Answer (1 of 14): The term “continuity error” gets thrown around a lot in reference to Trek, oftentimes erroneously.
Some of the most famous “continuity errors” can be explained with a little imagination and common sense.
WHY DOES KHAN KNOW CHEKHOV IF CHEKHOV WASN’T INTRODUCED TO STAR TREK UNTI...
Moving at 10+ in TOS was always due to some alien influence or something. The Enterprise engines were definitely not capable of those speeds under normal conditions.
With that said, in TOS, warp 10+ is just “you are moving really fast”. But in VOY, warp 10 is “you are literally occupying every point in space simultaneously” and there is nothing past warp 10. It is a complete reimagining of the ceiling to warp speed. In TOS, it seemed there was no theoretical maximum warp speed. But by VOY, warp was capped at 10, and once you reached that speed, you became a salamander because reasons.
Frankly, I never saw the salamander thing as a real downside to transwarp 🦎
Its a logarithmic scale, it makes sense that 10 is the maximum. The difference between warp 9.1 and 9.2 is the same as the difference between warp 1 and 6, for example.
It’s like decibels, there is a theoretical maximum. It just doesn’t make much sense to TV audiences since bigger number = more fast, in a linear way.