What Scene Drives You Crazy

Moving and remaining conscious in the transporter beam was not a mistake in TOS. On the contrary, in "That Which Survives," it was an actual plot point: while in the process of beaming, the landing party helplessly witnessed the death of the transporter operator in the episode's teaser, which they discussed among themselves after they'd beamed down.

I've always thought that it makes sense. A reasonable approach to ensure that people stay alive during transport is never to interrupt the process of life in the first place.

 

The transporter, the Stargate, various other means of transportation from point to point without walking/running/flying in between, even apparition in the Harry Potterverse, all have one thing in common, or should: they open up a hole in the fabric of space/time and squeeze the traveler through it. This has the benefit of not killing the traveler necessitating revivification at the target site.

 

And in The Enemy Within, the second Kirk who materialized half a minute after the first, was able to turn half-way around in the beaming process.

 

End of Enemy Within with Spock making light of sexual assault.

 

That utterly ruined the episode for me. Up to that point it had been tolerably entertaining.

That's because Chekov hadn't joined the crew yet.

Now I've got a mental image of him also carrying a matching umbrella.


The scene that drives me crazy is the shot of Trelane's front hall, and there's a Salt Vampire on display in one of the niches. WTF?!

 

Who says he was only looking at Earth? That was the in-show logic, as I recall.

 

Trelane didn't mention any other planets but Earth.

 

Why would he need to? Why bother? He has a salt vampire, he has the bird creature from "The Menagerie", he has a couple of others. For lack of a better term, they're in-jokes, references that only BTS personnel and the most avid fans get.

 

Kirk would be easy to see as someone who would be patriotic and nationalistic to the land of his birth.

The political set-up in the Trek future is ill-defined, but I have no problem with the United States being a sovereign state in the 23rd century, and not just a administrative district of United Earth or the Federation.

Picard's words in "The Defector" indicates that the United States still exists as a country in the 24th century.

 

Trelane could have put the salt vampire and other creature in his castle after scanning the minds of the Enterprise crew and mining their adventures for "trinkets" to try to impress them.

 

One thing that annoys me... happens a lot... is with fight scenes. As mentioned earlier about the Mark of Gideon -- Spock tossing a guy causes him to pass out? Kirk karate chopping a guy on the shoulder causes him to pass out? Kirk grabbing a guy around his neck from behind, giving one hard quick squeeze and the guy is out like a light? C'mon! Not believable. I don't care what species... they're all humanoids of formidable strength, not lightweights (fists are thrown back and forth mind you, in many scenes). Bah, looks ridiculous.

Also... a ship approaching at warp speed. On view screen. Ummm... isn't warp faster than light? Then how come such a ship is VISIBLE on approach, or even when doing a fly-by? WARP SPEED! Bugs me. Star Trek really screws up the distance and speed factors, all the way up through Voyager and Enterprise. It would've been better if they learned some method of more accurately depicting it.

Language. I know... we have the "universal translator." But... c'mon. It doesn't translate YOUR LIPS. How can humans pass themselves off as disguised Romulans using universal translators? Even if the translators produced an excellent mimicry of dialect, it's the lips man... the LIPS! It's going to look like the Japanese speaking with English dubbing on old Gozilla movies. Total giveaway.

 

But realistically speaking... I mean, you're being transported, molecular disassembly. How can ANYTHING function at that point when you're in flux? Presuming there was any kind of feasibility to the transporter (I think not, never will be, total farcical imagination), I'd expect it to go like this:

1) Beam engages, which NUMBS the person and the neurological effect causes them to clamp up fully. Eyes closed. Mouth shut. Muscles locked. Totally immobilized.
2) Beam intensifies. Person is now totally suspended on the molecular level. No motion whatsoever.
3) Beam glow becomes so bright, you can't really see the person anymore. Blinding bright light. Nobody can look directly at it without burning their retinas.
4) Dissolve action -- the beam dissipates, taking the person with it.
5) Target location, we see reversal of steps 4) (dissolve-->reform), 3), 2), 1)...
6) Person opens their eyes. Magic! They've been transported. No memory of it. It's like the light went out and then back on in an instant, and they're somewhere else. No time passed, because... well... they didn't exist during transit!

To me, that's how Star Trek should do the transporter beaming. It makes much more sense to me, presuming that the demolecularization and reforming could really work. But you can't have anybody "slightly alive" in the process. Everything needs to be locked down for accurate scanning and disassembly. Makes no sense to me any other way.

 

Yes, I am aware of this. I'm annoyed because there is no sensible in-universe reason for Trelane to have a Salt Vampire in his front hallway.

 

That's a perfect description for the classic "kill and copy" type of transporter, where every molecule of your body is charted, disassembled and converted to energy.

The fact this is NOT the process as depicted in Star Trek tells us that their transporters operate in a different manner altogether

 

Well, yes... it's pure sci-fi, without any solid basis in reality. The point being, if you tried to make this work within the confines of real technology, their depiction wouldn't work. So we could fan-wank it into something like "well, they open up some kind of portal, you see, a momentary schism in the space-time continuum and they are whisked away through this schism -- molecules aren't really disassembled, so they're fully conscious of the whole process." But, we hear them talk of molecules being "ripped apart", so... that's the key word here, "molecules." If they're being disassembled, it is a form of momentary death. Even worse than when someone's heart is purposefully stopped for a heart transplant.

 

First thing for me that comes to mind is in "The Savage Curtain": the fight sequences are so interminably slow, boring and nothing happens but some minimal-contact wrestling!

 

But doesn't match what we're seeing. With the majority of the dialog (not all) describing the transporter process, a physical person is turn into a different state, and this is what is moved to a destination. They are still some form of matter though, because there is repeated use of the term "matter stream."

Not energy stream.

Whatever the transporter does to them, they remain living conscious people the entire time. The is no "kill and replace."

Are they they in some form of altered energy state while being moved? Okay.

 

The thing about transporter-phobics and their use of language to describe what (in their minds) is a horrific process is that their language is going to be somewhat imprecise. Language in general often takes shortcuts in describing complex procedures. Sometimes it doesn't of course, but what remains consistent is the depiction of the transportation process itself, which has little to do with a person being slowly disintegrated at the molecular level and an exact duplicate created elsewhere

 

Any scene in "And the Children Shall Lead" featuring either the Gorgan, the kids, or both.

Kor

 

In any case, the ubiquity of Universal Translators in Trek TOS is a colossal retcon. Only one episode, "Metamorphosis," actually showed us a UT -- and it was a small handheld prop. I believe a couple of other TOS episodes mentioned computer "translation circuits" or some such.

There's no way around it -- everyone in the TOS universe speaks English!