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"The Apple" - The TOS Mythbuster Episode!

Your reasoning is flawed. You are confusing continuity errors with fact

STAR TREK MYTH #1: The Enterprise has multiple transporter rooms.

TAS: Terratin Incident
SCOTT [OC]: Barely, sir.
KIRK: Get a crew down to transporter room three. We have twenty minutes left while we can still operate transporter controls.
SCOTT [OC]: How many beaming down, Captain?
KIRK: One, Scotty. Myself.

TAS: Mudd's Passion
M'RESS: Mudd has landed on the planet surface. Co-ordinates relayed to Transporter room four.
SCOTT: And the Captain's in transports about it with our ever-loving Mister Spock.
M'RESS: You're funny, and very attractive for a human
 
TAS is after the fact. They added a turbolift to the bridge also. That doesn't mean there was one in the original series. TAS was an opportunity to fix some things.
 
I’m 100% that there is at least an occurrence when more than 6 people are beamed UP in TOS. I don’t think that this necessarily proves that the enterprise had more than one transporter room, though, but only that the system could handle more than six patterns, storing the ones in excess in the buffer until the pads are cleared. Of course the same is not possible while beaming down (well, it could be if they REALLY wanted to appear all together, but why bother?), therefore they split up in groups.

I think that TOS suggests, without making it clear, that there is only one transporter room on board, as they always refer to it as THE transporter room without causing any confusion. TAS is another story, as the ship had obviously been refitted between the series.
 
I’m 100% that there is at least an occurrence when more than 6 people are beamed UP in TOS. I don’t think that this necessarily proves that the enterprise had more than one transporter room, though, but only that the system could handle more than six patterns, storing the ones in excess in the buffer until the pads are cleared.
At the end of "The City on the Edge of Forever," seven beam up. There's also "Day of the Dove" (already mentioned upthread), when nine do. In "Dove," the Klingons are suspended in transit, but that's primarily because prior to beam up Kirk alerted Scotty to take them prisoner.

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x28/cityontheedge_743.jpg
https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x07/dayofdove_069.jpg


There were also instances when two people seemed to be sharing the same pad. "The Cloud Minders" comes to mind, in the beam up of Kirk, the High Advisor, and Vanna while the two men are fighting:

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x21/TheCloudMinders1112.jpg

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By the way, The Making of Star Trek claims that there are altogether 11 transporter rooms: 4 6-person types, 2 dedicated cargo types, and 5 22-person emergency types (page 192).
 
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Franz Joseph postulated multiple transporter rooms and even a cargo transporter. Naturally, if they actually had a cargo transporter, Simon Van Gelder would have beamed up there from Tantalus V.

Set changes never indicate a different room for me, just changes to reflect the needs of the episode or the ever evolving sets over time. The Engine Room changed noticeably throughout the series, but even as a kid, I didn't try to justify it. I knew it was just a change as they added more stuff.

If they never had to specify which transporter, like they did in later shows, then they only had one. I don't assume there was any more if the producers never indicated there was. Otherwise, instead of Scotty tinkering with the broken console, he'd run to one of the others. Kirk pulled a piece of something out of the console and Deela (who had plenty of time to get to know the Enterprise) didn't walk him down to another transporter.

What actually bugged me was in TNG when Picard called Crusher and she said, without prompting, "I'll meet the Away Team in transporter room four." Picard didn't say which one and I felt he shoulda said, "actually, Doctor, I was thinking transporter room two..."

If you ask me ("and you haven't"), later Treks gave us too much transporter. Multiple rooms, cargo pads, site to site, shuttlecraft escape transporters, personal single use widgets, and so on. The transporter was created to save money on model shots of the Enterprise making landings. However, once that was established, writers needed to finagle reasons why Scotty couldn't just beam Kirk out of danger. That led to multiple episodes of the Enterprise under attack, being dragged into the atmosphere, diverted away or having communicators taken from them. Then they came up the the subcutaneous transponders (and promptly forgot them). Once we got to later shows and films, they doubled and tripled down on the transporters. There are just too many ways to get out of scrapes.

One "cranky transporter" is just fine.
 
FWIW, we know that beaming in batches of six or less isn't due to it being impossible to beam in batches of seven or more - there were nine going up in "Day of the Dove", without comment. So the 6+3 thing is at the very most consistent with the idea of a single transporter room - it offers no support for this theory over any other.

The hero ship has "the shuttlecraft" and "the briefing room" and "the turbolift" among others. Of those, we more or less know that the "among others" thing is confirmed. On "the transporter room", there's no real telling one way or the other. Except, of course, when we get two different-looking rooms in one episode, such as "Dagger of the Mind"...

Timo Saloniemi
I haven't watched Dagger for a while. Does the transporter room look different in both scenes?
 
By the way, The Making of Star Trek claims that there are altogether 11 transporter rooms: 4 6-person types, 2 dedicated cargo types, and 5 22-person emergency types (page 192).

I totally missed this, sorry!

Interesting. None of that made it into the episodes, in fact the episodes steer pretty clear of it. This is as close to official as you can otherwise get since this was published during the run of the series, but it also feels like Roddenberry doing some world building / continuity damage control.
 
I haven't watched Dagger for a while. Does the transporter room look different in both scenes?

Depends. The same two people are in attendance at the console, but only the first usage shows a prominent "circuit board" behind their backs. And this first usage delivers a stowaway down to Deck 14 or lower, which is as unique for a transporter as the circuit board wall, never to be seen or heard of again. Presumably, we saw a dedicated cargo transporter first, or at least a transporter serving the cargo areas.

Which is a good reason to have multiple rooms, even if there's only one machine providing the beaming magic to all of those. Cargo beamed aboard needs to reach destinations within the ship, and beaming it directly to Deck 14 is quite a bit better than beaming it to Deck 6 or 7 and then manhanding it down...

But yes, it's the same set throughout the episode, presumably. It just portrays a unique facility at first, and isn't likely to portray a unique facility later in the episode any longer.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Oh! This is from the Star Trek Writers/Directors Guide (third revision, April 17, 1967), page 15:

We assume there are various Transporter Rooms through the vessel. The one we use has access from a corridor.​

It also says that the operators

can transport up to six people at a time​

.
 
As for the expression "you've earned your pay for the week", it's just a way of saying "attaboy" or "good Job"; it's not supposed to be taken literally. If you want definitive proof they used a monetary system on TOS look no further than the fact that in "Trouble With Tribbles", Uhura was definitely, literally going to buy a tribble before Jones gave her one for free. Nothing figurative about that.
Weird that you choose to discount two other lines of dialogue that support your argument, but okay.
Your reasoning is flawed. You are confusing continuity errors with fact

TAS: Terratin Incident
SCOTT [OC]: Barely, sir.
KIRK: Get a crew down to transporter room three. We have twenty minutes left while we can still operate transporter controls.
SCOTT [OC]: How many beaming down, Captain?
KIRK: One, Scotty. Myself.

TAS: Mudd's Passion
M'RESS: Mudd has landed on the planet surface. Co-ordinates relayed to Transporter room four.
SCOTT: And the Captain's in transports about it with our ever-loving Mister Spock.
M'RESS: You're funny, and very attractive for a human
I fail to see how TAS, a show that was produced four years after TOS ceased production, is binding on TOS. As pointed out earlier in the thread, TAS also added in a second turbolift on the bridge and had all sorts of other discrepancies with the original series.
By the way, The Making of Star Trek claims that there are altogether 11 transporter rooms: 4 6-person types, 2 dedicated cargo types, and 5 22-person emergency types (page 192).
Which is a good example of TMOST claiming something that is not at all supported by the show itself. Heck, if the Enterprise had that many transporters, they could've beamed a minimum of 134 people down at one time (24 people for the four six-person transporter rooms, and 110 for the five 22-person emergency transporters, plus however many the cargo transporters could beam down), and we never would've seen this backlog in "This Side of Paradise":


The dialogue in TSOP also indicates that beaming all the plants up to the ship is a long operation:
(No equipment or colonists now, just plants going up to the ship.)
MCCOY: (with an extreme southern drawl) Ready to beam up. Hiya, Jimmy boy! Hey, I've taken care of everything. All y'all gotta do is relax. Doctor's orders.
KIRK: How many of those did you beam up?
MCCOY: Oh, must be nigh onto a hundred by now.
If the transporter chief could beam up a hundred of the spores at once, he wouldn't lose track or have to guestimate. But if he was beaming them up six or so at a time a dozen or more times, he could absolutely lose track.

"This Side of Paradise" also shows us that long line of people outside the transporter room, waiting to beam down to the planet. That means there's a long wait. Therefore, only so many people can beam down at once. If there's just one transporter room with only six pads, it would take 70-71 transports to get all 424-430 crewmen. That's the kind of wait we're seeing. Therefore, there's just one transporter room. Again, Occam's Razor.

<Waits for the inevitable "Oh, but Kirk just happened by in the 30-seconds where they were slightly backed up..." comments :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:>
Franz Joseph postulated multiple transporter rooms and even a cargo transporter. Naturally, if they actually had a cargo transporter, Simon Van Gelder would have beamed up there from Tantalus V.
Exactly. The entire plot of "The Enemy Within" also falls apart if the ship has more than one transporter.
If they never had to specify which transporter, like they did in later shows, then they only had one.
Yeah. Again, the phrasing "THE transporter room" doesn't really allow for any wiggle room here.

Again, if the Enterprise was real, then it absolutely makes sense for it to have multiple transporter rooms, as well as cargo transporters. But the series never shows or even implies anything like that, so...
 
As regards evidence-based arguing, what we glean from TOS is ambiguous:

Single room?

+ It's always "the transporter room"
+ All transporting is lost when a hiccup occurs

- We see different-looking rooms at different times, the set changes going back and forth and thus probably not denoting in-universe renovations
- We get the "Dagger" delivery (of cargo) to down below and apparent saucer-based action in other cases

Plenty of wiggle room there. Of course it's always "the room" when the heroes know which one (and scenarios where multiple heroes are summoned from all across the ship to meet in "the room" are darned difficult to find - typically the heroes traipse from bridge down to "the room" all together). And the set changes are best explained with the multi-room model. The limitation on six transportees doesn't exist so "The Apple" isn't a datapoint. Yet hundreds can beam down in plot time, as in "Doomsday Machine", obviously calling for more capacity than shown.

That the same ship has at least four rooms in TAS just comes atop this, suggesting where we should wiggle. But not dictating. Still, the only feeble excuse for a single room, "the room", is a phrasing also frequently used in TNG...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Which is a good reason to have multiple rooms, even if there's only one machine providing the beaming magic to all of those. Cargo beamed aboard needs to reach destinations within the ship, and beaming it directly to Deck 14 is quite a bit better than beaming it to Deck 6 or 7 and then manhanding it down...

Timo Saloniemi

Anti-Grav's make hauling even the heaviest cargo easy peasy.

Am I the only kid who really geeked on Anti-Grav's? I wished we saw them used more.
 
Yeah. The best rationale I've thought of there is that something in the planetary atmosphere made using a shuttle impractical or dangerous. The high winds, maybe.

One line of dialog about atmospheric disturbances would have settled that continuity hole in seconds....
 
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