So, going beyond the edge of the galaxy is known to make psychic gods out of high ESPer humans. Did Rojan luck out by unwittingly kidnapping a crew of muggles? If they had not responded to the original beacon in Where No Man Has Gone Before would Gary Mitchell and/or Elizabeth Dehner have complicated things? Or did they simply exit out of the "non-psychic" area of the galactic barrier?
After WNM, Spock studied the sensor logs and identified what kind of energy put the whammy on Mitchell. Then Spock came up with a deflector shield modification to screen it out. We can only assume the shields came on automatically when Larry Marvick went mad and plunged the ship into the Barrier in "Is There in Truth No Beauty."
Hmmmm, envisage it: Rojan: From this time forward, you are subjects of the Kelvan Empire. You will serve us from now on. Gary Mitchell: (voice echoing): On your knees NOW! Time to pray! Pray to me Kelvan! Rojan: To you human?!? Gary Mitchell: Pray you die easily!
Works for me. Since the 1970s, I've supposed shield modifications in my personal continuity such as you describe.
We know of two ships with espers aboard - two went divine on Kirk's, at least one on the Valiant. So let's say one out of 200 might be of sufficient PSI rating. (Perhaps not out of all humans, but out of all humans weird enough to enlist and to gain deep space assignments.) Where do we have a problem here, exactly? We know none of the main heroes were vulnerable that way. The rest of the crew is known to undergo at least some rotation, so some new espers might have come aboard - but the symptoms develop slowly, and Rojan turned everybody else into RPG dice long before they could have gone the Gary Mitchell way. If somebody did develop omnipotence problems after the adventure, he or she would probably have been aware of what happened the last time around, and would have left the ship in time... As for "In Truth", perhaps the one out of 200 was Larry Marvick? Timo Saloniemi
Actually, more than just Mitchell and Dehner were affected on the Enterprise. Nine others were killed, and they had high ESP ratings too.
I assumed, in that instance, the Enterprise disappeared into some other topographical fold of space. It looked similar to the Barrier, but was much more colorful.
I figured that in "Is There In Truth...", the barrier plus Warp Factor Insane blipped the Enterprise into a weird pocket universe or something. Voyager probably would have given it a special name, like tri-fluxic-quantum-fold, and have Harry look worried when he said it.
The Kelvin modifications to the engines which will get them to Andromeda in 300 years shot them through the barrier so quickly, nobody had time to get zapped and turned into silvery eyed gods. Run your hand through a flame fast enough, you won't get burned.
This. And I've come to realize that Delta Vega is not, repeat, not, beyond the barrier. If it were, the cracking station wouldn't be there. What the Enterprise did was ricochet off the barrier and back into the galaxy. I just had to mention that.
That's odd; In all these decades, I never once thought that Delta Vega could be beyond the barrier. This is just like the idea that Gary Mitchell might have been second in command, as some posters have suggested but never even occurred to me.
Beyond the barrier is where no man has gone before. More specifically: "Other vessels will be heading out here someday and they'll have to know what they'll be facing." Also, Kirk had to give an order for extra power to escape the barrier, once they had penetrated it, so the Enterprise didn't "ricochet off the barrier": "Helmsmen, take us out of here. [...] Helmsmen! [...] Lateral power! [sic]"
Ah, very true. It's more like one in fifty who is dangerously sensitive, then. Spock filled that role admirably enough: On the other hand, But the original Kelvan spacecraft apparently wasn't fast enough to avoid the deadly effects. Would a modified alien starship actually be faster? Well, Kirk never ordered a course change. So the Barrier can probably be blamed for turning the ship around, but Kirk and his crew then had to struggle heroically to sail out of the phenomenon again. "Ricochet" might be valid terminology, depending. Timo Saloniemi