h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

WWhenever i watch Star trek (which is rare to be fair) i get confused by the different systems.

If it takes 5 days to get to Alpha Centurai, it must take a couple of weeks to make it to Vulcan.
So how come in the most recent film it takes them 18 minutes, albeit at emergency speed.

I get so confused by the inconsistencies(then again, this is expected from star trek :S )

In any case, its another excellent piece here.

If it says that in the script, then it must be right, or perhaps it comes under the category of filmic continuity errors

The Galaxy-class Enterprise was cruising at Warp Six, and took five days to travel 5 lightyears. The original Enterprise has a maximum speed of Warp 8, which on the old scale was 512 times the speed of light (There are two different scales, the latter one was adopted in the 24th Century). At this speed, the 14 lightyears between Vulcan and Earth should have taken about 10 days to travel. However, this concept of not taking as long as it should has come up before; in First Contact the Enterprise E traveled all the way from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in a matter of minutes.