Transporter Rooms

[James Wright]

On Constitution class starships there are supposedly 4 transporter rooms.(According to the book by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry,"The Making of Star Trek")
Can 3 of the transporters be operated remotely from the 4th transporter room in an emergency, like abandoning ship, like in the episode "The Doomsday Machine"?

 

[Albertese]

umm....

Maybe but I doubt it. Seems like whenever they used the transporter they were operating it as much by visual cues of what the actual mechanism was doing. Therefore, doing so remotely might not put one in a position to really see what's going on.

Also, why bother? If there's so many people moving off ship (as in an evac scenario) then surely you can spare a guy to run the controls.

OTOH, transporters can be set to run automatically, such as flipping the switch and then running to the pad and riding out on a delay, so you know...whatever.

My personal opinion? I suppose each transporter control console is wired directly to the device it manages and can't be networked to another device without some severe Starfleet improvisational engineering business in effect! We're talking opened panels and cable harnesses stretched all over the place. Major tripping hazard stuff.

--Alex

 

[Timo]

Four rooms in the saucer would explain the two distinct shapes and standards of equip. That is, they'd account for the enlarged set with the food dispenser and the viewscreen, and for the sometimes varying door colors - the slightly mobile control console might best be explained as indeed being unattached to the floor, except by some sort of reliable magnetics. Remember how we sometimes see Kirk's command chair pedestal lifted from the floor, too, or how the big "transformer" thingamablobs at Engineering appear to wander about?

We might still want to believe in additional (cargo?) transporters in the secondary hull, too - to go with the Deck 14 reference when Simon van Gelder is beamed up in "Dagger of the Mind". Further believing in emergency evacuation transporters and the like wouldn't be a big step, either.

But we have seen several times that a central resource can get damaged or otherwise be lost, preventing use of any and all transporter rooms. Some sort of central control then exists across all the possible platforms. Yet active, positive control is not necessarily required, as it's not implied anywhere - not even in the total evacuation events we see or hear about ("This Side of Paradise", "Doomsday Machine"). Instead, each platform might be operated via its dedicated console, which as we witness (say, "Let That Be Your Last Illegal Beamout") can be set on automatic for the last person to leave.

TOS never seems to feature explicit remote use of transporters, although "Tholian Web" comes close with Spock ordering "ready to transport on my order" without pressing the intercom button, as if somebody on the bridge were to be the one to execute the order. Of course, Spock is never heard giving the order! We probably have to pretend it was "lost in editing", i.e. happened when the camera was doing something else. Perhaps we lost Spock's pressing of the intercom button, too? Or perhaps Uhura relayed the order to the transporter operator down below?

If not, though, this rather anomalous case could serve as our proof for centralized command of all transporters.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gagarin]

I would think not. I would assume only 1 of them is ever manned full time and ready for use. I'd imagine 2 of them would be ready to use (but offline), and 1 is in some state of diagnostic/tear down/repair condition. The on-duty transporter room would change every shift.

 

[Jose Tyler]

I think there probably is a centralized control for all the transporters but not each room controlling others; I'm thinking the Emergency Manual Monitor is the logical location for a centralized control. In "Lights of Zatar" Scott and Romaine were going to conduct all the equipment transfers to Memory Alpha from there. It is likely from a safety consideration that an operator controls a single room at a time.

 

[Gagarin]

It's not clear how the equipment was going to be transferred down. It could have been in bulk in some of the cargo bays... maybe they were managing some automated cargo conveyors as workbees carried it down to Memory Alpha. (Memory Alpha had no atmosphere, as far as one could tell). Or they were managing the cargo out of the various hatches so the transporters could then be used (put the cargo in a vacuum, then transport it, instead of very-carefully trying to engage transporters without ripping out part of a bulkhead (it's mid 23rd century, after-all, and they use that pad for a reason!). Or maybe they built a conveyor system from the cargo bays to the cargo transporters (and made use of turbo-lift shafts along the way).

 

[scotpens]

Further believing in emergency evacuation transporters and the like wouldn't be a big step, either.

Emergency evacuation transporters aren’t a big step at all; in fact, they’re canon.

From The Making of Star Trek:

There are eleven personnel and cargo transporter stations aboard the vessel. Four are the familiar main operational stations, two are cargo transporters, five are emergency personnel transporters which can handle twenty-two people each but involve a risk factor at such power loads and are limited to use in ship-abandoning emergencies.

The exact location of the various transporter rooms is another matter. According to the Franz Joseph plans, three of the emergency 22-person transporters are on Deck 8 in the saucer, and two are in the secondary hull on Deck 22.

. . . Or they were managing the cargo out of the various hatches so the transporters could then be used (put the cargo in a vacuum, then transport it, instead of very-carefully trying to engage transporters without ripping out part of a bulkhead (it's mid 23rd century, after-all, and they use that pad for a reason!).

I don’t understand what you’re getting at here. The Memory Alpha complex had an internal atmosphere. And even if they were beaming cargo to the planet’s surface outside the complex, why would the cargo have to be put into a vacuum? That doesn’t make sense to me.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Emergency evacuation transporters aren’t a big step at all; in fact, they’re canon.

No. According to the strict definition of canon at the Memory Alpha article http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Canon, the 22-person emergency transporters are licensed non-canon material. The definition of canon reads:

The Star Trek canon is generally defined as all live-action television series and feature films released by Paramount Pictures. With the release of Star Trek: The Animated Series on DVD, the studio appears to have changed its stance, and is now listing the cartoon series (aired 1973–1974), as a part of established canon. ([X]wbm [X]wbm [X]wbm) The various "official" references (such as the Star Trek Encyclopedia or the Star Trek Chronology) may be used as a guide to canon information, but are not canon in and of themselves.

Except for the parts that are canon, the descriptions in The Making of Star Trek about the Enterprise are licensed non-canon material.

 

[scotpens]

. . . According to the strict definition of canon at the Memory Alpha article http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Canon, the 22-person emergency transporters are licensed non-canon material.

But do we accept their definition of “canon” as canon?

Whatever. Makes no difference to me, really.

In any case, high-volume emergency evacuation transporters do seem a logical idea.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

To me, they are part of the Enterprise, especially since they are mentioned in The Making of Star Trek.

 

[Timo]

...Which is also why I wanted to offer my support to them, by suggesting that what we actually see on air is already in pretty good accordance with their existence. We have seen or heard of a couple of major evacuations, and we witnessed long lines in the "This Side of Paradise" case when a standard transporter room was used. An emergency facility with greater capacity (and better queuing logistics) would certainly be welcome, then!

Regarding "Lights of Zetar", Scotty and Romaine are originally told to go to emergency manual monitor aka auxiliary control to "prepare for direct transfer of equipment". It's not that they need the EMM/AC in order to conduct the transfer - it sounds like they are told to use it to prepare because it's a convenient facility for kowtowing on technological matters. Kyle and pals might be crewing the transporter controls, and shuttles might also be standing by, but our main characters need to supervise things from a properly equipped central location, and for some reason Kirk wants them off his back and out of the main bridge.

When an emergency arises, and Kirk needs transporters, he doesn't order Scotty to use the resources of the EMM, he orders Scotty to the transporter room where Kyle conducts the transport.

It is only at the conclusion of an emergency beam-up that the EMM issue arises again: after the immediate crisis is over, Kirk apparently wants to know what went wrong and how it could be stopped from going wrong again, and for this reason says "Mister Scott, check emergency manual monitor for transporter control." That is, the EMM is a good location for diagnosis and analysis (probably on par with Main Bridge there), but it doesn't really stand out as a location from which transporters could be operated.

Of course, the reason the EMM is featured in the episode at all is that this relatively new set is the cost-effective yet still dramatically somewhat plausible way to isolate Scotty and another engineer for romantic scenes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gagarin]

. . . Or they were managing the cargo out of the various hatches so the transporters could then be used (put the cargo in a vacuum, then transport it, instead of very-carefully trying to engage transporters without ripping out part of a bulkhead (it's mid 23rd century, after-all, and they use that pad for a reason!).

I don’t understand what you’re getting at here. The Memory Alpha complex had an internal atmosphere. And even if they were beaming cargo to the planet’s surface outside the complex, why would the cargo have to be put into a vacuum? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Beaming things from one part of a starship to somewhere else (intership beaming, with no transporter pad) was frowned upon back in the day. If you had cargo stacked up (I assume computer equipment or heavy machinery for pressure dome construction) in a cargo bay, an easy way of moving it -if you weren't going to lug it to the transporter chamber, or if it would be physically impossible to fit inside the transporter chamber, would be to open the cargo hatch and safely engage the transporter when it's outside the ship's hull. Intership beaming was dangerous because it was thought (or probably true with the equipment they had) that you could accidentally take part of the starship with you accidentally.

Putting the equipment EVA and then engaging the transporter when it's outside the ship might be easier.

 

[Timo]

That would make it a site-to-site transport, though - another thing that TOS equipment apparently didn't handle well.

Say, in "Cloud Minders", when they site-to-site Chief Annoyer Plasus from the cloud city to the mines, they apparently are forced to briefly materialize him on the Enterprise pad in the middle of the process. This would make it impossible to beam objects that are larger than the transporter room.

We have little idea what was being moved in the episode, as whatever it was remained aboard the starship because of the crisis. But Memory Alpha was going to receive new "equipment", which doesn't sound like our heroes would be hauling ancient harvesters or ocean liners to the location for archiving. Probably what was being moved was modern equipment for data storage, and it was delicate enough to require a chaperon. We don't know if it was bulky as well, or if it would have been particularly difficult to move by transporter or by spacewalk, but we can assume our heroes would not have chosen a risky method such as site-to-site here.

Of course, we may be selling TOS technology short. Mere two decades later, Scotty was quite able to site-to-site two humpback whales and associated seawater...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gagarin]

Maybe it's easier to get a lock on something outside the dense ship with a line of sight vs inside a dense ship without a line of sight... or they had enough room to wiggle with the water they were taking, too, who knows. Room to wiggle in a compartment = bulkheads and conduits.

 

[Albertese]

...

Of course, we may be selling TOS technology short. Mere two decades later, Scotty was quite able to site-to-site two humpback whales and associated seawater...

Timo Saloniemi

... using Klingon technology. If Enterprise is to be believed (and I usually take it with a grain of salt at least), when Earth's Starfleet started out, the Klingons were way ahead technologically. (I know, so was most everyone else). But maybe the site-to-site gimmick was something that most poeple have a hard time getting right and, for all we know, the Federation got the polished version of that particular idea from that very bird of prey after hauling it up out of the bay.

I dunno. Never even occurred to me til just now as i read this thread...

--Alex

 

[scotpens]

. . . Beaming things from one part of a starship to somewhere else (intership beaming, with no transporter pad) was frowned upon back in the day. If you had cargo stacked up (I assume computer equipment or heavy machinery for pressure dome construction) in a cargo bay, an easy way of moving it -if you weren't going to lug it to the transporter chamber, or if it would be physically impossible to fit inside the transporter chamber, would be to open the cargo hatch and safely engage the transporter when it's outside the ship's hull.

Okay, I see what you were getting at. Seems unnecessarily complicated, though.

“Intership” means between two ships. “Intraship” beaming is from one part of the ship to another. We saw it used only once in TOS, in “Day of the Dove,” with a bit of dialogue explaining that the procedure was rarely done because of the danger of the transportee materializing inside a deck or bulkhead. In any case, it still required the use of the transporter pad at the sending end. We never had any indication that the transporter could grab people or objects from anywhere within the ship and beam them elsewhere.

That would make it a site-to-site transport, though - another thing that TOS equipment apparently didn't handle well.

In “The Trouble with Tribbles,” when Kirk and Spock beamed over to the K-7 space station, they materialized on the station’s own two-person transporter platform — implying that precise site-to-site beaming required a transporter mechanism at both the sending and receiving end. But then in “The Enterprise Incident,” Kirk, disguised as a Romulan, was able to beam straight into a corridor on the Romulan flagship with apparent ease, and without causing a security alert!

 

[Timo]

We never got the impression that the transporter would be positionally imprecise in the slightest: our heroes always materialized on the target surface, not ten inches above it or below it! This regardless of whether the target is surrounded by a mere atmosphere, or by dozens of layers of starship hull metal, or perhaps by (less than a couple of klicks of) bedrock.

It is thus difficult to explain what could possibly have been difficult or dangerous in "Day of the Dove". Perhaps it's a matter of the transporter having difficulty focusing when the target is really close to the sending platform? (But how distant could Kirk have been in "The Tholian Web", when most of his ghostly appearances had been within the ship?) Or perhaps the emitters of the proverbial beam do not work well in the direction of the ship itself, being aimed outwards?

Beaming from Enterprise to K-7 wouldn't be "site-to-site" in the treknobabble sense anyway, but its exact opposite: site-to-site lacks pads at both ends, while we frequently see pads used at both ends when two Starfleet vessels or installations interact (even if only one of the ends is being "active" in the process). And this still holds true in the TNG era, where site-to-site is trivially easy. Perhaps it's just for reasons of protocol that one doesn't beam from bridge to bridge, or from office to office?

But as you pointed out, TOS never showed us anybody beaming people up from within the ship that was operating the transporter system; this may have been just as risky as beaming people down into the ship that was operating the system. But not because of general positional uncertainties in the process - the reason has to be found elsewhere.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gagarin]

^Maybe we never saw it because our heroes knew the limitations of the transporter (or the plot) and didn't try it. I think getting a lock on someone or something (precisely) and transporting them or it somewhere (precisely) might be two separate issues. It's possible to grab someone and exactly be on target and then place them somewhere other than intended. Or it's possible to be a little off as you grab but be perfectly spot-on with the release...of whatever you brought back.