WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, Episode 10, "The Galactic Barrier," streaming now on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 has seen the Federation face a devastating threat from beyond the galaxy's edge, unleashing a dark matter anomaly that has consumed everything in its path as it moves erratically through the cosmos. Determined to make a diplomatic first contact with the entity responsible for creating the anomaly, dubbed Species 10C, the USS Discovery makes the arduous journey to meet with the mysterious civilization personally, and in doing so, Discovery Season 4 has finally made good on a promise made as early as the beginning of Star Trek: The Original Series.

The second pilot episode for TOS made good on its title of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" by having the USS Enterprise attempt to breach a cosmic barrier at the border of the galaxy to investigate what exactly occurred to a missing vessel. Describing the barrier as a magnetic space storm, the barrier severely damages the Enterprise's warp drive, kills nine crew members and gives godlike abilities to two officers, forcing the starship to withdraw rather than progress any further. The Enterprise briefly managed to go beyond the galactic barrier in the TOS Season 2 episode "By Any Other Name" thanks to alien modifications to the ship systems, but they ultimately returned home when Captain Kirk regained control of the ship.

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Centuries later and with the wellbeing of the galaxy's entire Alpha Quadrant at stake, the Discovery escorts a diplomatic delegation to formally make first contact with Species 10C before an anomaly annihilates their home. In contrast to its depiction in TOS, as a pink band bordering the galaxy's edge, the galactic barrier is depicted in Discovery as something resembling a tear in the fabric of subspace. The electrical storm properties of the barrier are still present though with noticeably large cells making up the barrier, constantly undulating against each other, threatening to smash or electrify anything caught in between them.

In order to succeed where the Enterprise had failed centuries prior, the Discovery uses its unique Spore Drive and negative energy particles to enter one of the spatial cells and ride it through toward the other side of the galactic barrier before jumping outside of the galaxy and heading toward Species 10C's coordinates.

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This navigational method is not without its own challenges, as the cells move at varying speeds and in strange paths. To make matters all the more harrowing, any time the starship is outside of the cell, facing the raw energies of the barrier, the matter making up the ship steadily are compromised. Fortunately, the Discovery manages to emerge safely on the other side of the galactic barrier, continuing its vital diplomatic mission.

With any sort of meaningful intergalactic communication a logistical impossibility for the Federation, even in the 32nd century, the Discovery leaving the galaxy to contact Species 10C was something of an inevitability. Such an expedition has usually resulted in disaster. but Discovery manages to take its characters where no Star Trek has gone before as Captain Michael Burnham leads Starfleet a mission for the fate of the Milky Way Galaxy. The galactic barrier is considerably less lo-fi but just as treacherous as ever but, thanks to some quick thinking and 32nd century know-how, the Discovery has proceeded beyond the galaxy undeterred to save the day.

Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, Star Trek: Discovery releases new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.

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