There were always silly sci-fi shenanigans that had led to the 10+ warp speeds in earlier episodes, that’s for sure. But that doesn’t make the salamander thing any less of a retcon. The way that it was explained in that episode, any object moving at a speed of warp 10 is everywhere at once or whatever. How that object achieved that speed (be it a standard warp drive or the efforts of an alien) makes no difference. If an object is moving that fast somehow, it’s salamander time.
He was experimenting with transwarp technology used by the Borg. I mentioned this in another comment but I think the reason he lizard-ified was because he didn’t have a Borg transwarp conduit to reduce the infinite probability down to a finite point in space. Thats how the Borg were able to travel nearly instantaneously across entire quadrants of space without turning into mecha-lizards. Like you said, it’s silly if you try to think about it too much.
There were always silly sci-fi shenanigans that had led to the 10+ warp speeds in earlier episodes, that’s for sure. But that doesn’t make the salamander thing any less of a retcon. The way that it was explained in that episode, any object moving at a speed of warp 10 is everywhere at once or whatever. How that object achieved that speed (be it a standard warp drive or the efforts of an alien) makes no difference. If an object is moving that fast somehow, it’s salamander time.
He was experimenting with transwarp technology used by the Borg. I mentioned this in another comment but I think the reason he lizard-ified was because he didn’t have a Borg transwarp conduit to reduce the infinite probability down to a finite point in space. Thats how the Borg were able to travel nearly instantaneously across entire quadrants of space without turning into mecha-lizards. Like you said, it’s silly if you try to think about it too much.