Do you mean "The higher, the fewer" from "Cost of Living"?
Spoilers TOS: The Higher Frontier, by Christopher L. Bennett - review thread
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Do you mean "The higher, the fewer" from "Cost of Living"?
Maybe. It’s been a while since I saw the episode.
Continuing my reading and it's fascinating how Christopher ties the Enterprise's 3 visits to the edge of the galaxy in the original series and why certain things were different among the 3 visits. And it's a reminder that while the original series was much more episodic than the later series, that there was just a bit of serialized story-telling involved as well.
Anyway, I was curious during that part of the book if it would affect or reference Greg Cox's "Q Continuum" trilogy in regards to the barrier. First there is no reference, though that's not really surprising since this is an earlier story in the continuity. It couldn't reference the 'real' purpose for the barrier as Greg described it and not negatively impact that 'later' story.
On the other hand, at least so far (unless something changes later) Christopher does not provide an alternate purpose for the barrier so it doesn't out and out conflict at least the major points of "The Q Continuum". In short, there's nothing precluding the possibility that the Q created the barrier to protect the galaxy from 'O' in "The Higher Frontier" (at least as of chapter 15
).
I know it's not really germane to "The Higher Frontier" but I always like to see how different novels can fit in the same continuity, even if that wasn't the intention of the author. As a reader I try to look for ways different stories can fit in the same continuity, maybe not perfectly but at least in broad strokes. I did the same with "The Captain's Oath" and "My Brother's Keeper" since they both covered a similar period in Kirk's professional history. In that case there were parts that just can't be reconciled between the two--however, there are parts that could work together between the two (particularly with Kirk's pre-captain career depicted in MBK). And despite the things that can't be reconciled both had a similar 'feel' for that earlier Kirk (for lack of a better word). In a way, that similar feel for that era made me want to look for that more. I found that Christopher and Michael Jan Friedman had similar views on Kirk's character in those early days--which I admit is much more in line with the 1st season of the original series then say "Enterprise: The First Adventure" did.
Anyway, I was curious during that part of the book if it would affect or reference Greg Cox's "Q Continuum" trilogy in regards to the barrier. First there is no reference, though that's not really surprising since this is an earlier story in the continuity. It couldn't reference the 'real' purpose for the barrier as Greg described it and not negatively impact that 'later' story.
On the other hand, at least so far (unless something changes later) Christopher does not provide an alternate purpose for the barrier so it doesn't out and out conflict at least the major points of "The Q Continuum". In short, there's nothing precluding the possibility that the Q created the barrier to protect the galaxy from 'O' in "The Higher Frontier" (at least as of chapter 15
).I know it's not really germane to "The Higher Frontier" but I always like to see how different novels can fit in the same continuity, even if that wasn't the intention of the author. As a reader I try to look for ways different stories can fit in the same continuity, maybe not perfectly but at least in broad strokes. I did the same with "The Captain's Oath" and "My Brother's Keeper" since they both covered a similar period in Kirk's professional history. In that case there were parts that just can't be reconciled between the two--however, there are parts that could work together between the two (particularly with Kirk's pre-captain career depicted in MBK). And despite the things that can't be reconciled both had a similar 'feel' for that earlier Kirk (for lack of a better word). In a way, that similar feel for that era made me want to look for that more. I found that Christopher and Michael Jan Friedman had similar views on Kirk's character in those early days--which I admit is much more in line with the 1st season of the original series then say "Enterprise: The First Adventure" did.
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On the other hand, at least so far (unless something changes later) Christopher does not provide an alternate purpose for the barrier so it doesn't out and out conflict at least the major points of "The Q Continuum". In short, there's nothing precluding the possibility that the Q created the barrier to protect the galaxy from 'O' in "The Higher Frontier" (at least as of chapter 15
Sorry, but no. I don't accept the premise that the barrier surrounds the entire galaxy. For one thing, there's abundant evidence to contradict that assumption: With the exception of the Enterprise and the Kelvans, it tends to be quite easy for extragalactic visitors to get into the Milky Way -- Sylvia & Korob, the Doomsday Machine, the giant amoeba, the builders of Mudd's androids, the cosmic cloud from "One of Our Planets is Missing," etc. So the idea that the whole Milky Way is shrink-wrapped for our protection just isn't tenable. All we really know is that there's an obstacle across one portion of the edge of the galactic stellar disk within reach of the Federation. There's no reason to assume it exists everywhere else, and plenty of reason to conclude it doesn't.
Not only that, but it doesn't even make cosmological sense, because the stellar disk isn't actually the whole galaxy, just the most visible part of it, like the pit in a peach made mostly of diffuse gas and dark matter. The halo around it contains plenty of stars and stellar clusters; why should they be exempted from the "protection" the stellar disk enjoys?
I'm partial to Diane Duane's interpretation from The Wounded Sky, that the so-called "barrier" is just a transient phenomenon, a wavefront from an extragalactic hypernova-like phenomenon that just happens to be impinging along the local edge of the stellar disk during the 23rd century. That's the only explanation I've ever heard that makes anything remotely like sense.
Hmm, I wonder if there is some way to reconcile all that. Perhaps the 'barrier' is not the same across the entire galaxy. Perhaps there'd be a way to explain that certain parts are like what we saw in WNMHGB, other parts more accessible but still inaccessible to 'O'. Perhaps this particular region required greater protection because of some stellar phenomena that made this region weaker and more accessible to 'O'. Perhaps there are a couple at various points, but some areas required 'less' protection that allowed things to pass through unharmed but not 'O'.
Sort of like a battlefield perimeter. You provide more protection in your weaker areas, less where it's less needed.
I know, I'm reaching here
. IIRC correctly Michael Jan Friedman went with a bit of a different explanation, that the barrier was there but was overcome by later ships in "Valiant" I think it was. That some things could pass through unharmed but others couldn't and Starfleet simply made advancements that make the barrier not a barrier anymore. In theory I guess you could make that work with "Q Continuum" if it's a barrier specifically to keep 'O' out and not really to keep others out. I mean, you'd wonder why 'O' wouldn't stowaway on something coming in, but then I guess the Q would have anticipated that and made it that 'O' couldn't pass through plain and simple, no matter the method.I'll admit part of it is I did enjoy "Q Continuum"--it was a good dramatic story overall--and I'm trying to think of ways it could work.
Indeed. And (if memory serves correctly) in the "extended" part of Star Trek Log Eight, when the Enterprise goes on a jawanda hunt, it leaves the galaxy at an angle almost perpendicular to the galactic plane, encountering no barrier.
I'm not interested in trying. No criticism of Greg's writing is intended, but the whole barrier idea is one of Trek's dumbest, and I'd rather explain it away than lean into it. The notion that the galactic stellar disk even has anything definable as an "edge" is indefensible to begin with, even before you get to the fact that it's not even remotely accurate to call it the entire galaxy.
Besides, the fact that the barrier has never been canonically mentioned post-TOS supports the notion that it's an ephemeral and localized phenomenon rather than a permanent wrapping around the whole galaxy.
Well, the barrier is dopey, no doubt about that. If it did indeed surround the entire galaxy wouldn't you see it wherever you were? Plus even the 3 times we saw it, it literally looked like a boundary. If you really think about it you'd wonder why don't you go above or below it? At least in Voyager or Enterprise when they came across such a barrier they made it more 3 dimensional so you couldn't just go 'around' it.
I think Greg Cox was just trying to provide a potential explanation why it was only around our galaxy and not others, and to explain why it could be there in the first place. The same with the galactic barrier at the center of the galaxy, which scientifically we know would make no sense otherwise. But the trilogy was more about the characters anyway and why they were such bad actors. I esp. liked Q's shocked response when 'O' went ahead and destroyed the Tkon Empire's home system even after they found a way to stop the nova. Q could have a dark side, but even he had his limits.
If the barrier was made by Q I really see no reason for another scientific plausible (well, or at least not completely implausible) explanation. It's a magical wall that's all around whatever Q considered an appropriate area, thath as properties to keep 0 within this area and has different effects on mortals trying to pass it.
You know when you put it that way the ridiculousness of the barrier actually makes a little more sense. The Q created it so that would explain why it doesn't conform to the norms of space/time as we know it. And their primary focus is to keep 'O' out, not other beings, though a side effect is sometimes it's difficult to get through for some groups.
Perhaps at the time of the 5YM 'O' was trying to get in that section of the galaxy so the barrier needed to be reinforced in that area, or maybe it only appears when 'O' tries to get in, leading to the effects we saw. Sure it lasted a few years but then what's a few years to an immortal being.
Ok, I know I'm just making stuff up now and really reaching, but it could work.
I don't care for "A wizard did it" handwaves. I detest the idea of the barrier as a galactic "shrink wrap" in the first place, so I have no desire to justify it. I'll acknowledge it only as much as I have to for canon consistency; beyond that I just want the damn thing to go away.
Well, I did like how you explained the differences in the barriers effect on the Enterprise the times it encountered the barrier. That was a nice touch, esp. how it didn't seem to have the same deadly effects the other 2 times after WNMHGB. And you even redeem Gary Mitchell a bit. And I liked how you managed to give a nod to the Enterprise relaunches and the 24th century relaunches---in the same paragraph no less.
Muh?
Maybe if you ask Q nicely, he'll magically make it go away again
In the paragraph where you mention about how the Andorian guard helped the early Federation handle crises like the Ware crises, you also noted about the Andorian population issue, alluding to it becoming an issue, which by the time of the 24th century relaunches would become a crisis. And there was a bit of irony I guess you'd call it when the Andorians figured the Federation would come up with an answer eventually, which I took to allude to how the Federation actually classified something that would have helped, the metagenome (so an indirect nod to Vanguard as well).
I mean, you didn't come out with a direct 24th century reference, I mean, how could you since this story was before that. But an indirect reference to something that would become a major issue in the 24th century relaunch stories. And that was all in one paragraph.
Maybe if you ask Q nicely, he'll magically make it go away again
Ha-ha, Christopher's just no fun. He just needs to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter
Perhaps we can borrow a theme from "Dead Endless" and bring that to the party. The barrier is there, except when it's not, and it surrounds the galaxy, but it doesn't.
I'll admit, I don't like the galactic barrier idea much myself. I can buy a local phenomena, but it'd be hard to surround the entire galaxy. And it sort of makes the galaxy seem two dimensional, like you could only get out along the edge, and not above or below it. And if that same barrier did surround the galaxy I'd have to imagine you'd see it wherever you were at in the galaxy. Which was not the case. If something like that existed around the rim of the galaxy then I'd think you'd just leave the galaxy above or below it. Why would you go through it. If you dig just a little bit into the idea it sort of falls apart.
But I did like the "Q Continuum" trilogy a lot. Giving a Q-like purpose to the barrier at least gave a potential reasoning for it being there, and it wasn't some impossible natural phenomena. But obviously the barrier was only a small part of the entire story. When Christopher brought it up in the book I was just curious if he would present a different explanation for it. But there's no reason I can see that it conflicts with the other story, which was my main point. "The Higher Frontier" was more concerned with it's effects on certain people, not what caused the barrier to exist in the first place.
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There's no way it's along the outer rim as people tend to assume. That's at least 25,000 light years from here, which would be decades away at TNG-era speeds. Also, the Kelvans encountered it while coming from Andromeda, which is not in the plane of the galactic disk. Surely the Enterprise encountered it along one of the "flat" faces of the stellar disk, whose "edges" (allowing for the absurdity of pretending the scale height is actually a sharp cutoff) would be on the order of 1000 light years away or less, more plausibly reachable.
Yes, the onscreen visuals showed it as a flat ribbon, but lots of onscreen visuals in Trek are physically impossible or absurd, like fireball explosions and visible energy beams in vacuum, or a couple of dozen planets in TOS having exactly the same continents. You can't take the VFX too literally.
I wonder what the original intent was? Did the writer (was it Samuel Peeples) intend on it being the outer rim? I mean at that point it wasn't exactly clear how far the ships could go yet. Now we know that wouldn't work so we have to assume it's along one of the 'flat' surfaces. But I wonder if back in 1965 when WNMHGB was made did they intend on that being the actual outer rim.
That's also something that always bugged me a lot about TFF. By that point they should have known it would have taken decades to get to the center of the galaxy. Granted Voyager hadn't premiered yet but I think it was pretty well established in Star Trek history that it would take more than a few hours to get there (or if you wanted to be generous a few days if you wanted to try to stretch those events to a few days). I think the novelization by Dillard may have tried to take a stab at that, something about Sybok doing something to the shields or something (or maybe that was just to protect them from the Great Barrier, I can't remember if she offered any explanations for how quickly they got there).
Yeah, I know. Some of it I let pass, like seeing explosions in space and 'hearing' the ship because sometimes you have to allow for 'dramatic effect'. I loved the sound effects from the final battle in Nemesis, it would have been a lot less exciting without that bangs and booms and explosions. But the energy barrier at the border of the galaxy bugged me from the beginning in the sense that I just kept thinking, can't you just go above or below it? Maybe it's bigger than it looks but seeing the ship fly towards it I just thought, gee, why would you try to go through it? Like I said, I give Voyager and Enterprise credit when they encountered some expanse, like the Delphic Expanse, they made it big enough and 3-D enough that going around really wasn't an option.
I imagine 'leaving' the galaxy would be a lot less dramatic. Is there even a delineation between the galaxy and extra-galactic space? Is there something like a helio-pause around the galaxy that gives you an indication that you are leaving the galaxy? Or do you just stop seeing stars eventually?
I guess that depends on how 2-dimensionally Peeples was thinking, but I figure the intent was probably for it to be a boundary between "the galaxy" and whatever was beyond it, so that implicitly it would've been found wherever one attempted to cross.
And yes, TOS did tend to assume the distances traversed by starships were far greater than they are under modern assumptions -- see "That Which Survives," in which the Enterprise needs only about 12 hours to cover nearly 1000 light-years, which would take Voyager roughly a year.
Dillard addressed how they got through the "Barrier," but not how they got there so quickly.
Like I said, the visible disk that we think of as "the galaxy" is more like the pit in the peach. Beyond it is a much larger, roughly spheroidal halo of gas, dust, star clusters, and loose stars (see here), and that's within a far larger dark-matter halo that engulfs more than a dozen of its smaller satellite galaxies. So crossing outside the stellar disk would not immediately put you in "intergalactic space," merely in the galactic halo. It's less like leaving the Earth's atmosphere and more like moving from the ocean into the atmosphere.
As for leaving the disk itself, yes, you'd just get a gradual diffusion of stars, getting less dense as you went. The figure generally given as the thickness of the disk is actually just its scale height, the distance at which its stellar density is reduced by a factor of e (about 2.718). So at 1000 ly from the center plane, the stellar population density is about 2.7 times thinner, at 2000 ly it's about 7.4 times thinner, at 3000 ly it's 20 times thinner, etc. And that's just the thin disk -- the thick disk of lower-metallicity stars has a scale height of about 4900 ly.
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