Examples of Transwarp Beaming?

[Timo]

What's the point? Well, defining what we are talking about in the first place.

"Transwarp" semantically suggests that "warp" is involved somehow. In "Mudd's Women", warp may be involved. And in the 2009 movie, the big deal was beaming to a warping starship, a difficult moving target (with the great distances involved being just icing on the cake).

In ST:ID, and in the second transporting feat of the 2009 movie, that from Titan to Earth orbit, great distances are involved, but not warp speeds (although obviously there is a great speed differential involved anyway). So that broadens the definition of "transwarp beaming". It doesn't narrow down the definition, though, and all that "hijacking the thread" nonsense is just needless bickering.

The two film examples of transwarp beaming are:

2009: Kirk and Scott transport from a planetary body to a starship traveling at warp speeds several light years away.

STID: Khan transports from a hovering craft on Earth to the Klingon Homeworld which is also many light years away.

And those are the only things anywhere in the Trek universe that are called "transwarp beaming" in dialogue. The rest of this thread involves expanding and speculating, which is fine and welcome.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Isn't it possible that what's "transwarp" about "transwarp beaming" is simply the carrier wave? Perhaps the carrier wave moves through something like a transwarp conduit, in order to bridge the vast distances in a very short amount of time, and e.g. quickly catch up to ships that have a big head start at warp.

The OP wasn't only talking specifically about transwarp beaming. He was clearly talking about long-range teleportation that might or might not be based on similar principles.

As much as I dislike the Transwarp beaming in the new films, I realized that there are examples of this in TOS.

Gamesters of Triskelion immediately comes to mind, with Kirk and company transported across a vast expanse by the Providers.

Are there other examples of "'magical teleportation" that could be Transwarp beaming?

 

[erastus25]

Scott describes it as long distance transporting. Like beaming a grapefruit from one planet to the next.

I'm with Timo on this one, and the 2009 movie is just too painful to watch for me to check Scotty's lines. Also, I do not recall the term "transwarp" appearing anywhere in TOS. And since JarJar Trek sweeps away all canon, why should it be taken as canon?

It amazes me when people come into a thread with nothing to add and post just to take a swipe at a movie they don't like.

Wouldn't be a problem if TPTB had tried to make good movies.

 

[Timo]

Isn't it possible that what's "transwarp" about "transwarp beaming" is simply the carrier wave?

It's very possible. Certainly this beaming seems to happen at FTL speeds, even for "short" hops like from Titan to Earth, so some sort of warp might well be involved.

That the "warp" in "transwarp beaming" would have more to do with where one is beaming (that is, to or from a warping ship) stems from the dialogue introducing the concept:

Spock: "You are, in fact, the Mister Scott who postulated the theory of transwarp beaming."
Scotty: "That's what I'm talking about. How'd you think I wound up here? I had a little debate with my instructor on the issue of relativistic physics and how it pertains to subspace travel. He seemed to think that the range of transporting something like a, like a grapefruit, was limited to about a hundred miles. I told him that I could not only beam a grapefruit from one planet to the adjacent planet in the same system, which is easy by the way, I could do it with a lifeform. So, I tested it on Admiral Archer's prized beagle."
Kirk: "Wait, I know that dog. What happened to it?"
Scotty: "I'll tell you when it reappears. I don't know. I do feel guilty about that."
Spock: "What if I told you that your transwarp theory was correct? That it is indeed possible to beam onto a ship that is travelling at warp speed?"

That's sort of ambiguous. Scotty seems to be talking about extending the range of transporters (supposedly, somebody did accomplish that at some point between the 2230s and the 2260s, because the TOS transporters can do much better than what Scotty describes here!), but Spock clearly says it's about "indeed" being possible to cross the border from standstill to warp.

Later on, when Scotty worries about the procedure and Spock shows how it's done, Scotty's objections are to how difficult it is to hit a moving target. Range doesn't seem to matter (any more?).

It should be noted that long-range beaming can be achieved by multiple means, some of which are accessible to "mundane" cultures and seem to differ from the very concept of "transwarp beaming":

- In TNG "First Duty", a technology that nobody considers special whisks cadets from disintegrating spacecraft to a moon at least hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. Supposedly, then, the 40,000 km limit only applies to starship hardware, just like there's a 10 km limit to certain emergency transporters in VOY "Future's End".
- In DS9 "Covenant", Dominion technology is believed by Worf to be capable of moving people across many lightyears. We don't know if Dukat actually had access to this tech or faked it somehow, but the Federation seems to know a lot about it.
- Somebody in the UFP experimented with subspace transporting before TNG "Bloodlines". Was that Scotty? Our heroes specifically don't mention him despite now having personal ties to him.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BillJ]

I'm with Timo on this one, and the 2009 movie is just too painful to watch for me to check Scotty's lines. Also, I do not recall the term "transwarp" appearing anywhere in TOS. And since JarJar Trek sweeps away all canon, why should it be taken as canon?

It amazes me when people come into a thread with nothing to add and post just to take a swipe at a movie they don't like.

Wouldn't be a problem if TPTB had tried to make good movies.

Since they've made two good movies that rank with Star Trek's best, I don't see a problem.

 

[Ronald Held]

It is unclear still. The 2009 movie sounds like transwarp beaming. The next one is more like that of the Aegis or maybe subspace transporting.

 

[Ginger]

Timo makes a good point in #24. The transporter in ST '09 is pretty useless compared to that seen in TOS. Old Spock may have known that historically a leap in transporter tech was about to occur and decided to give the information to Scott - for all we know he would have been fundamental in the development of TOS era transporters, although I find that a tad too contrived.

Spock may have simply given Scott a bit more information than was strictly needed because of the situation, the urgency and a good dose of what-the-hell he learned from his years of knowing Kirk. As a consequence, Scott was given credit for inventing transwarp beaming, which allows you to beam onto a starship at warp while you are not. While (in the film) this seems to massively extend the accuracy (and to beam into a receding warp field), nothing is said about range.

My confusion is then are the two techs seen in ST '09 and STID the same? Or is transwarp beaming just a catch-all for any beaming outside of the normal?

Anyway, the OP clearly meant long range beaming, but I thought I'd develop my own tangent.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

While (in the film) this seems to massively extend the accuracy (and to beam into a receding warp field), nothing is said about range.

The whole first part of the dialog that Timo quoted from the 2009 film is about how Scott's attempt to demonstrate transwarp beaming to his instructor involved transporting an object a much further distance than his instructor thought possible, and doing so from one planet to another, obviously meaning that neither endpoint is at warp. It's therefore a given that extending transporter ranges beyond those known to Federation science is a key feature of the process. And the whole point was to beam onto the Enterprise, which had been receding at warp from Delta Vega to rendezvous with the fleet at the Laurentian system. The Enterprise was therefore way beyond regular transporter range. It was also about beaming onto a ship traveling at warp "without a proper receiving pad," because certainly it would be useless for getting back to the ship if it couldn't do that too.

My confusion is then are the two techs seen in ST '09 and STID the same?

Yes, I think it's pretty clear that Khan beamed from Earth to Kronos/Qo'noS using the same process, even though obviously neither endpoint was moving at warp.

 

[Ithekro]

One would assume there are bases of some sort in the Saturn area for "First Duty".

What Scott was attempting at first was transporting an object several light-minutes away. What Spock pointed out was that transport over light-years was possible with Scott's theory. The second use of beaming from Titan to Earth orbit is a little less than 11 AU distant...so around 85 light-minutes (~1.5 billion km) away from Earth. Well outside the typical 40,000 km range of a shipboard transporter.

 

[Timo]

One would assume there are bases of some sort in the Saturn area for "First Duty".

Indeed. And it's a terminology issue: the emergency transporter was associated with Mimas, the reckless maneuver with Titan, and those two moons never come to within 40,000 kilometers of each other, not in our universe at least.

But I don't see that as a cause for worry. No dialogue relating to TNG or TOS transporters makes the claim that transporter tech in itself would have a range limit. It's just different limits for different types of hardware. ST09 is the first to introduce the idea that even the best of the best could only achieve a range of X, and this is consistent with what has been seen in the main timeline before that date, and with what has been seen in the altered timeline of the movies before that date.

The dialogue in ST09 can be interpreted in many ways. Spock's use of "indeed" is the key: it may suggest that

a) Scotty originally made the claim that he could achieve the thing described by the "indeed" phrase, and had to back down from that when he fumbled the very first hurdle, that of transporting across a great distance - or
b) Scotty's possible claims are not what Spock is commenting on, and the Vulcan is just saying that the specific task he wants Scotty to perform is "indeed" possible.

Either way, Spock must be referring back to something with his "indeed". But we hear the entire preceding dialogue, and Spock never brings up the fact that he wants Scotty to beam Kirk to a ship that is traveling at warp speed. Not until he makes this "indeed" claim. Which is why I'm biased toward Scotty having claimed beaming-into-warp as a key element in his new theory.

Timo Saloniemi