Graham

Trek cheats because, according to one explanation (well, ok, bit of Treknobabble) what the Warp Engines are supposed to do is to "compress" space in front of the ship such that it doesn't *actually* go faster than light.

Imagine you put a needle on a rug, then bunch the rug up in front of it, push the needle through that bunched up section and then flatten the rug again, that's sort of what's supposed to happen, although that explanation actually comes from Harry Harrison's excellent and hilarious "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers!"

As to Tom Paris exceeding Warp 10 in ST:Voyager, that's just another example of Trek failing to keep to its own rules, because the "warp scale" is supposed to be an exponential curve where Warp 10 is unachievable but can only be approached asymptotically (except if you're slingshotting around a star to do a quick bit of time travel as in assorted Trek films... Consistency? What's that??)

Of course that episode also has the nonsense that, for some reason, exceeding Warp 10 didn't cause Tom Paris to go back in time, but, instead, caused him to "evolve", which rather demonstrates that the Trek writers have no idea what evolution is all about, because instead of him becoming "better fit" to his environment, the first thing that happens is that he almost dies because his lungs change to breathe a different mixture of gasses...!!

The point is that, according to Einstein, mass increases as you approach the speed of light, so as you accellerate you need more and more energy until you need an infinite amount of energy to achieve it.