Galactic Barrier

I've been enjoying rewatching all my vhs episodes with my daughter lately. It didn't really dawn on me after all these years until she pointed out that the barrier didn't affect the crew in "By Any Other Name" as they were in "Where No man Has Gone Before!" Any thoughts or explanations?

 

Thought about it several times over the years. Either Starfleet by then knew how to counter that effect or no one on board had an high ESP rating.

About this, I find it’s a shame that the topic of human ESP has been almost completely dropped after the pilot. I think it was glossed over only in TNG, with Wesley, and Lower Decks, with the ascension guy.

 

The funny thing about that is that Miranda Jones in "Is There In Truth" very much had human ESP, yet was unaffected by the Barrier.

In "By Any Other Name", the crew members who remained awake after the Barrier penetration were ones who had survived the original "Where No Man" transition just fine, so there was complete consistency there! If any of the other crew were turned into demigods, it doesn't matter, because they were turned into dodecahedrons immediately thereafter.

Timo Saloniemi

 

It doesn't come up, at all, of course, after TOS (unless you reconceptualize Wesley and others who demonstrate powers far beyond ESP), but I think alot of that is because the "stigma" (for wont of a better term) connected to ESP has died down by TNG times. You have countless telepathic aliens in the 24th century, not just mysterious touch telepaths like the Vulcans. So, the whole idea of extra-sensory perception gets a shrug rather than dedicated research science into its applications.

No telepathic humans are shown in the 24th century, but maybe that's because they are (for the most part) a very obscure minority who don't fit in well with Starfleet or are off doing other things. Or maybe Sariel Rager or Tracee Jae were espers but no one ever thought much of it.

 

right! But do hey cross the barrier in that episode? Didn’t they “just” end up in some sort of weird space fold?

yes, but no one was mentioned fainting and so on...in fact Kirk should have mentioned the possible risk of having a human god onboard to the kelvans.

 

On the outside leg, they have their hands full. But for the return leg, they are pretty explicit:

Why reveal your ace in the sleeve? (Especially if you aren't sure you have one there.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

but they get back using the medusians’ weird navigational techniques...perhaps they can avoid the Barrier somehow that way.

well, I’m not sure it would be in his interest having to deal with another Mitchell...sounds a bit like getting rid of mold by setting your house on fire!

 

I found the idea of the barrier only being a finite ribbon at the galxy edge rather dumb. It should really have been a sphere encompassing the galaxy to be unavoidable. Avoiding it as is would be as simple as going over or under it.

 

It is: there is no way the enterprise could have reached the horizontal end of the galaxy in the current canon. them traveling “up” or “down” to reach the barrier is a simple, logical explanation that has no side effects and works well.

 

Not really, since they call it the "rim" when they refer back to it which directly contradicts it being above or below. TOS, TAS and the classic movies zipped around the galaxy at a whim, from the rim to the centre.

 

Well, not only is the Barrier fictional - any "rim" to the Milky Way would have to be fictional as well, because the real deal has none.

So it would be fine for our heroes to define as "rim" a starfish-shaped mantle that hugs every luminous arm of the galaxy and excludes the galactic halo, say.

Spock does establish the way, in that very bit of dialogue: warp drive gets them through the Barrier, but warp drive is only available if one has a Medusan navigator. Otherwise, the "distortions" quoted would prevent Sulu from knowing whether he's warping towards the Milky Way or away from it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

which is why I wrote *current* canon. Back then they couldn’t care less.

 

By the way, this is an easy explanation for that barrier, the one at the center of the galaxy is much harder to explain (unless you go the “it was all a Dream” way)

 

Not really. Sha Ka Ree lies "beyond the Great Barrier - at the center of the galaxy". It doesn't follow that the Great Barrier would lie at the center of the galaxy. For all we know, it's twenty and one quarter lightyears corewards from Nimbus III.

Might be the nearest inner surface of the starfish envelope; the one and same barrier is red outwards and green inwards. Might be a mirror phenomenon, or something utterly different. But being far away from Earth is not a requirement - indeed, the closer, the better for the concept of many having tried and none having returned...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Perhaps no humans with high Esper ratings continued to serve on Starships?
Miranda Jones may have been protected by her contact with the Medusan?

 

yeah, it’s how I rationalize it, but we both know it wasn’t shatner’s intention.

 

I guess I always assumed that the Kelvans modified the Enterprise shields in line with their own, for full protection from the barrier. After all, we don't see any electrical fires on the bridge in BAON. I just assumed it was a given.

 

That's close to my thinking, that after WNMHGB, Spock devised a shield modification that prevented the Barrier from affecting human brains and damaging the warp engines. He found the hole and he patched it, and then all Starfleet ships got the upgrade on the second Tuesday of the following month.

 

Thank goodness for those Kelvan ship modifications: souped-up M/AM reactor(s), warp engines and shields. Glad to have them in the Federation.

 

Well, if we assume space lanes that allow boosts to warp factors, you might get a fast ride spinward—right into the barrier