Site to site transport

[DonIago]

Is it possible that back in Kirk's day it was considered best practice for two transporters to work in tandem where possible? We never see evidence to this effect, but we do always see Our Heroes beaming to pads in other places when they're available.

Unfortunately, in this case the E's transporters malfunctioned so critically that even the other transporter couldn't make up for it. In TNG they'd probably say the transporter caused a feedback loop or some other tech issue.

 

[Timo]

In the TNG era, people always beam to target pads, too, if such are availble - but we see how extremely flexible the system is in DS9 "Dramatis Personae". A Klingon ship initiates transport and then blows up. After the Klingon ship is gone, a red Klingon transporter signal begins to materialize on the Cardassian pad at DS9 Ops. This doesn't work out, so O'Brien resets, and now an amber Cardassian transporter signal materializes on the pad and successfully completes the transport!

Basically, then, we could argue that once a transporter has pushed the victim into the "phased realm" and out into space, the need for transporter machines goes away altogether and the victim just floats to the target on his own. Except the typical transporter also superimposes some sort of a "signal" onto the phased matter, this giving the phenomenon its culturally characteristic color and shape. The signal isn't vitally important, but may improve the survival odds of the victim - and one may even do a sort of transporter CPR with the signal when things begin to go horribly wrong.

A receiving transporter may also "grab" incoming phased matter, much like Kirk's grabbed Gary Seven, and Sisko's grabbed the hapless Klingon in the above episode. This may be a default setting, a combined targeting aid and safety/emergency procedure. This doesn't make it an equal partner in two-transporter tango yet, and if the sending machine has done its job properly, then the "grabbing" feature, a phased matter funnel of sorts, adds nothing to the process.

Combining these two, or choosing from them, allows us to think of Kirk's TMP transporter as either the active or the passive party.

1) Active reaches to Earth and phases Sonak and the NCO/NPC beaming up with him, then waits for them to arrive, but blows in the middle of the process - so it needs to be "overridden" and SF HQ be commanded to "pull them back" by becoming the active party. "We", that is, everybody involved, needs "more signal" to ensure the safe return of the phased matter to SF HQ, but the "signal" is not part of Kirk's machine, it's SF HQ's which Kirk is bossing around in his inimitable style.

2) Passive just waits for the phased forms of Sonak and sidekick to arrive. But for reason X, it's not a simple beam-up - it faces a sudden "redline" snag, perhaps in the reception-aiding funnel. All Kirk tells SF HQ to do is "override" this malfunctioning funnel, that is, a device that is jammed on both "on" and "grind to pulp" while having it on "off" would allow for Sonak to arrive intact even if two centimeters to the left from planned.

But honestly, one, there was little reason to justify going on board via shuttle in the first place even if the ship's transporters weren't working yet since the starbase's would have been. It's just an excuse to have a good, long, slow look at the ship in stages of revelation.

That's not "little reason". That's the reason, also in-universe.

When the ship's transporters fail to work, Kirk stops trying to get to his ship. Instead, he decides to get to Scotty to bitch and moan. Scotty is well prepared for this, and does the right thing in placating Kirk with a sightseeing ride. And no doubt Kirk expected nothing less. Just beaming up directly to the ship would not have served Kirk's interests at that point. And him and Scotty beaming from the orbital station to the ship would have ill served the interests of both.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRTStarlight]

Basically we could argue that once a transporter has pushed the victim into the "phased realm" and out into space, the need for transporter machines goes away altogether and the victim just floats to the target on his own.

That seems weird. As I understand it, the active transporter reads the target's information while taking it apart at the quantum level, and I believe those processes are simultaneous, turning the target and the target's information into an energy signal and sending it through subspace. If the distance is too great, or the intervening material too thick or dense, or some energy barrier between the target and the transporter causes too much interference, the active transporter either cannot get a lock, or send the signal through.

If nothing prevents a transporter lock, the process begins, dematerialization takes place, and the signal is sent via subspace. The active transporter either must reassemble the target at the destination site, which again must be clear or free of interference, or a second transporter must complete that task by intercepting the signal, reading it, and reassembling the target using the encoded information in the signal.

Except the typical transporter also superimposes some sort of a "signal" onto the phased matter, this giving the phenomenon its culturally characteristic color and shape. The signal isn't vitally important, but may improve the survival odds of the victim - and one may even do a sort of transporter CPR with the signal when things begin to go horribly wrong.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, or transport items, and any number of unusual visual effects may be possible given the technology in use.

A receiving transporter may also "grab" incoming phased matter, much like Kirk's grabbed Gary Seven, and Sisko's grabbed the hapless Klingon in the above episode. This may be a default setting, a combined targeting aid and safety/emergency procedure. This doesn't make it an equal partner in two-transporter tango yet, and if the sending machine has done its job properly, then the "grabbing" feature, a phased matter funnel of sorts, adds nothing to the process.

Intercepting an incoming signal may be the default of any transporter mechanism since reassembly by an on-site transporter likely is safer, takes less energy, or provides better security by control incoming matter and checking it over for infections, pathogens, weapons, etc., and assuring the incoming travelers are not in a place they shouldn't be (like a high security area). Bypassing that default may be possible, but I think it would take knowledge of the other systems and some effort. Gary 7 didn't expect any transporters in the 1960's, so they didn't use any safeguards to insure they weren't intercepted. Still, it was a bit of bad luck his beam passed through or near enough the Enterprise's systems to be intercepted. How far they might reach out looking for incoming transporter signals is unknown, but I wouldn't expect it to be too far. But considering how far that signal was sent, maybe it hit the whole Earth, expecting the only transporter system there to pick it up and funnel it in, but the Enterprise was hit first since it was in orbit and on the correct side of the planet at the time, and therefore closer, even if only a little.

Combining these two, or choosing from them, allows us to think of Kirk's TMP transporter as either the active or the passive party.

I think it's clear the Enterprise's transporters were the active system in TMP accident.

1) Active reaches to Earth and phases Sonak and the NCO/NPC beaming up with him, then waits for them to arrive, but blows in the middle of the process - so it needs to be "overridden" and SF HQ be commanded to "pull them back" by becoming the active party. "We", that is, everybody involved, needs "more signal" to ensure the safe return of the phased matter to SF HQ, but the "signal" is not part of Kirk's machine, it's SF HQ's which Kirk is bossing around in his inimitable style.

I doubt the transportee just reassembles themselves without tech intervention at the destination site. It either takes the sender's transporter, which has demonstrated it can reach that far and read the area, to do it, or another system at the destination (or a relay station, I guess) to put them back together or pass the signal farther along to a third, fourth, etc, system, IMO.

I scoff as transwarp beaming, or whatever it is called, and question what they did or can do with it, but that's another matter.

When the Enterprise's transporter system malfunctioned in TMP, the signal began to degrade and neither they, nor the starbase's transporter system, could get a lock on the signal fast enough to save them. The corrupted signal was put back together, but essentially in the wrong order or form, or inside out, and the two people didn't survive.

That's not "little reason". That's the reason, also in-universe.

Kirk even complained the ship's transporters weren't working. However, they never gave one reason to suggest why he couldn't use a starbase transporter to beam on board. The real reason seems clear that the writer wanted to show off the new Enterprise slowly and in stages of revelation (mostly to an audience who hasn't seen it yet or any new Trek for years and years), and Scotty may have even wanted to show off his ship to his captain, and Kirk may have even enjoyed it, but he was in a hurry and had other things to do and other things on his mind – and he probably had already seen plenty of footage of the refit process that doubtlessly has numerous cameras on it and can be viewed by the public live on StarshipsAreUs.Org, or more official Starfleet coverage, so he's seen it. This may have been a more active experience (even slower or more tedious), but it wasn't surprising or something he likely hadn't seen already. And V'Ger was only 3 days away and the Earth was likely doomed unless they get there PDQ, so taking time out for fun wasn't something he'd probably do. So I see no in-universe reason why he didn't use the starbase's transporters to beam aboard.

Just beaming up directly to the ship would not have served Kirk's interests at that point. And him and Scotty beaming from the orbital station to the ship would have ill served the interests of both.

I don't buy it. If both of those boys wanted to look and had the time, they didn't need the excuse the transporters weren't working and Kirk wouldn't have complained they weren't working. It's just my opinion they should have come up with a better reason to show off the ship or make room for Spock, and killing that next generation's pride of Vulcan and the next Spock so cruelly was just . . . cheap. But YMMV.

 

[at Quark's]

Also interesting: how are systems that are capable of transporting themselves supposed to work? For example the 29th century Borg internal transporter nodes? Or even those 'mobile transporters' they have in some episodes tagged on?

 

[Ithekro]

Could the more advanced future (of the future) tech devices hijack someone else's transporter node as an anchor, or could it use a kind of replicator technology to replicated and transport itself to the location and then beam the wearer to the new unit, that dematerialize the original back into the replicated units memory for future use. Or just have a second one in the buffer at all times and they just switch places on transport.

 

[at Quark's]

^well, my own thought was something along the line of redundant systems that didn't all 'phase out' and 'phase in' (or whatever) at the same time. But it's still a bit weird when you consider it. Just like that mobile emitter. You could argue it only uses the doctor as a means to move itself around

 

[JRTStarlight]

It might be possible to send two signals, each at different speeds, and send the slower anticipated re-materialization routine first, then dematerialize the target and transporter unit and send that at a faster speed, coordinated so both signals arrive at the target destination simultaneously.

But I dislike that whole notion.

 

[Timo]

That seems weird. As I understand it, the active transporter reads the target's information while taking it apart at the quantum level

The thing is, transporting isn't described like this in the Trek universe at all. Notably absent are any expressions suggesting "taking apart", except when McCoy huffs and puffs. In contrast, we see people put through the first stage of transporting, turned from visible and tangible to invisible and intangible - and then continue existing as an integrated and interactive whole until moved elsewhere and/or turned back to normal.

Intercepting an incoming signal may be the default of any transporter mechanism since reassembly by an on-site transporter likely is safer, takes less energy, or provides better security by control incoming matter and checking it over for infections, pathogens, weapons, etc., and assuring the incoming travelers are not in a place they shouldn't be (like a high security area).

This would make one question why the use of a receiving transporter is so uncommon in practice. When there is no receiving platform, the choices would be a) beam down anyway and b) don't beam down. And the latter ought to always win if receiving platforms really are significant for safety.

We have ample evidence that once turned into a transportable form, the victim can be handled much like a UPS shipment - rerouted, temporarily stored, sent into an address that no longer exists and bounced back, kept going even though the sending city was flooded out of existence, perhaps even digitized for one stretch of the voyage. Transporting where two machines keep constant vigil over the package is at most possible, but clearly not necessary nor commonplace. Speculating on an operating principle that in fact relies on two machines watching over it all is fruitless; speculating on one that benefits from a second machine should be done with moderation.

But considering how far that signal was sent, maybe it hit the whole Earth, expecting the only transporter system there to pick it up and funnel it in, but the Enterprise was hit first since it was in orbit and on the correct side of the planet at the time, and therefore closer, even if only a little.

No doubt a transporter signal is a suitably weird phenomenon that allows for odd geometries, such as seeming "spreading" or "dodging" or whatnot. Perhaps an advanced transporter might even push its beam through the Earth. But Gary Seven is a good example of transporting not being about machines, but about a natural phenomenon: no matter who builds the machine, another machine built for the same purpose (by aliens from across millennia!) will be able to handle the package. This undermines the idea of a "signal" consisting of data organized by the cultural quirks of the user, as such would be impossible to handle by another culture. Unless we insert UT technology into the transporter, that is...

I think it's clear the Enterprise's transporters were the active system in TMP accident.

Two factors cast serious doubt on that. One, the sender is supposed to stop sending to avoid the calamity. Two, the sender is supposed to boost his signal in order to get the package delivered intact.

Whatever the receiver is supposed to do, the technobabble on that is actually almost nonexistentially thin. Which is natural in a sense - Kirk would look silly giving himself voice commands, even if he's doing crucial things with his fingers. But the fact that Kirk gives crucial-sounding voice commands to the other end, while that end has nothing to say to Kirk, suggests Kirk isn't an empowered party in this affair.

I doubt the transportee just reassembles themselves without tech intervention at the destination site.

But the thing is, this isn't about tech. Phasing is a natural phenomenon, and phased packages exist regardless of the exact machinery involved.

So I see no in-universe reason why he didn't use the starbase's transporters to beam aboard.

But you list so many good ones! Kirk is mildly annoyed that the transporters aren't working. He isn't in any hurry, though - he takes his sweet time taking the deliberate long route not just with the little space pod, but with the turbolift as well. And he smiles all the way to the Bridge.

Kirk got exactly what he wanted, it seems. And the first half of the movie is all about that: the world may go up in flames, but for Kirk it's just an excuse for a good time.

TImo Saloniemi

 

[JRTStarlight]

The thing is, transporting isn't described like this in the Trek universe at all. Notably absent are any expressions suggesting "taking apart", except when McCoy huffs and puffs. In contrast, we see people put through the first stage of transporting, turned from visible and tangible to invisible and intangible - and then continue existing as an integrated and interactive whole until moved elsewhere and/or turned back to normal.

Well, a medical man should know. And being converted into energy, beamed somewhere, and then converted back to their "original form," does strongly suggest your constituent matter parts are no longer being held together in the normal fashion at some point, anyway. There is also a notable change from Wrath of Khan onward. Prior, one was immobile and had no real sense of the passage of time, though in Mirror, Mirror Kirk claimed to get dizzy in transport, but mostly they did little and moved little if at all and experienced nothing mid transport. And whatever sensation they got in the transporter buffer may have been imagined. After TMP, they seemed more able to move, even conduct an uninterrupted conversation, and by TNG they could interact and grab things in some in-between zone. Inconsistencies are most likely attributed to never really knowing how the tech works and individual writers taking whatever liberties they wished to make a story work.

I wonder what Scotty was thinking for those 75 years he was in the pattern buffer.

This would make one question why the use of a receiving transporter is so uncommon in practice. When there is no receiving platform, the choices would be a) beam down anyway and b) don't beam down. And the latter ought to always win if receiving platforms really are significant for safety.

Not really. Taking a shuttle down or crossing the road is not without risks. Transporting to an area without a receiving transporter just means if something goes wrong, the odds are greater you will die. Normally, nothing goes wrong, and such a transport may be (in fact some say is) safer than most alternative methods of getting there. A receiving transporter just would add an extra layer of backup and protection, as well as take less energy (perhaps) and safeguard against unwanted visitors (microbes, hostile Klingons, weapons, explosives, for example) by providing a safe and open conduit but only into a protected area.

We have ample evidence that once turned into a transportable form, the victim can be handled much like a UPS shipment - rerouted, temporarily stored, sent into an address that no longer exists and bounced back, kept going even though the sending city was flooded out of existence, perhaps even digitized for one stretch of the voyage. Transporting where two machines keep constant vigil over the package is at most possible, but clearly not necessary nor commonplace. Speculating on an operating principle that in fact relies on two machines watching over it all is fruitless; speculating on one that benefits from a second machine should be done with moderation.

I don't know how many examples, if any, you can dig up of the sending transporter mechanism being destroyed before transport was complete, but the transport being completed anyway without the aid of a second receiving transporter to finish the task, but I don't think there should be any. That doesn't mean there aren't, but none come immediately to mind.

Transporter tech is daft and problematic, of course, as are many other Trek technologies (replicators, holograms, artificial gravity, etc), and arguing about their inconsistencies as if there is one true and correct way they "actually work" is almost pointless, beyond entertainment, and entertaining some ideas about how it might work or what they problems might be.

Memory Alpha suggests (though who always know from what stories they derive these ideas, or if it comes from elsewhere) that your so-called package can hang around in a pattern buffer for 420 seconds or 7 minutes before it will start to degrade. Scotty, of course, found a way to stretch that to 75 years, but not reliably, and Janeway, IIRC, was hiding telepaths in the pattern buffer for relatively short inspection periods, but even that began to cause health problems, so in that way it's not too much like a UPS shipment, unless you mean getting a package that was damaged in transit happens more than you'd like.

No doubt a transporter signal is a suitably weird phenomenon that allows for odd geometries, such as seeming "spreading" or "dodging" or whatnot. Perhaps an advanced transporter might even push its beam through the Earth. But Gary Seven is a good example of transporting not being about machines, but about a natural phenomenon: no matter who builds the machine, another machine built for the same purpose (by aliens from across millennia!) will be able to handle the package. This undermines the idea of a "signal" consisting of data organized by the cultural quirks of the user, as such would be impossible to handle by another culture. Unless we insert UT technology into the transporter, that is...

Despite some minor cosmetic differences that may be introduced at the beginning or end, if it is a transporter beam, or a compatible transporter beam, it probably replies on the same scientific principles and therefore any machine capable of handling those can read those signals since they are not cultural or arbitrary. There may only be one way to represent an electron in such a way, or a neutron or proton, or their relative positions and velocities. If some cultural oddity is possible or is introduced, then an alien system won't recognize it, or won't be able to handle it. And Gray 7 had a machine – a transporter mechanism, both on the homeworld thousands of light years away and in his office walk-in vault.

Two factors cast serious doubt on that. One, the sender is supposed to stop sending to avoid the calamity. Two, the sender is supposed to boost his signal in order to get the package delivered intact.

Whatever the receiver is supposed to do, the technobabble on that is actually almost nonexistentially thin. Which is natural in a sense - Kirk would look silly giving himself voice commands, even if he's doing crucial things with his fingers. But the fact that Kirk gives crucial-sounding voice commands to the other end, while that end has nothing to say to Kirk, suggests Kirk isn't an empowered party in this affair.

If another system (starbase transporters) are handling it as the active system, then the malfunction on the Enterprise should be irrelevant. The starbase would beam a person to the ship just like any transporter beams a person someplace and rematerializes them at the target destination sans assistance.

In a two-transporter hand off, the first system could just finish the job if the second one failed, or vice versa. When two transporters are involved, the whole idea is one can take up the slack if the other fails. Therefore I do not think they were using a two-transporter hand off in the way they probably should have been.

What I think happened was the Enterprise was using its own transporters without assistance from the starbase (which is maybe not atypical, but if I had backups, I'd use them). A malfunction occurred. Engineering tried to alert the transporter room before they engaged, but were too late. Rand had started beaming two people aboard. She tried to stop it but couldn't. Rand requested the starbase to "Override us. Pull them back" mid-transport, showing definitively it was the Enterprise that had the active system. "Us." Kirk then took over after Rand requested the starbase transporters try to grab the signal and put them back together. Kirk suggested to starbase transporter control boosting the matter gain, as captains often do by assuming one more expert in their field needs his help or suggestions, but sometimes lesser mortals panic, and Kirk does not panic by nature, so even if they are already doing it, there is little harm in suggesting or encouraging that course of action. He fights for more signal, or laments they need more, but they don't have it.

Had Kirk been more expert, doubtless he would have cross-circuited to B, but he wasn't, and he didn't.

But the thing is, this isn't about tech. Phasing is a natural phenomenon, and phased packages exist regardless of the exact machinery involved.

Yes, the matter stream exists, sort of like how a photon of light exist as it travels ever onward under its own steam, but how long the matter stream can do that before its signal degrades (7 minutes) is short, and it can't just rematerialize itself "back" into its original form without tech assistance that I know of. Although, Chekov felt those Klingons they beamed into the pattern buffer were "non existent" and should remain that way in Day of the Dove.

But you list so many good ones! Kirk is mildly annoyed that the transporters aren't working. He isn't in any hurry, though - he takes his sweet time taking the deliberate long route not just with the little space pod, but with the Turbolift as well. And he smiles all the way to the Bridge.

Kirk got exactly what he wanted, it seems. And the first half of the movie is all about that: the world may go up in flames, but for Kirk it's just an excuse for a good time.

Kirk wanted a change, sure, and regretted giving up command, but to even suggest he didn't care about the world as long as he got what he wanted is just as unlikely that he was happy his girlfriend died on the transporter pad since it saved him the trouble of breaking up with her. Kirk is not like that. And he was in a hurry. No reason not to relish the moment, but that moment was fleeting.

 

[Ithekro]

Kirk was only relatively in a hurry. He still have half a day before Enterprise would launch under his own orders to speed out to intercept the intruder cloud. He could afford to spend eight minutes or so on a beauty pass of his ship, since there wasn't too much he could do as captain to make the ship get out of dock faster. Mr. Scott, maybe, but he probably had time between given instruction to various people to do check and double checks, calibrations, and diagnostics, to go get Kirk and come back before they would be completed. Plus, Captain Decker was tweaking with the transporters already from Engineering (that's were we first meet him...and what they were doing right before the transporter malfunction...they had just identified a problem, but they were working on it still when the transporter was engaged).

 

[Timewalker]

Kirk wanted a change, sure, and regretted giving up command, but to even suggest he didn't care about the world as long as he got what he wanted is just as unlikely that he was happy his girlfriend died on the transporter pad since it saved him the trouble of breaking up with her. Kirk is not like that. And he was in a hurry. No reason not to relish the moment, but that moment was fleeting.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about Admiral Lori Ciana. She was not some junior NCO, nor was she Sonak's "sidekick." According to the TMP novel, she was Kirk's ex-wife (their contract marriage had just expired after the one-year-term was up). She was either going to the ship on Starfleet business, or maybe to see Kirk off, or to talk about renewing their marriage contract - it's been decades since I last read the novel, and don't recall offhand why she would have been beaming up to the ship.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

If having a transporter pad to beam to is such a big issue on a planet where none would be, here's a bright idea: beam down a transporter unit set to activate upon re-materialization first and send the people and goods that you're trying to transport to it.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Apart from Miramanee I never knew Kirk ever officially got married. Even that one might not "count" in some ways since it wasn't Kirk so much as Kirok.

Contract marriage? Sounds practical, but not particularly romantic. It's probably a good thing for high pressure professional types. I now gather Lori Ciana was an admiral or vice admiral, so her loss to StarFleet would have been an even bigger deal, but in the movie we just never get the impression Kirk is terribly broken up over it. But he is capable of compartmentalization like that and he did have more important things on his mind, so he can mourn her loss later, assuming he or Earth even survives long enough to do that.

Transporting a transporter might take considerable time, effort, and cost, just for a minuscule increase in the survival rate. Mostly, they certainly do not have the time.

If transwarp beaming tech is allowed to stand as canon, though, it makes perfect sense to transport those to every planet you can, and from there every planet they can, and soon you can get anywhere in the galaxy without ever needing a ship and in virtually no time.

 

[Timewalker]

Apart from Miramanee I never knew Kirk ever officially got married. Even that one might not "count" in some ways since it wasn't Kirk so much as Kirok.

Contract marriage? Sounds practical, but not particularly romantic. It's probably a good thing for high pressure professional types. I now gather Lori Ciana was an admiral or vice admiral, so her loss to StarFleet would have been an even bigger deal, but in the movie we just never get the impression Kirk is terribly broken up over it. But he is capable of compartmentalization like that and he did have more important things on his mind, so he can mourn her loss later, assuming he or Earth even survives long enough to do that.

I've dug out my copy of the Motion Picture novel. Lori Ciana was a Vice-Admiral, working for Admiral Nogura, and she's the one who told Kirk about V'ger, plus the fact that the Enterprise was the only ship that could be ready and available in time to intercept it. Kirk saw the opportunity to get the Enterprise back and went for it.

Yes, Kirk and Lori were married - a standard one-year contract marriage, which Kirk had been subtly maneuvered into as one more reason to accept his admiral's rank and stay on Earth. According to the novel, Nogura was the one who did the maneuvering, Lori cooperated, and Kirk genuinely did love her. Her death hurt all the more because he didn't know why she tried to beam up - whether she was going along on the mission, or whether it was for personal reasons.

Keep in mind, however, that this was only in the novelized version of the movie, not in the actual movie itself.

 

[Timo]

Well, a medical man should know.

Why? An MD riding aboard an ambulance shouldn't be expected to know the first thing about the vehicle's transmission.

There is also a notable change from Wrath of Khan onward. Prior, one was immobile and had no real sense of the passage of time, though in Mirror, Mirror Kirk claimed to get dizzy in transport, but mostly they did little and moved little if at all and experienced nothing mid transport.

Why would one do anything mid-transport? Moving a little already establishes that one can move, and indeed this is a fundamental characteristic of the machine - you always end up in a slightly different pose at B from the one you held at A, because of the studio technique used for creating the illusion. So I don't see any change there - just a very rare occasion of Kirk holding a conversation through beaming in one example amidst hundreds before and after.

I wonder what Scotty was thinking for those 75 years he was in the pattern buffer.

You can freeze people in there, obviously. Doesn't mean it would happen particularly often - certainly our TNG heroes didn't think that the still-active transporter of the Jenolan would or could be a survival aid, even though at least one of them was an engineer actually familiar with transporters.

Not really. Taking a shuttle down or crossing the road is not without risks. Transporting to an area without a receiving transporter just means if something goes wrong, the odds are greater you will die.

Yes. So why take the one-terminal transporter every time? Ben Sisko beamed from SF Academy to his New Orleans living room for dinner every night; we eventually see his living room and it has no terminal. That the one-terminal transporter is the default choice is the thing that makes one doubt there would be anything wrong with it at all.

I don't know how many examples, if any, you can dig up of the sending transporter mechanism being destroyed before transport was complete, but the transport being completed anyway without the aid of a second receiving transporter to finish the task, but I don't think there should be any. That doesn't mean there aren't, but none come immediately to mind.

One would certainly assume Gary Seven's masters to be prepared for such a case. Indeed, one has to wonder whether Kirk's transporter would be able to intercept a beam so fundamentally different that it actually moved at FTL, unlike his own beams - in which case Seven could not count on either end terminal of his transporting process surviving throughout the millennium-long process.

...in that way it's not too much like a UPS shipment, unless you mean getting a package that was damaged in transit happens more than you'd like.

Not really more, just a bit faster than with cardboard boxes; all things considered, a transport process taking ten minutes would be the equivalent of a UPS box spending ten years in circulation.

Despite some minor cosmetic differences that may be introduced at the beginning or end, if it is a transporter beam, or a compatible transporter beam, it probably replies on the same scientific principles and therefore any machine capable of handling those can read those signals since they are not cultural or arbitrary.

With a lump of phased matter, that holds. With a signal that is essentially computer code, it doesn't - code is always arbitrary and incompatible. In which case we have to evoke UT, but even that device only handles humanoid languages with any sort of reliability. Transporter machines talking to each other would be like ferns trying to understand tigers.

Therefore I do not think they were using a two-transporter hand off in the way they probably should have been.

Might be they wanted to test the ship's systems with some sort of an ill-advised "big toe only" partial handoff, which ended up killing Sonak in two ways: a malfunction that shouldn't have mattered, did, and a muddled division of authority and responsibility hindered the rescue efforts.

What I think happened...

Makes sense, and could be much the same as what happened in "Dramatis Personae", only with sending and receiving reversed. A machine sends/receives and malfunctions; another is able to intervene because the relevant package is still/already physically inside that other machine (or, alternately, "inside" in some weird sense relating to some weird tunneling phenomenon where location is ill defined until X).

...and it can't just rematerialize itself "back" into its original form without tech assistance that I know of.

That is, unless this is what always happens in normal transport. This wouldn't much help somebody who's degrading inside the pattern buffer.

Although, Chekov felt those Klingons they beamed into the pattern buffer were "non existent" and should remain that way in Day of the Dove.

Well, they'd be ghosts, which is a nice synonym for non existent.

Kirk wanted a change, sure, and regretted giving up command, but to even suggest he didn't care about the world as long as he got what he wanted is just as unlikely that he was happy his girlfriend died on the transporter pad since it saved him the trouble of breaking up with her. Kirk is not like that. And he was in a hurry. No reason not to relish the moment, but that moment was fleeting.

Shatner shows us a man who isn't particularly moved by anything besides the chance to be aboard the ship. He also shows a man who isn't in a hurry, even if he tells everybody else to be in one. He deliberately wastes time getting a Vulcan science officer for purely selfish reasons, too. I really can't see him caring about the world at that point. (Or about that NCO who died with Sonak, regardless of whether she happened to be named Lori Ciana and/or was one of Kirk's exes.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRTStarlight]

Why? An MD riding aboard an ambulance shouldn't be expected to know the first thing about the vehicle's transmission.

Nor would he be expected to work on the transmission, but working on the human body, he'd be expected to know all sorts of things about the medical effects of a transporter on a human body or living things.

Why would one do anything mid-transport? Moving a little already establishes that one can move, and indeed this is a fundamental characteristic of the machine - you always end up in a slightly different pose at B from the one you held at A, because of the studio technique used for creating the illusion. So I don't see any change there - just a very rare occasion of Kirk holding a conversation through beaming in one example amidst hundreds before and after.

Usually they beam in stiff as a board, and later they move more. It's just a change. But it's important since before you couldn't really assess your beam in situation until after you finished materializing, while later you might assess the situation, or maybe even take out your phaser and adjust the settings before completely materailized. If they can have conversations, or grab floating stuff in the matter stream, who knows what else they can do?

You can freeze people in there, obviously. Doesn't mean it would happen particularly often - certainly our TNG heroes didn't think that the still-active transporter of the Jenolan would or could be a survival aid, even though at least one of them was an engineer actually familiar with transporters.

Geordie plays it safe and conforms to specs, so he'd never do anything that risky, or would tend to discount it since survival might be 100 to 1 or whatever. What else could Scotty do, though? He lived, Franklin died, and we could expect that trick wouldn't normally work or be worth the risk in most situations.

Yes. So why take the one-terminal transporter every time? Ben Sisko beamed from SF Academy to his New Orleans living room for dinner every night; we eventually see his living room and it has no terminal. That the one-terminal transporter is the default choice is the thing that makes one doubt there would be anything wrong with it at all.

It's not overly dangerous – there is just no backup when using one transporter. If I want to insure I get somewhere on time, I could have a back up car follow me, too, so if my car breaks down, the back up is right there and I can likely get to my destination on time. To have backup transporters everywhere would probably cost a ton. It might save money in energy, but would only pay for the secondary back up in savings if you used it often enough, and a private transporter wouldn't be cost efficient or practical in most instances. Commercial use or high traffic public use might make it worth it, but that usually wouldn't be the case for little jaunts like Sisko did.

And a general rule, I also doubt transporting is free at that time any more than flying in a jet is free today. It might be quite expensive. It's quicker and generally safer but I doubt it's free. Military types might get to slide on costs since Uncle Sam (or whatever government StarFleet or the FoP is or has or works under) tends to pick up the check for their personnel's transportation costs and medical bills. That doesn't make them free. Maybe Sisko had to pay something for that privilege, but it's more likely whoever wrote that just thought it was free since many things in Trek stories seem free.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with just taking one car, but if it breaks down, well, you'll be late. If your one and only transporter breaks down, you might be dead. If this only happens 1 in a billion times, maybe they don't care enough to pay for backup. Maybe you do. Maybe crossing the street kills more than 1 in a billion times, so it's not a huge risk.

One would certainly assume Gary Seven's masters to be prepared for such a case. Indeed, one has to wonder whether Kirk's transporter would be able to intercept a beam so fundamentally different that it actually moved at FTL, unlike his own beams - in which case Seven could not count on either end terminal of his transporting process surviving throughout the millennium-long process.

I think all transporters work at FTL since they use subspace tech (from what I've read) but they are just short range. I wouldn't expect Gary 7's master to be prepared for an intercepting transporter at Earth in the late 1960's since if one is there, then they almost already have failed. And we don't know if the beam is that fundamentally different. Apart from greater distance, it could be the same. And from in-story fact, it was similar enough to be intercepted by a transporter 300 years more advanced than that time period should have elsewhere.

What? Millennium-long process? You mean if it were STL? Or light speed? Well, even a photon of light experiences no time (relativistic effects). But I think G7's and Kirk's transporters use FTL tech all the time. They scan things and shoot at things and do all number of things at FTL speeds using subspace Tech, so this seems no different. And it is a fact G7 has his own transporter system (he used it to beam around while on Earth). I don't see the mystery here, or the resistance to assuming two transporters work better, or at least are safer, however marginally, and might in some instances even be required to make a long range transport.

Not really more, just a bit faster than with cardboard boxes; all things considered, a transport process taking ten minutes would be the equivalent of a UPS box spending ten years in circulation.

How they arrived at this 7 minute pattern buffer limit is a mystery to me, but the equivalency of 1 minute of transporter time to one year on a truck seems quite arbitrary. However, a UPS package could survive for much longer than 7 years on a truck, while a person normally should never be able to survive past 7 minutes in a pattern buffer.

With a lump of phased matter, that holds. With a signal that is essentially computer code, it doesn't - code is always arbitrary and incompatible. In which case we have to evoke UT, but even that device only handles humanoid languages with any sort of reliability. Transporter machines talking to each other would be like ferns trying to understand tigers.

We don't know the signal is just arbitrary culturally biased computer code. And there might be a UT equivalent, or Internet language browser standard the universe imposes. It seems there is since they can do it, so one should look for reasons why it is instead of assuming it cannot possibly be.

Might be they wanted to test the ship's systems with some sort of an ill-advised "big toe only" partial handoff, which ended up killing Sonak in two ways: a malfunction that shouldn't have mattered, did, and a muddled division of authority and responsibility hindered the rescue efforts.

Due to Rand's error? Her agonizer should straighten her out.

That is, unless this is what always happens in normal transport. This wouldn't much help somebody who's degrading inside the pattern buffer.

Well, they do suggest one should not leave the transporter until the job is complete. I just don't see the idea of a self-completing signal working, or why anyone would ever try to grab it and fix it if it were intended to be self-completing.

Well, they'd be ghosts, which is a nice synonym for non-existent.

Why would they be ghost? Ghosts hang around for centuries. After 7 minutes, they'd be nothing – non-existent.

Shatner shows us a man who isn't particularly moved by anything besides the chance to be aboard the ship. He also shows a man who isn't in a hurry, even if he tells everybody else to be in one. He deliberately wastes time getting a Vulcan science officer for purely selfish reasons, too. I really can't see him caring about the world at that point. (Or about that NCO who died with Sonak, regardless of whether she happened to be named Lori Ciana and/or was one of Kirk's exes.)

She was a vice admiral, apparently, and not a non commissioned officer. And knowing the value of Spock and how much Kirk owed his success to such a man, feeling another Vulcan science officer would be similar and help him succeed doesn't seem like a selfish thing to do. But if you enjoy this darker view of Kirk, or need it to be true for some reason, it's not like I can disprove Kirk always had a baser motivation for most everything he ever did. I just don't think he did, myself, and he was quite a guy.

 

[Timo]

Nor would he be expected to work on the transmission, but working on the human body, he'd be expected to know all sorts of things about the medical effects of a transporter on a human body or living things.

Far be it from me to doubt the medical competence of our medical hero. It's just that his colleagues appear to doubt him when he rants about the transporter.

From his expressions, I gather he might know as much about the transporter as today's medics know about alternating current - but fail to convey the physical reality to the audience because of all the exaggeration, much like silly comparisons of AC electrocutions to lightning strikes would confuse that issue. Importantly, nobody seems to take McCoy seriously on anything relating to transporters (even though Scotty's express concerns are always noted), and indeed when another medic a hundred years later has an aversion to the device, it's treated as an outright irrational phobia.

Usually they beam in stiff as a board, and later they move more. It's just a change. [..] If they can have conversations, or grab floating stuff in the matter stream, who knows what else they can do?

Probably a lot - there are instances of somebody unholstering a phaser, say (although this will take a bit of digging up I'll try to get done ASAP). It's what happens during transport, rather than at the beginning and the end, that has "always" been dictated by studio reality into involving motion, reaction and interaction.

Geordie plays it safe and conforms to specs, so he'd never do anything that risky, or would tend to discount it since survival might be 100 to 1 or whatever.

But none of the lesser experts go "Hey, what if there's somebody inside?", either. Typically, there indeed is somebody inside when a transporter is in use - so something should be guiding the thoughts of our heroes away from stasis, be it days or decades in length.

It's not overly dangerous – there is just no backup when using one transporter. If I want to insure I get somewhere on time, I could have a back up car follow me, too, so if my car breaks down, the back up is right there and I can likely get to my destination on time.

But who has a backup car, like, ever? Once you get used to the idea of doing one-terminal transporting, why go for "extra safety" when you know in your still-intact guts that you have no use for it?

The cases involving two transporter pads don't significantly correlate with a requirement for greater safety or reliability. Such a concern may lurk there in the background - I just don't feel we have good reason to think it's there.

And a general rule, I also doubt transporting is free at that time any more than flying in a jet is free today. It might be quite expensive. It's quicker and generally safer but I doubt it's free.

One wonders about "that time". In TNG it certainly sounds dirt cheap. But even in TOS, it's never suggested to consume any of Kirk's resources unless his ship is one step from shutting down altogether (ST4:TVH); if his employer is fine with such "reckless" use, then wouldn't most employers be? The military today minds the use of its precious vehicles, even in (battle)field conditions; that Starfleet just plain doesn't mind Kirk's use of the transporter might suggest it's more comparable to him using the elevator than the HMMWV - and of it being unlikely that the employer of Senior Janitor Bobby Joe would yell at him for using the elevator, either.

I think all transporters work at FTL since they use subspace tech (from what I've read) but they are just short range.

Well, the long range, high speed variant is specifically called "subspace transporter" when it comes up in TNG. This explicitly comes from the theoretical/abandoned concept of "transporting matter through subspace". If the regular mode doesn't involve this, I can't see how it could be FTL.

Since the regular mode involves short distances, less than a lightsecond in most cases, we naturally can't tell anything about the speed of the "beam". One second more or less is lost in the overall duration of the phasing and dephasing process.

How they arrived at this 7 minute pattern buffer limit is a mystery to me, but the equivalency of 1 minute of transporter time to one year on a truck seems quite arbitrary. However, a UPS package could survive for much longer than 7 years on a truck, while a person normally should never be able to survive past 7 minutes in a pattern buffer.

So let's adjust the ratio a bit more, so that we get the demonstrated degradation effect... That's the point, after all, with a package that in both cases gets sent, rerouted, stored, and hopefully delivered rather than dumped. (It's just that Starfleet hasn't invented a practical "waterproof roof" for its storage corral of "cardboard boxes" yet.)

We don't know the signal is just arbitrary culturally biased computer code.

Of course it is, if it's data derived from scans. Ask any two (million) experts today how they'd code such data, and you get fifty (million) different answers. Data coding is a way to circumvent the analog nature of nature, and as such inherently utterly unnatural.

If it's not pure digital data packaged like the local inventor thinks it optimally should, but rather this "phased matter" analog, then it could be universally compatible. But then we have to either assume that "scanning" is not at all the same as "digitizing", or then suppose that scanning of data is unrelated to the actual process of phasing and dephasing, and just some sort of ultimately irrelevant icing on the cake.

It seems there is since they can do it, so one should look for reasons why it is instead of assuming it cannot possibly be.

The assumption that the device is analog already sidesteps the entire problem, though.

Well, they do suggest one should not leave the transporter until the job is complete. I just don't see the idea of a self-completing signal working, or why anyone would ever try to grab it and fix it if it were intended to be self-completing.

Hmm. If it's a phased matter bubble you shove through phased space from A through walls and space to B, you have to precisely aim and time it, and probably otherwise "encapsulate" it, too, to manage its "dimensions". Such a process might be unfinished when the sending station blows up, even if 100% of the matter is already in phased form and en route; a bit of patting here, stretching there might be required for allowing the re-emergence to be a perfect one.

Why would they be ghost? Ghosts hang around for centuries. After 7 minutes, they'd be nothing – non-existent.

When Chekov wants the Klingons dead, the seven minutes aren't up yet. "Leave them in there" is just his way of saying "Leave them to perish".

It's not as if he's arguing that Kirk should haul along a load of non-existent Klingons or anything. He seems to think that "leave them where they are" will solve the problem for good.

She was a vice admiral, apparently, and not a non commissioned officer.

But the woman who died was a NCO (the extra was decorated that way, even if we can't see that in the finished movie, but we can definitely see she's not wearing flag attire). So either she's not Lori Ciana, or then she's a NCO named Lori Ciana, and whatever she did with or without Kirk is left unstated in either case.

In the wider view, choosing to believe in Lori Ciana requires us to believe in Kirk being a cyborg, too. Greater continuity suggests cranial datalinks are uncommon, though (especially when they come up in DS9). Novelizations complicate things, especially when their writers try to simplify things...

And knowing the value of Spock and how much Kirk owed his success to such a man, feeling another Vulcan science officer would be similar and help him succeed doesn't seem like a selfish thing to do. But if you enjoy this darker view of Kirk, or need it to be true for some reason, it's not like I can disprove Kirk always had a baser motivation for most everything he ever did. I just don't think he did, myself, and he was quite a guy.

I just can't see what other point the movie would have had other than "Kirk has become an asshole, and V'Ger helps him overcome it"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

One wonders about "that time". In TNG it certainly sounds dirt cheap.

Perhaps individuals have their transporter pass scanned first, like a bus pass.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Far be it from me to doubt the medical competence of our medical hero. It's just that his colleagues appear to doubt him when he rants about the transporter.

It may not be a medical problem that he has with it. It could be a safety issue, or a philosophical issue, or something else.

From his expressions, I gather he might know as much about the transporter as today's medics know about alternating current - but fail to convey the physical reality to the audience because of all the exaggeration, much like silly comparisons of AC electrocutions to lightning strikes would confuse that issue. Importantly, nobody seems to take McCoy seriously on anything relating to transporters (even though Scotty's express concerns are always noted), and indeed when another medic a hundred years later has an aversion to the device, it's treated as an outright irrational phobia.

None of that suggests medical people don't know about the medical effects on the human body, or how the thing works in principle – taking people apart and putting them back together.

But none of the lesser experts go "Hey, what if there's somebody inside?", either. Typically, there indeed is somebody inside when a transporter is in use - so something should be guiding the thoughts of our heroes away from stasis, be it days or decades in length.

What are you saying? You think it should have been obvious to others that somebody was in the transporter buffer on a crashed ship?

But who has a backup car, like, ever? Once you get used to the idea of doing one-terminal transporting, why go for "extra safety" when you know in your still-intact guts that you have no use for it?

The cases involving two transporter pads don't significantly correlate with a requirement for greater safety or reliability. Such a concern may lurk there in the background - I just don't feel we have good reason to think it's there.

Some people do have back up cars, though maybe for things other than back up transportation, they could also serve that purpose. And once you pass a certain safety margin with one transporter reliability, most would be fine using just one, even if two were technically safer. Mostly this argument is silly if transporters are a dime a dozen and transporting things is virtually free. Then why not have two, three, even four or more backups? Here's my ten cents – I'll have 11 backups, thank you very much. But my assertion is they are damned expensive, transporting someplace cost more than your average plane ticket, and they can't really afford the redundancy in most cases as a matter of pragmatism in time, energy, or money. However, if it does add some level of safety, and if it does cost less power to rematerialize something on a pad than at a distance, then despite the costs of a redundant unit, high traffic areas might well have more than one transporter. Also, for security reasons, some places may insist you come in on their transporter pad – they may even block general transporter signals attempting to come in any other way.

One wonders about "that time". In TNG it certainly sounds dirt-cheap. But even in TOS, it's never suggested to consume any of Kirk's resources unless his ship is one step from shutting down altogether (ST4:TVH); if his employer is fine with such "reckless" use, then wouldn't most employers be? The military today minds the use of its precious vehicles, even in (battle) field conditions; that Starfleet just plain doesn't mind Kirk's use of the transporter might suggest it's more comparable to him using the elevator than the HMMWV - and of it being unlikely that the employer of Senior Janitor Bobby Joe would yell at him for using the elevator, either.

You still have to compare its cost to taking a shuttle, which might be nearly as expensive. I'm not saying Sisko should have taken a shuttle home everyday instead – I'm saying Sisko should have stayed on campus (or where ever he was) and only gone home for special occasions. We just don't know enough about the cost of running a ship like that, what resources it takes, how big a commitment they are on society, or anything since those items are not very entertaining. But I do imagine it is what preoccupies most of the captain's time - paper work and bookkeeping and reports to justify what he's doing with those things entrusted to him. We just don't tell too many stories about those things.

Well, the long range, high speed variant is specifically called "subspace transporter" when it comes up in TNG. This explicitly comes from the theoretical/abandoned concept of "transporting matter through subspace". If the regular mode doesn't involve this, I can't see how it could be FTL.

Since the regular mode involves short distances, less than a lightsecond in most cases, we naturally can't tell anything about the speed of the "beam". One second more or less is lost in the overall duration of the phasing and dephasing process.

True, we don't know, but I would tend to think both the communicators and the transporters should be using subspace – though the communicators might not be able to contain something as large as a subspace transmitter. Memory Alpha says transporters work using subspace. When they decided that, I don't know, and if it is retroactive, I don't know. The short-range aspects may come about since it could use both light speed signals and subspace signals together. I wish we knew more about it, but as it is, in a way, we already know too much. It's only when they try to make clearer the details of something we have no idea how it would work in real life that we can begin to pick it apart. Still, that's better than saying it's "magic."

So let's adjust the ratio a bit more, so that we get the demonstrated degradation effect... That's the point, after all, with a package that in both cases gets sent, rerouted, stored, and hopefully delivered rather than dumped. (It's just that Starfleet hasn't invented a practical "waterproof roof" for its storage corral of "cardboard boxes" yet.)

It may not be possible to invent a waterproof one – the laws of the universe might prevent it. But Scotty sure demonstrated a highly resistant hydrophobic process. 75 years – damn, son. Break me off a piece of that.

(Although, unbeknownst to the Aberdeen pub-crawler, Scotty was possessed long ago by a benevolent alien life force that protects him, helps him in his work, and assured his transporter signal didn't degrade. How else do you think he got his reputation as a miracle worker?)

Of course it is, if it's data derived from scans. Ask any two (million) experts today how they'd code such data, and you get fifty (million) different answers. Data coding is a way to circumvent the analog nature of nature, and as such inherently utterly unnatural.

There may be fewer ways to encode it than you think and still use minimal space, and the transporter might recognize most of them since it knows what the information must be in general and can figure it out. Point is, if it didn't, it would probably leave it alone. It recognized G7's signal and could handle it. Deal.

Such a process might be unfinished when the sending station blows up, even if 100% of the matter is already in phased form and en route; a bit of patting here, stretching there might be required for allowing the re-emergence to be a perfect one.

But if it is self rematerializing, I would expect to see one example of that before I'd go too far down that rabbit hole. Every sending unit that gets blown up seems to require another unit to pick up the beam and finish the job. Where have you ever seen otherwise?

When Chekov wants the Klingons dead, the seven minutes aren't up yet. "Leave them in there" is just his way of saying "Leave them to perish".

It's not as if he's arguing that Kirk should haul along a load of non-existent Klingons or anything. He seems to think that "leave them where they are" will solve the problem for good.

Well, yeah. So they aren't self unpacking, they still exist in that state in the pattern buffer, but their signals are degrading, and if you wait too long, they will degrade too far so they can't be reformed and still live. Sure, Chekov wanted them dead. You saw what they did to his brother. It was ghastly. So no ghosts. A few ghasts, at best. So close than you can smell them.

But the woman who died was a NCO (the extra was decorated that way, even if we can't see that in the finished movie, but we can definitely see she's not wearing flag attire).

I'm not sure where you are getting this. You say it's not in the movie? I do know Memory Alpha says she was an admiral and she died in THAT transporter accident. But anything from a novel is probably not canon.

In the wider view, choosing to believe in Lori Ciana requires us to believe in Kirk being a cyborg, too. Greater continuity suggests cranial datalinks are uncommon, though (especially when they come up in DS9). Novelizations complicate things, especially when their writers try to simplify things...

Yeah, if this is all from a novel, then as I understand none of it is canon, so if you'd rather she was some unknown NCO, I suppose that's fine. I don't know why you would so strongly resist the novel's facts unless they contradicted canon, or got in your way somehow. But even taking one novel fact to heart doesn't mean you have to take every novel's facts to heart, or even all the facts in that one novel. But that's just a novel idea.

I just can't see what other point the movie would have had other than "Kirk has become an asshole, and V'Ger helps him overcome it"...

Kirk has always been a flawed man, but why is he an asshole here? Stepped on Decker's dream to reclaim his own? Maybe. Felt little at the loss of his Vulcan asset he hardly knew? Maybe. Contract wife of one year snuffs it and he isn't weeping uncontrollably? V'Ger's coming, and he does have bigger things on his mind. Even his reaction to the death of his son and the death of Spock may have caused him to miss a step or two, but he was right back at it. The loss of the Enterprise, too, or the death of billions in that star system. He's just not that outwardly emotional. Does that make him an asshole? I don't know how much he feels, or much or how long he cries at night.

 

[Forbin]

Technically, it's actually site-to-site-thru-site (the transporter itself).

Yes, this. That's what I always assumed - The person is beam from site A, momentarily held in the transporter buffer without being materialized, then beamed directly to site B. You still need the transporter device to do it.

If you wanted to set up a transporter specifically to do site-to-site transports, you wouldn't need a room with the pads, but you'd still need the mechanism and a pattern buffer.