The 22-Man Transporter

[Timo]

No power, no mobility and within transporter range of the 3rd planet = imminent fall into planet That rationalization requires less stretching than the rationalization for ramming and has fewer technical problems, IMHO

I'm not sure about that - because getting anywhere near a planet always requires deliberation, and a collision course requires even more of that. We have to find out first why Decker would steer to transporting orbit before losing navigation power, at which point getting there would become impossible.

OTOH, if loss of power didn't completely cripple the ship's ability to navigate, then we're also back to accepting that Decker could still ram the beast.

So, what reason could Decker have for aiming at the planet before his ship lost the ability to aim? We could argue that he went there because the DDM was there, eating the planet or preparing to do so. But in that case it would be doubly impossible that he could ever consider sending his crew down to the planet. (Had he seen the beast gobble up L-374 IV? Perhaps not, as the planet was already "breaking up" when they went to investigate, and the DDM might have left the scene and moved on to L-374 III. But if the eating action was what lured Decker to III, then the above point stands.)

Or we could argue that he went there because his ship was becoming uninhabitable for reasons that preceded the power loss - reasons such as the preceding shots in the firefight with the DDM. But the power loss was not indicated as happening before reaching the planet. All Decker says about power loss is " I had to beam them down. We were dead. No power, our phasers useless.". Which allows us to believe in a variety of scenarios, including the one where only phasers lacked power (since clearly transporters did not).

Constellation never "lost phasers". Scotty just charged one right up to be fired without any repairs made to the weapons. She lost all power

Scotty specifically said that the phaser banks were "exhausted", not that the ship was. The loss of phasers was a specific event concerning only that hardware, and evidence that the crew had fought. It wouldn't be evidence that the crew had fought if loss of general power shut down the phasers before a single shot was fired! Scotty eliminates that possibility by specifying that the phaser banks themselves were exhausted and insisting that this indicated their use in a fight.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

...because getting anywhere near a planet always requires deliberation...

Since when? All it requires is being caught in the planet's gravity well. Thousands of meteors a year are proof enough that deliberation isn't a requirement in the least.

 

[blssdwlf]

No power, no mobility and within transporter range of the 3rd planet = imminent fall into planet That rationalization requires less stretching than the rationalization for ramming and has fewer technical problems, IMHO

I'm not sure about that - because getting anywhere near a planet always requires deliberation, and a collision course requires even more of that. We have to find out first why Decker would steer to transporting orbit before losing navigation power, at which point getting there would become impossible.

As CRA points out, getting near a planet to be caught by the gravity well does not need to be deliberate at all. The Constellation could have been knocked powerless and drifted into the 3rd planet's gravity well putting it in danger.

So, what reason could Decker have for aiming at the planet before his ship lost the ability to aim? We could argue that he went there because the DDM was there, eating the planet or preparing to do so. But in that case it would be doubly impossible that he could ever consider sending his crew down to the planet. (Had he seen the beast gobble up L-374 IV? Perhaps not, as the planet was already "breaking up" when they went to investigate, and the DDM might have left the scene and moved on to L-374 III. But if the eating action was what lured Decker to III, then the above point stands.)

Actually Decker describes to Kirk that the DDM used a force beam of antiprotons to slice up the 4th planet so he's quite aware of what the DDM does. So it's really a question of why would Decker beam down his people onto the 3rd planet?

If he still had impulse power, he'd just take the ship to escape. Close-range combat (like ramming) wasn't even mentioned until after he got on the Enterprise.

But if his ship was dead in space and caught by the 3rd planet's gravity well, her battery power could've delayed an immediate fall into the planet long enough to beam his crew down. And by a cruel twist of fate, the DDM came along to eat the 3rd planet and accidentally hits the Constellation as it is slicing up the planet. So the DDM destroys the planet and saves the Constellation unintentionally but Decker's crew wasn't so lucky...

Or we could argue that he went there because his ship was becoming uninhabitable for reasons that preceded the power loss - reasons such as the preceding shots in the firefight with the DDM.

Unfortunately, we can rule out that he abandoned ship due to habitability problems since the dialogue comments that there was no reason to abandon ship (working life support.)

But the power loss was not indicated as happening before reaching the planet. All Decker says about power loss is " I had to beam them down. We were dead. No power, our phasers useless.". Which allows us to believe in a variety of scenarios, including the one where only phasers lacked power (since clearly transporters did not).

If the ship had only enough power to beam 400 people down but not enough to charge up a phaser bank then it would suggest that she was in no shape from an energy standpoint to go ramming the DDM.

Constellation never "lost phasers". Scotty just charged one right up to be fired without any repairs made to the weapons. She lost all power

Scotty specifically said that the phaser banks were "exhausted", not that the ship was.

Exactly how are phaser banks "exhausted"? They were not damaged and knocked out of commission. The only way they would be "exhausted" is to use up all the phaser bank energy to fire them and not be able to replenish them. And if you can't replenish them, that says alot about the state of the ship's power systems, like "we were dead, no power."

...because getting anywhere near a planet always requires deliberation...

Since when? All it requires is being caught in the planet's gravity well. Thousands of meteors a year are proof enough that deliberation isn't a requirement in the least.

Exactly

 

[Captain Robert April]

Decker might've been gambling that the planet killer was already full from eating the fourth planet and leave the third alone. Unfortunately, the thing had a very big appetite...

 

[Timo]

Since when? All it requires is being caught in the planet's gravity well. Thousands of meteors a year are proof enough that deliberation isn't a requirement in the least.

But it takes those thousands of meteors thousands if not millions of years to get to the point where they actually enter the atmosphere and burn. Decker's ship didn't have thousands of years to spare, nor were there thousands of ships of which one might statistically be captured.

The battle wouldn't accidentally take Decker to the vicinity of L-374 III. It could take him there if he tried to pound on the DDM at close range, though. But that would mean the DDM was on low orbit, too, and that in turn would mean it was eating the planet or preparing to do so, and that in turn would mean nobody would beam down on that planet...

...Unless the very act of beaming down prevented the beast from devouring that planet. Which would be true if Decker was planning on ramming.

If he still had impulse power, he'd just take the ship to escape.

But if he had something like 1/3 impulse, he couldn't run but he could ram, as shown later.

If the ship had only enough power to beam 400 people down but not enough to charge up a phaser bank then it would suggest that she was in no shape from an energy standpoint to go ramming the DDM.

Yet phasers, transporters and engines all appear to draw power from separate sources. "Batteries" are an option for firing the guns; transporters typically work even on otherwise dead ships; and (impulse?) engines in ST2 seemed to be capable of getting the ship to Regula I even when phasers had recently used up their "just a few shots"...

"We were dead" thus doesn't necessarily translate to "we were immobile". Rather, it can simply be taken at face value: it was high time to call the undertaker. Or then try something really desperate - which we know did happen, because beaming down on that planet was insanely desperate in the circumstances.

Exactly how are phaser banks "exhausted"?

We don't know, but Scotty does. And he can restore one of the phasers, but not all of them, when he restores power to the ship - and nowhere is it indicated that these two restoration acts would be connected (save for being achieved at roughly the same time). So it's not a matter of getting more power to the "phaser network", but rather a matter of performing repairs on a single specific phaser bank, repairs that reverse "exhaustion" on that specific bank.

We later learn of the USS Defiant phasers having "phaser power cells" that get exhausted and need to be replaced, quite regardless of the fact that the ship has a main powerplant that is not exhausted. Quite possibly, this sort of technology was at fault when Decker couldn't fire further shots against the space monster...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Since when? All it requires is being caught in the planet's gravity well. Thousands of meteors a year are proof enough that deliberation isn't a requirement in the least.

But it takes those thousands of meteors thousands if not millions of years to get to the point where they actually enter the atmosphere and burn. Decker's ship didn't have thousands of years to spare, nor were there thousands of ships of which one might statistically be captured.

Or a very unlucky ship Commodore. If you're going to pull statistics out for TOS, what about the planets that are identical to Earth, even down to the Komms and the Yangs?

The battle wouldn't accidentally take Decker to the vicinity of L-374 III. It could take him there if he tried to pound on the DDM at close range, though. But that would mean the DDM was on low orbit, too, and that in turn would mean it was eating the planet or preparing to do so, and that in turn would mean nobody would beam down on that planet...

When the DDM struck the Enterprise on one of the shots it sent the ship out of control in a random direction. That could have happened to the Constellation and sent her right at the 3rd planet.

...Unless the very act of beaming down prevented the beast from devouring that planet. Which would be true if Decker was planning on ramming.

That does not make any sense. The problem here is that there isn't anything to indicate that Decker wanted to ram the DDM.

Just looking through possible options:

- Ram the DDM? No. If Decker had maneuverability, he would've kept his distance as his dialogue was that he maintained a long-range fight. If Decker didn't have maneuverability, well he wouldn't be able to ram the DDM. The idea to ram the DDM didn't occur to Decker until he listened to Spock.

- Ship becoming uninhabitable? No, dialogue mentions that the ship's life support was fine and no obvious reason to abandon ship.

- Ship about to be eaten by the DDM? Unlikely. That would imply that Decker got uncomfortably close to the DDM, got caught and couldn't break away. There was no other starship to distract the Constellation and the ship would've been destroyed. And he would've known his phasers are not effective at close-range also.

- Ship about to fall into the 3rd planet? Probable. It fits the evidence: ship's power dead which means no ability to control her flight, close enough to beam down means already in gravity well, batteries still work for a beam out, transporters last to be knocked out.

If he still had impulse power, he'd just take the ship to escape.

But if he had something like 1/3 impulse, he couldn't run but he could ram, as shown later.

Yes, later He could have ran away on impulse power as long as the DDM wasn't focusing on the Constellation since the Constellation was obviously not devoured by the DDM when the 3rd planet was destroyed.

If the ship had only enough power to beam 400 people down but not enough to charge up a phaser bank then it would suggest that she was in no shape from an energy standpoint to go ramming the DDM.

Yet phasers, transporters and engines all appear to draw power from separate sources. "Batteries" are an option for firing the guns; transporters typically work even on otherwise dead ships; and (impulse?) engines in ST2 seemed to be capable of getting the ship to Regula I even when phasers had recently used up their "just a few shots"...

What separate sources do you speak of?

AFAIK, they all can draw on the same sources depending on how much power is left. On the Enterprise (and movie version) those sources are:

Main power = M/AM+Dilithium
Auxiliary power = Impulse/fusion
Emergency power = Batteries

ST2: the "just a few shots" line is after Enterprise is left with only battery power. Impulse power wasn't restored until after the battle. Now, imagine the situation on the Constellation when they couldn't even manage "a few shots"...

"We were dead" thus doesn't necessarily translate to "we were immobile". Rather, it can simply be taken at face value: it was high time to call the undertaker. Or then try something really desperate - which we know did happen, because beaming down on that planet was insanely desperate in the circumstances.

Insanely desperate or an absolute necessity? If the ship was going to crash into the planet first then the DDM would be least of their worries.

Exactly how are phaser banks "exhausted"?

We don't know, but Scotty does. And he can restore one of the phasers, but not all of them, when he restores power to the ship - and nowhere is it indicated that these two restoration acts would be connected (save for being achieved at roughly the same time). So it's not a matter of getting more power to the "phaser network", but rather a matter of performing repairs on a single specific phaser bank, repairs that reverse "exhaustion" on that specific bank.

That's not even close to the dialogue. Scotty just charged one up once he was able to get impulse power going. That points to the the phaser banks were drained of power, not that they were damaged.

SCOTT: Phasers? You've got 'em. I have one bank recharged.

We later learn of the USS Defiant phasers having "phaser power cells" that get exhausted and need to be replaced, quite regardless of the fact that the ship has a main powerplant that is not exhausted. Quite possibly, this sort of technology was at fault when Decker couldn't fire further shots against the space monster...

I've always thought of the phaser "power cells" as the same as "battery" or "capacitor" for the phasers that has been referenced in TOS. But if they were at fault, Scotty would've said, "Phaser banks are burnt out" or something indicating damage or incapable of holding a charge. He does not.

The context also appears different as well. Scotty sounds like he meant that the phaser banks "exhausted" it's energy charge versus O'Brien meant that the phaser power cell's operational life had been used up. One, a discharged battery, the other, an unusable battery.

KIRK: Scotty, check the phaser banks. See if they've been fired. Bones, you come with me.
...
SCOTT: Captain, I've checked the engines. The warp drive is a hopeless pile of junk. The impulse engines are not too badly off. We ought to be able to do something with them.
KIRK: Phaser banks?
SCOTT: Exhausted. They didn't give up without a battle.

and the line from "Behind The Lines":
O'BRIEN: Excuse me, Captain. The power cell from the phaser array. We used it up on the last mission.

 

[Timo]

If you're going to pull statistics out for TOS, what about the planets that are identical to Earth, even down to the Komms and the Yangs?

If a statistical fluke turns Kirk into a tulip in the teaser, this may be the premise of an interesting episode. If a statistical fluke turns Spock into a tulip in the middle of his epic pon farr fight to death with Kirk, that's implausible storytelling.

The premise of this particular episode is not "Decker suffers a one-in-googolplex stroke of bad luck when fighting the DDM". It is "Decker meets with DDM, Kirk has to clean up the mess".

Really, the chances of a random direction being the direction towards low L-374 III orbit are a flat zero. Not one in a trillion, not even close - but a flat zero, or a fraction indiscernible from it. Rocket scientists using every ounce of deliberation in their possession couldn't hit the Moon in the 1950s; the audience should know that much.

The problem here is that there isn't anything to indicate that Decker wanted to ram the DDM.

The overwhelming problem is that people beam down to a planet threatened by a planet killer. This only makes sense if the threat of the planet killer can somehow be negated. And Decker has only an unarmed starship for the purpose. What possible other explanation could there be than ramming, no matter how unlikely?

(Luring the beast temporarily away wouldn't help, because as soon as it returned, it would devour the crew anyway; but in theory, Decker might think he can lure the beast so far away that it moves to another star system. That doesn't jibe with his insistence that he cannot run away from the beast, though.)

- Ram the DDM? No. If Decker had maneuverability, he would've kept his distance as his dialogue was that he maintained a long-range fight. If Decker didn't have maneuverability, well he wouldn't be able to ram the DDM. The idea to ram the DDM didn't occur to Decker until he listened to Spock.

Nothing indicates Decker kept his distance. Instead, Decker is said to have learned that keeping the distance would lead to failure. If he knew that much, it's fairly likely that he decided to close in. And that cost him his crew and the functionality of his ship!

We know the DDM hit Decker's ship. We know the DDM can only fire at starships in its forward sector, and at relatively close ranges at that. We really have far more evidence that Decker was at close quarters than that he was not.

In consequence, there really isn't proof that Decker would have been unable to maneuver enough to ram. Hasty field repairs by Scotty would allow the very same wreck of a ship to ultimately perform a successful ramming, after all.

the Constellation was obviously not devoured by the DDM when the 3rd planet was destroyed.

The DDM doesn't eat starships. The only way our two skippers could get it to pay attention to their respective ships was to fire at it! No phasers would mean Decker would no longer be noticed; the parting shot would cripple his transporters, but that would be that.

Also, the survival of the Constellation is not scenario-dependent. It is an episode-given absolute that simply establishes that the DDM doesn't eat derelict starships.

What separate sources do you speak of?

The ones established in this very episode.

The episode doesn't tell their technobabble identities, but it clearly spells out that phasers do not recover when propulsion does, and that transporters don't die when phasers do.

AFAIK, they all can draw on the same sources depending on how much power is left.

Not according to this episode. Propulsion and ramming was an option for the starship at one point where phasers explicitly weren't, meaning it could have been an option at another point as well. The concept of "total power loss" does not exist in this episode; systems go down separately. (Apparently, m/am power might be totally "jammed" here, what with the talk about "deactivated" antimatter, but whatever is left is clearly still available to propulsion when it's not available to all phaser banks.)

If the ship was going to crash into the planet first then the DDM would be least of their worries.

Not really. Death would be absolute and immediate in both cases; only insane and panicking people would abandon ship in such a situation, and the evacuation clearly was not insane nor panicky.

No scenario that omits a plan to negate the DDM threat can account for the beam-down. Not unless we decide that Decker is lying and the beam-down wasn't voluntary, did not happen at all, or some such murderous insanity that might well jibe with Decker's fucked-up mental state but is a bit difficult to plausibly postulate.

Scotty just charged one up once he was able to get impulse power going. That points to the the phaser banks were drained of power, not that they were damaged.

Yes, individually. The dialogue completely disproves the possibility that power shortages would universally affect all the ship's systems. Phasers lose power individually, and regain it individually, in a process apparently independent of propulsive power restoration (on which Scotty only comments later on).

Scotty sounds like he meant that the phaser banks "exhausted" it's energy charge versus O'Brien meant that the phaser power cell's operational life had been used up.

Sure. But the point is, phaser banks now have their own established power hardware - plenty of excuse there for them becoming individually "exhausted".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

If you're going to pull statistics out for TOS, what about the planets that are identical to Earth, even down to the Komms and the Yangs?

If a statistical fluke turns Kirk into a tulip in the teaser, this may be the premise of an interesting episode. If a statistical fluke turns Spock into a tulip in the middle of his epic pon farr fight to death with Kirk, that's implausible storytelling.

That still doesn't answer the statistical odds of another planet coming up with the Declaration of Independence

The 3rd planet is a whole lot more plausible as an unlucky random direction than Decker deciding to beam his crew down onto a planet that's DDM food in order to go ram it with his ship.

The premise of this particular episode is not "Decker suffers a one-in-googolplex stroke of bad luck when fighting the DDM". It is "Decker meets with DDM, Kirk has to clean up the mess".

But it is "Decker decides to go ram the DDM once he realizes that Spock is right and it can't be destroyed by phaser fire."

The problem here is that there isn't anything to indicate that Decker wanted to ram the DDM.

The overwhelming problem is that people beam down to a planet threatened by a planet killer. This only makes sense if the threat of the planet killer can somehow be negated. And Decker has only an unarmed starship for the purpose. What possible other explanation could there be than ramming, no matter how unlikely?

Falling into the 3rd planet is another possible explanation

And you've already provided a good reason why the DDM threat is negated:

The DDM doesn't eat starships. The only way our two skippers could get it to pay attention to their respective ships was to fire at it! No phasers would mean Decker would no longer be noticed; the parting shot would cripple his transporters, but that would be that.

And if the DDM threat is negated, then the only reason to abandon ship is if something else was about to destroy it (like falling into the planet.)

(Luring the beast temporarily away wouldn't help, because as soon as it returned, it would devour the crew anyway; but in theory, Decker might think he can lure the beast so far away that it moves to another star system. That doesn't jibe with his insistence that he cannot run away from the beast, though.)

That's another reason why ramming or even luring the DDM away from the planet doesn't make any sense.

Nothing indicates Decker kept his distance. Instead, Decker is said to have learned that keeping the distance would lead to failure. If he knew that much, it's fairly likely that he decided to close in. And that cost him his crew and the functionality of his ship!

I'd support that BUT that's not what Decker says. He clearly said he stayed away from the DDM. It wasn't until he got a hold of another ship that can maneuver (Enterprise) that he gambled on a close-range attack.

SPOCK: You tried to destroy it once before, Commodore. The result was a wrecked ship and a dead crew.
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.

We know the DDM hit Decker's ship. We know the DDM can only fire at starships in its forward sector, and at relatively close ranges at that. We really have far more evidence that Decker was at close quarters than that he was not.

We don't know what the maximum range is but the DDM can fire in a 60 degree forward arc.

As to evidence, what is there for close quarters between the Constellation and the DDM under Decker's command? What dialogue supports this that you can quote?

The episode doesn't tell their technobabble identities, but it clearly spells out that phasers do not recover when propulsion does, and that transporters don't die when phasers do.

Or more accurately, phasers need alot more power to recharge than transporters to beam down 400 people when on battery power.

Not according to this episode. Propulsion and ramming was an option for the starship at one point where phasers explicitly weren't, meaning it could have been an option at another point as well. The concept of "total power loss" does not exist in this episode; systems go down separately. (Apparently, m/am power might be totally "jammed" here, what with the talk about "deactivated" antimatter, but whatever is left is clearly still available to propulsion when it's not available to all phaser banks.)

That I don't disagree with. I probably read it differently when you wrote about the different systems drawing power from different sources. After the Constellation lost warp power, she would've been still able to maneuver on impulse but keeping her shields up would've made it difficult to keep her phasers fully powered. (As per "Elaan of Troyius" and "A Taste of Armageddon").

When the Enterprise lost her main energizers and shields and got caught in the DDM's tractor beam, they could've still fired phasers but Decker was convinced by Spock to break off the attack using impulse power. When they were freed, they still got off a few phaser hits to distract it away from the Constellation while on impulse power. So if Enterprise could still fire her phasers on impulse power, Constellation should have also unless she lost impulse early on and was never able to fire phasers afterwards at the DDM at close-range (which she didn't get close as far as the dialogue goes)...

Not really. Death would be absolute and immediate in both cases; only insane and panicking people would abandon ship in such a situation, and the evacuation clearly was not insane nor panicky.

Abandoning a powerless ship about to crash into the planet below isn't insane or panicky.

No scenario that omits a plan to negate the DDM threat can account for the beam-down. Not unless we decide that Decker is lying and the beam-down wasn't voluntary, did not happen at all, or some such murderous insanity that might well jibe with Decker's fucked-up mental state but is a bit difficult to plausibly postulate.

Which might work if we argue that Decker had been tracking the DDM far longer than we are told of...

Scotty just charged one up once he was able to get impulse power going. That points to the the phaser banks were drained of power, not that they were damaged.

Yes, individually. The dialogue completely disproves the possibility that power shortages would universally affect all the ship's systems. Phasers lose power individually, and regain it individually, in a process apparently independent of propulsive power restoration (on which Scotty only comments later on).

Please quote where Scotty comments on this later on. All we know is that the phaser banks were fired and all energy discharged ("exhausted"), the power systems are all down except for the batteries at low levels when the Enterprise finds the Constellation. When Scotty gets the impulse engine operation again, he just recharged a phaser bank. The only reason we are left with as to why the phasers stopped firing is due to lack of power.

Scotty sounds like he meant that the phaser banks "exhausted" it's energy charge versus O'Brien meant that the phaser power cell's operational life had been used up.

Sure. But the point is, phaser banks now have their own established power hardware - plenty of excuse there for them becoming individually "exhausted".

Even if a bank is "individually" exhausted, we know the ship can fire a different bank. Just watch "Balance of Terror" or "The Paradise Syndrome" where they fire banks 1,2,3 and 4 all through the same forward emitters.

 

[Wingsley]

Haven't we deviated a little from the OP of this thread? While "The Doomsday Machine" does have some limited relevance here, we started by talking about transporter rooms, particularly the 22-man stations discussed in both "The Making of Star Trek" and FJ's 1975 Tech Manual.

 

[blssdwlf]

Sorry about the diversion Wingsley.

On a related note - since we've seen more than 7 beam up at once (Day of the Dove, City on the Edge of Forever) but increments of 6 or less on beam downs, could then that suggest there are no transporters on the Enterprise that has more than 6 pads?

ST2's Regula transporter and ST3's HQ transporter was interesting in that although it was still a 6 pad design, the middle 2 pads seem to be "shared". If there was a giant 22-pad design it might have design cues from the shared pads like a giant white flat platform with the standing places as lit circles instead of 22 individual circle platforms.

 

[Wingsley]

I give TOS a pass on the multi-beam-down angle. We never saw large numbers of beam-downs on-screen in any TREK, but "The Making of Star Trek" establishes that TOS's makers said they did exist, even if we never saw them. "The Apple" makes sense to me because we're only talking about a party of six followed by another beam-down of a few more. For all we know, McCoy and the second beam-down party may have used a different transporter room, or simply used the same one where everyone had assembled for instructions before departure.

As for your WRATH OF KHAN / SEARCH FOR SPOCK observations, since we never saw cargo transporters or evac transporters, we have no "canon" evidence of what they would look like. It would be neat to explore and retcon this aspect of the TOS Universe. Maybe there's a way to combine what was seen in the movies with the design sensibilities of TOS to come up with something that blends in with both...

I would love to see some 3D artists tackle that challenge, trying to envision them...

In the meantime, the only vague guides we have are the brief passage from "The Making of Star Trek" and FJ's drawings.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, we do see a cargo transporter in TNG, so we could extrapolate backwards...

 

[Wingsley]

Yes, that's my feeling as well.

TWOK and TMP pretty much made it at least plausible by showing us transporter stations not based strictly on the 2-man and 6-man configurations, so it seems more than plausible to extrapolate at least loosely on what was said in the Whitfield book and FJ's Tech Manual.

I like the idea of some 22-man transporter stations being concealed/stowed for "rainy day" only use. But maybe at least one station is fully operational on a full-time basis, and sees duty as a cargo transporter as well. That would seem logical in a TOS context.

 

[Timo]

Abandoning a powerless ship about to crash into the planet below isn't insane or panicky.

I guess this is the one make-or-break element of "DDM" that also bears the closest relevance to the original topic.

Abandoning ship is only rational if it improves the survival odds. In "DDM", there would be no improvement from a beam-down: a crash would probably just be the most merciful death out of the available options. (And never mind that there was no crash!)

Would beaming out improve survival odds in the general case? The evacuation transporter is a nice concept as such, but it's only useful if there's something to evacuate to. For most of the days in a "rainy week", the ship will be surrounded by pure nonsurvivability: harsh vacuum or uninhabitable planets.

It can be argued that the ship most often gets distressed while performing a mission close to a planet, and that starships of the TOS sort only perform missions near habitable planets. The 22-pad transporter would then defend its existence by serving as a rapid means of egress. Apparently, though, it does not do double duty in allowing rapid egress in non-emergencies, such as the unauthorized massed shore leave of "This Side of Paradise"; the six-pad unit we saw there should have been a secondary beam-down asset only if the 22-pad one was available, yet all the key action revolves around the six-padder anyway.

Lifepods would give survivability-enhancing egress in a wider range of situations, including those where there's a Class M world nearby. Would Starfleet bother with emergency transporters at all, then?

Conversely, does the use of transporters in "DDM" prove that there are no lifepods (which could have been a survivability-enhancing choice for evacuation, while transporters were a death-ensuring one) - or merely that the beam-down was a tactical choice decided on regardless of survivability issues, the eventual survivability depending on other aspects of the plan altogether?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DrBashir]

Perhaps in an abandon ship situation when they are close to a habitable planet, the transporters are used to transposrt the people, being the safest way to travel while the lifeboats are programmed to land nearby after making the descent unmanned. If whatever is threatening the ship is still nearby, would you want to get into a small, unshielded box or be dropped safely on the surface?

 

[blssdwlf]

Now going thru TMP and TWOK - when did we see something other than a 2 or 6 pad transporter? The SF HQ and Regula transporter was still 6 pads, just not arranged in a circle. Unless I'm missing a scene from the movies?

Abandoning ship is only rational if it improves the survival odds. In "DDM", there would be no improvement from a beam-down: a crash would probably just be the most merciful death out of the available options. (And never mind that there was no crash!)

Well it's a good thing that the DDM destroyed the planet before the Constellation crashed From their standpoint, they might have thought the DDM left the area given how much time they might have had to beam down without getting attacked.

Would beaming out improve survival odds in the general case? The evacuation transporter is a nice concept as such, but it's only useful if there's something to evacuate to. For most of the days in a "rainy week", the ship will be surrounded by pure nonsurvivability: harsh vacuum or uninhabitable planets.

If they were to abandon ship in deep space where would they go other than to huddle in the primary hull as a giant lifeboat? But if they had to put down on a Class-M planet in a hurry, I suppose a 22-man transporter would come in handy. Strange it isn't a 24-man (6x4) system.

 

[Wingsley]

Is there any indication why the Whitfield book cited 22-man stations? Did anyone ever give a rationale for the number 22?

Was there any rationale given for the configuration FJ used for his 22-man station design?

 

[Timo]

Interesting question! The first random association that pops into mind is the VLS cells of modern warships: One of these might hold, say, four missiles, but when you install a 4x3 grid of these on the forecastle, for some reason you have to leave out one cell and replace it with support utilities, so your total isn't 48 but only 44.

Perhaps the 22-pad unit indeed is four "standard" units combined, but loses two pads as "integration costs"?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

Either he made it up or Roddenberry told him so.

 

[Wingsley]

If you look at Franz Joseph's drawing of the 22-man station from the 1975 Tech Manual, you can see he extrapolated its design somewhat loosely from the common 6-man stations we saw throughout TOS. There's a touch of the 2-man alcove in the overall arrangement of the pads (obviously scaled up quite a ways), but if you look at the pads in the 22-man station you can see the hexagonal 6-man pattern repeated a few times. FJ's design seems to have a single pad on each end of the transport chamber, much as the pads are arranged in the 6-man station.

I have no idea if FJ ever talked with Roddenberry about the transporter room design, but FJ's drawings suggest to me that the Tech Manual's design resulted from some kind of dialogue between FJ and the show's makers.