Probably an Ignorant Question About Transporters

The transporter was the universal McGuffin, causing as many problems as it fixed. As others have pointed out, it was entirely plot related as to what it could (or couldn't) do. Theoretically yes, it could have been the ultimate technology, literally creating whatever anyone wanted, wherever it was needed. However, the Krell tried that in "Forbidden Planet" and look what happened to them. Creatures from the Id and all.

Just don't transport bread...

 

I have always noticed that various Star Treks do tend to bend "transporter rules" enough, one way or another, that it's difficult to determine what exactly it can and cannot do. Throughout Trek the transporter rules have sometimes been stretched like saltwater taffy.

 

Agreed with Kamen that the very fact that "transporters were down" establishes that some key centralized support resource was down, instead of the actual beaming machinery being hurt. Way too much such machinery aboard the E-E for all of it to get directly and uniformly hurt.

But what resource is that? If it's the usual targeting stuff and the tiny button is a beacon, then it isn't much different from a commbadge, and not even significantly more compact. No doubt most transporters are operated by "remote" in most circumstances - a commbadge suffices for controlling the whole process e.g. in DS9 where the runabouts don't have operators crewing a transporter console. The compact device from "Non Sequitur" no doubt is but another such remote, just like the "BoBW" armbands, with different situations calling for different numbers of push-buttons on the interface. But is the NEM button one of those as well?

The audience is tempted to think this is truly groundbreaking tech, what with being called "prototype" and all. But this is not an actual story requirement. Might be utterly humdrum instead: we'd get the same false impression that shoe heel -sized tracking devices are cutting edge in James Bond: Skyfall, even though they were cutting edge in a Bond movie three decades earlier, too.

Possibly Starfleet has always used "Emergency Transport Units", aka subcutaneous transponders aka pattern enhancers aka whatever. Or then those three are slighty different things and various packages hold between one to three of those functionalities in various sizes and shapes of casing. This Mk XCVIII button just combines good transponder range and power with adequate pattern enhancing at fairly good miniaturization level, but drops all user-selectability and reduces the interface to, well, a single button.

What other transporter resource could be involved besides targeting/remote control?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Actually after thinking a bit about these issues of transporter tech, i really can't understand the problems people have with accepting Discovery's spore network...

 

It's been years since I've watched Nemesis, but I do recall the script explicitly telling us it was a transporter unit. The script also states that there's no more power available to the transporter system, as Geordi drained it to beam Picard over to the scimitar.
I agree that it's more consistent to be an improved transporter beacon/remote, as all the transporter machinery takes up quite a lot of space. Let's just agree that Nemesis had a lot of flaws, especially with technology, and headcanon whatever we want to be whatever we want.

 

It wasn't just that the transporters went down, the console burned out anyway. Maybe someone could run to the cargo bay and re-route power and operate the unit manually, but how long would that take?

 

How about telling the guy or gal already standing next to a transporter console to punch the necessary buttons right away? The ship ought to have no shortage of those.

Transporter consoles or transporter platforms aren't centralized resources, but distributed ones. Power in turn shouldn't be an issue, as a flashlight battery (okay, hand phaser clip) suffices for completing a transport. But if a power surge knocks out a lot of little things, it may take a while to get even one transporter unit working properly.

All the more reason to get at it ASAP, of course. Which means the button that saved Picard may merely have summoned the regular transporters of the E-E, repaired just in time.

"Transporters are out" is a valid plot complication in situations where our heroes really want reliably working transporters, and can take the time to get those back. They don't want to die for nothing, after all.

It's not all that plausible when all the heroes want is just one at least halfway successful beaming, immediately or the world (or several) will end - squeezing this little thing out of the sum total of dozens of transporter systems and redundancies aboard ought to be possible even when, say, assured beaming out and back in of ten boarding parties is out of the question.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Maybe Data had the Shuttles ready to go and pre-programmed to respond to the Emergency Transporter.

It's not like Data couldn't have forseen the possible outcome and the necessary preparations for it given that his computing power can guestimate the likelihood of each scenario to defeat Shinzon and keep everybody he loves safe.

 

True, but Picard beamed to the bridge. Well, maybe they can shrink a transporter fully into that clip on.

 

The transporter relies on a lot of systems to work properly, and while I can't recall offhand exactly how much power can be squeezed out of something to create a jury rigged transporter; I think it's considerably more than a phaser or flashlight battery.
Fine, half the transporter subsystems are still functional. You still need a transport computer or else you"ll be scattered over a few hundred square meters or return inside out.

 

That's fine if it's a 1-way, 1-time use of crossing hundreds of meters for an emergency.

Not 150 ly like that King Daniel wanted.

I want to try to make Star Trek as "Realistic" as possible within the confine of it's rule set / technological level.

Ergo the distance limit and it's use a Plot Device for GTFO of a bad situation.

 

Why does everybody forget about the Transporters within the shuttles and the portable transporter modules that are self contained?

 

It's been mentioned at least three times. It's not in the script.

 

If it used a micro version of the quantum torpedoes zero point energy unit then I could buy a Stargate Atlantis type power resevoir in the main section that could only transport a 200lbs object around 500m and only that.

 

Thanks to everyone for their transporter insights. It's funny, I've seen watching Star Trek since the '70s (when I was a toddler in diapers) but I was never clear on what the transporter system's exact rules & limitations were.

 

And as the discussion showed, you still aren't entirely clear on the rules and limitattions of transporters are. Nobody could be entirely clear.

 

"I teleported home one night with Ron and Syd and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away, and I got Sydney's leg." - Douglas Adams

I'm with McCoy - a shuttlecraft is just fine with me. I'd only risk a transporter if it was a situation where I was going to die, otherwise, anyway. I've read "The Metaphysics of Star Trek" and I understand the philosophical concept of the closest continuer - but I don't know that I believe it enough to risk my life on.

Unless, of course, it's only the parts of the limb that you lost because the transporter re-wrote you to be a child because it sensed your age-determining chemicals wrong. ("Rascals" - great episode, horrible example of how the transporter should work.)

Transporters work off of a principle similar to "spooky action at a distance", which we probably knew instinctively was a thing even before we knew it was a thing. The 'shroom network is really pretty much just an analogy taken too far.

 

Of course nobody could be 100% clear with the rules always changing. In every series, sometimes transporters worked with the shields up and sometimes they didn't. That's just one example.

 

They also moved Captain Christopher from sitting to standing and back again. It's not as showy as doing a mid-beam kidney transplant or whatever, but it's probably about as difficult considering how many things still have to line up after you start moving them around.

There was a portable transporter that did pretty much the same thing as the pip-sized device in NEM in Voyager's "Non Sequitur" and "Concerning Flight," the latter case ruling out tapping into a "real" transporter system, except that device was hand-held. Could be the "prototype" part was just that it was tiny enough for Data to keep it in one of his smuggling compartments, instead of the old fist-sized units.

 

I remember that coin-shaped transporter peg in Nemesis. On the one hand, I thought it was clever but on the other hand it served as an obvious "deux ex machina" for Picard to survive at the end.