Can dilithium crystals be teleported?
- Thread starter Raul
- Start date
In "Elaan of Troyus"
We saw dilithium crystals beamed aboard in "The Terratin Incident."
In Voyager, they sometimes beamed entire shuttlecraft on board, and since the shuttles had warp engines, they probably contained dilithium.
I don't think we've ever seen anything that couldn't be transported. Even antimatter can be, though great care needs to be taken to ensure it materializes inside a magnetic bottle and doesn't touch the outside air.
In Voyager, they sometimes beamed entire shuttlecraft on board, and since the shuttles had warp engines, they probably contained dilithium.
I don't think we've ever seen anything that couldn't be transported. Even antimatter can be, though great care needs to be taken to ensure it materializes inside a magnetic bottle and doesn't touch the outside air.
I'm also thinking the crystals were probably beamed aboard in "Mudd's Women" as I'm not sure they had the shuttlecraft at that stage.
I'm sure that, in-story, they had shuttlecraft, but it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to use them in the stormy conditions of Rigel XII.
Even there, this requires nothing of the transporter or its operator, though. In "Peak Performance", the Hathaway is unable to go to warp in mock combat because she lacks antimatter. Wesley says he has the solution; he beams to the E-D, grabs a science experiment he was running, and has himself beamed back to the Hathaway with that compact experiment cylinder. Since the Hathaway can go to warp thereafter, we are supposed to think the cylinder secretly contained antimatter. Yet Wesley never told the transporter operator he was packing the stuff (because bringing it sorta counted as cheating in the mock combat), so obviously no precautions would have been taken - yet equally obviously no kaboom happened.
However, the episode that introduces Kasidy Yates to DS9, "Family Business", has Yates operate a ship with old, outdated transporters - and since those can't safely handle "unstable biomatter", her crew has to manhandle it in crates instead. Apparently, transporters can't do everything (yet, even though Sisko's Mk VII system could have handled said biomatter where Yates' Mk V could not), and I doubt unstable biomatter is the only thing they have difficulty with.
Timo Saloniemi
The version 1 Trill from "The Host"
They can be transported, just that they might die.
You and I have very different ideas about what constitutes a successful beaming
Oof, this reminds me of all the silly stuff that TNG-era Trek did with the transporter. Kira having the O'Briens' baby (although it led to some touching moments and was at least a creative way to deal with Nana Visitor's pregnancy), Tuvix, and soooo many TNG examples.
Tuvix was an awesome concept. And a hell of an episode, which still generates passionate debate 20 years later.
Or, worse still, exposed for what they are, when the transporter queries "Remove major internal parasite Y/N?".
Generally, the transporter is a "blind" device, taking stuff, any stuff, from A and depositing it at B. It doesn't need to know what it is transporting. But some stuff seems to fare ill during transport (unstable biomatter in "Family Business"), while some other stuff fouls up the machine itself (ore in "Enemy Within"), unless one takes extra preventive or corrective measures. And the user does have the option of asking the machine what is being transported, even though this is seldom useful information.
Timo Saloniemi
Okay, I didn't express myself clearly enough. What I meant was that we've never seen any material that resisted being dematerialized by a transporter, e.g. something that was too dense or strong for the transporter to break its atomic bonds. I assumed that was the gist of the original question about dilithium, although on reflection the question wasn't clear enough to indicate why the OP thought dilithium might not be beamable.
That episode is a little fuzzy, but I thought that was more of a "everyone will find out about our parasites if we beam over" not "beaming will kill it" kind of thing. You know, a lie to obscure a bigger lie.
Dr. Crusher thinks that beaming would have damaged the symbiont, Odan, even after she's learned of the symbiotic relationship (i.e. after the secret is out) and there's nothing to cover up anymore. So, I'm gonna go with the idea that part of the original conception of the Trill in "The Host" is that the Trill symbionts cannot survive beaming.
Last edited:
Similar threads
