A transporter-less Trekverse

[Crazy Eddie]

Suppose for a moment if you will, that within the Trek universe, transporters were never invented for use with living beings (maybe cargo, and replicators would be fine) due to that pesky old Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that no-one ever managed to devise some kind of compensator to work around.

Ignoring the real-world concerns of how it might change the franchise, or the various storylines that would be altered/impossible, etc, how does everyone imagine this would impact Starship (and I guess even Shuttlecraft!) design? Personally I suspect that many vessel classes might survive with little to no tampering - the Galaxy and Miranda classes seem like they have sufficient shuttlebay facilities already, but maybe the Constitution would end up needing a secondary bay up on the primary hull...

Thoughts anyone?

First, it's more than likely that they would simply use the shuttlecraft the same way we saw in "Enterprise", since that's really the only thing the transporter accomplishes anyway. The same thing basically happens in TFF, when the transporters aren't working so Kirk takes an assault team down in a shuttle. IOW, the transporter does exactly what a shuttlecraft does, it just does it faster and more conveniently but without giving you a nice mobile platform to keep your spare gear if you get stranded.

Secondly, there are situations where a shuttlecraft might not be ideal (inserting covert teams behind enemy lines or slipping in past enemy defenses) where transporters have a distinct advantage. In that case, it might actually be simpler to just have your away team sky dive from orbit (STXI on the drill) or drop them in some sort of insertion pods like ODSTs. Some sort of non-emergency version of the Kelvin Pod would seem to fit the bill.


As for the actual topic, I'm of the opinion that transporters are kind of over-used anyway. I'd prefer to build in more operational limitations to their use; it shouldn't be possible to beam through solid objects (e.g. rooftops, starship hulls, caves, etc), so if you need to beam an away team into an enemy ship you basically need to beam them onto the hull as close as possible to an airlock hatch. Same limitation for beaming up: line of sight or nothing. If you want to beam someone into a building or into a starship, then their transporter system needs to catch your beam and route them into their transporter room (otherwise, what the hell is the POINT of having a transporter room?)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I imagine the stock footage of the shuttlecraft launching would get tedious very quickly, though.

And the stock footage of the Enterprise orbiting a slightly different colored planet the same way every week... didn't?

Examples: Would DS9 need (somehow) more or larger docking ports, or have additional "pad" hangars?

No, DS9 preferred physical docking of starships over transporters anyway. They preferred this so strongly that the main transporter on the station is in OPS and is mainly used for emergencies. If you remove the OPS pad, what you basically have is an airlock where a shuttlecraft or a runabout could be docked, but other than that, almost nothing in DS9 would really change.

Would Starships have featured visible lifeboats integrated into the hull all along, or gone with the Saratoga type craft, or just resorted to shuttles for evacuation?

"visible" lifeboats is overrated. We saw in "Star Trek Beyond" that most of the escape pods on the Enterprise are concealed behind hull plating so you'd never know they were there until the ship started launching them. Transporters also don't make much sense as an evacuation system to begin with.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Because you didn't say no to cargo transporters and replicators. If you've got devices that can still transport bio-matter like foodstuffs and medicines, living organisms won't be that far behind. You got to get rid of cargo transporters and replicators too.

No, because bio matter and foodstuffs don't need to still be alive during transport. It could simply be a matter of the transport process being too disruptive and traumatic for a living being to still BE living when they materialized on the other side; you materialize in the pad 40 degrees colder and with most if not all of the electrical activity in your brain totally scrambled so you're suffering from simultaneous heart attack, seizure, hypothermia, hypoxia and decompression sickness all at the same time. That wouldn't be AUTOMATICALLY fatal if your doctor is really on top of his game, but it would be about the most horrible way to travel imaginable.

 

[uniderth]

I don't thin k much would need to be changed on the original Enterprise. It's got a hanger deck and shuttles.

But I wonder if "landing the ship each week" would have been that much more expensive. It wouldn't take that much more footage to accomplish such a task easily and cheaply. Shoot the landing sequence once and reuse it like they did on all the other exterior shots. Or show a shot from the bridge of the planet's surface rising up on the view screen then a crewman says, "We've landed sir."

Are we sure that "too expensive" rationalization is genuine? It seems like a cop out to me. Maybe they decided they wanted teleportation in the series and then later someone rationalized that depicting the ship landing would be too expensive. After all the other creative ways they used to depict a story on a tight budget you'd think they could have figured out how to make a two second landing sequence financially viable.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

No, because bio matter and foodstuffs don't need to still be alive during transport. It could simply be a matter of the transport process being too disruptive and traumatic for a living being to still BE living when they materialized on the other side; you materialize in the pad 40 degrees colder and with most if not all of the electrical activity in your brain totally scrambled so you're suffering from simultaneous heart attack, seizure, hypothermia, hypoxia and decompression sickness all at the same time. That wouldn't be AUTOMATICALLY fatal if your doctor is really on top of his game, but it would be about the most horrible way to travel imaginable.

Sorry, but that would completely destroy a lot of medications and foodstuffs, too.

 

[C.E. Evans]

No, because bio matter and foodstuffs don't need to still be alive during transport

The point is that it's still organic matter. It wouldn't take much for someone to start thinking of a way to transport living organisms. If we go by ye old TNG Technical Manual, that came about with the development of quantum resolution. If we go by onscreen material, then it took only a couple of decades after Emory Erickson initially invented the transporter for one to be developed that was capable of teleporting living organisms.

 

[Mytran]

And the stock footage of the Enterprise orbiting a slightly different colored planet the same way every week... didn't?

In fairness, they did vary the type and colour of the planets a fair bit.

Practically, it's far easier to swap out a blue screened planet than an entire flight deck miniature set.

I wonder if "landing the ship each week" would have been that much more expensive. It wouldn't take that much more footage to accomplish such a task easily and cheaply. Shoot the landing sequence once and reuse it like they did on all the other exterior shots. Or show a shot from the bridge of the planet's surface rising up on the view screen then a crewman says, "We've landed sir."

Bear in mind that the Flight Deck sequence wasn't even filmed until the first season was over half way gone, yet the hangar doors were included on the Enterprise from the beginning. They weren't even sure they'd last more than half a season in the beginning and certainly didn't have the budget for extra miniature filming until it was written specifically for an episode. I think any landing sequences would have been very sketchy for the first dozen episodes or so!

 

[Go-Captain]

With no transporters at all we would see a more diverse complement of shuttles on ships. There would be all the normal shuttles but also cargo shuttles and boarding shuttles. I think we would see enlarged shuttlebay facilities on every ship. We might also see more emphasis on landing, but that seems doubtful since cargo shuttles would be far easier. The captain's yacht would also make far more appearances.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

There are other ways you could handle it, too.

* Have a display map tracking the shuttle's progress or position (either the ship's or that of others expecting/tracking them) - animation of a blinking, moving dot on a map is cheaper than making a model.

*Show it from a long distance as it lands. Almost anything could stand in for a shuttle then without requiring too much detail.

*Animate a bright glowing light, again from a distance, as they break through the atmosphere. Cut to a scene of them coming through the trees into a clearing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Sorry, but that would completely destroy a lot of medications and foodstuffs, too.

Just yogurt and some vaccines, really. Any substance that can stand to be inert and/or sterile would be unaffected and probably better off for it anyway; we kind of already do this with pasteurization of liquids and decontamination of most food products. Anything too delicate to be transported would need to be sent across by shuttlecraft (which ALREADY isn't unheard of in Star Trek).

The point is that it's still organic matter. It wouldn't take much for someone to start thinking of a way to transport living organisms.

"Organic matter" and "living organisms" is a qualitative difference. You can, for a limited time, preserve organic matter in a meat freezer, but you can't preserve living creatures that way. There's a HUGE difference between keeping a piece of meat from decaying and keeping that piece of meat alive and functional.

If we go by ye old TNG Technical Manual, that came about with the development of quantum resolution. If we go by onscreen material, then it took only a couple of decades after Emory Erickson initially invented the transporter for one to be developed that was capable of teleporting living organisms.

And in this scenario, they discovered that living organisms cannot be transported if you want them to still be LIVING organisms when they arrive. We're assuming that transporters can still beam things from one place to another in the familiar way, just that the thing being transported won't still be alive when it materializes and thus makes transporters non-viable as a means of moving people.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

There are other ways you could handle it, too.

* Have a display map tracking the shuttle's progress or position (either the ship's or that of others expecting/tracking them) - animation of a blinking, moving dot on a map is cheaper than making a model.

*Show it from a long distance as it lands. Almost anything could stand in for a shuttle then without requiring too much detail.

*Animate a bright glowing light, again from a distance, as they break through the atmosphere. Cut to a scene of them coming through the trees into a clearing.

The special effects for the transporter scenes couldn't have been that much cheaper than this.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The main reasons for transporters in Trek?

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[Blip]

Because you didn't say no to cargo transporters and replicators. If you've got devices that can still transport bio-matter like foodstuffs and medicines, living organisms won't be that far behind. You got to get rid of cargo transporters and replicators too.

Cargo and foodstuffs being non-living, non bio-electrically active items; unlike living creatures that would essentially need to be "killed" and reassembled -- and most importantly, subject to the whole Heisenberg Uncertainty schtick. I'm going with the assumption that these inert items could be reassembled from much simpler pattern data and that their exact quantum state would be of negligible impact (though I'll readily admit I could be wrong on that score).

I don't want this to become a debate about the Transporter and the ethics of how it functions, but let me just put it this way:

Would you want to be transported (read: ripped into a trillion particles, converted into energy, then reassembled but with all of your particles in a completely different quantum state than they had been previously) without the magical Heisenberg compensator? And when you really think about it, would you want to even then??

You might suffer a terrible, agonising death once the Transporter has disassembled you, but because it is rebuilding you from the scan it took immediately prior, your clone at the other end wouldn't have a clue he was any different or that there was ever any pain endured once reassembled!


So, no (unless someone proves me wrong on inert items!) I don't got to get rid of cargo transporters or replicators.

 

[Blip]

We did... It was called Enterprise..

I thought they kept their shuttlepods in an enclosed drop bay, didn't they??

 

[Blip]

Just yogurt and some vaccines, really. Any substance that can stand to be inert and/or sterile would be unaffected and probably better off for it anyway; we kind of already do this with pasteurization of liquids and decontamination of most food products. Anything too delicate to be transported would need to be sent across by shuttlecraft (which ALREADY isn't unheard of in Star Trek).


"Organic matter" and "living organisms" is a qualitative difference. You can, for a limited time, preserve organic matter in a meat freezer, but you can't preserve living creatures that way. There's a HUGE difference between keeping a piece of meat from decaying and keeping that piece of meat alive and functional.


And in this scenario, they discovered that living organisms cannot be transported if you want them to still be LIVING organisms when they arrive. We're assuming that transporters can still beam things from one place to another in the familiar way, just that the thing being transported won't still be alive when it materializes and thus makes transporters non-viable as a means of moving people.

Darn, didn't realise this had reached page 2! Yes, Crazy Eddie has just about covered my viewpoint on inert biomatter versus living creatures (thankyou good sir).

Hence my question as to how we think starship/station/shuttle design would by necessity, differ.

 

[C.E. Evans]

"Organic matter" and "living organisms" is a qualitative difference. You can, for a limited time, preserve organic matter in a meat freezer, but you can't preserve living creatures that way. There's a HUGE difference between keeping a piece of meat from decaying and keeping that piece of meat alive and functional.

And yet they still found a way to transport living matter.

And in this scenario, they discovered that living organisms cannot be transported if you want them to still be LIVING organisms when they arrive. We're assuming that transporters can still beam things from one place to another in the familiar way, just that the thing being transported won't still be alive when it materializes and thus makes transporters non-viable as a means of moving people.

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.

Cargo and foodstuffs being non-living, non bio-electrically active items

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.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And yet they still found a way to transport living matter.

In the show, yes. In the scenario WE are discussing, they did not, and for whatever reason it isn't something transporters can do.

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.

Or just can't transport living matter, which is stipulated in the scenario. I don't even understand why this is an issue for you; that transporters work AT ALL is technological handwave, and its limitations doubly so. So in this scenario, you can't transport people without killing them.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Darn, didn't realise this had reached page 2! Yes, Crazy Eddie has just about covered my viewpoint on inert biomatter versus living creatures (thankyou good sir).

Hence my question as to how we think starship/station/shuttle design would by necessity, differ.

It suddenly occurred to me that smaller starships would have a certain disadvantage for being able to move people quickly from one place to another. Some of them -- like Defiant and the Maquis Raider -- would probably have to have a slight redesign to make landing or at least close-range flight easier. In Defiant's case especially, you'd have a lot more scenes where the ship is extracting crewmembers by flying right up to a ledge or something and having crewmembers heroically leap through an airlock:

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It also occurs to me that with no transporters for those convenient last-minute escapes, there's going to be a lot more running, hiding and getting shot at during such moments, so it would probably affect the design of Starfleet uniforms as much as anything else. To use the above example: both Alliance and Cerberus crew members include in their duty uniforms something that looks very much like parachute harness.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

And you'd need energy-proof vests. Ooh, I like this direction we're going...

 

[Blip]

Me too!