The Lorelei Signal

[Christopher]

If the transporter were real, and it could really undo such extreme, "all is lost" plot events, then everybody would want to keep their own recent pattern stored away as a backup.

And forward-looking people would keep a second backup, this one not recent but a preservation of their prime, for use when they get old and frail. You can always keep a diary to re-learn your important memories. What you want is your youth and health back.

Why wait that long? Why not just reset your physical condition to optimal every time you're beamed? That's how it works in Wil McCarthy's The Queendom of Sol tetralogy, about a future civilization where quantum teleportation is ubiquitous. People in that series use the teleporter/replicator devices to edit and re-engineer their bodies on a routine basis. Nobody ever ages (unless they choose to) because the teleporters tweak them to perfect condition every time. If they get injured, they just teleport themselves back to normal. They can even edit their patterns to make themselves taller, stronger, prettier, smarter, any physical change they want.

 

[FormerLurker]

John Byrne used a similar process in an issue of his "McCoy, Frontier Doctor" miniseries.

 

[Nebusj]

If the transporter were real, and it could really undo such extreme, "all is lost" plot events, then everybody would want to keep their own recent pattern stored away as a backup.

And forward-looking people would keep a second backup, this one not recent but a preservation of their prime, for use when they get old and frail. You can always keep a diary to re-learn your important memories. What you want is your youth and health back.

Why wait that long? Why not just reset your physical condition to optimal every time you're beamed? That's how it works in Wil McCarthy's The Queendom of Sol tetralogy, about a future civilization where quantum teleportation is ubiquitous. People in that series use the teleporter/replicator devices to edit and re-engineer their bodies on a routine basis. Nobody ever ages (unless they choose to) because the teleporters tweak them to perfect condition every time. If they get injured, they just teleport themselves back to normal. They can even edit their patterns to make themselves taller, stronger, prettier, smarter, any physical change they want.

Yeah, the Queendom of Sol is maybe the most interesting hard-SF setting I've encountered in a long time, and the ease with which people are copied and the copies merged back together (somehow) is a big chunk of why it's so interesting. I'm saddened McCarthy seems to have moved on to other things, and that other writers don't seem to be ripping off^W^W drawing inspiration from it for their own settings, especially since the ability to copy and merge people presents all sorts of ethical problems that I'd think would generate stories.

 

[Christopher]

^Oh, I've seen a lot of trans/posthumanist fiction about people copying themselves and recombining the copies. Lots of universes without FTL give characters AI "proxies" who operate autonomously when they're out of real-time communications range, then come back and upload their memories into the original's head. Greg Egan's done several novels about posthuman AIs who split and recombine themselves all the time, or who adopt various different bodies or identities when they aren't just living in cyberspace.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Why wait that long? Why not just reset your physical condition to optimal every time you're beamed?

Editing the data set to alter your body but keep your current memories is pretty advanced. It's nice technology if you can get it. I guess it would do away with the whole field of medicine, except possibly psychiatry (and that's assuming the government doesn't put a Roger Korby acolyte at the controls to re-program your mind to their liking).

It represents such a level of wish fulfillment that the only problem left is the old fear that when you transport, you actually die and a new "you" is created.

 

[Christopher]

Why wait that long? Why not just reset your physical condition to optimal every time you're beamed?

Editing the data set to alter your body but keep your current memories is pretty advanced. It's nice technology if you can get it.

If we stipulate that teleportation exists at all, then "pretty advanced" is a given.

Besides, we know that transporters already can alter the data. There's "The Enemy Within," where the transporter accident somehow edited the two Kirks' brain structures to alter their personalities. There's the biofilter, which routinely edits pathogens and toxins out of the body. There's "The Most Toys," where a weapon in a state of firing could be edited in the beam to render it inert. There's "Tuvix," where two separate patterns were edited into one. And there are the various instances where transporters have changed people's age without altering their memories: "The Lorelei Signal," "The Counter-Clock Incident," "Unnatural Selection," and "Rascals."

So selectively editing one part of the pattern while leaving the rest unaltered should be easy for a transporter.

I guess it would do away with the whole field of medicine, except possibly psychiatry (and that's assuming the government doesn't put a Roger Korby acolyte at the controls to re-program your mind to their liking).

Indeed it could. Which is why the shows don't go there -- they like having doctor characters too much.

It represents such a level of wish fulfillment that the only problem left is the old fear that when you transport, you actually die and a new "you" is created.

Got that covered:

http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/on-quantum-teleportation-and-continuity-of-self/

 

[Timo]

So selectively editing one part of the pattern while leaving the rest unaltered should be easy for a transporter.

For the transporter, perhaps. For the transporter operator, not quite that easy: the more "advanced" modifications listed above were accidents beyond the control of the heroes.

Rendering a gun inert can be done pretty violently; for all we know, the gun will then never fire again. Removing select pathogens and poisons could also be a rather crude game of tagging them, taking them, and leaving little holes in their place, as there would hopefully be so few of them that the holes in turn would not kill. Neither would serve for longevity or cure-all, although the possibility of using the transporter for basic surgery should certainly exist (and for all we know, this is how most of McCoy's futuro-scalpels really work).

In cases like "Enemy Within", "Tuvix" or "Rascals", all the original filtering is being done by an external phenomenon. In "Rascals", the reverse filtering is also the work of the phenomenon. It should be easy to argue that the solutions our heroes come up with for the reverse job in the other two episodes are also based on mindless aping of the phenomenon and could never be applied on any other case, not even nearly identical ones, as the heroes really understand nothing about what they are doing.

Cases where our heroes do actual healing instead of just undoing something the transporter already did include "Unnatural Selection" (where we can almost argue that Pulaski lost her memories when regaining her old body, and simply got up to speed very fast - i.e. they killed the old crow and started anew, with full and splendidly informed consent of the victim), and of course all those TAS episodes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Got that covered:

http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/on-quantum-teleportation-and-continuity-of-self/

That's interesting. It might never be proven, but as supporting material for science fiction, it gives us something to hang our hats on. We can say that Kirk and Spock weren't dying 40 times a year. Finally, an answer to the schoolyard taunts.

I also got caught up in your excellent Six Million Dollar Man / Bionic Woman reviews. Those shows are very important to me.

Incidentally, music from The Bionic Woman is available here:

http://www.joeharnell.com/

and on iTunes. I'd say the best single album is this 2 CD set:

http://yhst-76230688982511.stores.yahoo.net/fimuofjoeha2.html

It includes "Jamie's Theme" (6:45), one of the coolest pieces of music ever heard on TV.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Got that covered:

http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/on-quantum-teleportation-and-continuity-of-self/

That's interesting. It might never be proven, but as supporting material for science fiction, it gives us something to hang our hats on. We can say that Kirk and Spock weren't dying 40 times a year. Finally, an answer to the schoolyard taunts.

I also got caught up in your excellent Six Million Dollar Man / Bionic Woman reviews. Those shows are very important to me.

Incidentally, music from The Bionic Woman is available here:

http://www.joeharnell.com/

and on iTunes. I'd say the best single album is this 2 CD set:

http://yhst-76230688982511.stores.yahoo.net/fimuofjoeha2.html

It includes "Jamie's Theme" (6:45), one of the coolest pieces of music ever heard on TV.

Thanks for that.

 

[Maurice]

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Not much variation in their faces, is there?

 

[Lance]

While Uhura taking command is indisputably a real 'punch the air' moment, it must be noted that the circumstances under which she does so are exceptional. It isn't like she assumes command as part of a regular shift... the entire male crew compliment has been incapacitated, and Uhura is simply the ranking female bridge officer.

I remember an urban myth sprung up in the late eighties that Uhura was the fourth in line behind Scotty, based presumably on this episode. But that rather ignores the fact that in more 'regular' circumstances, we've seen Sulu and Chekov take the chair ahead of her. Not to mention the likes of DeSalle and Leslie.

 

[Christopher]

But later on in TAS, in "Bem," Uhura seems to be effectively in charge of the bridge while Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Sulu are otherwise occupied. She's not sitting in the command chair, just standing in the vicinity, but she's pretty much acting as if she has the conn.

 

[Timo]

Not much variation in their faces, is there?

Hmh? I'd say at least as much as there's between Kirk, McCoy and Scotty in TAS. In fact, I'm quite amazed they bothered to draw four distinct faces there, rather than just copy-paste. Whether the distinct jawlines, cheeks, ears etc. are just a side effect of them going to the trouble of doing four different angles of the same generic face, or an honest attempt at non-generic faces (that still conform to the good old TOS ideal and supposedly are viewed through a grease lens), it's more difficult to tell...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FormerLurker]

All four of those faces resemble Nurse Chapel in her animated form. The details are different, jawlines and freckles and so forth, but the eyes nose and mouth are almost identical, as if drawn from a single model or template. Probably made it easier to animate, as they just have to switch out mouth movements.

 

[GSchnitzer]

^^^
"It's science patches for the lot of ya!"

 

[Christopher]

I think it's just that they were drawn/designed by the same artist. Lots of artists have their own characteristic way of drawing faces that makes them all look pretty similar. (Just look at any of John Byrne's Star Trek comics for IDW. "Byrne faces" are easy to recognize.)

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

I think it's just that they were drawn/designed by the same artist. Lots of artists have their own characteristic way of drawing faces that makes them all look pretty similar. (Just look at any of John Byrne's Star Trek comics for IDW. "Byrne faces" are easy to recognize.)

Yeah, that's true... I'm reminded of Carmine Infantino. All the characters he drew looked just like him.

 

[Christopher]

Probably the worst offender in comics is John Romita, Jr. All his characters these days have the exact same rectangular, big-eyed face, making it difficult to tell them apart except by clothes, hairstyle, and coloration.

 

[Commishsleer]

While Uhura taking command is indisputably a real 'punch the air' moment, it must be noted that the circumstances under which she does so are exceptional. It isn't like she assumes command as part of a regular shift... the entire male crew compliment has been incapacitated, and Uhura is simply the ranking female bridge officer.

I remember an urban myth sprung up in the late eighties that Uhura was the fourth in line behind Scotty, based presumably on this episode. But that rather ignores the fact that in more 'regular' circumstances, we've seen Sulu and Chekov take the chair ahead of her. Not to mention the likes of DeSalle and Leslie.

To be fair how many times did a female bridge officer assume command in TNG?
Aside from VOY did any human female take command in ENT or TNG or DS9. I think I can remember Crusher doing night duty in TNG once. And I know there were female captains of other ships.