Outside The Galaxy?

[XKin]

My lack of Star Trek knowledge may show through here but I will ask anyway.

Do we ever see in any Star Trek episodes any of the crews leaving the Milky Way galaxy, and if yes by how far?

If we don't see it in any episodes are you aware of the Federation leaving the galaxy from any cannon? Presumably in the Star Trek future it is common place to leave the galaxy and colonise outside the galaxy?

Thanks.

 

[Michael]

Yes, they crossed the Galactic Barrier three times during the Original Series.

 

[Frodo Lives]

There are instances in the Original Series of the 1701 attempting to breach the galactic barrier that surrounds the Milky Way and head outside our galaxy, in Where No Man Has Gone Before, By Any Other Name and Is There In Truth No Beauty. Though I don't think they made it past the barrier in any of those episodes.

And in the Next Generation the 1701-D did in fact leave our galaxy and wound up in Galaxy M33, if I recall correctly, although that was entirely by accident (Where No One Has Gone Before).

But as for actually leaving the Milky Way and exploring beyond, I'm fairly certain no onscreen Trek has shown such a mission. Unless you count Voyager's little side-trip to Fluidic Space, which was more of an alternate dimension I believe.

 

[ITL]

I'm sure that the Enterprise did go beyond the barrier into intergalactic space in "By Any Other Name"....

 

[amdmiami]

So the Delta Quadrant is in the Milky Way Galaxy. I was always under the inpression that it was in some other galaxy.

 

[Frodo Lives]

Nope, sorry.

For some reason the Federation has divided the galaxy into four quadrants, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, all in the Milky Way. Voyager got stranded in the Delta, the Dominion comes from the Gamma, and the Federation is in the Alpha (and supposedly the Beta, along with the Klingons and Romulans, but this has never explicitly been stated in an episode).

As a matter of fact, references to the Beta Quadrant are surprisingly sparse in the onscreen material.

Must be the crummy quadrant.

 

[Lindley]

Star Trek: Odyssey portrays the struggles of a crew which is stranded in the Andromeda galaxy after a mission goes bad.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Frodo Lives said:
For some reason the Federation has divided the galaxy into four quadrants, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, all in the Milky Way. Voyager got stranded in the Delta, the Dominion comes from the Gamma, and the Federation is in the Alpha (and supposedly the Beta, along with the Klingons and Romulans, but this has never explicitly been stated in an episode).

As a matter of fact, references to the Beta Quadrant are surprisingly sparse in the onscreen material.

TNG's "The Price" was the first mention of the current Quadrant system. Most of Star Trek VI took place in the Beta Quadrant according to onscreen dialogue, implying that the Klingon Empire--or at least most of it--was located there and most of the Federation in the Alpha Quadrant...

 

[Nebusj]

ITL said:
I'm sure that the Enterprise did go beyond the barrier into intergalactic space in "By Any Other Name"....

Certainly they did in ``By Any Other Name''. In ``Where No Man Has Gone Before'' I think they only got partway through before being turned back, and I'm not sure that in ``Is There No Truth In Beauty'' they got through the barrier. I think they ended up just stuck midway through.

(Clearly, shielding has made huge breakthroughs between the first and second seasons of the Original Series. The first time through was catastrophic, while the following times were only mild inconveniences.)

Including the Animated Series the Original Enterprise dipped out of the universe a couple of times, although into vibrational universes parallel to ours.

 

[Hofner]

In the Star Trek universe, the Federation is an interstellar entity rather than a galactic one. In TNG's "Encounter At Farpoint" Picard says only 10% of the galaxy has been explored. The other galaxies are pretty muuch too far away for reasonable trips. Except when propelled by superior godlike beings or plot device. (Pretty much the same thing)

In Voyager they said it would take 75 years at maximum warp to travel 70,000 lightyears. The Milky Way is about 100,000 lightyears in diameter and the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.54 million lys away. To get a picture of the distances, if the Milky Way was the size of a CD Andromeda would be about ten feet away.

Although in real life two dwarf galaxies have recently been discovered, one only 25,000 lys distant and the other 70,000 lys or so. Both orbit the center of our galaxy and are being torn apart by its gravitational influence.

Robert

 

[shatastrophic]

What the hell were they crossing in Star trek 5, is there a barrier that separates the center of the galaxy, and a barrier that that separates us from the outside too?

 

[Lindley]

Yes, the Great Barrier is at the center of the Milky Way.

The Q Continuum trilogy by Greg Cox posits that the Q erected both walls----one to hold The One prisoner on "Eden", and the other to hold another entity in exile outside. It was this second entity who infected Gary Mitchel.

 

[-Brett-]

As I recall, the farthest distance given was 3 million light years in some early TNG episode. That means they were probably in the andromeda galaxy or one of it's satellites. Edit: Nope. Triangulum. My bad.

They travelled even farther out later in that episode, but seem to have lost track of the distance.

 

[EnsignJulka]

Space is a big place! (I didn't intend for that to rhyme....)

 

[Timo]

(Clearly, shielding has made huge breakthroughs between the first and second seasons of the Original Series. The first time through was catastrophic, while the following times were only mild inconveniences.)

Or then, as with any weather phenomenon, there are good days and bad days in the Galactic Barrier.

It seems that anything really alien in TOS was considered to have come from outside our galaxy. Was it the Galactic Barrier that twisted the Doomsday Machine out of shape, regressed the Space Fish into a Space Amoeba, and flattened the flying neural parasites into pancakes? Certainly the Barrier was said to have totaled the spacecraft of the Andromedans, so that they had to hijack Kirk's for their journey home.

Perhaps the Barrier is a defensive rampart, and only intended to hurt those who attempt to penetrate from outside in? The Valiant seemed to do fine on the outside trip, only succumbing to the attempt to return. When Kirk tried to follow, he may have become disoriented (as in "Is There in Truth") and headed back towards the galaxy, at which point the Barrier struck.

We don't know whether Kirk's return after "By Any Other Name" was cakewalk or an ordeal that nearly destroyed the Enterprise...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I would hope that the so called great barriers are stripped from canon because theres no way the barriers could exist and not show up in telescopes, you wouldnt even be able to see other galaxys beyond our own.

 

[Lindley]

Not if they're pulsing red light, no.

If they're simply energy fields which appear red due to creating license, but are actually light-permeable, then who knows....

 

[Red Ranger]

Fire said:
I would hope that the so called great barriers are stripped from canon because theres no way the barriers could exist and not show up in telescopes, you wouldnt even be able to see other galaxys beyond our own.

That would be good. I always found the barriers, while fascinating, a bit problematic for some of the reasons you cited.

As to the O.P.'s question, I think the furthest any Federation ship has been was Picar'd Enterprise in "Where No One Has Gone Before." In addition to ending up in Galaxy M-33, they also entered a realm so far away that their every thought became reality. They didn't mention how far away that was from the Milky Way.

Red Ranger

 

[Timo]

To be sure, one might consider the red-haze visuals of the Barrier a phenomenon of polarization rather than of conventional absorption or reflection. After all, the Barrier looks like a thin, horizontal line - why doesn't Kirk fly above or below it?

If the Barrier in fact is a 3D shell around the galaxy, but manifests optically as an elongated red stripe when one gets extremely close to it, there should be no problem either with it obscuring extragalactic sights, or with Kirk being a stupendous idiot.

Although of course we might also say that the Barrier only glows red right at the galactic plane, where dust clouds more or less completely obscure our view of the outside universe anyway. If there were a ring of red haze just a couple of million kilometers high there, we certainly couldn't tell.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Redfern]

I remember someone suggesting the Galactic barrier (as depicted in "Where No Man...") and the Great barrier (presented in "Final Frontier") as being one in the same forming a kind of toroid or doughnut shape encapsulating the spiral arms of the Milky Way with the galactic core exposed to the "outside". Kinda' like galactic scaled van Allen belts, which was supposedly the inspiration for the barrier in the second pilot.

I neither denounce nor support the idea, I'm merely repeating what another fan suggested. Make of it what you will.

Sincerely,

Bill