Lets Fix "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

[Warped9]

^^ The story seems to imply the edge of the galactic disk, but it could be rationalized as the edge of either the upper or lower plane of the galaxy. In that case then the "edge" would be only about 1500 light years away as our solar system is situated about midpoint of where the galactic disk is about 3000 light years thick.

 

[FatherRob]

I think the MW edge is closer to 20,000 LY than 15,000, guaging by the image at this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:236084main_MilkyWay-full-annotated.jpg

Interestingly, the Remastered attempt could have had the Enterprise going 'up' (nadir of the plane) but chose to show the galaxy edge-on. Note the original (unaired) intro shows the galaxy from a slight angle (you can see that intro on YouTube... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5YmGG3VB_Q)

Rob+

 

[gastrof]

The edge of the galaxy is 15,000 light-years distant from Earth. Given that magnetic space storms can not propel objects F-T-L, and impulse engines can not propel objects F-T-L, and the combination of the two forces can not propel objects F-T-L... how did a 200-year old (pre-warpdrive) Earthship "Valient" cross 15,000 light-years in anything less than 15,000 years, without benefit of a faster-than-light mechanism?

Did the episode actually say the Valient didn't have warp drive, or simply that "the old type of impulse engines weren't powerful enough to get the ship out of the storm"?

I think it's pretty obvious, that if a ship from Earth was "out there", they'd have to have warp drive.

Possibly they couldn't engage the warp engines because of the storm, and that left them with their useless impulse engines?

 

[gastrof]

You've cut the Captain's heart right outta him, and should be made to pay for this heinous act!!!!

When did i do that?

This was in reference to the using of the middle initial "R".

I mean, think about it.

How could it ever be the same without him calling himself

"James T. Kirk"?

You might as well sand down Spock's ear points.

 

[Warped9]

The edge of the galaxy is 15,000 light-years distant from Earth. Given that magnetic space storms can not propel objects F-T-L, and impulse engines can not propel objects F-T-L, and the combination of the two forces can not propel objects F-T-L... how did a 200-year old (pre-warpdrive) Earthship "Valient" cross 15,000 light-years in anything less than 15,000 years, without benefit of a faster-than-light mechanism?

Did the episode actually say the Valient didn't have warp drive, or simply that "the old type of impulse engines weren't powerful enough to get the ship out of the storm"?

I think it's pretty obvious, that if a ship from Earth was "out there", they'd have to have warp drive.

Possibly they couldn't engage the warp engines because of the storm, and that left them with their useless impulse engines?

This view makes the most sense. The Valiant must have had some form of rudimentary FTL to get "out there."

 

[Wingsley]

I never took Kirk's remarks as meaning that the original Valiant didn't have warp dirve; I always assumed it did, albeit in rudimentary form. The Valiant probably was disabled by the storm, Kirk and Spock both assumed that, and that the ship would have to rely on impulse power. Keep in mind this would be about 200 years before the Enterprise found the recorder-marker, so the Valiant's FTL and sublight engines were probably quite crude.

Here's the closed-caption dialogue from TrekCore:

SPOCK
Decoding memory banks. I'll try to interpolate. The Valiant had encountered a magnetic space storm and was being swept in this direction.

KIRK
The old impulse engines weren't strong enough.

SPOCK
Swept past this point, about 1/2 light-year out of the galaxy, they were thrown clear, turned, and headed back into the galaxy here. I'm not getting it all.​

This suggests to me that the Valiant did have warp drive, but it was probably very crude, even by Archer's standards. The ship got into a storm, probably the first time such a thing had ever been encountered by an Earth expedition. They were probably unprepared and unable to protect themselves. If you remember how the Enterprise needed repairs in "Court Martial", and if the Valiant's storm had any similarity to what the Enterprise faced, then maybe the Valiant lost control and that explains what Spock reported.

 

[Maurice]

Or that a magnetic space storm (whatever that is) renders the warp engines useless.

 

[Josh_Lyman]

What's wrong with a doctor who is old? What is wrong with ANYONE who is old?

Get a doctor who isn't old.

 

[Wingsley]

What's wrong with a doctor who is old? What is wrong with ANYONE who is old?

I tend to agree.

Paul Fix was a great actor, and his portrayal of Doc Piper was a positive contribution to STAR TREK. My favorite TOS character was Leonard McCoy, but I thought Piper was a very interesting aside. It's too bad we never saw Piper again in TREK.

 

[larryman]

The edge of the galaxy is 15,000 light-years distant from Earth. Given that magnetic space storms can not propel objects F-T-L, and impulse engines can not propel objects F-T-L, and the combination of the two forces can not propel objects F-T-L... how did a 200-year old (pre-warpdrive) Earthship "Valient" cross 15,000 light-years in anything less than 15,000 years, without benefit of a faster-than-light mechanism?

Did the episode actually say the Valient didn't have warp drive, or simply that "the old type of impulse engines weren't powerful enough to get the ship out of the storm"?

I think it's pretty obvious, that if a ship from Earth was "out there", they'd have to have warp drive.

Possibly they couldn't engage the warp engines because of the storm, and that left them with their useless impulse engines?

This view makes the most sense. The Valiant must have had some form of rudimentary FTL to get "out there."

Zefram Cochrane discovered warp-drive 200 years before Kirk's 5-year mission. The SS Valient has been missing for the same 200 years. It's not sensible that the first F-T-L Earth ships would be sent on a non-stop voyage to the edge of the galaxy, ignoring the exploration of everything between Earth and the galaxy edge. At a continous warp-5 speed (100 times light speed), it would require 150 years (non-stop) travel time to arrive there. Spock describes the SS Valient as an Earth ship, not a Federation ship. Did pre-federation ships possess warp-5 speed? And were they 'sleeper-ships' to accomidate the 150-year travel time at warp-5?

On the point of the edge of the galaxy being the top or bottom edge... the barrior is the same location the Enterprise had to pass on it's way to Andromeda galaxy in: "By Any Other Name" episode. Which side of our galaxy faces the Andromeda galaxy?

 

[Josh_Lyman]

Well said.

What's wrong with a doctor who is old? What is wrong with ANYONE who is old?

I tend to agree.

Paul Fix was a great actor, and his portrayal of Doc Piper was a positive contribution to STAR TREK. My favorite TOS character was Leonard McCoy, but I thought Piper was a very interesting aside. It's too bad we never saw Piper again in TREK.

 

[Wingsley]

Zefram Cochrane discovered warp-drive 200 years before Kirk's 5-year mission. The SS Valient has been missing for the same 200 years. It's not sensible that the first F-T-L Earth ships would be sent on a non-stop voyage to the edge of the galaxy, ignoring the exploration of everything between Earth and the galaxy edge. At a continous warp-5 speed (100 times light speed), it would require 150 years (non-stop) travel time to arrive there. Spock describes the SS Valient as an Earth ship, not a Federation ship. Did pre-federation ships possess warp-5 speed? And were they 'sleeper-ships' to accomidate the 150-year travel time at warp-5?

On the point of the edge of the galaxy being the top or bottom edge... the barrior is the same location the Enterprise had to pass on it's way to Andromeda galaxy in: "By Any Other Name" episode. Which side of our galaxy faces the Andromeda galaxy?

This argument rests on the assumption that warp velocities are simply the warp factor cubed times the speed of light and that's it. If that were the case, it seems unlikely that Kirk's Enterprise would be able to make it there and back, plus have any other kind of time to explore anything else.

I'm glad "Star Trek Maps" (Bantam, 1980) came along and added a modifier (Cochrane's Variable, which changes depending on environment) to boost warp velocities in certain parts of the Galaxy (I prefer to think that dark matter and dark energy play a role, especially given how the Enterprise broke down upon encountering the Barrier) while leaving other areas out of reach. This also has the side-benefit of explaining why starships in any generation of TREK seem to spend so much time at Warp 1-to-2 and yet they don't take forever to get anywhere.

There's also another advantage to Cochrane's variable here: maybe the old Valiant tried to ride a wave of dark matter or energy in deep space to get a "tail wind" and the resulting storm lead to the ship's demise at the Galaxy's edge.

 

[UnknownSample]

This is in response to post #1.... sorry but an eye problem is making me limit reading and I haven't gone through the rest of the post. Maybe this has been said already. Anyway, the first post alarmed me, and this is a subject I care about, and that's why I'm saying the following, not because of any desire to lay into anyone personally, though it may sound like it.

The effects of WNMHGB are among the most effective and compelling ever done in Trek, and the galactic barrier effect in particular is awe-inspiring. It was replaced in HD with some generic shapeless mass of glarinbg colors that had zero impact. A team of great effects people are having their work thrown into a dumpster now, and no one cares.

The very idea that great original Trek needs "fixing" shows how low we've sunk as a society. We need flashy, glittery objects dangled in front of our faces every couple of minutes to maintain interest. Stop trying to "fix" great work from the past and just try to get work that good made in the present. It's now we need to worry about.

 

[Basil]

Some of the camera work is a bit off, and Gary Lockwood's performance is at times a little flat, but otherwise I wouldn't change a thing. The episode is not as ambitious as "The Cage," nor as imaginative, but it is among the better in "Star Trek." I love the fistfight at the end because for all of the technology and accomplishments tauted in the episode, it all comes down to two guys acting like the primitive brutes we came from, which underscores the whole theme of "we're not ready to be gods yet" of the
story. Dehner can keep the pants, but she needs to bend over more and wear a tighter top.

 

[larryman]

Zefram Cochrane discovered warp-drive 200 years before Kirk's 5-year mission. The SS Valient has been missing for the same 200 years. It's not sensible that the first F-T-L Earth ships would be sent on a non-stop voyage to the edge of the galaxy, ignoring the exploration of everything between Earth and the galaxy edge. At a continous warp-5 speed (100 times light speed), it would require 150 years (non-stop) travel time to arrive there. Spock describes the SS Valient as an Earth ship, not a Federation ship. Did pre-federation ships possess warp-5 speed? And were they 'sleeper-ships' to accomidate the 150-year travel time at warp-5?

On the point of the edge of the galaxy being the top or bottom edge... the barrior is the same location the Enterprise had to pass on it's way to Andromeda galaxy in: "By Any Other Name" episode. Which side of our galaxy faces the Andromeda galaxy?

This argument rests on the assumption that warp velocities are simply the warp factor cubed times the speed of light and that's it. If that were the case, it seems unlikely that Kirk's Enterprise would be able to make it there and back, plus have any other kind of time to explore anything else.

I'm glad "Star Trek Maps" (Bantam, 1980) came along and added a modifier (Cochrane's Variable, which changes depending on environment) to boost warp velocities in certain parts of the Galaxy (I prefer to think that dark matter and dark energy play a role, especially given how the Enterprise broke down upon encountering the Barrier) while leaving other areas out of reach. This also has the side-benefit of explaining why starships in any generation of TREK seem to spend so much time at Warp 1-to-2 and yet they don't take forever to get anywhere.

There's also another advantage to Cochrane's variable here: maybe the old Valiant tried to ride a wave of dark matter or energy in deep space to get a "tail wind" and the resulting storm lead to the ship's demise at the Galaxy's edge.

I do not know of dark energy being able to exert faster-than-light speed on any object.

As for invoking any extra-TOS mechanisms (Cochrane's Variable) to explain SS Valient's arrival at the galaxy's edge... I'll stick with a pre-Federation hyperspace-driven SS Valient, as I believe the United Planets C-57-D saucer is far more familiar to the general sci-fi public, than is the "Star Trek Maps" (Bantam, 1980) book. But the dark energy is useful as the anti-gravity force for levitating the C-57-D for planet landings.

 

[FatherRob]

Well, I posted the second and third chapters of my reworked WNMHGB story tonight on at startrekcoldspace.blogspot.com. I elected for a bow-shock in place of the barrier. I have a vague idea of what I am going to do with said bow-shock down the line, but I made a major change to the storyline during the briefing room scene (Chapter Three in my story) that changes the entire progression of how the story will unfold.

Don't get me wrong, WNMHGB is among my 'most watched' episodes of TOS. I can throw it in anytime and enjoy it... but it could be better (as could most of Trek) if you are viewing it from a hard sci-fi perspective. (Of course, one could argue that hard scifi and Trek go together like matter and anti-matter, but I am trying to show otherwise.)

Rob+

 

[Shatmandu]

Stop trying to "fix" great work from the past and just try to get work that good made in the present.

We wouldn't be Star Trek fans if we didn't have quibbles with various aspects of the various episodes: plot, effects, writing, acting, etc. It's fun and interesting for me to see what other people don't like.

And I especially enjoy it when they offer alternatives, which can bring up more questions/concerns from still others. Imaginations at work. (The conversation here in this thread about the different possibilities regarding the edge of the galaxy are interesting, no?)

It's perfectly understandable for you to not want to play along.

"Corbomite Maneuver" is next.

Joe, in production order

 

[Kagan]

Let's colorize Mitchell and Kelso's tunics to red. That way everyone will know from the beginning that these are two doomed "red shirts" who will bite the dust before the end of the episode.

 

[Outpost4]

Did the episode actually say the Valient didn't have warp drive, or simply that "the old type of impulse engines weren't powerful enough to get the ship out of the storm"?

I think it's pretty obvious, that if a ship from Earth was "out there", they'd have to have warp drive.

Possibly they couldn't engage the warp engines because of the storm, and that left them with their useless impulse engines?

This view makes the most sense. The Valiant must have had some form of rudimentary FTL to get "out there."

Zefram Cochrane discovered warp-drive 200 years before Kirk's 5-year mission. The SS Valient has been missing for the same 200 years. It's not sensible that the first F-T-L Earth ships would be sent on a non-stop voyage to the edge of the galaxy, ignoring the exploration of everything between Earth and the galaxy edge. At a continous warp-5 speed (100 times light speed), it would require 150 years (non-stop) travel time to arrive there. Spock describes the SS Valient as an Earth ship, not a Federation ship. Did pre-federation ships possess warp-5 speed? And were they 'sleeper-ships' to accomidate the 150-year travel time at warp-5?

On the point of the edge of the galaxy being the top or bottom edge... the barrior is the same location the Enterprise had to pass on it's way to Andromeda galaxy in: "By Any Other Name" episode. Which side of our galaxy faces the Andromeda galaxy?

I like Shatmandu's attempt to tighten up the TOS episodes, but I would strongly recommend against trying to get them to fit within the rest of Trek's canon. Not only is this doomed to failure, it misses a major point of Roddenberry's production. Never was there any attempt to tie Star Trek into a ridged timeline. There are only hints of how far Star Trek is in the future, and even those allusions contradict each other. Star Trek is just "out there", sometime in the future. That is the way it should be.

 

[Shatmandu]

EDIT TO ADD: You know, I wonder if we aren't asking the wrong question to start with. Perhaps we should ask what changes we would make to the basic premise of Trek, given our knowledge of TOS (and disregarding the new movie).

I missed this on my first read-through of your post.

What I'm going for here is, imagine you're working with Roddenberry as Producer. The episode in question is in the works. You read through the Revised Final Draft script. The episode is in production. The effects are being put together. The episode is being finalized, edited.

What opinions and advice do you offer along the way, to make the episode better than what actually happened?

Joe, casting-coucher