Transporter episode idea

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

This idea comes partly from seeing lawyer commercials about contaminated military bases causing sickness.

Imagine that when you use the transporter, it's not perfect - tiny aberrant particles (call them "emoryons", after Emory Erickson) replace yours, before becoming your normal particles again after microseconds. But some of them don't. Some of them remain in your body. Repeated transporter use builds up your concentration of emoryons. Some people have more than others, some people are immune - no one knows why.

A high concentration of these particles leads to symptoms like body parts flickering - rapidly de and re-materializing - passing through solid objects randomly/dropping items you're holding because they pass through you, even spontaneous permanent de-materialization of your body/part of it. Imagine walking down the hall next to someone, and they suddenly disintegrate.

Improved transporter tech has or is working to eliminate this - maybe it only happens with certain defective transporter tech, but there's still a fall-out - legally, emotionally, medically...

 

[matthunter]

They kinda did this with the ENT followup novels - early transporters like on the NX-01 caused some single-bit errors in the DNA (like replicators in TNG) and this led to genetic issues in people who used the transporter regularly (I think Archer was rendered sterile and Malcolm had another disorder?).

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

At least with my idea, it's something unique to transporters; radioactivity can cause genetic errors now. Transporters could cause spontaneous material disintegration.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Reminds me of the LDS episode "Much Ado About Boimler".

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

It would be the transporter version of "Force of Nature", with a bit of courtroom drama in it as people testify about their bad experiences.

 

[Pauln6]

Cool idea. I have come to think that transporters do not disassemble and reassemble (kill and clone) but rather phase the transportee into a parallel dimension where space-time does not function. The energy shunted from that dimension is linked on a molecular level so that the transportee can be phased back again but that energy has to be contained in the annular confinement beam to prevent it leaking away and then sent to its new location via the carrier wave. Quantum fluctuations and the randomisation of the Heisenberg compensators mean that some of it leaks away over time (I am uncomfortable with the notion that you can just park the energy pattern in a buffer because the energy will still be lost due to the passage of time) and the data to recreate a person is absolutely humongous.

So the transporter compensates for lost data by reference to the pattern saved in the buffer on the way down. It then replicates missing data to replace anything missing *see TMP "Boost your matter gain".

In ordinary circumstances, a person cannot be replicated. You just get a replicated corpse. So there is a percentage (below 50%) where too much replicated matter causes health problems and death. Occasionally, weird chemicals or energy input have accidentally produced two living beings, probably with 50% real and 50% replicated matter (Evil Kirk, Thomas Riker). Other weird phenomena allow people to survive in the dimension and be retrieved through other means (like Realm of Fear).

Crew rotation would be needed to prevent illness caused by having too much replicated matter in your body. It's a cool way to mundane methods of transport relevant if using the transporter too often causes health issues.

So I can totally see the kind of issues you mention could arise if the particles remain linked to the parallel dimension.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Starfleet Medical would issue transporter use frequency guidelines. People who'd exhausted their transporter use quota for the time being would be taken off the away team rotation/tagged as "fly only", or assigned alternate work like workplaces do for people who have been injured and can't do their usual work nowadays.

 

[Ithekro]

Transports seem omnipresent by the turn of the 25th century. There seemed to be a sort of rationing if it's use on Earth in the mid-24th century judging by comments from Benjamin Sisko's time at the academy.