall violently out of slipstream, resulting in the starship's deadly crash-landing onto the surface of an ice planet on the outskirts of the Alpha Quadrant. Fifteen years later, after the remains of Voyager are finally discovered, Harry Kim and Chakotay, who survived the trip home on board the Delta Flyer, sends calculations back in time to Seven of Nine, by using a Borg temporal transmitter, which they believe will allow the slipstream to hold and Voyager to return to Earth. They are unsuccessful, but with no chance to correct their mistake, Harry takes the advice of The Doctor, whose program had been recovered from the wreckage and re-activated, and instead sends new calculations which collapse the slipstream field before the accident occurred in the primary timeline. Seven of Nine stated that she would continue studying it in hopes of someday reacquiring slipstream travel.

Quantum slipstream technology was one of the items requested in the "Think Tank" episode, despite Captain Janeway's admission they never got it to work properly.