A remote region of space with no star systems for a hundred light years, where Emory Erickson staged a transporter experiment in 2154 as cover for an attempt to recover his lost son.
The Barrens is an empty region of space featured in the Enterprise episode Daedalus. With no stars for a hundred light years in any direction, it is thought ideal for delicate subspace experiments.
Emory Erickson, the inventor of the transporter, has Enterprise take him there, supposedly to test a way of beaming over enormous distances. His real purpose is different. Fifteen years earlier his son Quinn vanished in an early experiment at that spot, and Erickson believes the Barrens is the only place where his signal can be brought back.
Quinn's unstable pattern appears around the ship as a deadly distortion that kills one crewman. Archer in the end helps Erickson attempt the retrieval, but Quinn lives only a few moments after materialising.