You'd think they would have that anyway. When were bulletproof vests invented?
A transporter-less Trekverse
- Thread starter Blip
- Start date
And yet they still found a way to transport living matter.
And then a couple of decades later, like we saw in Trek, they found a way how to do that. And finding out how to do things that someone earlier thought was impossible is very much a staple in Trek. Heck, transporting people may have been Erickson's primary motivation for inventing transporters in the first place and it just took awhile to get there.
Which doesn't mean much, because it's still organic matter being transported and it still won't stop someone--as seen in Trek--from figuring out how to transport living organisms.
Get rid of the cargo transporters and the replicators, because you're only delaying the inevitable.
It really might be best, though, if this was Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica or any other sci-fi universe where teleportation doesn't exist.
Since you're either deliberately ignoring or are unable to accept (understand?) the points you've been presented with, why then are you even commenting?
Yeah, I'd imagine they'd have initially had some kind of ablative (polarised?) body armor, and then substantially later things like personal shielding would be developed...
I think the only real difference would be they may have starship designs with slightly larger shuttlebays, and maybe a more diverse range of shuttlecraft (perhaps larger ones for colony transports, mass troop movements etc).
1885 in Hill Valley, California, when a young man named Clint Eastwood tied the door to a woodstove to his chest hidden under a poncho to avoid being shot in a street duel.
--Alex
I was about to ask you the same thing.
But it is something that's been demonstrated as possible in TREK though. And since we're still talking Trek (with all it's technology, scientists, and engineers), it's perfectly logical that it's something that will eventually be done, which is all I'm saying...
Then just get rid of transporters altogether, which is what I said from the start. You can't have a transporter-less Trekverse but then still have transporters and the related technology. Doesn't that totally defeat the purpose of this thread from the start?
Last edited:
1) My OP, my thread. You don't like the premise, fine: You don't have to join in. So far all you've done is be obstructional and refuse to discuss the point of the thread; instead trying to derail it with how you want Transporters to work regardless.
2) Myself and others have described -in detail- how and why this situation would be entirely feasible, but you seem unwilling or unable to comprehend the points raised - particularly as you've provided no logical justification for your stance beyond "well someone very smart is bound to make it happen whether you like it or not, nyah nyah nyah!"
Go read up on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and what it means for transmats and the magical hand-wavium Heisenberg Compensator, before telling me ad-nauseum your opinion on what the constraints of the scenario should be -- you don't get to decide that unless you start up your own thread.
3) From the very beginning I've been talking solely about a Trek universe where transporting live beings is NOT POSSIBLE (again, we're not talking about pre-deceased organic matter, or inert hardware where nobody gives a damn if it gets 'killed' by de-atomising and reassembly with its quantum signature scrambled), and how the design of ships in particular, but also other aspects of technology, would have developed differently. What about this escapes you?
It's really very, very simple: If you don't want to participate with useful input, then don't comment!
And the subject of this discussion is "What if it WASN'T possible?"
To which you inexplicably keep replying "Hurr durr... but it IS possible!!"
I pointed out earlier that not being able to transport living matter would be very similar to not being able to send living organisms via FedEx. It's not impossible, exactly, just utterly infeasible for any practical vision of what FedEx actually is.
The day that mail order brides actually arrive in the mail packed in a giant cardboard box, this point might finally make sense.
That's real funny given that it's not true. All I did was present another way to do it. Sorry if you only want people to agree with every single aspect of your idea to post in this thread. And nothing's been derailed since we're still talking about a Trek with "no transporters." If anything, I'm suggesting how to make a universe totally without them. So what are you arguing about really?
Hurr durr...but it IS possible. Every series and movie proves that. We've seen countless times how our heroes come up with ways to do things that was earlier called scientifically or technologically impossible. It's a actually a time tested staple in Trek. Get rid of that aspect of clever engineers and scientists finding solutions to problems, and you have something that isn't Trek at all, but is more closer to Battlestar Galactica or Star Wars.In fact, if you had actually read what I wrote, you would have realized that it was only a suggestion that in a truly transporter-less Trek universe, it should to be, well, transporter-less. Keeping transporters and replicators around defeats the purpose of this thread because you still end up with ships with that technology.
You and Blip should really think about what you're arguing with me about. The topic was about a transporter-less Trekverse...and you're arguing with someone who proposed it should be really transporter-less?
Stop trying to use a simplified thread title as justification. The specifics were laid out in the OP; and the discussion is around resulting Starship design and technology. We've already been over, repeatedly, just how we can have one without the other and as I said previously if you don't like the scenario that's fine - but stop trying to force your POV onto it.
Deliberately ignoring the point, yet again? This ISN'T ABOUT the TV series, books, movies, whathaveyous that have come before. This is a Trekverse where transporters cannot physically be used to transport living beings.
Just because a scientist or engineer is immensely intelligent doesn't mean they suddenly get to do whatever the hell they want - you don't see Scotty clicking his fingers together and instantly warping himself off, sans-engines, to a distant part of the universe.
In the actual Trekverse those miraculous feats that you refer to have been accomplished because they ARE physically possible, the characters just hadn't found a way to achieve it yet (for the purposes of the story). This is not so in this scenario. Are you getting it yet??
This is not the Star Wars universe, nor Battlestar Galactica, nor any other franchise. It's an alternate Trekverse, our distant "future" wherein the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, by its very nature, cannot be overcome.
I read what you wrote. (Repeatedly
) And I still don't see why you keep demanding this be the case when you've been given the reasons for how and why it wouldn't. Having cargo transporters doesn't defeat the purpose at all, since you'd still need extensive shuttle facilities and docking arrangements to allow for non-transportable items and living beings to be transferred. Your "suggestion" was refuted, logically, and it has been time to move on since several posts ago.You and Blip should really think about what you're arguing with me about. The topic was about a transporter-less Trekverse...and you're arguing with someone who proposed it should be really transporter-less?
Again, stop using a necessarily brief and simplified thread title to justify your stance.
I'm arguing with you because despite you being given very consistent, logical reasons as to the how and why this would be the situation, you doggedly refuse to accept it and instead insist on derailing the thread with how you think it should be, despite not giving any justification whatsoever for why it would work beyond "that's how it happens in the real TV show".
As I said previously, if you want an alternate scenario, that's just fine! But go post it in your own thread, and have the common decency to not keep trying to undermine this one.
Okay then...Maybe every member of the away team is attached to a very, very, long rope.
"Reel me in, Scotty!"
Cool story, Bro.
Like said upthread, they'll just use shuttlecraft. In The Original Series, at least, every episode will be the same, but they'll use shuttlecrafts instead. Maybe just establishing shots rarely, until they reach the point of them having the landing party walk into the shuttlebay, then show the planet, then show the landing party walking around on the planet.
Some episodes, like The Enemy Within, would need to be drastically rewritten (plant monster makes a Kirk duplicate? Maybe one that steals Sulu's shuttlecraft and sabotages all the shuttles?), if not scrapped entirely, but for the most part, every other episode works without transporters. "Mirror, Mirror" could involve some type of dimensional portal, and "The Tholian Web" could involve them trying to extend shields or something.
But that's production POV and just where my mind went. In-Universe, a universe where transporters don't exist in any form, I imagine the shuttlebay would have to be larger. Laura's idea makes me think that they could perhaps adapt escape pods as personal shuttles, for the purpose of shore leaves and whatnot.
I don't think they really use the transporters often on DS9. I mean, they do, but not really with visiting ships, who almost always use the airlocks. So I don't see any real change to the show. Airlocks were also seen in Enterprise, and I'd like to think they'd be used in some fashion in an alternate TOS and definitely in the 24th century shows.
Voyager landing itself was always an annoyance of mine, and I'd probably still be annoyed if they used it even in a galaxy without transporters. I might be okay with it if it was only used due to them being low on shuttlecrafts.
Replicators without transporters must operate on a different principle. Perhaps they are even more like our 3D printers, taking raw material and quickly reconstituting itself to a close approximation, that would rise into the replicator station.
Sonak and his friend might die when the shuttlebay forcefield blinks out for a second.
Some episodes, like The Enemy Within, would need to be drastically rewritten (plant monster makes a Kirk duplicate? Maybe one that steals Sulu's shuttlecraft and sabotages all the shuttles?), if not scrapped entirely, but for the most part, every other episode works without transporters. "Mirror, Mirror" could involve some type of dimensional portal, and "The Tholian Web" could involve them trying to extend shields or something.
But that's production POV and just where my mind went. In-Universe, a universe where transporters don't exist in any form, I imagine the shuttlebay would have to be larger. Laura's idea makes me think that they could perhaps adapt escape pods as personal shuttles, for the purpose of shore leaves and whatnot.
I don't think they really use the transporters often on DS9. I mean, they do, but not really with visiting ships, who almost always use the airlocks. So I don't see any real change to the show. Airlocks were also seen in Enterprise, and I'd like to think they'd be used in some fashion in an alternate TOS and definitely in the 24th century shows.
Voyager landing itself was always an annoyance of mine, and I'd probably still be annoyed if they used it even in a galaxy without transporters. I might be okay with it if it was only used due to them being low on shuttlecrafts.
Replicators without transporters must operate on a different principle. Perhaps they are even more like our 3D printers, taking raw material and quickly reconstituting itself to a close approximation, that would rise into the replicator station.
Sonak and his friend might die when the shuttlebay forcefield blinks out for a second.
For the Trek franchise to do without beaming live people entirely, I would foresee a broader application of "captain's yacht" and "saucer separation" scenarios for landing either small landing parties or limited crews on planets and other ships or celestial phenomena. There would be multiple avenues for personnel to leave the ship by using smaller vessels, or extending the ship by separating parts of it to allow expeditions to operate either partially or totally independent from the mothership.
Star Trek: Enterprise is really not this far from the transporter-less scenario. They did rely on docking and shuttlepods quite often.
Star Trek: Enterprise is really not this far from the transporter-less scenario. They did rely on docking and shuttlepods quite often.
Not THAT drastically. Have the shuttlecraft fly through some kind of spatial anomaly that somehow duplicates both Kirk AND the shuttle.
Well Mirror Mirror, like "Enemy Within" involves an ion storm, so you could actually just play up ion storms as a go-to "space weirdness generator" that causes unexpected things to happen.
Tholian Webb would be simple enough: the Defiant phasers out of existence just as the crew is climbing into the shuttlecraft and Kirk disappears inches from the doorway as the hangar deck vanishes all around them.
I don't think so. It's not like they ever actually beam more than a half dozen people down at any given time anyway. If they need more people they can just squeeze more of them into a shuttlecraft (off screen) and have then climb down one at a time. Transporters are never really shown (talked about but never SHOWN) to be used for mass-transportation of an entire crew, so that isn't really an issue IMO.
Not landing, exactly, but the idea of starships being able to defy gravity and hover wherever they like would be a welcome one for later series. I may be biased, though, because I've gotten used to this being the norm in other Sci-fi franchises (Star Wars, Mass Effect, Halo, etc) where the Hero Ship can often be seen hanging reassuringly overhead.
Well, we're only specifying that transporters can't be used for living matter, so the principle would be about the same (humans don't eat live food anyway, though Klingons will be disappointed...)
Or the shuttle just plain crashes on the hangar deck when the landing control system malfunctions.
Trek also decided that Warp 14 can't be done anymore, and Warp 10 mutates you into space iguanas. Thus giving us sketchy Warp 9.99999+ dialogue.
I see no issue with a cargo transporter that they still can't figure out how to make work for living creatures. Maybe it becomes something the 29th century Federation has, along with timeships.
Actually, all those are different examples of the same thing. It's not like saying it's impossible for warp ships to carry living objects.
Well, that's really kind of my point, that it's something that'll come along eventually.
