And why was it so different compared to regular space?
Was it maybe a place where only the mycelium network exists?
Was it maybe a place where only the mycelium network exists?
What kind of space was the edge of the universe in "Where No One Has Gone Before"?
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
- Start date
What? Are you thinking of the limbo space from "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" There was no "edge of the universe" in "Where No Man," just a supposed "edge" of the Milky Way Galaxy. And there was no alternate space; the ship was simply caught in a barrier on the putative edge and flung back into the galaxy.
Darling this is the TNG forum and the OP is talking about "Where NO ONE has gone before" not the TOS episode...
And in the TNG episode they do theorize that they're on the edge of the Universe where they see all those crazy visions, like Picard meeting his mother.
Oops! Sorry. I'm hours from deadline on a novel and my brain is frazzled. Plus I tend to use the collective "New Posts" list and don't always notice what forum a thread is in.
But yeah, the idea was that they were so far from the known universe that they'd entered a part where the laws of physics work differently. There are theories that the universe only appears to have uniform physics because the inflationary era caused it to expand so rapidly that any irregularities were flattened out; any zones with different physics are much more than 14 billion light-years away, so the light from them hasn't had time to reach us in the 13.8-billion-year age of the universe. So if you could travel so far and so fast that you ended up beyond the edge of the observable universe, you'd effectively be in a whole different universe, one that might have different laws.
The basic plot of "Where No One Has Gone Before" was a loose reworking of Diane Duane's TOS novel The Wounded Sky, which I highly recommend; it's one of the very best Trek novels of the 20th century. Its version of the "creative physics" that allow imaginings to come to life and all that is explained in considerably more detail, though it's pretty different from the episode's version.
Well, the episode has the Traveler say that 'thought is the basis of all reality' and (indirectly, by his equations) that 'space, time and thought aren't the separate things they appear to be'. A perception of reality that (supposedly) is still eons beyond Federation science.
I always interpreted the episode to mean that for the first warp experiment, the Traveler accidentally 'used' this property to boost the Ent-D far beyond speeds that would normally be attainable for the vessel, and that by the second attempt, he directly lead them into a domain (or plane of existence, or whatever- whether it's physically located somewhere in our universe or at the edge of it isn't even that interesting in my view) where these 'walls' between thought and space-time were lower or non-existent, so that the manipulation of reality by thought became possible even for members of such primitive societies as the Federation. Possibly a place not entirely unlike where the Q continuum lives.
But that's just my interpretation and I'm not bothered by too much knowledge of Trek.
I always interpreted the episode to mean that for the first warp experiment, the Traveler accidentally 'used' this property to boost the Ent-D far beyond speeds that would normally be attainable for the vessel, and that by the second attempt, he directly lead them into a domain (or plane of existence, or whatever- whether it's physically located somewhere in our universe or at the edge of it isn't even that interesting in my view) where these 'walls' between thought and space-time were lower or non-existent, so that the manipulation of reality by thought became possible even for members of such primitive societies as the Federation. Possibly a place not entirely unlike where the Q continuum lives.
But that's just my interpretation and I'm not bothered by too much knowledge of Trek.
Which is interesting, because even though the episode is a loose adaptation of Diane Duane's The Wounded Sky, that particular idea is very similar to the arivne concept from Joe Haldeman's earlier Trek novel Planet of Judgment -- a Vulcan concept that matter, energy, and thought are aspects of the same thing.
Yes, it was made pretty clear that Kosinski's modifications were useless and it was really the Traveler's powers propelling the ship.
At any rate, what happens there is somewhat similar to what would happen on the purported 'astral plane', where thoughts also are supposed to shape reality and people that attempt to supposedly enter this plane are also warned to 'control their thoughts'. (Or what happens in lucid dreams, which very much is an uncontestably real phenomenon.) These ideas are centuries old and I wouldn't be surprised if the idea for this episode was ultimately derived from one of those (whether by intermediary SF novels or not).
Just to be clear, "Where No One Has Gone Before" was written by Diane Duane and Michael Reaves based on Duane's own novel The Wounded Sky. So of course TWS is relevant to the origin of the idea, even though the show's writing staff rewrote the script so thoroughly that only the vaguest outlines of Duane's story survived.
Duane's own work does have a fair amount of spirituality in it, blended with scientific concepts. She tends to treat them as aspects of the same thing, e.g. in her Young Wizards universe, which has a lot of ideas in common with her Trek work.
I bought almost every Trek novel that came out in the 80s, and I can still vividly see the cover of "The Wounded Sky" in my mind. Thanks for the throwback.
That being said, I never knew that WNOHGB was based on TWS. I guess they did a pretty thorough re-write!
Where the magic mushrooms and incense and peppermints grew. One could even see the colour of time (it's green, with orange blossoms in the shape of poodle poofs that smell real bad when tasted. based on my current avatar, Picard secretly tried a few to be sure...
)
Where the magic mushrooms and incense and peppermints grew. One could even see the colour of time (it's green, with orange blossoms in the shape of poodle poofs that smell real bad when tasted. based on my current avatar, Picard secretly tried a few to be sure...
But seriously, the effects for the mycelium network (especially the ones in Season 1 of Disco) reminded me strongly on WNOHGB.
Always thought the writers were influenced by this episode when they established the mycelium network.
Something similar was in mathematician Rudy Rucker’s novel WHITE LIGHT—a trippy part of which was in his book “Infinity and the Mind.”
From Discovery Season 1's "Context Is For Kings":
"STAMETS: At the quantum level, there is no difference between biology and physics. No difference at all. And you talk about spores. What are they? They are the progenitors of panspermia. They are the building blocks of energy across the universe. Physics and biology? No. Physics as biology.
BURNHAM: All right.
STAMETS: I became an astromycologist because of awe. Awe at the miracle of life. I met Straal, and we formed a partnership. We would get to the veins and muscles that hold our galaxies together. We would find truth."
"LORCA: Imagine a microscopic web that spans the entire cosmos. An intergalactic ecosystem. An infinite number of roads, leading everywhere.
BURNHAM: The veins and muscles that hold our galaxies together."
And didn't the things we've seen flying around at "the edge of the universe" look a bit like spores and a kind of similar to the effects in "Context Is For Kings", when the mycelium network was shown for the first time?
Maybe the Discovery writers and producers were influenced by WNOHGB, when they developed this concept
Maybe the Discovery writers and producers were influenced by WNOHGB, when they developed this concept
No, they were influenced by the fringe theories of the real-life mycologist Paul Stamets, whom the fictional character was named after. Frankly it sounds like pseudoscience to me. But then, Trek creators have a history of listening to questionable experts, like when Voyager based Chakotay's Native American culture on the ideas of a supposedly "authentic Native American" consultant who later turned out to have been a complete fraud.
Yeah, i know. But that one thing doesn't necessarily exclude the other and possibly a few of the details of their concept may have come from that episode.
People always want to jump to the conclusion that similarity "proves" direct influence, but that's naive. Things accidentally resemble each other all the time. There are only so many ideas in the world, and lots of them recur over and over. So it's always safer to assume there wasn't an influence, unless there's something more to suggest that than the mere perception of similarity.
By this point, there are slightly more than 800 Star Trek episodes, movies, and shorts in existence. With such a huge sample set, it is statistically inevitable that any given Trek story will resemble at least one other Trek story. So mere resemblance is not enough to prove influence. Trek is such a gigantic target that you're bound to score a hit even without aiming.
Maybe you're right, but i can just say that i am always reminded on WNOHGB when Discovery uses the spore drive.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wik..._Enterprise_in_distant_galaxy,_remastered.jpg
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Mycelial_network?file=Mycelial_network.jpg
And i think it would be fun to theorize about a possible connection between these two concepts
I have not seen any of Discovery yet. However, I must say that my very first impression is that mycelium stuff sounds bonkers in an even worse way than the WNOHGB stuff, but that probably just shows my conditioning (if you hear an unconventional idea often enough, it starts to sound less crazy) 
The galactic barrier doesn't make much sense, as the galaxy doesn't really have some demarcation point as to where it suddenly ends, anymore then our solar system does. Also with later history of trek the Valiant getting that far doesn't make a lot of sense either, unless you employee some kind of wormhole or accidental transwarp conduit. But its canon. it has to be there.
The barrier didn't seem to be a problem for the Kelvans. IF the barrier doesn't permit electromagnetic signals from getting through why can we see other galaxies from Earth? If the barrier is visible, why didn't astronomers notice it before WNMHGB. One of the few answers would be, the barrier is new, and no one has time to see it yet (of course in Star Trek, things like supernovas effect other worlds apparently at superluminal velocities, and you can watch Vulcan be gobbled up by a red matter black hole in real time from, speaking of WNMHGB, Delta Vega.
It makes no more sense to me than the spore drive. An actual multiversal spanning fungus makes more sense then either of the above, though I don't understand how that is suppose to allow instantaneous travel. But it's no more more insane than genesis device or transporters or warp 10 salamanders.
The barrier didn't seem to be a problem for the Kelvans. IF the barrier doesn't permit electromagnetic signals from getting through why can we see other galaxies from Earth? If the barrier is visible, why didn't astronomers notice it before WNMHGB. One of the few answers would be, the barrier is new, and no one has time to see it yet (of course in Star Trek, things like supernovas effect other worlds apparently at superluminal velocities, and you can watch Vulcan be gobbled up by a red matter black hole in real time from, speaking of WNMHGB, Delta Vega.
It makes no more sense to me than the spore drive. An actual multiversal spanning fungus makes more sense then either of the above, though I don't understand how that is suppose to allow instantaneous travel. But it's no more more insane than genesis device or transporters or warp 10 salamanders.
