They didn't really think out the capabilities of the transporters

[Pauln6]

I prefer to think of the scanner as quantum entangling your actual molecules which are then phased into another dimension, displacing the energy pattern which can then be sent while confined in the anular confinement beam and then snapping back at destination when the quantum linked energy returns from whence it came.

Problems arise with energy leakage in every case which means that a percentge of you matter cannot be rephased back so the transporters have to add in a percentage of replicated matter when reforming individuals. Most transporter mishaps occur because of this replicated matter. If too much of the pattern leaks, or if the qunatum links get messed up, you end up with a dead person barring some external factor such as the Enemy Within.

 

[CoveTom]

I prefer to think that the transporters in Star Trek do exactly what we're told they do: Move you, molecule by molecule, from Point A to Point B. Not clone, not copy and paste, not replicate, not anything else. But actually move you from here to there. Now, how do they accomplish that? I don't know. Can we explain it with our current real-world physics? Probably not. But this is sci-fi and I prefer to simply accept that they work the way the shows say they work instead of trying to come up with alternative theories to make them fit into modern day real-world science.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

This idea has been debated and argued about numerous times before. I'd recommend searching and reading those threads.

The question about a person's molecules has been ultimately theorized to be "transported" to another location, not destroyed and recreated elsewhere. So, you can't just pull organic matter out of thin air. You're not replicating a human being, just moving them around. And yes, they can be genetically altered... usually by accident.

That's the crux of the problem. To store clones of a person argues against the idea of matter being transported to another location and magically reassembled, as opposed to copied and assembled from matter that happens to be available at the location. If it's copied - brrr! That means the original person was killed. Nobody wants to address the implications of that, so the cloning idea can't be touched, except in rare instances (Tom Riker).

If you really start to think about it, sending information (how to assemble the person who was disassembled) and reconstructing them from matter available at the location is the only sensible way the transporter can work. The original matter is gone when it is converted to energy. What's being sent is the recipe for creating a perfect copy as of the time of their death, complete with memories that convince that new person that they are, in fact, the original (and no memories of death). But if that were the case, nobody would ever use a transporter.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Oh PS, when I clicked on this thread, I thought it was going to be a discussion of how transporters can be used as an offensive weapon in battle. Star Trek hasn't done enough of that, and it doesn't lead to sticky existential quandries to discuss it.

 

[Anwar]

To be a proper offensive weapon, the transporters have to be able to get by shields. And if you can get by shields, you've won already.

I wonder if a strong enough transporter could teleport part of a star in the path of an enemy ship, destroying it the way a wormhole was used as a solar cannon in "Farscape".

 

[Kelthaz]

To be a proper offensive weapon, the transporters have to be able to get by shields. And if you can get by shields, you've won already.

But you do have cases such as the Defiant's ablative armour which could be bypassed with a simple transport of a torpedo.

 

[USS Excelsior]

If you also store an old piece of your DNA, you can use it to make yourself young again.

 

[Anwar]

There are already plenty of youth treatments in Trek, the Transporters would just be one among many (and more risky).

But you do have cases such as the Defiant's ablative armour which could be bypassed with a simple transport of a torpedo.

Remedied by developing better weapons to neutralize armor without having to drop your own shields.

 

[Kelthaz]

If you also store an old piece of your DNA, you can use it to make yourself young again.

Too bad Admiral Jameson didn't think of that.

 

[Timo]

They missed a great opportunity for low-cost credibility in "Unnatural Selection".

The trick to restore Pulaski's youth was really a trick to restore her to a state of being that preceded her geriatric days by mere, well, days. It didn't take decades off her age, it only removed an annoying few days (or hours) during which she had developed a wrinkled skin and other such symptoms. So using the transporter to restore Pulaski would have been "dramatically harmless", as no other human(oid) being could have been restored to her or his youth the same way - the trick only removed "artificial" aging - and anybody trying the same trick for removing decades of her or his life would end with the very thing argued in many previous posts: total amnesia for the "removed" years.

Now, it would have been cool to show Pulaski recovering from her artificial aging and emerging from the transporter all "Huh?", after which Picard would put a hand on her shoulder, take her aside, and tell him a few important things about the days she had just missed!

And in a way, the episode can be read that way. Pulaski does emerge from the transporter disoriented. And then the camera cuts to the corridor outside the transporter room, and Pulaski is fully up to speed again. So perhaps Picard did get the chance to utter an explanatory phrase or two to her "during the cut"?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maurice]

The reality is that the transporter became a magical device for creating and resolving situations instead of merely what was intended: a cheap way to move the story along by not having to land the giant spaceship or always use the shuttle. Blame The Enemy Within for starting it. <shakes fist>

 

[Anwar]

I dunno, a lot of mileage can be gained from what are usually just cheap genre devices. Look at how much Farscape got out of wormholes, which are usually just plot devices in other sci-fi shows?

I mean sure, wormholes are real but the fact still stands...

 

[Silvercrest]

To be a proper offensive weapon, the transporters have to be able to get by shields. And if you can get by shields, you've won already.

I wonder if a strong enough transporter could teleport part of a star in the path of an enemy ship, destroying it the way a wormhole was used as a solar cannon in "Farscape".

If so, that invalidates your first paragraph, since you don't have to get by the shields. But it does sound like a good idea.

Otherwise, just transport fifty photon torpedoes right outside the perimeter and watch how well the shields deal with that. There are lots of ways the transporter can be a proper offensive weapon.

 

[Anwar]

To transport stuff OFF your ship, you also have to drop your own shields.

 

[Sandoval]

They can't beam through shields until they need to. Same old story.

On the occasions that you need to you have frequency windows or scan windows like O'Brien used in The Wounded to beam to the shielded Phoenix. Just like you can't beam from a ship at warp to a stationary location until Voyager needed to do it, then B'Elanna is able to calculate it so that they can beam someone aboard a Kazon vessel without dropping from warp.

 

[Anwar]

Somehow Kirk was able to beam aboard a Romulan ship in "Enterprise Incident" even when, unless they're idiots, the Romulans should've had shields up.

The Borg were able to beam through the Enterprise's shields in "Q Who?" as well but never showed that ability again.

 

[zar]

Now, at 42, I can say that I know more now than I did then. I would love to be 25 again and know what I know now. I would love it, but I don't think I'd like it. The things I did then, I wouldn't be stupid enough to do this new time around. I wouldn't fit in with people my age, nor would I fit in with people my mental age.

But you would fit in, if every other 42-year-old also switched to a 25-year-old body.

That reasoning makes my head hurt. I'm not saying your argument is stupid, I'm saying the in-show logic is flawed. If their scanners are advanced enough to scan every molecule of a person's body, which they must be in order for transporters to work, and if computer has the memory to hold a pattern in the first place, which it does, then surely it has the ability to do a Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V operation.

The reasoning is fine as long as you assume that pattern buffer memory technology uses completely different principles than our electronic computer memory, where the patterns are a temporary type of "data" that can't be stored any other way.

 

[Timo]

Somehow Kirk was able to beam aboard a Romulan ship in "Enterprise Incident" even when, unless they're idiots, the Romulans should've had shields up.

Let's remember the Romulans allowed Spock and Kirk to beam aboard the command ship earlier on. In that particular tactical situation, it would probably have been sensible for the command ship to lower her shields for transportation and assume a general "diplomatic" posture, while the other two vessels remained aggressive.

It's a separate issue that transporter use in general will probably be easily observable by the enemy. But perhaps there are standard tricks for camouflaging it? Certainly "parlor tricks" carried far against the best countermeasures of a top-rate warship in TNG "Devil's Due", suggesting this particular rat race goes to the transporters and perhaps has gone that way for a long time.

Timo Saloniemi