Transporter Purge

[TommyR01D]

An idea has come to me regarding the transporter:

We see in VOY's Prophecy that, when pushed to their limits, the ship's transporters are capable of picking up hundreds of Klingons from their own ship and putting them down in Voyager's shuttlebay in a few seconds.

We also see in DS9's Return to Grace that Kira can beam three dozen or so Klingons from their own bird of prey to a Cardassian freighter while also beaming those Cardassians onto the bird of prey.

One wonders why this ability was not used more extensively?

It would have been especially useful in Basics Part II, where Suder could have simply beamed all the Kazon into space rather than overloading the power couplings.

 

[Timo]

Good question. Perhaps targeting is a chore, and Torres and Kira had a head start (thanks to their devious fighting mindset) in two tactical situations, making it look more effortless than it really was, whereas Suder had neither the skill nor the disposition (sure, sadistic murder could be his thing, but he wouldn't have planned for this impersonal killing from distance when fantasizing of the 47 ways he could finish off Janeway's entire crew)?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Stibbons]

Transporters are powered by plot. They have all the consistency of the Red Dwarf TV series and the fickleness of a cat.

When I saw "Transporter Purge" I thought it was something like deleting your browser history.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I don't think it's a Bio Matter storage tank issue, there's plenty of space for that, especially when you compactify the raw matter that a person is down to their individual base atoms.

But the volume of data needed for all those people has got to be an issue, especially given how accurate your data needs to be and how much data one transporter computer system needs to store all the Atomic / Quantum State of every single Atom in your body along with all the stuff you're carrying. If you go out of bounds and add in even more people, the volume of data sky rockets.

Even DS9 had a Transporter/Holodeck incident that dealt with this where the Transporter needed to borrow all the free memory on the station and that caused weird glitches where the main crew were part of the Holodeck.

 

[Timo]

...Yet a runabout transporter was supposed to deal with that same operation with regular ease!

I doubt there is any data involved in transporting, save for a minimal stamp to accompany the phased matter package for bureaucratic purposes. All the data is carried by the phased matter itself, that is, the person is just zapped with a ray that turns him into a ghost that can be pushed through walls.

When this somehow fails, and there's a need for handling data, all hell breaks loose. Basically, the transporter is forced to become a replicator, a bit like how a locomotive in theory might be forced to become a precision cutting tool because the capacity is built in its wheels. It may be doable with lots and lots of jury-rigging, as seen, but how the machine is supposed to extract the "brain patterns" of our victims in "Our Man Bashir" is a real mystery and a completely new ability for the technology...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Josh Kelton]

It would have been especially useful in Basics Part II, where Suder could have simply beamed all the Kazon into space rather than overloading the power couplings.

Or just beam them all into the brig. Even if it might be somewhat cramped. We could have ended up with "Rascals" 2.0

 

[matthunter]

One would hope that there are a lot of safety lockouts on beaming people into space unless the computer confirms they have a suit first - though a skilled operator can override, perhaps doing so for so many would raise additional flags (even if it's not an enemy trying to beam the whole crew off, it's an act of mass murder)? Whilst beaming lots of folk from one place to another safely is fine.

 

[publiusr]

I've often thought about towing dedicated transporter space stations with elaborate security set ups because there might be things so dangerous you don't even want their patterns in your ship's buffer....