Plot hole city: Part II!

[F. King Daniel]

Either the transporter can cancel momentum or it can't.

It does, and did. And when Kirk and Sulu materialized several feet above the floor, the gravity aboard the Enterprise prevented them from just hanging weightless above the transporter pad, and instead caused them to fall those several remaining feet to the transporter deck. Something that would still occur even though their previous momentum had been fully cancelled.

This has been covered already, but to reiterate, they fall way too fast after re-materializing to have had their momentum "cancelled" by the transport. Go watch the scene again, and you'll see.

What you're saying is that it wasn't entirely cancelled out - merely reduced sufficiantly to prevent their demise, which is acknowledged in the script when Chekov calls out "compensating for gravitational pull". So not a plot hole, just "not the way TBBS user William Walace would have liked it"

 

[Saquist]

I thought the "compensating for gravitational pull" was for the fluctuation caused by the singularity. If he was cancelling out the momentum wouldn't he have said, "compensating for terminal velocity."?

 

[beamMe]

I thought the "compensating for gravitational pull" was for the fluctuation caused by the singularity. If he was cancelling out the momentum wouldn't he have said, "compensating for terminal velocity."?

Haven't we established by now that one of the implied necessary functions of the transporter is to always compensate for velocity?

 

[chardman]

Either the transporter can cancel momentum or it can't.

It does, and did. And when Kirk and Sulu materialized several feet above the floor, the gravity aboard the Enterprise prevented them from just hanging weightless above the transporter pad, and instead caused them to fall those several remaining feet to the transporter deck. Something that would still occur even though their previous momentum had been fully cancelled.

This has been covered already, but to reiterate, they fall way too fast after re-materializing to have had their momentum "cancelled" by the transport. Go watch the scene again, and you'll see.

I have watched it again, and no, they don't fall too fast. They fall as fast as people always do in movies. Virtually every fall an actor makes on screen is sped up to make it look far more violent than it actually was, because usually, the actor hasn't fallen at all, but has merely flopped like a fish and reacted as if he's fallen. Or was a stunt performer, and not the actor at all, and the footage has been sped up to not give you enough time to spot the difference. Likewise, they almost always speed up punches, and occasionally remove frames at the supposed moment of impact, to create a visual "jump" that creates a greater sense of violent impact, even though no actual impact occurred.

It's called "movie magic".

In this case however, while they may have used some cinematic trickery to make the impact seem greater than it was. I don't believe that it was sped up at all. If anything, it was slowed down.

See, they only fell about three feet after materializing in the the transporter room, so the full length of their fall, sans momentum, should only have been about a 10th of a second of so, or about 3 frames of film. Those of you claiming they're moving faster than that, had best be able to prove that the sequence in question is less than 3 frames long, and that we all saw the scene subliminally.

 

[Gojira]

I thought the "compensating for gravitational pull" was for the fluctuation caused by the singularity. If he was cancelling out the momentum wouldn't he have said, "compensating for terminal velocity."?

Either term would be fine for suspension of disbelief. I could conceive that either act would reduce or eliminate the momentum once the transporter beam got a hold of the objects that were falling.

A reason an object is falling is due to the gravitational pull on the objects. So compensating for gravitational pull could easily be understood as slowing the momentum of the falling objects .

Also, compensating for terminal velocity can also be understood as slowing the momentum of the falling objects.

Either would work!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

See, they only fell about three feet after materializing in the the transporter room, so the full length of their fall, sans momentum, should only have been about a 10th of a second of so, or about 3 frames of film.

No, this is incorrect. The time it takes to fall a distance of 3 feet starting from rest is .4318402280 seconds. See my post upthread for a high school physics refresher on why. At 24 frames per second, the fall should last more like 10 frames, unless they aren't initially at rest.

However, this is not a plot hole, and I've discussed extensively why there are good reasons one should accept it. Just calling it "movie magic" is another more than sufficient explanation.

 

[chardman]

Just calling it "Hollywood magic" is another more than sufficient explanation.

Or "movie magic" as I called it.

And, yeah, I figured the actual acceleration from three feet was longer than a 10th of a second, but was just too lazy to figure it out properly, and instead just figured it from the "30 ft per second" as though that speed were constant for the first second. Still, the real point is that if they were falling anywhere near terminal velocity, as some keep insisting was the case, they'd be little more than a blur on a single frame, and the only way the audience would perceive them is at all, is on a subliminal level. That, of course, isn't what we got at all. Instead, they clearly show up in several frames, thereby making idiots of those suggesting they still had their full momentum, and weren't just falling the last few feet after having their previous momentum negated by the transporter under Chekov's manipulation.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yes.

 

[Gojira]

Isn't the transporter itself movie magic?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

No, it's real.

 

[JarodRussell]

The ship is usually circling in orbit with thousands of kilometers and hour, and they can't beam moving objects. That was stupid. And then Chekov manages to beam Kirk and Sulu aboard while they fall, but he can't manage to beam Amanda, who fell AFTER she was already getting beamed.

The beaming process also had the speed of plot. It took maybe a second to beam Kirk and Sulu, or Kirk and Scotty, but like ten seconds to beam Spock and Amanda.

 

[William Wallace]

What you're saying is that it wasn't entirely cancelled out - merely reduced sufficiantly to prevent their demise, which is acknowledged in the script when Chekov calls out "compensating for gravitational pull". So not a plot hole, just "not the way TBBS user William Walace would have liked it"

What I'm saying is that I don't see why momentum could be "partially" cancelled out. As evidenced in previous Trek canon, transporters are capable of completely cancelling out momentum of their subjects. Either the momentum-cancellation was working or it wasn't. There's no logical reason to assume that it only worked part-way. "Compensating for gravitational pull" does not adequately explain the discrepancy, in my opinion.

I have watched it again, and no, they don't fall too fast. They fall as fast as people always do in movies. Virtually every fall an actor makes on screen is sped up to make it look far more violent than it actually was, because usually, the actor hasn't fallen at all, but has merely flopped like a fish and reacted as if he's fallen. Or was a stunt performer, and not the actor at all, and the footage has been sped up to not give you enough time to spot the difference. Likewise, they almost always speed up punches, and occasionally remove frames at the supposed moment of impact, to create a visual "jump" that creates a greater sense of violent impact, even though no actual impact occurred.

It's called "movie magic".

Why would they want to make the impact seem bigger than it really was? Wasn't the point of that scene to show that Kirk and Sulu survived the transport because they avoided the impact of the fall?

In this case however, while they may have used some cinematic trickery to make the impact seem greater than it was. I don't believe that it was sped up at all. If anything, it was slowed down.

See, they only fell about three feet after materializing in the the transporter room, so the full length of their fall, sans momentum, should only have been about a 10th of a second of so, or about 3 frames of film. Those of you claiming they're moving faster than that, had best be able to prove that the sequence in question is less than 3 frames long, and that we all saw the scene subliminally.

Your math is off. Without momentum, the fall would have taken longer than 1/10th of a second. It should have actually taken closer to half a second. If it took 1/10th, then they actually fell 4 or 5 times faster than they should have. See below for mathematical derivation of this.

Time taken to travel a given distance under a given acceleration rate:
t=sqrt(2g/d)

Where t is time, g is gravitational acceleration, and d is distance travelled downward.

We'll use 9.8 meters per second per second to match Earth's gravity (g), and 1 meter for distance (d). So we get:
t = sqrt (2/9.8)
= sqrt(.204)
= 0.45

So it would normally take 0.45 seconds for an at-rest object to fall 1 meter (even longer if you take air resistance into account). So if, by your admission, it only took 1/10th of a second, then they clearly already had downward momentum.

 

[Gojira]

The ship is usually circling in orbit with thousands of kilometers and hour, and they can't beam moving objects. That was stupid. And then Chekov manages to beam Kirk and Sulu aboard while they fall, but he can't manage to beam Amanda, who fell AFTER she was already getting beamed.

The beaming process also had the speed of plot. It took maybe a second to beam Kirk and Sulu, or Kirk and Scotty, but like ten seconds to beam Spock and Amanda.

That was one of the things I did happen to roll my eyes at a bit. Once Chekov manages to lock on to Kirk and Sulu it takes a moment to beam them but it takes considerably longer to beam up Spock et al. once they have been locked on.

It would have made more sense if Amanda had fallen prior to being locked on but from a dramatic sense it works to have her fall as the beaming begins.

 

[Gojira]

Why would they want to make the impact seem bigger than it really was? Wasn't the point of that scene to show that Kirk and Sulu survived the transport because they avoided the impact of the fall?

Were talking about a fictional transporter so their landing out of a transporter beam never "really was" to begin with. The entire scenes was to show how they both just missed the icy claws of death so the closer they came to death the more dramatic the scene.

 

[chardman]

Why would they want to make the impact seem bigger than it really was? Wasn't the point of that scene to show that Kirk and Sulu survived the transport because they avoided the impact of the fall?

They were trying to create the illusion that Kirk and Sulu fell a couple of feet post-materialization, rather than the few inches that the actors actually flopped or rolled into frame. See, the actor's didn't actually fall at all, and their feigned "impact" would have been far too gentle to be believed as the genuine impact of even such a short fall as was desired. Speeding the footage up made the impact look more like a genuine impact. Speeding footage up, and adding/removing frames to create visual "beats" are commonplace tricks that are essential to any stunt sequence that involves impacts or physical blows of any kind.

 

[Saquist]

I thought the "compensating for gravitational pull" was for the fluctuation caused by the singularity. If he was cancelling out the momentum wouldn't he have said, "compensating for terminal velocity."?

Haven't we established by now that one of the implied necessary functions of the transporter is to always compensate for velocity?

well yeah, before this film.
But as of this film apparently transporters can't do that automatically.

But it's like I said before...if there were a real blackhole at the center of vulcan...everyone would have been crushed to death instantly if not very quickly against the surface of Vulcan.

It seems the "sudden movement of Amanda by falling was enough to fool the Transporters and it couldn't compensate for the fall. That's why I don't understand why they lost her. Why not reacquire the lock?

I thought the "compensating for gravitational pull" was for the fluctuation caused by the singularity. If he was cancelling out the momentum wouldn't he have said, "compensating for terminal velocity."?

Either term would be fine for suspension of disbelief. I could conceive that either act would reduce or eliminate the momentum once the transporter beam got a hold of the objects that were falling.

A reason an object is falling is due to the gravitational pull on the objects. So compensating for gravitational pull could easily be understood as slowing the momentum of the falling objects .

Also, compensating for terminal velocity can also be understood as slowing the momentum of the falling objects.

Either would work!

I suppose so.

 

[chardman]

It seems the "sudden movement of Amanda by falling was enough to fool the Transporters and it couldn't compensate for the fall. That's why I don't understand why they lost her. Why not reacquire the lock?

Uhhhh...no. How could it reacquire the lock on Amanda while still remaining locked onto the people who weren't falling, but had already begun de-materializing? When have we ever seen a single transporter simultaneously beam up two or more people who weren't in fairly close proximity to one another? It seemed pretty obvious to me that while they most certainly could have reacquired and saved Amanda, they' would have had to sacrifice Spock, Sarek, and the rest of the council to do so.

 

[beamMe]

The ship is usually circling in orbit with thousands of kilometers and hour, and they can't beam moving objects. That was stupid. And then Chekov manages to beam Kirk and Sulu aboard while they fall, but he can't manage to beam Amanda, who fell AFTER she was already getting beamed.

The beaming process also had the speed of plot. It took maybe a second to beam Kirk and Sulu, or Kirk and Scotty, but like ten seconds to beam Spock and Amanda.

That was one of the things I did happen to roll my eyes at a bit. Once Chekov manages to lock on to Kirk and Sulu it takes a moment to beam them but it takes considerably longer to beam up Spock et al. once they have been locked on.

It would have made more sense if Amanda had fallen prior to being locked on but from a dramatic sense it works to have her fall as the beaming begins.

It seems the "sudden movement of Amanda by falling was enough to fool the Transporters and it couldn't compensate for the fall. That's why I don't understand why they lost her. Why not reacquire the lock?

That beaming process was different than the one before.
And there is a line of dialogue that explains the difference and why it probably takes longer; Chekov says something about a "volume transport/beam".

 

[F. King Daniel]

The transporters were on manual override in the Vulcan scenes. It says so across the console's screen in huge letters, which we're given close-ups of.

 

[DrBashir]

Interesting that they still had downward velocity which you would assume to be the gravity he was compensating but he managed to complely negate their motion due to the planets rotation. On Earth's equator you'd have a lateral velocity of about 465 m/sec. If it had the same amont of risidual velocty as their downward motion they should have slammed into the wall at the same speed they hit the floor.