The barrier in TFF was put there to keep that being imprisoned, the novel makes that clearer than the movie did.
The Galactic Barrier!
- Thread starter johnnybear
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The barrier in TFF was put there to keep that being imprisoned, the novel makes that clearer than the movie did.
You know, that's probably TRUE. No joke.
Come to think of it, it's actually an impressive bit of continuity for '60s TV that "By Any Other Name" acknowledged the barrier at all, rather than just ignoring "Where No Man" altogether as every other extragalactic-themed Trek episode has done. Another rare bit of continuity in BAON is when Kirk suggests that Spock use the same mind-touch trick he used to get out of prison in "A Taste of Armageddon."
Doesn't Spock find that their true forms are some sort of Cthulian-like thing? Yet Kirk still makes out with one for the better good. That's our Jim!
Good boy, Jim! He's going where no man has gone before!
And I ask again: how is defining the edge of the atmosphere, according to whatever properties humans find convenient to use for the purpose the definition is put to, not a definition of the edge of the atmosphere?
As I read it you seem to be very worried that there's an inherent arbitrariness in defining the edge of the atmosphere to roughly match some properties that humans presently find convenient. But there is an inherent arbitrariness in pretty much every definition: what is ``red''? What is a ``rodent''? What is a ``liberal democracy''? What is a ``prime number''? Every one of these is a human construct, every one of which has some arbitrariness in it. That doesn't make the terms meaningless and it doesn't make the definitions meaningless. They're tools for organizing our thoughts.
Yes, but if the Enterprise had a mission to go beyond the edge of the galaxy, presumably it had some idea where the edge was, even if it is ``merely'' the notional edge equivalent to the edge of the atmosphere. It surely had orders to go somewhere, with some condition which would indicate whether the mission had succeeded or failed.
I would think ``the region where the number of individual stars visible to the average naked human eye drops below 1'' to be a fairly good definition of the edge of a galaxy, actually, if we have to take a scientism-based definition.
Fine, fine. I submit that more interesting really is that ``Where No Man Has Gone Before'' really belongs in a nearly vanished sub-genre of stories about what happens to the first men in space. You get a fair number of them in the 1950s. Suspense particularly ran several episodes about the first pilots who venture beyond the atmosphere and encounter aliens (often giving a worthless warning to humans to end our warlike ways) or hallucinations or time-loops or the like. (I want to say there were some Dimension X or X Minus One episodes with those plots, but I can't bring any to mind right now.)
There were a couple of Twilight Zone episodes along those lines, too, and come to think of it a handful of generally awful movies like Night Of The Blood Beast are also about that idea that the planet is surrounded by transformative perils. Shifting the focus from the atmosphere to either the solar system or the galaxy was unavoidable after spring of 1961, of course, but this feels like one of the last entries in it.
I suppose Brin's Crystal Spheres and bits of the Spelljammer RPG universe share the notion, and of course Ryk Spoor's retro-styled space opera Grand Central Arena universe starts from it. Considering the way piercing a physical barrier at the edge of (the atmosphere, the solar system, the galaxy) gives a story a natural symbolism it's surprising to me that it seems to be a rare gimmick.
Obviously the barrier in TFF is not the same one as in WNMHGB and BAON! They are clearly defined as being at the edge of the galaxy while the other is at the centre of the galaxy which debates whether Starships of the Federation could reach the centre? I mean isn't the Federation situated at the edge of the milky way where as the centre is somewhere near the Gamma quadrant? (I'm remembering a map of the systems I once saw) Plus other races may have found the barrier as no hinderance to their entering the galaxy while others did! Can you imagine The Doomsday Machine smashing through it with little if any damage!
JB
JB
As I already told you, it is not a definition of the edge of the atmosphere, because the atmosphere has two layers that are defined as extending far beyond it. It is one international agency's arbitrary definition of the "beginning of space," specifically of the boundary between aerodynamic flight and orbital flight. Yes, the lay assumption is that "space" and "atmosphere" cannot exist in the same place, but in fact they overlap, and the beginning of space is not the edge of the atmosphere. (In the same sense that everything beyond the Sun's heliopause is considered to be interstellar space even though there are portions of the Solar System -- the Kuiper Belt, the scattered disk, and the Oort cloud -- that extend far beyond the heliopause.)
I'm not "worried" about the definition in the least, because it's not the subject of this conversation. I'm explaining why it is a poor analogy for the definition of the edge of the galaxy. The definitions apply in different ways because they serve different functions. If you want to define a point where a vehicle's motion is orbital rather than aerodynamic, and it can thus be considered to be functionally a spacecraft, then the Karman line works for that purpose. But if you want to define the point beyond which there are no air molecules, then that definition won't work in the slightest. And that's why it doesn't work as an analogy for the edge of the galaxy, because that is defined, both in the episode and in Blish's adaptation, as the boundary beyond which there are no stars. And there is no such boundary, certainly not on the scale of less than half a light year suggested in dialogue. Not only does the edge of the stellar disk thin out too gradually for that, but there are plenty of stars beyond the stellar disk, in the halo. As I've said, it's a common mistake to confuse the most visible part of the galaxy -- the stellar disk and central bulge -- for the entire galaxy.
Yes, certainly there could be an arbitrary cultural definition. But my whole point from the start of this discussion has been that that definition would not represent an actual physical boundary and that it thus makes little sense for there to be an actual physical barrier at that exact point. But that is what the episode showed. The presence of the barrier means that there is some real physical meaning to the "edge of the galaxy" as defined by the Enterprise crew. And that is what doesn't make sense.
Why in the world would a scientific definition be based on naked-eye observation? And what the hell is "scientism?"
Interesting observation. I never thought of it that way, but it does fit that genre. As I recall, the very first Dimension X episode, adapting "The Outer Limit" by Graham Doar, was on that subject.
In TOS, TAS and the classic movies, the Enterprise went a lot farther and faster than in TNG, DS9 and Voyager. They slowed warp speeds down considerably and made crossing the galaxy a decades-long undertaking. It's a massive discontinuity which many fans are completely unaware of.
I see it more as improving the plausibility of the universe. Roddenberry never wanted space travel to be portrayed as a quick, easy commute, never wanted to lose the sense of space as vast and challenging. If you can make it a thousand light years in 12 hours, or get to the center of the galaxy in days (or faster), then interstellar travel becomes far too quick and easy -- you lose the "Trek" part. Sometimes in TOS, he let things slip through, but in TNG, with the added input of Sternbach & Okuda, they dialed the velocities back to a more credible and consistent level.
Really? I thought it was fairly well known. What does get my goat however is that a lot of the fanbase seem to assume that the slower TNG speeds are "the right ones" somehow, and that the (numerous, well documented) instances of TOS travelling faster are occasional "errors".
First come, first served, right?
In fairness to Peeples (and the other writers 50 years ago,) we didn't know then what we know now about galaxies.
For example, spiral arms were once thought to be structural, dense concentrations of stars and the gaps between them devoid of stars in comparison. Asimov's Second Foundation even uses this
We now think that the spirals are a pattern manifestation of density waves and star formation and that the density of stars in the arms are not much higher than the disk in general.
For example, spiral arms were once thought to be structural, dense concentrations of stars and the gaps between them devoid of stars in comparison. Asimov's Second Foundation even uses this
as the physical (as opposed to pschohistory) solution in describing "opposite ends of the galaxy."
Really? I thought it was fairly well known. What does get my goat however is that a lot of the fanbase seem to assume that the slower TNG speeds are "the right ones" somehow, and that the (numerous, well documented) instances of TOS travelling faster are occasional "errors".
First come, first served, right?
Absolutely not! That's getting it entirely backward. What you have to understand is that creativity is a process of constant refinement and self-correction. What you see onscreen is not a first draft, it's the result of a lot of trial and error, tossing out the stuff that didn't work and trying new stuff in its place. Well, sometimes the stuff that gets onscreen doesn't really work the first time, and in that case the creators absolutely need and deserve the right to correct those mistakes, to refine their work. It's the later version that should be given priority, because it represents the more mature, refined version of an idea.
After all, if we applied "first come, first served" to everything in Trek, then we'd be watching the voyages of the Earth ship Yorktown, Spock would be a highly emotional Vulcanian with a human ancestor, the ship would have a time warp drive, etc.
This is particularly true in science fiction, where the advancing state of the art in our understanding of science often renders old stories obsolete. In those cases, SF writers have always reserved the right to retcon or rewrite earlier works to amend their scientific errors. Clinging religiously to the original version would make no sense.
Well, the new movies have gone back to the older and faster ways, so someone up high agrees (or at least, finds those ways more expedient to their storytelling)Really? I thought it was fairly well known. What does get my goat however is that a lot of the fanbase seem to assume that the slower TNG speeds are "the right ones" somehow, and that the (numerous, well documented) instances of TOS travelling faster are occasional "errors".
First come, first served, right?
Only if you insist on basing Trek's world in reality. I'm happy to call it a fantasy world which operates under it's own set of rules. Even if that wasn't the original intent in 1964, and if I may hijack one of your points, it belongs with the Yorktown, Vulcanians and Time Warp Factors.Christopher said:
You show me a woman who looks like Barbara Bouchet, and I'll kiss her even if her true form is a giant cockroach.
I wouldn't agree, because it's come and gone rather than simply being abandoned. Later Roddenberry-led productions like TMP and TNG made good use of science consultants and kept things even more scientifically grounded than TOS did. DS9 generally did a better job with science than VGR. And even through the end of Trek on TV, there were always science consultants employed by the franchise, even if some showrunners were less inclined to take their advice than others. So the goal of grounding things in reality is always there in principle, even if some showrunners or film directors are less invested in it than others. And there's nothing to preclude some future Trek creator -- or a tie-in novelist such as myself -- to reintroduce a more science-based perspective, because that's just part of the ongoing process of refinement.
Anyway, I wasn't talking specifically about Star Trek in the passage you quoted. I was talking about science fiction in general, and how writers need to have the option to amend and update their earlier ideas, for whatever reason. Revision and improvement are essential parts of the creative process.
I've come to realize that we are arguing about subtly different points without noticing, which is probably why we're not getting much of anywhere and, I worry, boring other readers around here. If I may present a summary of what I think are the salient points.
The things I think we agree on wholly:
1. In the episode the Enterprise is tasked with the mission of going outside the galaxy, whatever precisely that might mean.
2. In attempting to do this, the Enterprise encounters a vast energy barrier of plot-generating events, because if it didn't the episode would be ``the Enterprise ventures into previously unvisited territory, looks around, and comes home'' and the show would never go to series.
The point I mean to argue and which I think you would be willing to concede:
3. While there is an inherent fuzziness in the concept of the edge of the galaxy, persons who might want to travel to it would have come to some definition, based on whatever seems relevant to their needs or interests, about whether a particular point in space-time is within the galaxy or not. By implication then they have some definition for a boundary between points inside and outside the galaxy, for the purposes of whatever those traveling to it are doing.
The points I think you mean to argue and which I do mean to concede:
4. There is absolutely no (in-universe) reason that any human-defined boundary to the galaxy should correlate with any kind of mysterious plot-generating field of energy.
5. Any human-defined boundary would correspond only loosely with any physical properties in the space it's meant to divide, and would look comically arbitrary, in a near-homogenous region, to someone in the field at the boundary's location.
Do you think that's a tolerable assessment of what we seem to be stuck disagreeing on?
Scientism is the philosophical approach that the most authoritative knowledge has to depend on empirical observation. So it would, in this view, look for some measurable phenomenon for whatever you were interested in; if the problem is defining whether something is in the galaxy or not, describe an experiment that could (in normal circumstances and at least in principle) give a yes-or-no answer.
I picked naked eye observation because if we want to use ``individual stars detectable'' as a standard then we need some threshold of sensitivity, and that's an easy one to describe. If the Federation Standards Organization wants me to write one with a less obvious human bias (and one that handles a number of the obvious problems with an 'individual stars' standard) that's fine, I'm open to taking the job.
Of course, ``The Outer Limit''. That was the first radio story I had in mind for being part of this kind. And it was adapted to X Minus One, and curiously comes not from the science fiction magazines but The Saturday Evening Post originally.
Really? I thought it was fairly well known. What does get my goat however is that a lot of the fanbase seem to assume that the slower TNG speeds are "the right ones" somehow, and that the (numerous, well documented) instances of TOS travelling faster are occasional "errors".
First come, first served, right?
Absolutely not! That's getting it entirely backward. What you have to understand is that creativity is a process of constant refinement and self-correction. What you see onscreen is not a first draft, it's the result of a lot of trial and error, tossing out the stuff that didn't work and trying new stuff in its place. Well, sometimes the stuff that gets onscreen doesn't really work the first time, and in that case the creators absolutely need and deserve the right to correct those mistakes, to refine their work. It's the later version that should be given priority, because it represents the more mature, refined version of an idea.
In general I agree. However, I was referring specifically to the issue of speed.
Most of the quirky differences you listed were really all sorted out by middle of the first season, so we are talking about 2½ years of stability in terms of how the Trek universe operated (more, if you include TAS). Slowing speeds down to Voyager's crawling velocities when Kirk (and even Picard at times) had been zipping around the Galaxy with much greater ease is too much of a contrast to exist in the same continuity. Sometimes, a reboot really is the best thing!
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