The Transporter Malfunction

[Shat Happens]

I read this somewhere else:

> The Transporter accident (...) then everyone makes fun of McCoy for not wanting to step into the machine that just gruesomely rearranged two people a few hours earlier.
The two transporter scenes should've traded places in the movie, that way Kirk gets to eat crow big time for mocking McCoy earlier, and McCoy's long-standing transporter paranoia is shown to be fully justified.

It's a great idea. Added to my headcanon.

 

[fireproof78]

Nope. Transporter scene needs to be cut.

 

[somebuddyX]

The transporter that kills Kirk's interim love interest, when he just got back together with his real one true love, and Replacement Spock, necessitating the arrival of Real Spock.
An "accident."

 

[STEPhon IT]

Pretty sucky to see the NEW Enterprise in her brand new major motion picture appearance, doesn't work.

 

[XCV330]

Pretty sucky to see the NEW Enterprise in her brand new major motion picture appearance, doesn't work.

That was the point. It wasn't ready.

 

[somebuddyX]

That transporter malfunction is great but does it belong in that film? I dunno but the only other place I can think they'd do something that horrific is maybe TNG seasons 1 and 2, like when they blow up Remmick. Otherwise the transporter always comes off pretty tame even when it malfunctions.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I read this somewhere else:

> The Transporter accident (...) then everyone makes fun of McCoy for not wanting to step into the machine that just gruesomely rearranged two people a few hours earlier.
The two transporter scenes should've traded places in the movie, that way Kirk gets to eat crow big time for mocking McCoy earlier, and McCoy's long-standing transporter paranoia is shown to be fully justified.

It's a great idea. Added to my headcanon.

I like this idea.

The transporter that kills Kirk's interim love interest,

Was this from the novelization? Because I can't remember a single reference to this in the movie.

 

[Kor]

I like this idea.



Was this from the novelization? Because I can't remember a single reference to this in the movie.

The novelization said it was Admiral Lori Ciana, with whom Kirk had been in a temporary marriage contract for a year. He has a rather, um, sentimental reaction to seeing her on comms prior to the accident. Nothing in the movie indicates that the character was supposed to be either a flag officer or Kirk's former love interest. The uniform (which we don't ever get a clear view of in the movie but can be seen in at least one behind-the-scenes photo) was a technician one-piece jumpsuit without rank insignia. Robert Wise's idea was that the character was the original navigator who then had to be replaced at the last minute by Ilia. Hence, Decker's surprise at seeing Ilia.

Kor

 

[BillJ]

Love the transporter accident. Gives the universe an air of everything not being perfect.

 

[fireproof78]

Pretty sucky to see the NEW Enterprise in her brand new major motion picture appearance, doesn't work.

Indeed. It has that horror movie vibe that Trek likes to flirt with time to time that doesn't fit, either the presentation of Kirk's character, or the following scene. The scene reeks of horror jump scare, and poorly fit one as well. TWOK and First Contact tended to do this too and it just is a bad fit tonally. Like eating fish right after a York Peppermint Patty.

 

[Pauln6]

I like it. You can wonder why they chose to use the transporter while it was undergoing repairs but presumably if the back up sensor had been working, the transporter would not have redlined so the power surge and sensor may not have been linked. It makes more sense than many things like Pike's blast doors in Discovery or the Brewery in NuTrek or the turboshaft full of artificial gravity in Discovery.

Space is dangerous. Kirk is pushing. Kirk needs McCoy and Spock to even him out.

 

[Warped9]

TOS had some pretty horrific moments only you just heard them referenced rather then got to see them happen. Example: the two security guards who were beamed out into open space while the ship was at warp in “And The Children Shall Lead.” Another was when Marta was blown up by Garth in “Whom Gods Destroy.”

TOS had long flirted with horror which tended to set it up as more adult oriented than most sci-fi of the day. So the transporter accident in TMP is perfectly in keeping with what TOS had done previously, but now it was a bit more graphic in keeping with how everything else was more detailed in appearance than what we saw on TOS.

 

[fireproof78]

Some details are best left undetailed.

 

[J.T.B.]

Conceptually, the scene is fine, there's no reason it shouldn't have been included. Big-screen Star Trek was all new, and if you had gotten used to everything turning out all right by the end of each rerun, it was OK to shake that up. Everything is not safe in this version.

As executed, though, it has some big problems (which I have complained about before). We already know that transporters can "push" someone wherever needed, there's no reason the crew members had to be "pulled" by a transporter that wasn't 100% ready for business.

Kirk taking the controls from Rand is just dumb. I know it's an old-school heroes-take-charge beat, but even so.

The scene had two of the worst line readings in the movie: Kirk's stifled "Oh my God" and the guy on the other end's bizarrely detached "What we got back..."

Someone on the board once pointed out a parallel with another Robert Wise movie set on a ship, 1966's The Sand Pebbles.

Spoiler: The Sand Pebbles

In the film a Chinese worker is underneath the ship's engine to assist with a repair and is crushed when the gear locking the machinery in place fails and the engine goes into motion. This event seems to set the ship and crew down a bad path, and things get worse and worse from there. I never thought too much about the scene except, yes, it was a terrible accident. But later I talked to a relative who had seen the movie first run when she was a young kid, and that scene was the only thing she remembered about it.

 

[XCV330]

Indeed. It has that horror movie vibe that Trek likes to flirt with time to time that doesn't fit, either the presentation of Kirk's character, or the following scene. The scene reeks of horror jump scare, and poorly fit one as well. TWOK and First Contact tended to do this too and it just is a bad fit tonally. Like eating fish right after a York Peppermint Patty.

I think it fits very well. It's been part of Trek from the get-go (flames of hell, glowing-eyed-demonic-possessed-espers, etc). It's not at all an outlier, it's part of the core product.

 

[fireproof78]

I think it fits very well. It's been part of Trek from the get-go (flames of hell, glowing-eyed-demonic-possessed-espers, etc). It's not at all an outlier, it's part of the core product.

As the other thread notes, you are right and I'm misremembering. But, it is not something I find enjoyable. Which is a whole other story.

 

[XCV330]

As the other thread notes, you are right and I'm misremembering. But, it is not something I find enjoyable. Which is a whole other story.

oh that's definitely understandable. It's a pizza and I pick off some of the toppings, myself: I think when I was younger I liked the ESP stuff a lot more (telepathy, espers, empaths) but now I kind of find all that a bit silly. Still, its part of the show, many people enjoy that bit, and that is how it is.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I'm totally fine with the transporter malfunction. You can't cut it out without losing the connections (Sonak and why Kirk beamed to the shuttle location). HHowever...

Kirk: "Starfleet, this is Captain Kirk. Beam that officer up now!"

Note Starfleet is doing the beaming, not the Enterprise. They're simply receiving. Perhaps it's still not fixed.

 

[drt]

As executed, though, it has some big problems (which I have complained about before). We already know that transporters can "push" someone wherever needed, there's no reason the crew members had to be "pulled" by a transporter that wasn't 100% ready for business.

It doesn’t fit with the established continuity of TOS, but I think an argument can be made that for TMP they reimagined transporters as requiring a machine on each end. All examples of its use work this way, and instances in TOS where they probably would have transported someone they use a shuttle or spacesuit instead (why not beam Kirk directly to Enterprise from Starfleet Command, why not beam Spock off the Vulcan shuttle, why does Kirk go outside to fetch Spock after his excursion instead of just beaming him back aboard).

I believe that they relied more heavily on scientific advisers while making the movie, I wonder if there was a thought that such a technology would absolutely require a transmitting and receiving station in order to work.

 

[Ssosmcin]

David Gerrold in his "The World of Star Trek" book had a bunch of criticisms about the tech and designs. Only one door on the bridge was one and not having a transporter on the other end of the journey was another. This movie may have taken a lot of his points to heart.

No use of the transporter in this film only uses one unit. Spock shuttles over, so does Kirk and at the end they walk to V'Ger. Once out of Spacedock, no more beaming.

While this may be more "accurate" it also limits them. And in TWOK, this was dropped.