The 22-Man Transporter

[T'Girl]

One could argue that the absence of any 22-man transporters in on-screen TOS entirely negates the possibility of their existence

The implication then is that the TOS Enterprise possesses a single six person transporter.

I doubt you could even move the people onto the pads in one minute.

Enlarge the doorway giving access to the evacuation transporter, and yes I think it would be a possibly. Add the motivation of a burning, disintegrating ship and the crew would get on those pads pretty damn fast.

various platforms distributed all across the ship

One problem I have with FJ's ship layout, is that the transporters are clustered, instead of being more widely distributed about the ship. They're on three decks only.

 

[Captain Robert April]

That's the least of the issues I have with the FJ plans...

 

[Timo]

Clustering makes sense if all the transporters share critical resources - as they appear to do, because a single shot from Evil Kirk in "Enemy Within" disables the whole kit'n kaboodle.

OTOH, "Dagger of the Mind" requires one of the 6-pad platforms to be down on Deck 12 or thereabouts, a requirement FJ doesn't accommodate.

With four or perhaps five of the 6-pad units, this extra 22-pad unit barely doubles the evac capacity. Might still be worth the trouble. But we have conflicting evidence on how many people the total transporter system can handle. In "The Apple", Kirk wants to have nine people down on the planet, and they get there in two groups, 6+3. In "Day of the Dove", Kirk wants to have nine people up on the ship, 4 heroes + 5 Klingons, and they are beamed up in one group on a 6-pad station (but the Klingons are given the delayed materialization treatment).

Can the system handle more people than there are active pads? "Day of the Dove" says yes (even when "The Apple" leaves it unclear what is happening up in the ship, what hardware is being used and how, whether the nine really are in a hurry etc). So, can one transporter station operate the total resources of the ship? And if so, do the total resources equal the total number of pads (say, 6+6+6+6+6+22)? Or do they amount to less, or perhaps even more?

TNG systems can apparently do more than the pads indicate, judging by some cases where the explicitly only 2-pad runabouts handle three people. Again, TOS might be more limited. Even if ENT always wasn't...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TIN_MAN]

I doubt you could even move the people onto the pads in one minute.

Enlarge the doorway giving access to the evacuation transporter, and yes I think it would be a possibly. Add the motivation of a burning, disintegrating ship and the crew would get on those pads pretty damn fast.

I strongly suspect that this is the very reason why FJ had these mass xporters adjacent to large recreation/gymnasium areas, to provide suitable "staging areas" for large groups of evacuees. And since these areas would be the most familiar to the majority of the crew crew, this would expedite any emergency evac.

various platforms distributed all across the ship

One problem I have with FJ's ship layout, is that the transporters are clustered, instead of being more widely distributed about the ship. They're on three decks only.

There are transporters in the secondary hull as well, so they're not so clustered.

 

[blssdwlf]

There was also a 6 person transporter below Deck 11 (or was it 12?) in "Mudd's Women" since the turbolift from there went up to Kirk's deck.

I think TOS seems to suggest that they had multiple 6 person transporters spread out over the ship but only one 6 person pad was active at any one time. That would account for them on different decks and the variations of the room decoration/equipment. The TOS Enterprise probably could accommodate more than 6 people at a time, depending on how many frequencies or total bandwidth they had open given the local conditions. Hypothetically, multiple people could beam through on a single "wide" frequency but in noisy conditions like "The Tholian Web" only "narrow" frequencies were available limiting the numbers.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Keep in mind that Deck 12 is in the neck, so take those early references with very large grains of sodium chloride.

 

[blssdwlf]

Or Deck 12 could be in the secondary hull

 

[Timo]

True... All we know for sure is that Deck 11 is still in the saucer ("Errand of Mercy" torpedo attack visuals) and above secondary hull top level, but we don't know the numbering scheme for the neck or the secondary hull. Might be the neck skips several decks, or the secondary hull starts anew at Engineering Deck 1. (Let's also remember "Court Martial" where B Deck is at or near Main Engineering...)

FWIW, and to correct an earlier mistake of mine, the "Dagger of the Mind" scene shows van Gelder emerging from a transporter, then being spotted on Deck 14 while on his way to meet Captain Kirk. If he were halfway coherent, he wouldn't be heading down, so this particular unit would probably be on Deck 14 or lower.

This is compatible with "Mudd's Women" where Spock and the survivors take a short ride up from the transporter to reach Deck 12. While the transporter adjoins a transverse curving corridor in both cases, Deck 12 is portrayed as a single corridor that may just as well be taken to be straight and at the centerline of the neck.

Quite possibly the TOS ship had a main cargo floor at the same level as the TMP one, and there were transporters at that level (Deck 19). Perhaps a personnel unit and a larger cargo platform side by side - replaced by twin combined cargo/3-pad-personnel units in the refit, as shown by Mr Scott's Guide?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

Or, they hadn't quite worked out where things were yet and stuff like this should be filed away along with "James R. Kirk" and other bits of continuity flotsam.

 

[Mytran]

Now where would be the fun in that? You could dismiss anything awkward that way!

Especially as in this case, where a simple solution can be found. Whoever said that the dorsal section follows the same counting structure? And then there's those early S1 references to "decks" and "engineering levels" as if they were distinct entities (i.e. the levels in the Primary and Secondary hulls).

The established TMP layout of starships creates it's own issues as well - there are two deck 8s, 9s, 10s, 11s. So, why not just restart the count?

 

[Pauln6]

Lol - yeah. Can you imagine how brief and boring every single thread would be on here if we could accept such a simplistic answer? As opposed to long and ultimately VERY boring.

 

[T'Girl]

True... All we know for sure is that

You would seem to be making the assumption that the deck on the Enterprise are numbered in a sequential order, top to bottom. As opposed to be numbered in order of importance.

 

[scotpens]

True... All we know for sure is that Deck 11 is still in the saucer ("Errand of Mercy" torpedo attack visuals) and above secondary hull top level, but we don't know the numbering scheme for the neck or the secondary hull.

According to the Franz Joseph plans, decks 8 through 11 are non-contiguous. Each has a portion in the saucer and another portion in the dorsal pylon.

 

[Timo]

You would seem to be making the assumption that the deck on the Enterprise are numbered in a sequential order, top to bottom. As opposed to be numbered in order of importance.

Well, that would seem to be supported at least by "Day of the Dove" where decks 5 and 6 are explicitly next to each other. OTOH, if the deck featuring Captain's quarters is numbered 12, what does that tell us about priorities?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DonIago]

I can't imagine a spaceship ordering decks by "priority"...that would seem completely non-intuitive.

 

[Mytran]

The problem with "non-contiguous" decks is that it greatly (YMMV) complicates the deck naming structure. Why not just call the dorsal decks something different?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

OK, enough of your talk of consecutive decks; I'm Star Trek V-ing this thread. Take Deck 78 and Deck 52 twice, y'all! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

 

[Captain Robert April]

Kids, don't do drugs.

 

[throwback]

I think that Commodore Matthew Decker used the emergency transporters for beaming his people down onto L-374 III. How else could he have gotten his people down so quickly to the planet?

 

[T'Girl]

One, yes he probably did.

And two, there no indication in the episode that Decker beamed his crew down "quickly."