Day of the Dove

[Zycho32]

Here's a pathetic understanding of Transporter Capabilities;

Transporter to Destination: One way passage, travelers safely dematerialized within the Transporter Chamber.

Destination to Transporter: Again, one way. Probably would seem more difficult just by the fact the Transporter has to reach out a considerable distance, but at the same time the Transporter Chamber is still utilized to properly recieve the de-materialized travelers in order to reassemble them.

Point A to Point B: The Transport Chamber has to function both as a reciever and sender in this case- and such an actually dangerous technology clearly could've not been developed far enough to perform this function on a more casual basis.

Funny, the scene would've probably worked better if Spock's explanation was thus; "It has rarely been done because of the extreme danger. The Transporter is not naturally designed to recieve and send the same subject all at once. One could find oneself lost in the beam- forever."

But that's just me butchering lines.

 

[Maurice]

Another explanation is that the transporter beam emitting hardware is outside the ship and it's difficult and dangerous to try to aim it within the hull, which it might not point at.

 

[Ronald Held]

Which is why Kirk's intraship transport was virtual risk free.

 

[Maurice]

^^^Huh? What is why?

 

[Nebusj]

Timo said:
We might want to argue that the transporters have great difficulty focusing on targets that are closer than a few hundred meters from the pads.

That's the easiest explanation, and the one I'd always taken. There's an optimal range for transporter functions and the design was, at that time, such as to make it easier to beam to other ships or down to planetary surfaces. Why it should be like that is a bit of a mystery, but without any information on the technologies which go into making up the transporter or how they work, there's really not a way to say that this is implausible or unlikely.

Perhaps, for example, the computations for the quantum-mechanical operator that does the beaming from one site to another contains a term that's small and easy to deal with if the target point is distant -- if, essentially, all the particles are going in the same direction -- but becomes a hazard when there's a noticeable angular dispersal. Does it work that way? Impossible to say, but there's no particularly implausible reason for that.

 

[Mallory]

DS9Sega said:
^^^Huh? What is why?

Looks like he was replying to Timo.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Timo said:
And of course, the Pinwheel of Anger would prevent that from happening anyway, using whatever cheat was required.

Maybe that whole thing about the transporters was set up by (*) anyway.

It could have caused the crew to think that intraship beaming was dangerous when in fact it was not. We saw many times that (*) was capable of planting completely false memories. Maybe this was one of them.

Indeed, it would be in (*)'s best interests to prevent people from transporting in general, since they can't fight close quarters if they beam around too much.

 

[Maurice]

But since (*) could make the ship go crazy and fly out of the galaxy and seal bulkheads, it stands to reason it could have just disabled the transporter. But, since minds were being affected, wouldn't it be interesting if (*) caused the crew itself to set the ship on its crazy course and not think they had, and make everyone think 390 crewmen were trapped, when the doors actually would open. But that's too Talosian...

 

[Timo]

Frankly, that's what I always thought was going on. Scotty didn't really try a phaser or a torch on the bulkheads, he just thought he had done that. And the ship wasn't even necessarily careening out of control for real; they might have spent the entire adventure orbiting the "colony world".

Of course, the big question then is, did those swordfights happen for real? Did (*) truly heal those mortally wounded people, or was it all in their minds?

If (*) really had the skill to heal, it would probably also possess the skill to technologically jam the doors, transmute the walls, adjust the engines and play with the transporters.

If it was in their minds, OTOH, and (*) could not transmute anything, then nobody ever got wounded. After all, the combatants would be clubbing each other with nothing worse than hand phasers and tabletop ornaments!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cyrus]

Noname Given said:
It must have been a screwup with the feed (and glad I'm not going insane because when I watched my DVRed copy it went right from opening credits/commercial to the swordfight in the briefing lounge; and the episode ended 10 minutes short - meaning that on the tape used for the sattelite feed, SOMEONE forgot to edit in a full act).

Also, if anyone is interested - KTLA seems to be doing a repeat on 1/14 at 4:00 AM (my DVR is set) - and since KTLA hasn't been doing TOS-R repeats I assume it's because they know they had a bad feed and are doing a 'make up' for the advertisers that were cut because there was a full act missing (and probably a commercial or two with it).

Yeah, the LA station screwed up big time. But they are not repeating it because of the screw up, they have had the 4 am repeat showing ever since TOS-R moved to KTLA. If you check the guide you'll see the next episode is also repeated on 1/21. But thanks for the reminder, I have set my DVR to record it too.