A Goof in the STAR TREK Franchise

I do not remember that....but did wonder why Kirk left Elizabeth's stinking corpse on my planet. Imagine climbing out of that hole, only to discover...that...

 

Not to mention that the idea of a definable "edge" to the galaxy is a load of rubbish in the first place. To quote David Gerrold, it's like trying to bisect a sneeze.

 

...said the guy who invented Tribbles.

The barrier needs no hard scientific basis--it was a striking, threatening creation holding much mystery (not to mention its effects on humans after contact). The shot of the Enterprise approaching the barrier is one of the defining images in all Star Trek.

 

Sometimes people tend to forget the fiction in science-fiction, that some stuff is indeed just made up solely for dramatic storytelling purposes with no actual basis in science. In the fictional Star Trek Universe, there is an energy barrier surrounding the Galaxy, and it's really no different from ancient sea stories about things at the End of the World.

 

Wouldn't that rather apply to the producers or the VFX people?

I mean, it really just looks like the barrier would be an obstacle for a ship that's somehow stuck to a two-dimensional plane. A spaceship approaching it should be able to pass over or under it (unless lethal radiation is least at the bright center of it, there could be plenty of impenetrable "dark" matter above and below).

Oops...just another one of these crazy rationalization attempts.

Bob

 

+1

 

Well said. Trek is a comic-book fantasy world, not real science fiction (whatever it was originally envisioned as), and this is another example. It's as realistic as the magical bridge made of rainbows in Thor, but it's just as real to Trek's world as that is to the Marvel movieverse.

 

The "rationalization" that personally satisfies me is that the "barrier" is "something" that is only observable by ships and probes employing some sort of warp drive. In "normal" space, it's effectively not there and one can just cruise on by. But it would take hundreds or thousnads of years to traverse the same distance. Kick in that warp drive and it becomes very "real".

As to why it appears as a "band" instead of a "shell", maybe that's just one of those optic things. Likewly, it IS a "shell", but it simply appears to be a band from whatever angle it's approached. Warp "north" or "south" of the galactic plane, and it still looks like a bloody band.

Yeah, a "weak" explanation to be sure, but it suspends my disbelief well enough to enjoy the story.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

I remember wondering something similar to this thread topic a number of years back. I will provide the link if anyone is interested....

LINK

 

Actually that's a pretty damn good explanation. I like it.

 

Hmm, that's the second time within recent memory I tossed some oddball thought out there and you've stated your like. Uh, what was the first? I can't remember.

A bit more seriously, if I've thought of something, odds are someone else has already considered the concept and put a lot more reasoning behind it.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

Well some years ago I did think the barrier could be some form of optical illusion that always seems to appear right in front of you. But I never considered that it could only be visible in warp flight. That's inspired and I really like it.

 

Which is good snark, but bad thinking. If there are some places which are unmistakably inside the galaxy, and some places which are unmistakably outside the galaxy, the implication is that there is some boundary.

There might be some phenomenon that makes for a compelling boundary, such as, say, a massive field of energy. There might just a point where some measurable quantity (e.g., the density of particles) grows too small to bother with or changes in character (e.g., the kinds of particles being distributed the way they are in indisputably intergalactic space). There might just be a practical point such as, say, the farthest extent that a starship could reach and still be tactically significant. But one could still define that edge.

No one seriously disputes that we can talk about the boundary of a planet's atmosphere, even though the atmosphere really just peters off and merges imperceptibly into interplanetary space.

And it's not as if gigantic structures at the limits of the galaxy, in whatever way you want to define the limits, are unknown or unthinkable.

Bisecting a sneeze is even easier, as there are so many ways to do it.

 

And, for the two pilots and most of the first season, the production also received detailed notes from Harvey Lynn of the RAND Corporation.

 

Yeah, it's a great idea. It explains why the barrier is "not there" as far as we can see in real life. It exists only in subspace, but it's so big that you can't get there, let alone cross it, without warp drive. This basically vindicates the whole episode.

 

I like Redfern's idea too, to a degree. One major point it has going for it is that it allows the barrier to exist in Star Trek mythology without its absence conflicting with real world observation. In-universe, the explanation would be that we can't see it, because we aren't FTL capable.

The problem that it runs into is that the Valiant had impulse power only, and the barrier had a real effect on her. I'm not a subscriber to the fanwank that impulse is some form of FTL, crude or otherwise. I can (I suppose) tolerate a warp-capable ship using a warp field to reduce its inertial mass so that rockets can accelerate the ship faster than otherwise. Considering impulse itself to be FTL is a bridge too far for me, though.

In my personal continuity, the Valiant was swept to the edge of the galaxy by the "magnetic space storm", which is an FTL effect in the Star Trek universe, possibly related to the barrier itself, and she wouldn't have been able to get out that far ever, otherwise (with a live crew). In fact, that right there is another alternative: perhaps the barrier flares up in some sort of cyclic pattern related to the magnetic space storms, and that's why we "don't have any evidence of it" at the moment.

 

A cyclic pattern or periodicity to the Barrier is another good suggestion, but the Valiant simply had to have FTL. Storm or no storm, you don't get out there, past other stars, without exceeding the speed of light.

Granted, the timeline barely works. The Valiant took off 200 years prior to WNM, which can't be more than a few years after Cochrane discovered the space warp.

 

Like I said, I'm going with the idea that the storm was an FTL effect, that itself swept the Valiant to faster-than-light speed. Something's gotta give in the dialog: either one is loose with what is meant by "magnetic" or one is loose with what is meant by "impulse". I'm going with the former.

I'm not sure why you say "past other stars", though. If it's a question of collision, stars themselves occupy only a tiny fraction of the volume of the galaxy. They wouldn't be in the way. When two galaxies collide, stellar contact is rare to non-existent. If it's a question of the distance involved, I'm assuming that the storm provides all the FTL effect needed to get out that far.

I know that not all fans agree with this notion here, because we've discussed the subject before. I'm just trying to clarify what I mean, because I sense that it might not have been fully clear what I'm suggesting.

 

Yeah, so? Bring her back to life. You're a god.

(One of you is, anyway.)

 

Where does it say Dehner's body was left behind? For that matter who is to say they left Mitchell's body under the slab?