Reset... Energize...

[Wingsley]

We all remember the line in TOS' "Obsession"

[On the surface of Tycho IV, Kirk and Garrovick stand a meter away from the Cloud Creature as it tries to assimilate Kirk's anti-matter bomb]

KIRK
Now! Energize and detonate!

[Kirk and Garrovick dematerialize, just as the bomb explodes]

[In the Enterprise's Transporter Room, Scott operates the Transporter Mechanism as Spock assists and McCoy looks on. Kirk and Garrovick weakly begin to materialize, then fade away. Something is obviously wrong with the materialization process.]

SPOCK
Reset. Energize.

But what does that mean? If Kirk and Garrovick do not materialize, doesn't that mean they were lost? They certainly did not re-integrate at their point of origin, awaiting a second beam-up.

Compare this to TMP, when Sonak was killed. Nobody could hit the reset button then.

Any thoughts on how to reconcile this?

 

[drt]

I guess we'll have to assume that the issue was reintegrating them out of the transporter pattern buffer - and that in the case of TMP, uploading them into the buffer didn't happen correctly in the first place.

 

[Melakon]

I guess we'll have to assume that the issue was reintegrating them out of the transporter pattern buffer - and that in the case of TMP, uploading them into the buffer didn't happen correctly in the first place.

Let's also consider the circumstances of the two different transport attempts. The "Obsession" transport sequence is begun seconds before an anti-matter explosion, and Kirk and Garrovick apparently have made it as far as the pattern buffer when it hits.

In TMP, there's no anti-matter explosion, but the failure is due to defective equipment.

[Enterprise engineering]
VOICES (OC): Check. Cleary on number six.
Space matrix restoration coils. Dilithium crystals.
I knew it. The transporter sensor was not activated.
Faulty modules.
SCOTT (OC): Cleary! Put a new backup sensor into the unit.
CLEARY (OC): Aye sir.

...

[Kirk announces he's taking command]
...

CLEARY: Transporter room, come in! Urgent! Redline on the transporters, Mister Scott!
SCOTT: Transporter room, do not engage! Do not...
CLEARY: It's too late. They're beaming now!

[Enterprise transporter room]
RAND: Do you read me Starfleet? Override us. Pull them back!
KIRK: Give it to me. Starfleet, boost your matter gain, we need more signal! ...More signal!
SCOTT: We're losing their pattern.

Along with Kirk telling Starfleet to boost the matter gain while a defective transporter sensor is in the process of being replaced. No telling what that did to the circuits.

 

[HIjol]

We all remember the line in TOS' "Obsession"

[On the surface of Tycho IV, Kirk and Garrovick stand a meter away from the Cloud Creature as it tries to assimilate Kirk's anti-matter bomb]

KIRK
Now! Energize and detonate!

[Kirk and Garrovick dematerialize, just as the bomb explodes]

[In the Enterprise's Transporter Room, Scott operates the Transporter Mechanism as Spock assists and McCoy looks on. Kirk and Garrovick weakly begin to materialize, then fade away. Something is obviously wrong with the materialization process.]

SPOCK
Reset. Energize.

But what does that mean? If Kirk and Garrovick do not materialize, doesn't that mean they were lost? They certainly did not re-integrate at their point of origin, awaiting a second beam-up.

Compare this to TMP, when Sonak was killed. Nobody could hit the reset button then.

Any thoughts on how to reconcile this?

If I remember correctly from TMP, the Enterprise was not getting enough signal on its pads, and when the signal tried to reintegrate at Star Fleet, what managed to reform was not enough...in your case above, I think they were lost...

 

[T'Girl]

Along with Kirk telling Starfleet to boost the matter gain while a defective transporter sensor is in the process of being replaced. No telling what that did to the circuits.

Why was Rand beaming anyone while there was a empty socket where the sensor module usually is?

 

[Timo]

The module might well be the third level of redundancy in a process that normally works without a hitch... Or even completely unrelated to the process and what went wrong with it. Perhaps it allows the transporter chief to sense beam-down locations, rather than sense the process, and at this juncture there was no need to sense beam-down locations.

In any case, TOS is rife with situations where people clearly are aboard the ship but not yet fully materialized ("Tholian Web" is a very similar case), paving way for all those later theories that feature a "pattern buffer" or a similar piece of equipment.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[HIjol]

^ to Timo...did that version of the transporter have the quadruple redundancy buffers that TNG had?...I cannot find the info...seems to me no, but the brain is not what it used to be...

 

[Timo]

The TOS transporter no doubt features some redundancies somewhere, but those aren't evident from the technobabble. Save for the fact that there appear to be multiple transporter rooms aboard the ship, represented by a number of dissimilar sets, yet if one is down for reason X, generally all the transporters of the ship are considered to be down - but that was how it worked in TNG as well. It's just that TNG had an actual Tech Manual, plus dialogue stating the existence of multiple transporter rooms even when there was just one set that very seldom was altered in any way.

I'd suppose that if TNG has quadruple redundancy, the rough and ready TOS has at most a single level of it. Then again, some episodes seem to feature a six-person maximum for a single transport sortie, while others do not, perhaps because redundancies in the system are sometimes utilized for safety, sometimes for capacity?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

CTRL-ALT-DEL..?

Mark

 

[HIjol]

CTRL-ALT-DEL..?

Mark

 

[HIjol]

The TOS transporter no doubt features some redundancies somewhere, but those aren't evident from the technobabble. Save for the fact that there appear to be multiple transporter rooms aboard the ship, represented by a number of dissimilar sets, yet if one is down for reason X, generally all the transporters of the ship are considered to be down - but that was how it worked in TNG as well. It's just that TNG had an actual Tech Manual, plus dialogue stating the existence of multiple transporter rooms even when there was just one set that very seldom was altered in any way.

I'd suppose that if TNG has quadruple redundancy, the rough and ready TOS has at most a single level of it. Then again, some episodes seem to feature a six-person maximum for a single transport sortie, while others do not, perhaps because redundancies in the system are sometimes utilized for safety, sometimes for capacity?

Timo Saloniemi

Makes sense...thanks!

 

[Green Shirt]

CTRL-ALT-DEL..?

Mark

That DEL key is a killer.

 

[Nebusj]

CTRL-ALT-DEL..?

Mark

That DEL key is a killer.

``Warning! Interrupting this procedure may result in the loss of critical data! Do you want to continue? Abort / Cancel / No'' … what failed user interface designer even writes these things?

 

[BeatleJWOL]

I can just hear any of our chief engineers now... "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

 

[WarpFactorZ]

If I remember correctly from TMP, the Enterprise was not getting enough signal on its pads, and when the signal tried to reintegrate at Star Fleet, what managed to reform was not enough...in your case above, I think they were lost...

In short: the Enterprise only had one bar and dropped calls.... Time to switch to Sprint-Transportability.

 

[HIjol]

If I remember correctly from TMP, the Enterprise was not getting enough signal on its pads, and when the signal tried to reintegrate at Star Fleet, what managed to reform was not enough...in your case above, I think they were lost...

In short: the Enterprise only had one bar and dropped calls.... Time to switch to Sprint-Transportability.

The gods forgiving me for laughing...sooooooo f*cking funny, WarpFactorZ...!!!!



"...can you see me now...."?
<adjust pattern buffer>
"...now....?"

 

[trevanian]

In TMP, there's no anti-matter explosion, but the failure is due to defective equipment.

[Enterprise engineering]
VOICES (OC): Check. Cleary on number six.
Space matrix restoration coils. Dilithium crystals.
I knew it. The transporter sensor was not activated.
Faulty modules.
SCOTT (OC): Cleary! Put a new backup sensor into the unit.
CLEARY (OC): Aye sir.

To show how badly thought out all this is, if you look at Wise's annotated copy of the script as shown in THE MAKING OF ST-TMP, the word 'new' is something he added on the day. I guess the original inference was the backup sensor is a supplement to what they'd normally have (maybe the equivalent of keeping your system hooked up to an oscilloscope or wave-form monitor to note status), whereas the filmed version indicates it is a regular component.

 

[Wingsley]

The TOS transporter no doubt features some redundancies somewhere, but those aren't evident from the technobabble. Save for the fact that there appear to be multiple transporter rooms aboard the ship, represented by a number of dissimilar sets, yet if one is down for reason X, generally all the transporters of the ship are considered to be down - but that was how it worked in TNG as well. It's just that TNG had an actual Tech Manual, plus dialogue stating the existence of multiple transporter rooms even when there was just one set that very seldom was altered in any way.

I'd suppose that if TNG has quadruple redundancy, the rough and ready TOS has at most a single level of it. Then again, some episodes seem to feature a six-person maximum for a single transport sortie, while others do not, perhaps because redundancies in the system are sometimes utilized for safety, sometimes for capacity?

Timo Saloniemi

Here's an interesting idea...

[Transporter room]

(Spock and Scott are at the controls with McCoy watching.)

SPOCK: Reset. Energize.

(As Scott re-engages the transporter, we hear the P.A. system whistle.)

CHEKOV [OC]: All decks, stand by! Shock waves!

(The ship is shaken, and still nothing appears on the transporter pad.)

MCCOY: Do something!

SPOCK: We are, Doctor. Cross-circuiting to A.

SCOTT: Got them. A piece of them, anyway.

SPOCK: Cross-circuiting to B...

MCCOY: Crazy way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all over the universe!

(Finally the swirly bits solidify into two men.)

SCOTT: Captain, thank heaven!

SPOCK: Mister Scott, there was no deity involved. It was my cross-circuiting to B that recovered them.

MCCOY: Well then, thank pitchforks and pointed ears. As long as it worked, Jim.

Could it be that "cross-circuiting" meant that a means has been developed to combine the transporter mechanisms of more than one room in the process in order to accentuate said process, canceling out whatever disruption was causing the "materializer" to be responding so weakly after the explosion?

If so, Spock could've been experimenting with a new technique because the task was too much for a single mechanism to handle. (And presumably this process was not useful in preventing the problems encountered in "The Enemy Within" and "Mirror, Mirror"; perhaps it was not invented yet.)

This would also mean that cross-circuiting transporter rooms ("A" and "B") was not applicable to save Sonak, possibly because Cleary's accident skewed the beam itself, making recovery of Sonak impossible.

 

[Timo]

That's a cool idea. I do hope Scotty was being less than literal about that "A piece of them, anyway" thing, and that the two were in the buffer the whole time. Probably Scotty was saying "This light here shows that they are in the buffer. Of course, it would light up even if only part of them was, but here's hoping..."

Incidentally, the terminology would mean our TOS heroes prefer Transporter Room C, much like Picard had a thing for Transporter Room 3. Is there a naval superstition against using the first two transporter rooms, perhaps?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

Maybe C is just quicker to get to...