How many transporter rooms on TOS Enterprise?

[FalTorPan]

Back to the original topic, one could reasonably argue that the TOS-era Enterprise has but one transporter room, since it's often called "the" transporter room, or just "Transporter Room" with no additional distinction.

[Just a Bill]

FalTorPan wrote:

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Back to the original topic, one could reasonably argue that the TOS-era Enterprise has but one transporter room, since it's often called "the" transporter room, or just "Transporter Room" with no additional distinction.

As far as I can tell, it's not just "often" but always referred to as if it were unique. I searched all scripts looking for a hint of more than one, but didn't find it. So canonically speaking, there seems to be only one.

But that will never do. Common sense, and the variety of implied corridor configuations in various episodes, will want us to want more than that. Based on the on-screen dialog, maybe the "fudge factor" is that that perhaps there is a "main" or "primary" transporter room and then some additional ones, but they omit saying "main" for convenience and it's understood that the lack of a disambiguator means the primary one — just as I assume there's more than one sickbay, but when somebody says "sickbay" or "the sickbay" it means the primary one.

However, I would expect that walk-and-talk scenes in various episodes will probably poke holes in this stretch; probably we've seen "the" transporter room implied to be in the primary hull at some times, and the second hull at other times. (Not to mention that building a separable starship without beaming capability in both hulls would be just plain idiotic.)

So, maybe when you say "the" transporter room, it means the primary transporter room in whichever hull makes contextual sense. If you mean any other one, then you have to say "transporter room 3" for clarity. But of course this requires one TR in each hull to be somehow more "special" than the others, just as I assume that the primary sickbay is the one that has McCoy's office and the lab directly adjacent to it.

[Albertese]

I've assumed that under normal conditions, only one transporter unit is active at any time. The others are shut down for maintenance and de-gaussing, et cetera. They can probably be fired up if emergency conditions warrant it, but generally just one. The crew who would need to know what transporter was active at the time would already know.

--Alex

[Timo]

The same probably applies to the shuttlecraft, explaining why our TOS heroes use similar grammar when discussing those: the option in, say, "Immunity Syndrome" is to refit "the shuttlecraft", singular, for a special mission, even though the ship has at least two craft available. Any one of the generic shuttles may be chosen, but the assumption is that there is always just one immediately available so there is no ambiguity as to which one the heroes should refit, or use, or meet next to, or whatever.

Timo Saloniemi

[Robert Comsol]

Albertese wrote:

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I've assumed that under normal conditions, only one transporter unit is active at any time. The others are shut down for maintenance and de-gaussing, et cetera. They can probably be fired up if emergency conditions warrant it, but generally just one. The crew who would need to know what transporter was active at the time would already know.

I think so, too, and as a crew member I guess I'd actually appreciate the transporter crew to do heavy maintenance on a device that will scatter my atoms through space.

However, if you believe there's only one engine room ("engineering section") the label "transporter section" could equally indicate just one, given the lack of a number (in contrast to the briefing room numbers).

But, indeed, the transporter room corridor differences (one with a red door turbo lift befind the A-frame, the other with just a blue door and no turbo lift sign) suggest there to be more than one.

According to The Making of Star Trek the producers envisioned 11 transporter rooms (of different sizes) and TAS mentioned at least a "transporter room number four".

I'd like to believe four transporter rooms to be the minimum, but that's just my personal opinion.

Bob

[Metryq]

Keep in mind all the "TV shorthand" going on. For example, we always see the "away team" entering the transporter room from the main corridor fully equipped for their mission. Once in a while we may see the transporter operator handing over, or receiving phasers and the like. Realistically, a transporter section would have several transporter rooms, along with extra elevators (cargo, etc.) and equipment rooms (armory, scientific field gear, attire for various climates, etc.). The section might even have its own communication station, rather than routing everything through the bridge comm officer, as seen in the series.

Then again, maybe not. Consider the cell phones of today, with voice recognition and all the computer controlled functions of the network compared to the "walkie-talkies" of the '60s. Likewise, it may not be necessary to have a huge staging area surrounding the transporting rooms. But it seems sensible to contemporary audiences.

[throwback]

Transporter room four was mentioned in "Mudd's Passion". (http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/TAS008.htm)

[Timo]

...And in a funny context, as this if any would be a time to say "the transporter room". M'Ress knows the main heroes are in a specific room waiting for the coordinates. Or if she doesn't, there's no sense in only sending the required coordinates to Transporter Room 4!

Timo Saloniemi