Transporters too Good

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Nine of Four, Aug 27, 2013.

  1. Nine of Four

    Nine of Four Commander Red Shirt

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    Just thinking of the possible military applications of transwarp beaming, i.e., surprise attacks, no boundaries to attacks, quick assassination, it wouldn't be hard to believe Section 31 "confiscated" the equation.....
     
  2. CorporalClegg

    CorporalClegg Admiral Admiral

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    Oops. There was supposed to be an "exclusively" in there somewhere.

    He was implying that Enterprise was strictly part of nuverse. He started with "This new time line..." Archer's crew is really a part of the "Star Trek Verse."
     
  3. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The film's editing implies otherwise.
     
  4. austen_pierce

    austen_pierce Captain Captain

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    Unfortunately.

    Enterprise had so much potential, crippled by bad writing. Those eps only got interesting in season four, when they had nothing to lose and decided to pull out all the stops with eps like In A Mirror Darkly, the Augment multi parter, and the Terra Prime series.

    Sorry, mods, I know I'm off topic.
     
  5. Bry_Sinclair

    Bry_Sinclair Vice Admiral Admiral

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    All you have to do is to beam out either a pre-assembled transporter pad, or all the parts and an engineering crew to assemble it and you have a means of returning or going even further.

    It'd be like a system of Star(Trek)gates.
     
  6. Timelord Victorious

    Timelord Victorious Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Did the movie even establish that Khan knew where he was going? For all we Know the mobile unit was hardwired to a single location and Khan either did know or didn't know where he was going to end up.

    But either way, it was better to use it than crash and burn in his fighter craft.

    It doesn't appear that Quonos was a very desirable place for him to be.
    But putting him there fits Marcus' plan perfectly.

    So he set up Khan to get his hands on it and just wait for him to make his inevitable escape.
     
  7. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    This is one of the more likely scenarios, yes.

    However, it sort of seems the one thing Khan did know was that the 72 long range torpedoes would be used against him. That's why he put his followers in the torpedoes, right?

    Sure, he could have been short of options and hollowed out the torps solely because that was the only way to smuggle the followers out of S31 premises - but leaving it at that would make very little sense, because the torps would then be sent to end users and the followers would be scattered to galactic winds (rather literally and gruesomely). Khan must have known exactly where the torpedoes would end at. And that sort of necessitates him knowing all about the plan to send Kirk to start war with Klingons and then die of acute sabotagedstarshipengineitis.

    So it seems Marcus and Khan agreed that the latter should go to Qo'noS and play target in order to get the war going. Khan obviously wouldn't agree to such a plan if it involved his own death, so perhaps Marcus lied to him about some sort of an escape route? Or perhaps Marcus actually provided him with an escape route (say, another transwarp transporter package), although why he should bother when it was in his interests that Khan die, we can't tell.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  8. SeerSGB

    SeerSGB Admiral Admiral

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    Right up till the point that he's warned that the new torps are armed at him, Khan could have been following Marcus's plan. Even gunning down the Captains at Daystrom could have been part of the plan, cause it gives Marcus (1) PR and Political capital for the war, (2) takes out anyone that might be a roadblock in his plans.

    Once the new torps are in play, Khan gambles on Kirk taking him in and not killing him. When Kirk confirms the number of torps, it confirms Khan's theory that Marcus has sold him out.

    Granted, at the end of day, Khan is Khan and he probably had a way or plan to fuck over Marcus when he wanted or needed to, just Marcus threatened Khans family (the other augments) and that was the end of it, Khan went into rage mode.
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    What was this original plan in which Khan going to the Klingon homeworld made good sense to Khan and Marcus both, though? It seems that the only reason for Khan to go there is to act as an excuse for a war - so if he's doing what Marcus wants, he should be trying to start a war. Sure, he guns down a lot of Klingons, but that's after he parts ways with Marcus...

    Yes, Khan asks how many torps. If the count is any less than 72, he has failed in his own personal plan of rescuing all of his disciples. If it's more than 72, the weapons might not be the ones he designed, but some other random ordnance. But if it's exactly 72, they must be the cryocapsules - and only two people could have arranged for the cryocapsules to be shipped to Khan that way. One is Marcus, in control of everything (at least in his own opinion). The other is Khan, but only if he has cunningly planned for every step of this operation from the very start...

    ...And if he has, this cannot be the original plan of Marcus, because any plan that involves 72 "long range torpedoes" being fired at Qo'noS will involve Khan's death and thus isn't something Marcus could sell to Khan. So, what's going on?

    Originally, I thought this was a Marcus scheme:

    - Khan revolts and escapes
    - Marcus decides to kill two birds with one stone, and tells Kirk to threaten Khan with 72 long range torpedoes
    - Khan will get the hint that these torpedoes in fact are execution devices for Khan's followers, devised as such by the nefarious Marcus, and so he will either surrender or be directly responsible for getting his own followers killed

    But then I actually saw the movie, and Khan takes credit for placing the stiffs in the torps. So it must be Khan who organizes the whole thing of Kirk transporting them to Klingon space and into safety, while Marcus is kept in the dark. It must be a long term plan, then: Khan must convince Marcus to build/refit a starship that has launch facilities for exactly 72 torps, then build the fake torps, then convince Marcus to give a go-ahead to a plan that involves a gullible captain taking that ship and the "torps" to a location where Khan can acquire them.

    So, again, what is that plan? What sort of bull did Khan feed to Marcus here? There are two plans that both seem to make sense, but don't.

    1) A renegade Khan is a good excuse for sending the gullible captain to start the war. But Marcus won't accept a plan that involves Khan going renegade for real, and Marcus in turn knows that Khan won't accept a plan that involves the superagent pretending to go renegade and then serving as a target for weapons of mass destruction.

    2) Sending the gullible captain to start the war is straightforward - but doesn't work unless there's a decoy there to lure him into attacking. So why install the weapons in the ship of a gullible captain? Why not install them aboard the Vengeance, which will fire them and then successfully escape? Starfleet will be blamed for the first shots anyway, but at least this way Starfleet wouldn't be one ship short.

    I guess there could be a clever third option that the writers wanted to suggest, but I'm just not seeing it.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  10. austen_pierce

    austen_pierce Captain Captain

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    Cross posting to this older thread about transporters, just to add my opinion.

    How does a transwarp transporter replace a starship? How does TB accomplish exploration? How does TB seek out new life and new civilizations? How does TB go where no man has gone before? Don't you need endpoint coordinates even for transwarp beaming? Finally, how does TB face and repel an aggressive invading species? Sure, commercial transportation will be laying off jobs, but star fleet is much more than just a way to get from point A to point B.
     
  11. Kemaiku

    Kemaiku Admiral Admiral

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    A starship can:

    Orbit and study an entire planet in hours.
    Approach and study an anomaly in space.
    Carry hundreds of people at once (engineers, specialists).
    Carry dozens of well equipped laboratories.
    Launch several support craft to different locations.
    Wage war with powerful weapons in space and orbit.
    Carry cargo in emense quantities quickly.
    Carry equipment and supplies that are too unstable to be beamed at all.
    Mine materials from celestial masses or nebulae.
    Take a fully assembled machine to a specific location.
    Deploy objects into space or orbit of a planet (comms/satellites).
    Retrieve objects adrift.
    Aid evacuation en masse.

    Etc, lets see transwarp beaming replace all of that overnight, then I'll believe it makes an organised Starfleet redundant.
     
  12. austen_pierce

    austen_pierce Captain Captain

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    Even better, thank you! You've thought this through even more than I have. I'm saving all this for the next time I see the "they don't need starships" snipe show up in a thread.
     
  13. OpenMaw

    OpenMaw Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    One point you guys seem to miss, though.


    The transwarp beaming device can fit inside of a duffle bag...


    ...HOOK THAT THING UP TO A STARSHIP! Transwarp beam a starship! BAM! Instant-travel through space.
     
  14. OpenMaw

    OpenMaw Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Double posted again. Sorry.
     
  15. M'Sharak

    M'Sharak Definitely Herbert. Maybe. Moderator

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    And maybe the starship ends up materializing, half a galaxy away, inside its own turbine-room water tank? Er, "inert reactant" tank.

    It could happen. :p
     
  16. Amaris

    Amaris Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    To me, transwarp beaming seems to be very specialized, very dangerous, and is technology kept under tight control. The novelization of the movie (yeah, yeah, I know) says that Khan's portable transporter beamed him to a Section 31 facility on the Moon whose larger, more powerful transwarp transporter then beamed him to his destination coordinates.
     
  17. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    For what it's worth, the old FASA manuals said transwarp is a combination of warp and transporter systems - beaming a warp field ahead of the ship, or something like that.
     
  18. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Favorite wtf, when Chekov says Spock and Khan keeping moving, which is why he can't beam them aboard.

    That didn't stop you from beaming Kirk and Sulu aboard when they were falling under crazy gravity fluctuations, and didn't stop Scotty from beaming Spock out of a fast moving Jellyfish. Fucking idiot.
     
  19. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Just going by the name, it's either that or a combination of warp and cross-dressing.
     
  20. Kemaiku

    Kemaiku Admiral Admiral

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    There's also the fact that the new Enterprise is bigger than a Sovereign class, the energy required to beam that much mass would be incredible.

    They'd likely have to land her back at the Iowa yards, encase her in something then hook the assembly up to the national grid then beam her somewhere.

    Considering with the new drive systems in this universe you can get 4 days travel done in 12 hours, there's not much point wasting 2 or 3 days and a massive amount of energy doing it the other way.

    Beaming a Section 31 operative into the Romulan data archives and back out again however...