It this your first time in Star Trek?
Scientific weirdness in Star Trek
- Thread starter Neopeius
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I, Mudd is a masterpiece.It this your first time in Star Trek?
Perhaps the whole concept of transwarp beaming was only possible with the Earth/Starfleet version of transporter technology as invented by the famed Emory Erickson. 
At least in the context of Earth and its allies, supposedly Gene R "would have preferred" that the transporter was something humans developed on their own... at least according to the editor of Star Trek: Communicator issue 142 (p. 72) from 2003.
Kor
At least in the context of Earth and its allies, supposedly Gene R "would have preferred" that the transporter was something humans developed on their own... at least according to the editor of Star Trek: Communicator issue 142 (p. 72) from 2003.
Kor
They set it in a parallel universe explictly so they could do whatever they wanted.
And the fanboys still whined.
Also see Subspace Beaming in TNG.
I think the issue with transporters was that they did not bother to put hard limitations on it right out of the gate because they never saw it as anything other than a cool and groovy way of moving characters around in the story. Lots of silly incongruities grew up like mould.
In some episodes, they need communicators to call the ship to be beamed back and yet in other episodes they can just beam up everyone in an area.
Beaming inside a ship is dangerous but beaming between two ships is safe.
Later (or earlier if you watch Discovery) intra-ship beaming is safe but security guards are expected to run to locations where needed. Why bother sending security when you can just beam intruders to the brig about 5 seconds after they arrive?
Incursions by transporters are detectable (it's a high energy beam aimed right at your ship) and yet are often undetected.
Transporter weapons technology should exist, but doesn't - no beaming bombs onto the bridge or a full spread of torpedoes all around a ship
Transwarp beaming is even better. Ships don't fly around with shields up. Just beam your torpedoes a few dozen light years and boom.
What Trek is missing is counter-measures. WWII led to great technological advances as each side tried to beat the other AND outsmart their opponents' tech. Shields are a basic counter-measure to phasers, photon torpedoes, and transporters but only the Borg seem able to work out how to bypass them. You have elements of that in Corbomite, Balance of Terror, and Borg encounters but it might have been cool if the Klingons and Romulans had more distinct technology and tactics, like the Tholians.
In some episodes, they need communicators to call the ship to be beamed back and yet in other episodes they can just beam up everyone in an area.
Beaming inside a ship is dangerous but beaming between two ships is safe.
Later (or earlier if you watch Discovery) intra-ship beaming is safe but security guards are expected to run to locations where needed. Why bother sending security when you can just beam intruders to the brig about 5 seconds after they arrive?
Incursions by transporters are detectable (it's a high energy beam aimed right at your ship) and yet are often undetected.
Transporter weapons technology should exist, but doesn't - no beaming bombs onto the bridge or a full spread of torpedoes all around a ship
Transwarp beaming is even better. Ships don't fly around with shields up. Just beam your torpedoes a few dozen light years and boom.
What Trek is missing is counter-measures. WWII led to great technological advances as each side tried to beat the other AND outsmart their opponents' tech. Shields are a basic counter-measure to phasers, photon torpedoes, and transporters but only the Borg seem able to work out how to bypass them. You have elements of that in Corbomite, Balance of Terror, and Borg encounters but it might have been cool if the Klingons and Romulans had more distinct technology and tactics, like the Tholians.
Well, part of it was the fact that the transporter was designed as a workaround to expensive model work. So, the implications of what the transporter could and could not do were not seen right off. But, even as the show progressed the transporter basically always had to have some sort of issue to make the storyline work. They simply didn't work through all the implications or possible counters. And even DS9 forgot how to use the transporter from time to time.
Exactly. No matter what they did, no matter what other science happened, it was wrong.
"This new wrong science is slightly different to the old wrong science! The old wrong science is right, but this new wrong science is just wrong!"
To be fair, that was me in 2009. I've calmed down a lot since then and really come to appreciate the Kelvin films.
But Scotty did replicate it on the Enterprise after both him and Kirk were beamed back over. Why else was Scotty manning the transporter station? Plus when he finally understood the issue on why he couldn't complete the equation, why would that stop him from replicating it again on his own?
In that case, they were confiscated from him afterwards by Starfleet/Section 31 in a manner like Kor or Mytran described.
I keep pointing out that Subspace beaming was introduced in TNG "Bloodlines" to much the same effect, and then never used again. Why is this acceptable in 1993 but not in 2009?
My issue was not so much that it was possible or replicatable but that it was suggested as practical for normal use. No special equipment, no increased power consumption, a standard low spec shuttle transporter or even a portable unit, and a magical formula. The danger was portrayed as beaming inside a warp field, not the vast distances. Even the dog, which was lost during an experiment months before, returns alive and unharmed at the end of the movie, albeit in an outtake scene.
TNG was quite vague on the cons of subspace transportation, citing it as unsafe but never once showing any negative consequences. It used the same power source as a normal transporter. Subspace communications require subspace relays because the signals get weak or diffuse if the distance is too long (an anular confinement beam would require a source and a lot of energy to keep the information intact, quantum linked, or whatever it does). I think the network is about every 20 light years or so. Presumably this would apply to a subspace signal carrying a transportee just the same. This I could get behind, being similar in concept to a Stargate bridge but It wouldn't make much sense in Into Darkness, where the relays would have to traverse enemy territory where subspace signals would be monitored and detected. You could probably get away with it a few times, assuming your relay was mobile and cloaked but given that it would have to stay in range to be of any use, it would probably have a limited shelf life. You would also need a receiving platform or at least a device at the destination to avoid splatter.
More significantly, transporters can send cargo. Why would Kodos need to starve his population if he could have ordered provisions on sub-space deliveroo?
So it seems to me that this type of transportation has its place in canon but with serious limitations. It should only work from a designated station with sufficient power consumption. It relies on a subspace network vulnerable to sabotage. It requires allies to run a receiving pad or spies to set up a receiving pad in enemy territory. It requires strategies to prevent enemies detecting the signal and tracing it to source.
The way it was portrayed in ST09 was very sloppy. The Enterprise should have been closer to Delta Vega. In Into Darkness, they should have tracked the signal through sub-space system. How Khan evaded detection should have been an open question for enquiring Federation minds (even if we don't need to know the answer).
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Well if we're making up technobabble so Trek does exactly what we want, how we want then they should have inverted the trans-phasic bobble dynamics. That would have done it but faster.
But I want my made up technobabble to match. Trans-phasic bobble dynamics are already used to create Yeoman Rand's giant tower of hair. How could that help with transporters? Are you mad? Or just Wesley Crusher?
Plug her hair directly into the transporter matrix to harness it's strength!
Reverse the polarity first and you've got a deal, friend!
TOS exposed Scotty and Spock to three incidents of transwarp-like transporting: first in The Gamesters Of Triskelion, second in Assignment: Earth, and third in That Which Survives. Maybe there was tech transfer with the Providers or research on the Kalandan outpost after a few years. What ever the case, without these events, Scotty and Spock might not be able to fathom the science. 
The way I see it, if they could do it, it's inevitable that Starfleet would figure it out sooner or later.TOS exposed Scotty and Spock to three incidents of transwarp-like transporting: first in The Gamesters Of Triskelion, second in Assignment: Earth, and third in That Which Survives. Maybe there was tech transfer with the Providers or research on the Kalandan outpost after a few years. What ever the case, without these events, Scotty and Spock might not be able to fathom the science.
Just got to figure out why they're not teleporting around the galaxy at the tap of a badge in Discovery's third season
(My headcanon is that the technology was erased in the temporal wars)
The thought of beaming in normally is terrifying. You could be asleep at night and someone could ransport into your house and rob you or murder you. There'd be no privacy. Now Klingons from half-way across the galaxy could beam into a schoolyard or Starfleet Academy with Transwarp beaming.
Maybe that or TPTB on both sides decided that say Transwarp beaming is a superweapon and not to use it. But I'm thinking there has to be an economic or physical reason Transwarp beaming can't be used everday like you have to be a superman like Kahn to survive it or it uses up a whole heap of energy to do it or it only works 9/10.The way I see it, if they could do it, it's inevitable that Starfleet would figure it out sooner or later.
Just got to figure out why they're not teleporting around the galaxy at the tap of a badge in Discovery's third season
(My headcanon is that the technology was erased in the temporal wars)
That's a valid approach. But for myself, I don't adjust my Star Trek "beliefs" to justify anything in JJ-Trek. Those movies are just chewing gum for the mind.
Star Trek: First Contact was the last film I cared enough about to try to rationalize its story content.
I think the logistics are such that it can't be duplicated successfully without killing some people. Kind of like Klingons and phrasing cloak.
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