List of Star Trek regions of space
Several films and episodes of the science fiction franchise Star Trek are set in distinct astrographical regions of space.
This list describes some of the more significant settings for Star Trek films or story arcs over multiple television episodes.
[1] Located in Star Trek's Alpha Quadrant, the Badlands are characterized by constant plasma storms and funnel clouds.
In "Caretaker", the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the titular starship pursues a Maquis ship into the Badlands before being pushed by an energy wave to the Delta Quadrant.
[1] In "Erigah", the seventh episode of Star Trek: Discovery season 5, the Badlands are determined to be the temporary location of a next clue to finding vital creation-of-life technology.
[2] The Badlands are also mentioned in the computer game Star Trek: Armada II, where the Borg build up forces in that area close to the Federation.
In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Bajoran wormhole is a spatial anomaly located within 160,000,000 kilometres (1.1 au) (DS9 S1Ep2: "Emissary (Part 2)") of the planet Bajor.
Starfleet Commander Benjamin Sisko and Lieutenant Jadzia Dax are the first people to make contact with the wormhole's mysterious creators, who dwell inside it.
The planet featured in Star Trek: Insurrection is a class-M world; it is unusual for its possession of an intricate planetary ring system.
The Ba'ku have established a colony on the surface, where the colonists rejected most forms of advanced technology and attempted to create a utopian society.
The Klingon system Klach D'Kel Brakt is also given the designation "Briar Patch" by Dr Arik Soong in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "The Augments".
Intense gravitational distortions, similar to quantum singularities, make travel through the Expanse extremely difficult, as it seems that space does not obey the known laws of physics in this region.
One area of the Expanse, 700 million kilometers wide and centrally located within a group of spheres, has already been distorted into a bubbling particle soup with an organic appearance.
In 2037, a temporally divergent starship Enterprise from 2154 becomes stranded in the Expanse; it becomes a generational ship, dedicated to countering the Xindi threat destined to arise in the 2150s.
On February 13, 2154, the Enterprise destroys the network of Spheres, reverting the distorted space to its natural form, and gradually dissipating the thermobaric cloud barrier.
[6] Although the Enterprise's Captain Jonathan Archer is shown a possible timeline in which the Expanse becomes a major threat to the future United Federation of Planets, this eventuality appears to be eliminated by the successful destruction of the Spheres.
By this point in time, the energies of the galactic barrier had grown strong enough that shields were actually weakened by passing through, forcing the crew to find and hide in bubbles of stable space to enact repairs before continuing their travels.
Various books try to explain the existence of the galactic barrier, although none of these are canonical: In the original Star Trek, "quadrant" is used interchangeably with "sector".
The crew of young aliens who serve as the main characters start the series as slaves on the Tars Lamora prison colony in the Delta Quadrant where they find and steal the derelict USS Protostar.
In the second season, now-Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway returns to the Delta Quadrant in the Voyager-A to stop the threat posed by the Vau N'Akat.
The peace treaty ending the war and subsequent border adjustments result in several Federation worlds within the zone being ceded to the Cardassians.
The DMZ ceases to exist at the outbreak of the Dominion War in 2373; the Maquis are subsequently eliminated as a functional resistance group by a joint Cardassian-Dominion task force.
In Star Trek Into Darkness, set in an alternate reality, the USS Enterprise violates the Neutral Zone to capture Khan Noonien Singh.
The Enterprise (NCC-1701) crosses the Neutral Zone three times: Once to get to a starbase quickly when the crew is suffering accelerated aging, once when it is commandeered by a group of disestablishmentarians in their quest for paradise, and once more when the Federation attempts to steal a Romulan cloaking device.
The following year, the USS Yamato crosses into the Neutral Zone to prevent the Romulans from finding the Iconian home world, an abandoned planet that contains highly advanced technology.
An overt but lawful entry into the Neutral Zone occurs when the USS Bellerophon participates in a Federation–Romulan conference on Romulus during the Dominion War.
In Star Trek Nemesis, Shinzon lies that he wishes to take down the zone as part of his ultimately failed plot to destroy Earth and the rest of the Federation.
It may take the form of irregularities in gravity, ripples in space that can damage equipment and personnel, alterations in the laws of physics, and areas of disruption inimical to the human brain.
Other episodes featuring spatial anomalies are "Disaster", which features two quantum filaments that temporarily cripple the Enterprise, the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation (in which the USS Enterprise-D encounters a "multiphasic temporal convergence in the spacetime continuum", caused by "an eruption of anti-time"), and "One Small Step" (in which the USS Voyager discovers a rare "graviton ellipse").
