The 22-Man Transporter

[Timo]

Time to take the old hobby-horse out again, I guess.

If Decker's crew evacuated onto the planet to escape a "sinking ship", in irrational panic, then it defies reason how all of them could have gotten down. If the crew were gripped by such panic that they couldn't think straight and opted to escape a planet-eating beast by beaming down to a planet, then it would not have been possible to organize a beam-down where everybody including the operators themselves got a ride. Moreover, in such panic, while 201 people would have beamed down, 207 would have chosen to remain at their posts (54 of these because they were incapable of the physical and mental effort of leaving), and 18 would have started maiming and shooting their comrades, two would have started believing they were Admiral Archer, and one would have started eating the upholstery.

Instead, 429 people seemed to have performed a perfectly orderly evacuation, apparently even taking the corpses of fallen comrades with them. Clearly, they expected the planet to survive the beast. Moreover, their ship appeared to be in relatively good working order at that stage, with plenty of transporter capacity left.

An obvious assumption, then, would be that they had a plan, one that involved using the ship to save the planet, even if at the cost of Commodore Decker's life. Perhaps Decker planned all along to ram the beast, but without Scotty he couldn't cope with a sudden and unexpected engine failure? Or perhaps he intended to lure the beast away, but again immobility meant that the 429 died in the stead of the one.

Statistical considerations go against scenarios where everybody thinks going down to the planet and abandoning the ship is a splendid idea, but Decker alone gets left behind when the beast makes its move...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TIN_MAN]

Well, there's nothing to suggest that Decker or his crew knew before hand that the DM blew up planets to consume the debris for fuel, is there? Probably, the DM did not display this function until after the crew was beamed down, and the ship disabled? Otherwise the whole scenario makes no sense, so the logical conclusion is that they did not, in fact, know. No doubt seeing the DM destroy the planet he'd just beamed his crew down to and being helpless to do anything about explains why he had a nervous breakdown?

 

[Wingsley]

When Scotty played back the duplicate ship's log in the Auxiliary Control Room, it was indeed clear that Decker and company got a good look at the "Planet Killer" devouring planet L-374 IV. Decker further confirmed this when telling his story to Kirk.

"The Doomsday Machine" has always been a fascinating enigma, a mixture of sensational dilemmas to try to reason through. Why would an alien race build a machine that eats planets? If this planet-eater is "self-sustaining as long as there are planetary bodies for it to feed on", how did it manage to sustain itself in the intergalactic void? If the Constellation was wrecked by the planet-eater, how did the crew find enough energy to evacuate everyone to the ill-fated third planet? If the Constellation was wrecked when Kirk and company found her, how did Scotty and a very small team of specialists manage to partially restore her systems and make her useful as a weapon? If the Enterprise's transporter room was damaged by the first direct hit from the planet-eater, why didn't they just use a different transporter room or rescue Kirk and company in a shuttlecraft?

I'm sure there are at least several different logical ways to make sense of all of this.

In the end, the story has us believe (or at least suspend our disbelief) that the Constellation was severely damaged but still able to use her transporters (including supposedly the 22-man stations) to evacuate her crew in a foolhardy attempt to escape. Maybe they got away with the power drain of evacuating everyone but Decker in a huge beam-out because there was nobody left on board to call on power from any of the ship's systems. And when Decker decided to make his suicide run, he found the evacuation had drained all systems and he could not rectify the failures by himself.

Makes sense to me.

 

[Timo]

It's also possible to fight back the question marks in detail:

Why would an alien race build a machine that eats planets?

We don't know, and Kirk doesn't know, either, yet he speculates. But is it an alien race building these machines? Or are these instead von Neumann machines, multiplying themselves out of a basic survival imperative, and adapting to the loss of original operating conditions by converting to planet-eating? This is indeed an intriguing question, and I'm happy it wasn't answered... Except through Kirk's rather odd speculation.

If this planet-eater is "self-sustaining as long as there are planetary bodies for it to feed on", how did it manage to sustain itself in the intergalactic void?

Spock claims it did, but there is no real basis for Spock making this claim. The course of the machine cannot be backtracked except by visiting each solar system in turn, as evidenced by our heroes only verifying planetary carnage when entering L-374, last in a row of such surveys. And a line of a dozen points won't be proof enough of any specific course, nor does such a line contain any evidence of its length and thus of its point of origin. Might be the DDM never crossed a distance greater than fifty lightyears without stopping to eat.

If the Constellation was wrecked by the planet-eater, how did the crew find enough energy to evacuate everyone to the ill-fated third planet?

To be sure, while the transporter is a finicky device, it's never portrayed as particularly energy-hungry.

If the Constellation was wrecked when Kirk and company found her, how did Scotty and a very small team of specialists manage to partially restore her systems and make her useful as a weapon?

Scotty apparently did not repair weaponry - he recharged it, which is a plausible task for a small repair team if it only involves routing power reserves to preexisting systems.

Also, Scotty said the impulse engines were in "fair shape" - only the control circuits were "fused", and he was able to find substitutes and reroute.

If the Enterprise's transporter room was damaged by the first direct hit from the planet-eater, why didn't they just use a different transporter room

The entire system might have taken a hit that was unrelated to any specific transporter room - say, since the hit was external, it may have disabled the supposed emitters on the outer hull. Also, Spock would be unlikely to find another chance to drop shields for transport.

or rescue Kirk and company in a shuttlecraft?

That'd also require disengaging from the battle, then finding a way to keep the DDM distracted. Decker didn't want to disengage, and Spock didn't dare distract.

All that said, the writing certainly isn't airtight, and parts of the premise are hammered in place rather without regard to story logic. But just a little bit of filling in will make a decent episode out of "DDM", too. (Except for the abysmally bad visuals, even by TOS standards - but the remastered version was a partial improvement in this regard, save for some rather wimpy-looking phaser effects.) And it does establish the transporter as a relatively robust and efficient evacuation system.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TIN_MAN]

@ Wingsley. Ah well, that is a huge plot hole then. It's been a while since I've reviewed the episode so I wasn't sure of the details.

 

[Timo]

Another strange thing is that both Decker and Kirk appear to have hunted the DDM through several star systems, yet neither reacted rationally to the "exceptionally heavy subspace interference" that was jamming their communications. There was hardly any urgency in the chase for yet more destroyed star systems, at least initially; the trail could have been cold by several months at least. OTOH, if Spock was able to establish a trajectory for the destruction, and this suggested UFP assets at risk somewhere down the line (the dialogue doesn't necessarily establish that the very next victim would have been a UFP system, only that the DDM was headed for Rigel eventually), getting a message out should have been considered a hot priority.

Why, then, were both skippers headed for the destruction, rather than away from it?

I mean, Kirk was responding to a distress call, with the rubble a secondary concern at best (already a twisted set of priorities). But why did Decker play in the hands of an obvious enemy and directly challenge a power verifiably capable of destruction far beyond any single starship's means?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[throwback]

Why didn't Commodore Decker send an automated probe with the ship's logs to Starfleet if he couldn't contact them?

Some quotes from the episode:

Decker: Oh, I had to beam them down. We were dead. No power, our phasers useless. I stayed behind, the last man. The Captain, the last man aboard the ship. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? And then it hit again and the transporter went out. They were down there, and I'm up here.

At this point, the Constellation's warp drive is destroyed, and she is drawing power from her impulse engines. Why didn't the Commodore have his ship moved to the inner system? The planet killer was ignoring the starship, and the ship could have been moved to a safe position. Instead, the Commodore felt the need to transport his crew down unto a planet knowing full well that the robot had destroyed one planet, and could have been responsible for the destruction of other planets in nearby systems. While in the inner system, the Constellation could have been repaired. The Yorktown, in the fourth movie, was in a worse state and survived after having suffered a complete power failure.

Spock: Evidently programmed to ignore anything as small as a ship beyond a certain radius. We'll maintain a discreet distance and circle back to pick up the Captain.

This quote supports the contention that Commodore Decker could have moved his ship to a safe distance from the robot. The Commodore was a very bad leader, and four hundred people died needlessly because he choose 1. not to find an alternative method to contacting Starfleet; 2. to engage the robot without assistance; and 3. beamed down his entire crew to a planet that had a very good chance of being eaten. (The planet killer destroys worlds that are capable of supporting life.) I love how the fanon and canon depict this Commodore as a hero when in fact he was a buckaroo whose actions resulted in the destruction of a starship and her crew, and nearly resulted in the destruction of another ship and her crew.
Sulu: It's veering off, back on course for the next solar system. The Rigel colony, sir.

This quote identifies the closest system to the L-374 system.

 

[blssdwlf]

I'm wondering how the Constellation got close enough to the 3rd planet to beam down the crew in the first place. We know from the episode that her warp drive was destroyed and her impulse controls had been fused solid:

SCOTT: Captain, the impulse engines' control circuits are fused solid.
KIRK [OC]: What about the warp drive control circuits?
SCOTT: Aye, we can cross-connect the controls, but it'll make the ship almost impossible for one man to handle.
​

With both Warp and Impulse drives out the only thing they had left was battery power and thrusters. And we've seen what happens to starships that lose power in orbit of a planet (they fall into the planet with no chance of escape.) So I couldn't imagine that Decker deliberately moved his ship into the 3rd planet's orbit with no power so my guess is that during the long-range battle...

DECKER: I made a mistake then. We were too far away. This time I'm going to hit it with full phasers at point-blank range.
​

..the Constellation was rendered powerless and at some later time the 3rd planet captured the Constellation in it's gravity well forcing Decker to abandon ship since it would soon fall into the planet. The only reason the ship survived was that the Doomsday Machine smashed the planet before it could fall into it.

So hypothetically, the Constellation could have been trading shots with the Doomsday Machine at long-range and just as it was getting out of the Doomsday Machine's tracking radius it takes one last hit which renders her dead in space and drifting slowly away. She was probably safe outside of the tracking radius at this point and hours or maybe days later the 3rd planet's gravity well caught her forcing Decker to abandon the ship.
​

Also, just curious, when was it said that transporters consumed alot of power?

 

[Captain Robert April]

Holdover reference from the initial format pitch. Holds no water with regard to actual productions.

It's safe to say that the transporter takes a lot of computer power, but in raw energy used, not so much.

 

[Timo]

Why didn't Commodore Decker send an automated probe with the ship's logs to Starfleet if he couldn't contact them?

We might speculate that no probe had the speed and range required for the feat. Log buoys in the show were indicated to be stationary or nearly so - something to be picked up by the ship that comes to examine the wreckage. A shuttlecraft would probably have been little better in this respect, unless Decker happened to be carrying a long range variant such as the large TAS "Slaver Weapon" design.

If Decker did drop recorder markers in his wake, the quoted subspace interference could have made it impossible for Kirk to find those.

The Yorktown, in the fourth movie, was in a worse state and survived after having suffered a complete power failure.

We have no evidence that she did survive.

But regarding the decision not to evade the DDM into a location where repairs could at least have been attempted, this presupposes that the DDM had indeed lost interest in the starship. Yet events prove the beast was still very much interested: she "hit again". An immobile starship would apparently not be ignored, but merely classified as "easy prey", as long as she had previously been proven hostile, and was unable to leave the "discomfort zone" of the DDM.

This quote supports the contention that Commodore Decker could have moved his ship to a safe distance from the robot.

Only if the ship is capable of maneuvering fast enough to escape the beast's current attentions. Decker's ship was still under bombardment, at least if his half-crazed and incomplete account of the events can be trusted.

This quote identifies the closest system to the L-374 system.

...Only the closest system the DDM has a known appetite for, tho. Systems without edible planets wouldn't count, nor apparently systems in wrong directions.

But if the Rigel Colonies (or Rigel Colony, as the plural is ambiguous in the pronunciation) are close to L-374, then apparently the DDM is ravaging space proximal to major UFP assets. This is in sharp contrast with the idea that the region would be only sparsely visited by UFP starships.

...Unless we assume that the Rigel Colony is an insignificant little speck in the middle of nowhere, and only happens to lie in the same direction as the earlier mentioned "most densely populated section of our galaxy". Millions would die at the Rigel Colony, but the place might still be devoid of, and distant from, true UFP assets.

(The Rigel Colony might also be quite distant from Rigel, to be sure - just like an Earth Colony could well lie far away from Earth!)

And we've seen what happens to starships that lose power in orbit of a planet (they fall into the planet with no chance of escape.)

But this happens when the power loss takes the ship by surprise when she's already orbiting. A ship without sufficient power would opt for an orbit that doesn't decay; a ship with generally reliable power would have every reason to choose a different orbit, probably a figure-eight above the spot where the landing party is operating so that the line-of-sight sensors and transporters can be used to support the party.

OTOH, Decker's ship could well have lost her maneuvering power only after approaching the planet (that is, when the DDM hit the ship with only Decker remaining aboard), but could still have been on a trajectory that didn't spell immediate doom. While a figure-eight orbit would be rational in allowing all the crew to beam down at the same location for survival (if for some mysterious reason the planet was considered survivable in the first place), Decker might just as well have chosen a freefall orbit and distributed his crew across the planet if he considered that this better ensured survival.

..the Constellation was rendered powerless and at some later time the 3rd planet captured the Constellation in it's gravity well forcing Decker to abandon ship since it would soon fall into the planet. The only reason the ship survived was that the Doomsday Machine smashed the planet before it could fall into it.

An interesting idea! Still doesn't quite explain why a rational crew would agree to beam down to certain death, though. At least some of them should have chosen the equally certain death onboard their own starship, rather than on some unknown and hostile rock.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

And we've seen what happens to starships that lose power in orbit of a planet (they fall into the planet with no chance of escape.)

But this happens when the power loss takes the ship by surprise when she's already orbiting. A ship without sufficient power would opt for an orbit that doesn't decay; a ship with generally reliable power would have every reason to choose a different orbit, probably a figure-eight above the spot where the landing party is operating so that the line-of-sight sensors and transporters can be used to support the party.

OTOH, Decker's ship could well have lost her maneuvering power only after approaching the planet (that is, when the DDM hit the ship with only Decker remaining aboard), but could still have been on a trajectory that didn't spell immediate doom. While a figure-eight orbit would be rational in allowing all the crew to beam down at the same location for survival (if for some mysterious reason the planet was considered survivable in the first place), Decker might just as well have chosen a freefall orbit and distributed his crew across the planet if he considered that this better ensured survival.

Or Decker was rendered powerless and the 3rd planet eventually came around and captured the ship in it's gravity well making it an unplanned orbit.

Even in "Mudd's Women" where power was a serious issue, Kirk at least had impulse power.

Captain's log-- Stardate 1330.1. Position, fourteen hours out of Rigel 12. We're on auxiliary impulse engines. Fuel low, barely sufficient to achieve orbit over the planet.
​

Imagine Decker with no impulse and warp and trying to make orbit without plunging into the planet. Perhaps they tried to slingshot around the planet with thrusters or find a stable orbit and failed getting caught in a fatal orbit requiring an immediate abandon ship order? (Yes, I'm thinking of a reason why abandoning ship had to be immediate rather than simply waiting it out in orbit.) As to why only Decker stuck around - he probably ordered everyone off, even the ones that wanted to stay... That's alot of guilt to rack up, IMO.

 

[Timo]

Yes, I'm thinking of a reason why abandoning ship had to be immediate rather than simply waiting it out in orbit.

One fairly obvious reason to hurry would be that they were under fire. Nothing suggests more than a brief a lull in the attentions the DDM's antiproton beam was giving to the ship.

he probably ordered everyone off, even the ones that wanted to stay...

But unless he had a plan, the crew would probably disregard his order, either because discipline had already broken down - or because it hadn't and everybody chose to die like a proper sailor does, aboard his ship, fighting the hopeless fight.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rocketeer]

The way I interpret what I've studied about transports, the main 6-man units have the most safety features. Quad circuits and other duplicates to ensure that a person arrives safely.

The cargo transporters transport at the molecule level (like the food replicators) and are probably missing the Heisenberg compensator that is necessary for living objects.

The emergency transporters are fast and dirty, if anything hickups you're toast, transportation device.

 

[Timo]

Basically the only times we actually saw cargo being transported in TNG, it was intricate substances and devices that needed the utmost transporting care, and ended up surviving the trip. Nothing suggests that the cargo units would have been less capable than the personnel ones there.

In TOS, we saw no cargo transporters, and on one occasion the operator believed that only cargo was transported, yet a human stowaway survived the process as well. Again, no evidence of different resolutions being used.

In DS9 "Family Business", we learned that there are different Marks of transporter, and that the newer ones cope better with intricate transport challenges than the older ones. An older model, the Mk V, was in production before 2355 or so, and may have been what our TOS heroes relied on (or a tad better); this model was said to be incapable of handling "unstable biomatter"...

The argument about "fast and dirty" emergency units might still hold water, though. We've seen such units in action a couple of times: in "BoBW" a shuttlecraft transporter was explicitly called an emergency unit, while in "Day of Honor" another shuttlecraft used transporters for emergency bailout, even though said shuttle model normally didn't perform any transporting. The VOY evidence might point to these units being unreliable (or perhaps just roughly 100% reliable the first time around but unreliable on successive attempts, much like safety belts or ejection seats).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Basically the only times we actually saw cargo being transported in TNG, it was intricate substances and devices that needed the utmost transporting care, and ended up surviving the trip. Nothing suggests that the cargo units would have been less capable than the personnel ones there.

In TNG: The Hunted, Danar uses a cargo bay transporter to escape the Enterprise, which he powered with a hand phaser no less.

Kids, don't do drugs.

Thanks, I'm OK now. It's just that after seeing Star Trek V, every time I think of Enterprise deck numbers, things get a little fuzzy and I start blacking out.

 

[blssdwlf]

Yes, I'm thinking of a reason why abandoning ship had to be immediate rather than simply waiting it out in orbit.

One fairly obvious reason to hurry would be that they were under fire. Nothing suggests more than a brief a lull in the attentions the DDM's antiproton beam was giving to the ship.

If it was a brief lull then it must have been long enough to transport 400 people down. But the problem is as others have pointed out - why beam down to the planet at all when they knew the machine would destroy the planet?

DECKER: Oh, I had to beam them down. We were dead. No power, our phasers useless. I stayed behind, the last man. The Captain, the last man aboard the ship. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? And then it hit again and the transporter went out. They were down there, and I'm up here.
...
DECKER: Don't you think I know that? There was, but not anymore. They called me. They begged me for help, four hundred of them. I couldn't. I couldn't.
​

he probably ordered everyone off, even the ones that wanted to stay...

But unless he had a plan, the crew would probably disregard his order, either because discipline had already broken down - or because it hadn't and everybody chose to die like a proper sailor does, aboard his ship, fighting the hopeless fight.

If that was the case, why did Decker's crew all go down to the planet given that they knew what the machine does to planets? Or even, why or how was the Constellation close enough to the 3rd planet to beam down his crew given that they had no warp and impulse?

 

[Timo]

It would all make sense if we assumed Decker had the same plan all along, from start to finish: since (weakened) phasers don't work on the beast, ramming is the solution. But the crew would have to be evacuated first, and planets were the only option for that. An all-or-nothing approach there: if ramming works, only Decker dies, but if it fails or is not attempted at all, everybody dies.

Of course, Lady Fortuna then chose the fourth option, in which everybody but Decker died. Which made Decker insane after the fact, even though his original plan had been quite sane and his crew had agreed with it. Getting access to a fully functional starship restored Decker's ability to try something less desperate, but losing that access made him revert to the original ramming idea... Allowing Kirk to catch on, too.

In that scenario, Decker was near the 3rd planet in order to prepare for ramming, but was under constant fire, and eventually lost impulse drive which prevented the ramming from being completed. Until then, he did have impulse, but could not escape (like he says) because he had already lost warp, and could not fight because he had already lost phasers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

The ramming scenario doesn't work since he had lost maneuvering power before he beamed everyone down. He even cited that they were unable to move prior to evacuating the ship. We're still left with why they beamed down.

 

[Timo]

Nope, he only said they were unable to escape. "We couldn't run!"

The ship might still have been at least as maneuverable as she again became after Scotty's tender care. Not good enough for escaping the beast, but good enough for challenging it.

Beyond the "we couldn't run!", Decker only says they were "dead" and had "no power", but that apparently didn't mean they were unable to run transporters to beam down 400+ people. Decker elaborates that their phasers were gone, and with them their ability to fight. But he never comments on the ship's mobility again.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[throwback]

The problems began long before the Constellation was in orbit of the third planet. Commodore Decker chose to pit his ship against the robot without a backup plan.

What we know is that the robot was consuming the fourth planet when the Constellation entered the system. This robot has a very animal-like thinking - it will focus on one task until diverted by other a threat or a distraction. So, what occurred for the machine to divert its attention to the starship? I am thinking the starship initiated the attack for reasons only known to the Commodore.