One Giant Transporter Pad?

[Stoek]

I've been watching Enterprise and something that has been niggling in the back of my brain came to the fore. The transporter. One giant pad. So not only would that mean only one anular confinement beam but also it seems to me that the computers would have to work harder to keep separate people or objects separate. This would I would think increase greatly the chances for failure.

So I'm wondering if this was just poor thinking on the creative people's parts, or are there real life examples of poorly thought out ideas like the above that in subsequent years seem self evident with hindsight?

 

[Skywalker]

Considering the transporter was forced on them by the network (Berman & Braga didn't want to have one), I don't think they did too bad a job with it. I liked that it wasn't as precise as future transporters. I think that was part of the point; this was supposed to be relatively new technology.

 

[DonIago]

Also wasn't the transporter on the NX really only intended to be used for cargo? Perhaps, while it ended up being used for the purpose, it wasn't planned to be used to transport multiple people.

Trek has already established that transporting cargo is considerably easier, so I don't have much of a problem with one large pad for that purpose.

 

[Timo]

Trek has already established that transporting cargo is considerably easier

Actually, no.

If anything, we have had many episodes telling us that this special kind of cargo or that cannot take the transporter and has to be moved by the shuttle. In contrast, we have had only three cases of people being difficult to transport - the Medusan in "Is There In Truth", the supersoldier Ragar in "The Hunted" and the Trills in "The Host" - and two of the three involved the transportee himself trying to be difficult, while the third posed no transporting problems per se, merely the need for special safety arrangements for the other people involved.

The whole thing about cargo being transported at a lower resolution is just backstage doubletalk, never indicated in the actual episodes or movies, and indeed implicitly contradicted by some of them. Say, in "Datalore", Lore is beamed out to space by a cargo transporter, and the operator has no intention of (or time for) resetting the device to be friendlier to the live transportee - but we later learn that Lore survives the process just fine. And in "Dagger of the Mind", cargo is beamed aboard, but with a stowaway inside, and he doesn't die.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[KNH]

So not only would that mean only one anular confinement beam but also it seems to me that the computers would have to work harder to keep separate people or objects separate. This would I would think increase greatly the chances for failure.

Crewman Novakovich would agree.

 

[ImCaptKirk]

Also wasn't the transporter on the NX really only intended to be used for cargo? Perhaps, while it ended up being used for the purpose, it wasn't planned to be used to transport multiple people.

Trek has already established that transporting cargo is considerably easier, so I don't have much of a problem with one large pad for that purpose.

Actually it was approved for human use, but was limited to one person at a time.

 

[Timo]

The dialogue in "Broken Bow" suggested that the technology had existed for some time but that the specific device aboard the ship had only recently been cleared for "bio-transport", taking Reed by surprise. But there was no mention of it only being capable of handling one person at a time. In the very next episode to feature the transporter, the issue of beaming up several people arises, and there's no talk about them not being able to do all of them at a time (because they can do none of them). And then we get a triple beamdown in "The Andorian Incident", without much ado.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[I am Surak]

I think the pad is just a surface to stand on or place cargo on. Once transported there would be no pad at the target location and we have seen that the transporter gets locked on targets that haven't been transported before I.e. haven't been on the pad before.

 

[Timo]

Quite probably so.

Yet one wonders why the floor of the transporter "chamber" would be so inconveniently elevated. Why not keep it flush with the rest of the deck? If it's just a matter of excessively bulky underfloor machinery, surely it would be better to have that machinery protrude from the ceiling of the deck below, rather than from the floor of the transporter room?

Out of all the transporter setups, the ENT one comes off as the most enclosed, what with the conically flared upper and lower corners of the cylinder space. The way the lighted vertical ridges on the walls appear to extend to under the floor circle and above the corresponding ceiling one would seem to suggest that it's important to encase the transportee inside important elements of machinery from all directions, or at least as many as possible. Still doesn't explain the lack of a flush floor, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[arch101]

The transporter in Enterprise is a production disappointment. It really should have been a whole room (even a small one for budgetary reasons) and been modeled like the TMP transporter room- with a ray shielded operators platform and the feeling that the whole room IS the machine. Making it an alcove off a corridor made it look half-assed all 4 years.

 

[Skywalker]

It probably was half-assed, since they didn't want to do a transporter in the first place.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The transporter's really just a piece of magic with no real science behind it - talk about "annular confinement beams" and the internal logic of the thing are just so much poohbah. The set looked both cool enough and primitive enough compared to "later" (that is, earlier) designs to work.

 

[Skywalker]

Agreed, I thought it looked fine for what it was. My only nitpicks (and that's all they are) with it are I thought the transport sequence itself was too fast, and I wish the beam had been yellow like TOS. Neither's really a big deal for me.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

I wonder if the transporter was retrofited near the end of the Enterprise's completion which is why it was basically put in a corner alcove on the Enterprise. That was the only space available.

 

[Timo]

...with a ray shielded operators platform and the feeling that the whole room IS the machine.

Would have loved that. Although actually I'd have wanted to see something even more "primitive" or robust: a vault with a heavy door that is closed and painstakingly sealed before the operators staying safely outside dare press the appropriate buttons.

Then again, the more one emphasizes the danger posed by the machinery, the less sense it makes to have the other end of the process be wholly unshielded...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SFRabid]

I think the pad is just a surface to stand on or place cargo on. Once transported there would be no pad at the target location and we have seen that the transporter gets locked on targets that haven't been transported before I.e. haven't been on the pad before.

This. With point to point transporting why have a pad at all?

 

[Timo]

...Then again, apparently point-to-point was difficult if not impossible in TOS. Why was that? It almost seems as if the pad actually played a crucial role in the entire process, and no transporting could take place without it. (See the site-to-site transport in "The Cloud Minders", where the pad on the Enterprise appears to be an absolutely necessary stop en route!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

Well perhaps the console should have been a similiar size to the one in TOS or TNG. Not smaller.

I also tend to agree that the transporter cycle should have been longer, maybe only by a 3-5 seconds though. As for the colour perhaps they should have used something closer the gold pattern shown in TOS. To show an evolution of the technology.