Transporters too Good

Alternate reality. Not everything is going to be as the regular timeline.

 

Nobody ever does this, when they have the technology. It doesn't make sense. AbramsTrek is in this boat now.

 

Well, there was no episode that would actually have presented evidence of a Dominion long range transporter existing - but somehow Worf had become convinced that such a device did exist, and could explain Kira's kidnapping, in "Covenant". I wonder what the Dominion did with such a transporter to make Worf so convinced?

The escape of the Vorta in "Jem'Hadar" could be explained without long range transporters: simple standard transporter, coupled with a cloaked ship, would be plenty enough. And Kira's kidnapping was never thoroughly analyzed, only speculated upon; a standard transporter could have snatched her off the station to a waiting ship, say.

Exactly. That was explicitly the thing that had stopped the UFP from using the "High Ground" space-folding trick (it worked fine, until you died). The "Bloodlines" subspace transporter was said to be unstable and an energy hog. And the sub-quantum teleportation in "Daedalus" was apparently too dangerous to be even tried out. Scotty's invention could be similar to one of the three, or then something else altogether.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I suppose they could claim long term use could lead to damage to humanoids and there is a 10% risk of accident (Scotty being stuck in tube).

 

They honestly need to make the technology of the future seem risky and finicky again or they're going to shoot themselves in the foot over and over. Problematic technology is used as the device in the story for why they don't just "beam up" out of danger or other "easy-fixes" to the various troubles they face.

 

Forgetting transwarp for a moment, transporters just don't malfunction like they did in TOS. On the other hand. Enterprise (Archer and company) beat this to death,; Abrams has better things to focus on.

 

How does one confiscate an equation? I mean, Scotty was able to make it work on the JJPrise's transporters in the last movie by beaming Kirk and Spock onboard the Narada from Titan, so why couldn't he just use it again?

 

Why do they need starships when they have transporters that can beam them across sectors?

 

General logistics, I guess. In terms of personal armaments, Khan was rather well equipped even in his Qo'noS exile, but he didn't have a means of transportation or a sensor array with him.

What you would do with a super-transporter would thus be beaming starships across sectors. That is, vessels with warp engines replaced by super-transporters, but the other elements such as big guns, laboratories, holodecks and cargo holds still remaining.

This also relates to the Scotty-still-has-the-skills issue. What would our heroes do with a super-transporter? We've seen they have big trouble locking on to a target even with their regular ones (cf. the conclusion of the movie), so they couldn't use the transwarp transporter to imprison John Harrison. They could use it to go after him in force, but how much force could they pack on their belts and packpacks alone? Sending a starship would seem to be their only option of either delivering decisive firepower (as Marcus wanted) or snatching back Harrison.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Risk. Who knows how damn finicky or dangerous the thing is normally. We never saw it used in a normal situation: Kirk and Scotty was a last ditch desperation move; Khan was a nutjob super genius.

 

...Of course, it could also be that Khan never used a super-transporter to get to Klingon space. Such a thing was established by Marcus, but he was a scheming bastard. For all we know, Khan just beamed to an orbiting starship that Marcus had promised to him as an escape vehicle, only it delivered Khan to Qo'noS instead.

Khan seems well aware that Marcus has betrayed him from the get-go. Sure, he'd probably believe that of everybody automatically, but if Marcus marooned him on Klingon real estate, he'd have a pretty good excuse for knowing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That, and we've also seen them work in only one direction. It may be a "Hotel California" situation: you can beam there any time you like, but you can never leave.

Of course in reality, just like warp drive and everything else, transporters work at the needs of the story.

However, having been reminded that trans-warp beaming was mentioned in TNG means there's some continuity here in the Treks. Spock Prime "contaminated" this timeline with it in ST09 by giving Scotty's equation to him years, if not decades before he really discovered it himself. It wasn't just invented by Orci and Kurtzman as a plot device to get Kirk and Scotty onto the Enterprise and Khan to Kronos.

 

You say "they" like everyone can do it. Scotty's formula was confiscated by Section 31, and I doubt they're gonna post it online for all to see.

No, it was Scotty who found the transwarp beaming device in the wreckage of Khan's jumpship and retrieved the co-ordinates.

 

this new timeline is screwed up beyond any repair by massive influx of future technology from 26-31st centuries, which started in the Enterprise (22nd C) times due to temporal cold war.

Transwarp transporter, obviously slipstream/transwarp engines on starships (or Xindi vortices), Borg ship components, where does it end?

Braxton and his team should go in and fix this asap. Until they do, this is the rationale I need and use to make sense of it lol. It all started with Enterprise launching prematurely, over a 100 years ago...

 

Err. Archer Enterprise isn't part of the "new" timeline.

 

And that's exactly what I mean. Khan's attack on Starfleet brass may have been "genuine", that is, catching even Marcus by surprise - but OTOH it fits perfectly with the basic plans of Marcus and thus may have been carefully engineered, Godfather III style, to look as if Khan tried to kill Marcus, too. If so, Khan's escape must have been jointly planned as well, and could easily involve false clues, planted by Marcus, that would send our heroes on a mission that would start a war.

Sure is. We saw her on the tabletop of Admiral Marcus!

Timo Saloniemi

 

As has been pointed out before, the shuttle Scotty used to beam them in the '09 movie contained the code was left behind.

Scotty committed it to memory and used it once to beam them to the Narada, possibly not having the Enterprise computers record the procedure.

In Into Darkness we find out from Scotty that the transwarp beaming technology was confiscated entirely by Section 31, the shuttle, the Enterprise logs etc and made Khans prototype from it in the Kelvin building.

The building's systems were hacked, damaging all data, then blown to pieces for good measure, Khan burned out the only working unit when he beamed away.

The only surviving remnant of the technology is Scotty's memory, and after what happened I doubt he'll ever use it again.

 

Enterprise is the only part of the new timeline that is canon to both of the timelines.

 

Umm, no, we don't.

We learn it was confiscated by Section 31. Nothing about "entirely" there. And as far as we can tell, it may have been confiscated by two dozen other organizations as well.

After just two movies, we don't know how paranoid or ruthless this version of Starfleet is with information, and whether S31 is anything exceptional to begin with. Until we're told more, we have no good reason to think transwarp beaming secrets would be treated at any specific level of secrecy; we can just speculate they are at the upper tiers of military secrets, due to them being future technology. Them being held inside one cranium only isn't a particularly likely scenario.

Timo Saloniemi