Leaving the Galaxy....

[c0rnedfr0g]

How often (in which episodes) do you remember the Enterprise crew leaving the galaxy, or at least talking about it nonchalantly, as if leaving the galaxy wasn't THAT big of a deal (esp compared to the 24th century Trek)?

I can think of 2 to start:

Where No Man Has Gone Before

By Any Other Name

 

[miraclefan]

Cant think of any other eps besides those two!

 

[boobatuba]

There was the side trip in Is There In Truth No Beauty, but you could certainly argue that this was more of a dimensional side-track then leaving the galaxy (although I do believe the characters do make reference to "leaving the galaxy").

In Day Of The Dove, Kirk says the course the ship heads on will take them "out of the galaxy." Fortunately the crew regains control of the ship before then.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I have a vauge memory of Spock telling someone the planet Vulcan was "millions of lightyears" away from whatever alien planet they were on.

 

[Timo]

Oh, when he was stuck in planet Sarpeidon's ice age thousands of years in the past in "All Our Yesterdays"? Perhaps he was aware of something we aren't as regards the movement of our entire galaxy versus some sort of a fixed frame of reference; the galaxy, and Vulcan within it, might have moved millions of lightyears during those 5,000 years that separated Spock from his native 23rd century.

Or perhaps he was just plain nuts.

In any case, all four eps mentioned above did seem to regard leaving the galaxy a "big deal" in one way or another. In "Where No Man" and "By Any Other Name", the energy barrier is a factor, and is said to damage or destroy ships that attempt passage; in "Beauty", this is ante'd up by the fact that a ship going through may end up hopelessly lost. In fact, "Day of the Dove" is the only one where the sole "threat" made explicit is that of getting really far away from home.

OTOH, the distances involved in getting out of our galaxy need not be all that great - the heroes could shoot out of the upper or lower surfaces of the galactic disk, and those surfaces could be defined by this fictional barrier, perhaps lying much closer to the centerplane (where Earth more or less sits) than the fuzzy, barrierless surfaces in our reality do.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Green Shirt]

In Day Of The Dove, Kirk says the course the ship heads on will take them "out of the galaxy." Fortunately the crew regains control of the ship before then.

Wouldn't any course heading take you out of the galaxy? Assuming, of course that you don't collide with anything on the way.

 

[Timo]

A Starfleet hero might differentiate between courses that take months or years to get that result, and courses that send the ship through the barrier in weeks or less.

But I agree in principle, and I've always been annoyed about Spock's "Doomsday Machine" insistence that the titular menace came from outside the galaxy. Even if the observed course was a straight beeline, the prediction would only be valid if the events took place very close to the outer limits of the galaxy - and the course must have been meandering a bit because the DDM moved from star system to edible star system. Moreover, Spock would only have data on half a dozen star systems or so, as the episode hinged on it not being possible to spot these destroyed star systems by long range scans. And of course, if the DDM really were a weapon, one should suspect it would try to hide its true origin and destination...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[boobatuba]

I've always been annoyed about Spock's "Doomsday Machine" insistence that the titular menace came from outside the galaxy. Even if the observed course was a straight beeline, the prediction would only be valid if the events took place very close to the outer limits of the galaxy - and the course must have been meandering a bit because the DDM moved from star system to edible star system. Moreover, Spock would only have data on half a dozen star systems or so, as the episode hinged on it not being possible to spot these destroyed star systems by long range scans. And of course, if the DDM really were a weapon, one should suspect it would try to hide its true origin and destination...

Same annoyance here, and at to that the fact that a machine fueled by planetary bodies couldn't possibly cross vast interstellar distances with no available fuel.

 

[Timo]

...Assuming it is fueled that way. All our heroes really observed was that the device dismantled planets and then kept on dismantling them by feeding some of the fragments into its mouth. Perhaps there was no energy recovery involved in that process? Or, alternately, eating up a dozen systems is enough for an intergalactic trip, and eating half an asteroid is all that the device really needs for reaching the next star system and devastating it.

Of course, what our heroes came up with was a working hypothesis that, well, worked. If you assume the DDM is the enemy, it sure becomes the enemy. It's difficult to see how they could have acted differently even if they didn't make their amazing assumptions.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Same annoyance here, and at to that the fact that a machine fueled by planetary bodies couldn't possibly cross vast interstellar distances with no available fuel.

Peter David made that same argument in his TNG novel Vendetta. However, technically it is possible to cover intergalactic distances without fuel, since there's essentially no friction in space and you can coast indefinitely. It would just take millions of years to do it (or tens/hundreds of thousands if it's one of the Milky Way's small satellite galaxies).

 

[Tan Ru]

In The Alternative Factor, it is mentioned that the "winking-out" is felt all over the galaxy. "felt all over the galaxy"?? By whom??

I have always thought that an odd line.............

 

[Doug Otte]

In The Alternative Factor, it is mentioned that the "winking-out" is felt all over the galaxy. "felt all over the galaxy"?? By whom??

I have always thought that an odd line.............

Obviously, it was felt by beings who...felt it!

Seriously, I always assumed it meant that beings, either part of the Federation, or in contact w/ the Federation, had reported the "winking."

Doug

 

[Warped9]

In TAS' "Beyond The Farthest Star" I believe Kirk's log states they're near the edge or outer rim of the galaxy.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

In "The Mark of Gideon," Kirk talks about the Enterprise at the end as if it is able to reach (easily) the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Then again, he could've just been trying to impress Odona

 

[Ssosmcin]

However, technically it is possible to cover intergalactic distances without fuel, since there's essentially no friction in space and you can coast indefinitely.

THANK YOU! Man, so many SF TV shows used to really annoy me with this, saying they don't have enough fue to go from here to there when all they really needed to do was get up to the desired speed and then power down the engines. They would only need to use them for course corrections and the end of the trip. Even in the original series, before the whole "warp field" thing and warp factors were a "speed", I felt that Scotty didn't need to bitch so much about his engines not taking the strain.

But, to give them grace, they purposely kept it vague, which could defuse many arguments. Other shows, though, really needed to get into the science a little better...

 

[Timo]

Then again, space is only friction-free up to a certain fraction of the speed of light. At higher fractions, there's at least some friction from the medium, and supposedly a deflector beam will not remove the friction even when it prevents impacts with the medium (although with the fancy non-Newtonian tech of the Trek future, one never knows).

Accelerating to 0.45 c and then coasting might not be different from standing still: you still wouldn't get anywhere within the timespan of the episode, or even within your lifetime. It wouldn't solve any of the plot complications that our heroes face when their warp engines go down or their fuel runs out.

And it just doesn't sound right that warp travel would be free of friction. It's a rude violation of Momma Nature, and by all rights should require the constant applying of fantastic power levels...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[stonester1]

Exactly. Warp travel isn't Newtonian movement. It really isn't "movement" at all in the conventional sense. It's using the medium of subspace to shortcut through normal space. And it does require a constant application of power. Without, a ship can't maintain it's velocity, or even maintain the subspace bubble around the vessel.

 

[Cyke101]

Exactly. Warp travel isn't Newtonian movement. It really isn't "movement" at all in the conventional sense. It's using the medium of subspace to shortcut through normal space. And it does require a constant application of power. Without, a ship can't maintain it's velocity, or even maintain the subspace bubble around the vessel.

Really? I always thought the warp engines didn't really move the ship, but instead moved the universe around it.

...or is that the Planet Express ship? hmmm...

 

[Neopeius]

Exactly. Warp travel isn't Newtonian movement. It really isn't "movement" at all in the conventional sense.

There's some kind of acceleration involved. Everybody gets pushed back in their seats when the ship speeds up.

*grumbles about stupid use of artificial gravity in TOS*

 

[Myasishchev]

^The thing that bugs me about the "non-movement movement" theory--which, indeed, I personally subscribe to--is why a deflector is needed if there's no real inertial movement, and hence no huge impact with the infinitesimal particles due to high speeds. Maybe the warp field, which may just be a controlled black hole-intensity gravitational field, pulls that interstellar dust in at a real clip.