The Transporter Room

[Timo]

At one point on DS9, Sisco was on Earth and went home to New Orleans, I think to visit his father's restaurant, and had to schedule use of the public transport system.

"Homefront"? I can't see any sign of him having to schedule. Or of him using any specific system or mode of transport - for all we know, he took the train or a horse-drawn coach, but we also know he has access to military transporters down on Earth (being the Acting Chief of SF Security) so he's not our best example here anyway.

Particularly for any potentially dangerous missions where you'd want a thinking being on duty to yank you out of danger. Or at least to receive specialized instructions.

Then again, the computer might think with better clarity of mind, and have faster reactions. It does a damn good job opening the doors at dramatically opportune moments!

Ultimately, a man-in-the-loop tends to slow things down if his role is to react; it's preplanning and anticipating where live operators might be at their most useful. But I'd also like to see more control being given over to the landing party members themselves. Why not have a concealed panic button that instantaneously whisks the user to safety? Why the need for clumsy fiddling with communicator dials even in the best case?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Richard Baker]

They have used the Transporter 'Bug Out' mode before, but it was by maintaining a Transporter Lock on the person and standing ready to hit the switch at the first sign of trouble. Usually something happens in the script to prevent this from this going as planned.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Although the act in the episode isn't perfectly conceived for a variety of reasons*, "Arena" illustrates one of the quintessentially perfect rationales for why transport isn't possible: the shields have to stay up because the ship is under attack. Both ship and landing party are in jeopardy. The situation isn't resolved until the Gorn withdraw, and evidently that is because Kirk wins the fight on the surface with only the materiel at hand.

* - One manner in which the act fails is that the tactics are all wrong. Two major problems in the tactical conception of the act are: 1) With O'Herlihy disintegrated just a few yards from Kirk, Kirk and the rest of the party there are in mortal peril that they are inexplicably able to survive (fix = make O'Herlihy farther away and have him destroy a party of up-close Gorns as they kill him, thus eliminating all immediate threats to Kirk and company); 2) With the Enterprise out of orbit, the landing party is vulnerable to bombardment from space, which should be both large-scale and immediately fatal (fix = don't have Sulu take the ship out of orbit, as part of his job is to prevent bombardment of the surface from space by the enemy, by forcing them to have to sacrifice their ship to bombard; he's not gone but just engaged in combat in space, maybe show a shot of the sky with explosions going off in space). It's not like the Gorn aren't trying to kill them, right? Be all that as it may, the rationale for why beaming isn't possible is sound.

 

[Timo]

"Arena" illustrates one of the quintessentially perfect rationales for why transport isn't possible: the shields have to stay up because the ship is under attack.

And Kirk has to remind Sulu of this not once but twice! One is almost tempted to think that starships can successfully fight even with shields down, and Kirk performs an act of bravado by insisting that young Sulu use the extra protection of the shields, even if this jeopardizes the landing party.

It's not like the Gorn aren't trying to kill them, right?

Well, if they wanted Kirk dead, why go through the elaborate charade of dinner invitation? They have extremely accurate intelligence as evidenced by the setup, so they appear to have had all the time in the world to prepare their ambush. Yet the ambush isn't deadly, it's merely, well, probing.

OTOH, if the Gorn want to capture a starship captain, then their almost timid surface attack makes perfect sense. They have snipers in place, and from their invulnerable positions, the snipers will gun down Kirk's helpless entourage one by one yet save the man in gold for interrogation. Little do they know that Kirk isn't armed with mere sidearms...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, if they wanted Kirk dead, why go through the elaborate charade of dinner invitation?

Well, they specifically wanted the tactical people in the landing party for some reason. They killed two of them, evidently deliberately, so they didn't want to capture the tactical people. I can only assume that they thought that the Enterprise would be more vulnerable with the key defense officers on the surface.

They have extremely accurate intelligence as evidenced by the setup, so they appear to have had all the time in the world to prepare their ambush. Yet the ambush isn't deadly, it's merely, well, probing.

OTOH, if the Gorn want to capture a starship captain, then their almost timid surface attack makes perfect sense. They have snipers in place, and from their invulnerable positions, the snipers will gun down Kirk's helpless entourage one by one yet save the man in gold for interrogation. Little do they know that Kirk isn't armed with mere sidearms...

OK, right.

However, if their sole objective was to capture Kirk, you'd think that they would want him down with a minimal complement. So, perhaps their plan was in fact two-pronged: weaken the ship by getting the key defense officers down and then as you said pick off Kirk's guard to capture Kirk. It would certainly explain why they didn't kill Kirk when they killed O'Herlihy.

However, their intelligence wasn't all that great, because they didn't thoroughly clean out the ruins of materiel that Kirk could use against them, and it was stuff that Kirk had no trouble accessing, either.

 

[Drone]

They have used the Transporter 'Bug Out' mode before, but it was by maintaining a Transporter Lock on the person and standing ready to hit the switch at the first sign of trouble. Usually something happens in the script to prevent this from this going as planned.

Don't forget that in dire emergencies, Torres's skeletal lock can always be deployed!!!

 

[Avro Arrow]

Why not have a concealed panic button that instantaneously whisks the user to safety? Why the need for clumsy fiddling with communicator dials even in the best case?

OK, it wasn't concealed or anything, but didn't the TOS communicators actually have this? I thought there was a button they could just push that sent an emergency signal to the ship to call for immediate beam-out, without even having to speak. I believe this is how the Air Force sergeant got beamed up in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

Of course, this still required the transporter operator to initiate a beam-out, so if you meant the button would automatically activate the transporter itself, then no, I don't think they had that. (Data apparently did in Nemesis, though...)

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

I don't want to drift off the topic too much, but as long as the subject of Arena has popped up...

The Gorn, when pursuing Kirk on the planet, said "I will be merciful *hisss* and quick!". Why weren't the Metrons impressed with this example of the "advanced trait of mercy"?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I don't want to drift off the topic too much, but as long as the subject of Arena has popped up...

The Gorn, when pursuing Kirk on the planet, said "I will be merciful *hisss* and quick!". Why weren't the Metrons impressed with this example of the "advanced trait of mercy"?

Not advanced enough/not true mercy, I suppose.

 

[Richard Baker]

Promising to kill someone quickly is not quite the same as allowing them to live when you could kill them.

 

[T'Girl]

DS9 didn't suffer for a having a transporter in Ops...

Hard to say for sure, guess we'll never know if it would have substantially improved the show to have had a separate transporter room.