Spoilerific question on beaming (Spoilers, if that wasn't clear)

[donners22]

Most specifically, the beaming of Kirk and Scotty onto the Enterprise at warp.

I know there was some discussion about it being easy to transport things from one planet to another in a solar system, but the rest of the conversation is rather blurry to me.

What I find confusing is just how far they were supposedly beamed. Kirk was sent out on an escape pod, woke up, landed on the planet, ran into a cave, mind melded with Spock, found the Starfleet outpost and was then beamed to Enterprise which was moving at warp.

How far, then, was the Enterprise away? This would have surely taken at least a few hours, which would mean the Enterprise was a hell of a lot further away than a solar system (and certainly more than the established limit of 40,000 kilometres).

Am I completely misunderstanding this or missing something?

 

[Blackmm]

I think one of the episodes of TNG described a "Near warp transfer"

(cp from trek wiki)
A near-warp transport refers to the use of a transporter while a vessel is about to enter warp speeds. Because of the severe spatial distortions a warp field generates, this procedure is highly dangerous and requires extensive adjustments to the transport process as well as an upshift in the annular confinement beam frequency to compensate for the distortions.
If the vessel is currently at warp and needs to transport objects or persons to a stationary location, the ship must first briefly drop out of warp, engage the transporter and then reengage the warp drive.

This was performed when the USS Enterprise-D was responding to an emergency distress call from the USS Constantinople. They received a second emergency distress call from Ira Graves on the planet Gravesworld. A near-warp transport was conducted at Gravesworld which would allow the Enterprise to return to their original mission with greater speed. (TNG: "The Schizoid Man")

 

[donners22]

^ Yes, I understand the concept of the transfer at speed, my issue is the distance over which it was achieved.

 

[Michael]

Am I completely misunderstanding this or missing something?

I think your understanding is quite accurate. Considering how the transporter worked for fourty years in Star Trek, the way they presented it here didn't make a lot of sense. But I was able to ignore it, since it was just a way to show off how good an engineer Scotty is (or, more accurately, would eventually become). It was also a plot device to move Scotty and Kirk from the planet to the Enterprise. So it didn't worry me that much. It's a made-up technology anyway. It does whatever the plot demands it to do.

What I found harder to swallow, though, was the convenience of Spock being on that same planet, Kirk running into his very cave and Scotty being on the same planet, too. Puh-leeeease!

 

[Aragorn]

^ What about Luke Skywalker crashing on Dagobah 100 feet from where Yoda lives?

 

[Blackmm]

Well in TOS, Gary 7 was transported over 1000 light years. Its possible they did the transport, draining half the energy reserves in the process.

 

[Michael]

^ What about Luke Skywalker crashing on Dagobah 100 feet from where Yoda lives?

I dunno, maybe Yoda used the force to guide Luke's ship there? That could be one theory.

 

[Blackmm]

^ What about Luke Skywalker crashing on Dagobah 100 feet from where Yoda lives?

I dunno, maybe Yoda used the force to guide Luke's ship there? That could be one theory.

Yeah, the X-wing pretty much crash landed and I'm sure Yoda guided Luke to him else let him perish, much like Vader guided him when he fell into the tunnel on Bespin after the light saber battle (as described in the novel).

 

[Roshi]

Even Spock Prime was surprised (omigod a human emotion! ) by the randomness of them being at the same place.
Regarding the Transwarp teleportation thingy, I wouldn't put too much thought in it. It's a McGuffin device, based on (I think) real life teleportation, where entengled particles change whereever they are in the universe.

 

[El Chupacabra]

Even Spock Prime was surprised (omigod a human emotion! ) by the randomness of them being at the same place.

Well, its all the guff about the universe trying to correct itself that fills in the blanks there.

 

[chrisspringob]

Maybe old Scotty (the one who was rescued by the Ent-D in "Relics") came up with that equation in the distant future, after the TNG/DS9 era, and just before Spock went back in time. Thus, it's technology that we haven't seen in previous Trek stories, because it didn't exist yet.

 

[Jono]

Transporting from one planet to another is pretty huge, I didn't think even late-TNG Trek was capable of those distances.