A Time to Kill- beaming through shields?

[Destructor]

I just started 'A Time to Kill' and there's a scene where the Tezwa suddenly open fire on the Enterprise and the Klingon fleet and capture Picard and Troi on the planet's surface. Riker essentially divebombs the Enterprise beneath the planet's shield (a shield that had not previously been established by the text, so it was pretty confusing to establish what was happening) in order to beam Picard and Troi away from the surface.

The entire time this is happening the Enterprise is under heavy fire. So... how did they beam Picard and Troi up through the shields? Isn't that a pretty solidly established no-no in the Trekiverse? And if shield technologies just improved between Insurrection and Nemesis, wouldn't it be worth mentioning in the text?

Also... this is fairly off topic, but you'd think that very shortly after the invention of the transporter the very next thing they'd invent is a transport inhibitor, and they would deploy it over all major population centers, in order to stop people using the transporter as the ultimate murder weapon. I hate it when they just beam people out of situations where they've been captured like preventing that wouldn't be one of the first things the hostile party would think to do.

 

[Christopher]

Voyager: "Caretaker" also depicted the use of transporters (to beam Chakotay's crew aboard before their ship blew up) while Voyager was shielded and under heavy fire. So it's not unprecedented, though it wasn't explained there.

As for transport inhibitors, that's one of the functions that shields serve. Any facility that wants to block transporters just needs shielding.

 

[Sci]

We also saw people beaming through shields in TNG's "Relics."

Personally, I don't think it really matters. It's hardly the most important part of that novel, after all.

When I have bothered to think about it, the answer seemed fairly obvious to me. Star Trek Generations established that if you know what frequency your enemies' shields are operating on, you can set your weapons to match them so that they'll go right through the shields. Presumably, that's also why you can fire your own phasers and torpedoes from behind your own shields -- they're set to pass through your shields because they've been programmed with your own frequency. The reason shields work is that you never know what their frequency is, so you can't get past the enemy's shields.

Presumably, the same principle applies to transporters. You can beam through your own shields; the problem is that you can't beam through someone else's. In this instance, the Enterprise flew beneath the Tezwan shields and just set its transporters to match frequencies with their own shields.

 

[Christopher]

We also saw people beaming through shields in TNG's "Relics."

Well, that one's easy to justify. It was a 24th-century transporter beaming through 23rd-century shields. It makes perfect sense to me that transporters would've improved in the interim and that older shields wouldn't be advanced enough to block them.

Presumably, the same principle applies to transporters. You can beam through your own shields; the problem is that you can't beam through someone else's. In this instance, the Enterprise flew beneath the Tezwan shields and just set its transporters to match frequencies with their own shields.

Except that would invalidate all those stories where the ship is unable to beam the heroes to safety because they're under attack and need to keep the shields up. Shields, like transporters, are a plot device. And transporters are often a particularly inconvenient plot device because they make it too easy to rescue the heroes from danger. So the plot device that ships can't beam through their own shields was introduced and has been used routinely throughout the canon -- except in those cases where it was ignored because the plot required beaming people up or down during combat.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Also the shields on the Jenolin were under great stress as they were holding back the great big freaking door.

 

[Smellincoffee]

They could technobabble the modulation of the transporter beam to sync with the modulation of the shields, and...hey, presto.

I think the Klingons tried that in one of Dafydd ab Hugh's novels, Vengeance. Should check up on that.

 

[JD]

I just started 'A Time to Kill' and there's a scene where the Tezwa suddenly open fire on the Enterprise and the Klingon fleet and capture Picard and Troi on the planet's surface. Riker essentially divebombs the Enterprise beneath the planet's shield (a shield that had not previously been established by the text, so it was pretty confusing to establish what was happening) in order to beam Picard and Troi away from the surface.

The entire time this is happening the Enterprise is under heavy fire. So... how did they beam Picard and Troi up through the shields? Isn't that a pretty solidly established no-no in the Trekiverse? And if shield technologies just improved between Insurrection and Nemesis, wouldn't it be worth mentioning in the text?

Also... this is fairly off topic, but you'd think that very shortly after the invention of the transporter the very next thing they'd invent is a transport inhibitor, and they would deploy it over all major population centers, in order to stop people using the transporter as the ultimate murder weapon. I hate it when they just beam people out of situations where they've been captured like preventing that wouldn't be one of the first things the hostile party would think to do.

I actually just read this part before I quit reading ATTK (it was my second read through) and I could have sworn that they dropped their shield's for just enough time to beam up the hostages. I could be mistaken though.

 

[David Mack]

I just started 'A Time to Kill' and there's a scene where the Tezwa suddenly open fire on the Enterprise and the Klingon fleet and capture Picard and Troi on the planet's surface. Riker essentially divebombs the Enterprise beneath the planet's shield (a shield that had not previously been established by the text, so it was pretty confusing to establish what was happening) in order to beam Picard and Troi away from the surface.

What, you mean the one established at the top of page 44, when Vale says, "Sir, the Tezwans just activated an energy shield over their capital." ...?

The entire time this is happening the Enterprise is under heavy fire. So... how did they beam Picard and Troi up through the shields? Isn't that a pretty solidly established no-no in the Trekiverse? And if shield technologies just improved between Insurrection and Nemesis, wouldn't it be worth mentioning in the text?

Several paragraphs later on page 44, Riker calls for a damage report, and Vale clearly states: "Shields are down!"

So, no, the shields were not up. The ship's lack of shields was why Enterprise made a wild run to slip physically beneath the Tezwan capital's energy shield, on the assumption the Tezwan weapon systems weren't calibrated to target vessels buzzing the city.

Also... this is fairly off topic, but you'd think that very shortly after the invention of the transporter the very next thing they'd invent is a transport inhibitor, and they would deploy it over all major population centers, in order to stop people using the transporter as the ultimate murder weapon. I hate it when they just beam people out of situations where they've been captured like preventing that wouldn't be one of the first things the hostile party would think to do.

The Tezwans were established as being technologically behind the Federation and the Klingons. Also, the function you cite would be assumed as part of the energy shield's purpose—and the Enterprise was beneath the shield, negating its ability to block the transporter beam.

Any more questions?

 

[captcalhoun]

and The Wounded established you can beam through shields when they re-cycle their settings or... some technobabbly crap like that...

 

[Cybersnark]

And I recall one novel (I think it might be one of the early Shatnerverse ones) where they figured out a way to beam through shields that required two transporters, some disposable debris, and Data's split-millisecond timing (by beaming something else into the shield, then threading another transporter beam through the "hole" as the shield obliterated whatever was beamed into it).

(The SCE fan in me always thought that was awesome.)

 

[Destructor]

Any more questions?

No, that about covers everything!

 

[David Mack]

^ I win!

 

[DonIago]

Oh, while you're here David, just wanted to say I just finished Destiny. Great read!

Question...we know the fates of Axion and Mantilis obviously. Is the 3rd city supposed to serve a greater purpose beyond being the trigger for what occurs in a crucial moment? In other words, is there some other plan for them, or does the trilogy cover everything we're intended to learn about that one?

 

[David Mack]

^ The shrouded galaxy from the dawn of time is meant to remain a mystery.

 

[Tiberius]

I always figured that the more advanced starships could drop their aft shields whil;e still keeping their forward shields up. I mean, it makes sense...

 

[captcalhoun]

or drop the bottom shields and keep the top ones up.

(i'd say dorsal and ventral but i always get those twoo muddled up)

 

[DonIago]

Heck, more advanced starships probably have highly customizable shield geometry. We know at minimum that they can extend their shields around other vessels.

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, but no matter how advanced the technology should theoretically be, as long as the writers need the ship to be unable to easily beam a landing party out of danger, the inability to beam through raised shields will continue to exist. For the same reason that Starfleet persistently fails to redesign its shuttles to be less crash-prone and its holodecks to be less malfunction-prone.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

As I recall, both the TNG "published" technical manual, and the TNG writers' technical manual (as distributed by Lincoln Enterprises) said something about the Galaxy class shield and transporter emitters being arranged in such a way that a transporter beam can be routed through any arbitrary emitter, and the shields around that emitter can be selectively dropped.

And "transporter inhibitors" have come up in at least one novel (Enterprise: The First Adventure, by Vonda McIntyre, if I remember right, [I think it was a scene in which a stage conjurer has Scotty verify the functioning of one before doing a trunk escape]), and may have come up in other novels, as well as possibly in canon.

 

[Stevil2001]

There are enough natural phenomena that jam transporters that I am sure artificial ones can be generated.

In Memory Prime, there are super-powerful transporter pads that suck transporter beams toward themselves, enabling intruders to be quickly contained and incarcerated.