Ending Beam Up in City on Edge if Forever

For years I have wondered if I am the only person who noticed they beamed up 7 people in the final scene of City on the Edge of Forever. Have never heard anyone question it and at the time, 6 was the max for beaming, if I’m not mistaken?

 

Nice catch! “Day of the Dove” covered that eventuality:

Chekov’s line opens the door to possibilities best left closed.

 

Yep, exactly correct. I have read and seen everything (to my knowledge) regarding bloopers, mistakes, etc. yet never have I heard of anyone mentioning this 7 person beam up. Granted, Day of the Dove addresses it but way after the fact. Hard to believe this one slipped thru all the cracks.

 

Imagine if you were that seventh guy, the redshirt in back, and the other six got beamed up but not you. And you think, I'll just wait a minute and they'll beam me up next. But they don't. They forget you and leave orbit right away (which actually happened in "And the Children").

At some point, you'd have to start interacting with the Guardian. I wonder how that would go.

 

Many such f***-ups are possible!

 

Noticed it on first viewing in the 1970s. Maybe one person went to another transporter room.

 

There's nothing more dangerous than a vengeful red shirt with a time portal.

 

Chekov indicated a few times in the series and movies that he had "special" feeling when it came to the Klingons.

 

Hence the reality that became ENT and DIS?
JB

 

I like ENT (because I think they really did try), but yes, I can believe that some redshirt peeing around with the Guardian caused DISC!

 

I don't think we have much reason to believe in any specific limitations of the TOS transporter. No plot ever hinged on it being impossible/difficult to transport more than six people at a time. No dialogue hinted at such a limitation. The one time we got a beam-down in two parts, "The Apple", the late arrival of the three after the initial six is amply explained by one of 'em three being McCoy, who is not one to hurry...

Similarly, we never got a range limitation. We didn't get much support for the idea that the people or objects being transported would have had to confine themselves to specific circles on the floor (we get outsized items in "Dagger of the Mind" and handholding across pads in "A Private Little War" etc.). Beaming up through shields was a no-no, but beaming down through said appeared to be simple enough. And so forth.

On this particular issue, no spinoff show attempted to turn the fan misconception into onscreen fact, either. Groups of more than six were seldom seen beamed chiefly because actors are expensive and having more than six in a shot was something the writers and directors avoided... But the two pads of a runabout never meant a set of three heroes would face difficulty beaming, say.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Funny I never got that feeling, Phase! It seemed to me that it was just, "We need to put another Star Trek show on television and I've always liked the idea of setting it before TOS!" The arrogance of Braga (I think?) where he said to the Phlox actor in the corridor, "Are you ready for a seven year show?" Or words to that effect!
JB

 

Were they trying to make a Tuvix? Because that's how you get a Tuvix.

 

But you also need flowers for that. And plagues seldom leave behind fields of flowers, for some reason. But then again, logic is a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad.

It's pretty remarkable that in TOS, transporters were never considered risky or blamed for things they didn't do, except by McCoy - and McCoy's anxieties were generally made fun of... The transporter was a plot-enhancing rather than plot-complicating device for the most part. This despite the horrid accidents or the central role a malfunction played in an early episode. No writer would be likely to stop and think "Hmm, should this be possible?" or "Should I avoid introducing this capability?"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

No big deal. We know the Enterprise has multiple transporter rooms. Some went to a different room. Its either that or beam up in shifts.

 

Well, there was Scotty's line from "The Tholian Web":

"It's jamming our transporter frequencies. I've only got three of them working, and I'm not sure of those. One of you has got to wait."

That certainly implies that each of the six transporter pads uses a specific frequency, and you can't beam more than one person at a time on the same frequency. Of course, this was violated in "The Cloud Minders" when Kirk and Plasus materialize on a single transporter pad with their hands around each others' throats.

 

JB, I think Braga is a jerk, but there were some good scripts, strong premises, and excellent acting. Then when Coto took over it got really good. And at least a century before TOS left some room to maneuver. The arrogance of setting DISC right at the time of Pike is breathtaking, particularly when they had no intention of even pretending to honor TOS. UGH!!

 

Nothing more than a continuity error.

 

Maybe something like this happened (go to time mark 57:35):

https://archive.org/details/StarTrek1x00TheCageLaJaula

Yes, we don't see the planetside beamout and whether THE WOMEN dematerialized together or individually, but the suggestion is that a person (or persons) can vacate the chamber for a subsequent rematerialization that follows a few seconds later.

 

Or then the chamber can materialize a given number of objects, or a given volume of material, and this is quite a bit in excess of six grown men. That is, every pad can handle two people at least (just as we see a pad handle two people in "A Private Little War" or "The Cloud Minders"). But the system is supposed to be used with redundancy and buffer capacity available, and the six pads sort of serve as a suggestive, intuitive soft limit for the users.

We do see cargo handled in man-sized/pad-sized packages even though bigger objects obviously can be handled as well - even in the TNG era where a cargo transporter can move whole shuttlecraft but is usually occupied with shuffling blue 150 L barrels. Again a soft limit so that the crew don't overload the system with too much cargo at a time? Or just practical logistics, so that no load is too big for two redshirts (or one yeoman with an antigrav) to carry through the narrow doorways?

I'm not seeing the connection between frequencies and pads specifically. But the line could well be taken to mean that one transportee takes up one frequency, so that three require three.

Then again, the connection could be dismissed, too, with Scotty complaining about two separate things: that he only has three frequencies out of the usual 2,331, and that he won't risk handling more than three people at a time.

Timo Saloniemi