Transwarp Beaming Impact on Star Trek novels

[JB2005]

That's our job as tie-in writers, to treat it all as one cohesive reality.

Don't you mean two realities?

You may not "need" to "shoehorn" anything in, but I and my fellow tie-in writers do need to reconcile it all as much as we can. And since this is a thread about the impact of transwarp beaming on ST novels, well, there you go.

Has it been established in any novels yet where and when Scotty created transwarp beaming? (Perhaps in SCE, post-"Relics"?) That's something else that leads me to believe it's not the same as subspace beaming. They'd already done it in TNG, but Scotty is credited as the inventor. You'd have thought they'd at least mention that.

SCE stopped publishing years ago, and the film's new. They couldnd't establish it because it was made up for the film...

 

[Pauln6]

That's our job as tie-in writers, to treat it all as one cohesive reality.

Don't you mean two realities?

You may not "need" to "shoehorn" anything in, but I and my fellow tie-in writers do need to reconcile it all as much as we can. And since this is a thread about the impact of transwarp beaming on ST novels, well, there you go.

Has it been established in any novels yet where and when Scotty created transwarp beaming? (Perhaps in SCE, post-"Relics"?) That's something else that leads me to believe it's not the same as subspace beaming. They'd already done it in TNG, but Scotty is credited as the inventor. You'd have thought they'd at least mention that.

Once again you should distinguish between long distance beaming and beaming onto a ship at warp. Technically they're two different things. NuScotty is working on long distance beaming but he hasn't solved the problems of transwarp beaming.

Do they refer to it as transwarp beaming later in the movie too? That would seem to be an error, since the Narada wasn't at warp. Their problem there was just hiding so they didn't get blown up and then beaming over a few billion(?) kilometres to Earth. In fact, it might have been better if they had beamed onto the vessel while it was at warp since the risk to Earth would have been less immediate and they could have beamed on a lot more men.

 

[Christopher]

That's our job as tie-in writers, to treat it all as one cohesive reality.

Don't you mean two realities?

No, because we're talking about something that the movie established as happening in the Prime timeline, namely, Scotty Prime perfecting transwarp beaming. That's the whole thing that makes it a mystery and a challenge -- fitting that allegation into what we know of Prime history. Is it something Scotty perfected before he was trapped on the Jenolan, or after? Can't have been before, or it would be something that's used in the TNG era. But wait, here's a TNG episode where they talk about something that's kinda the same thing -- what if that were the technology Scotty developed? Or what if it were the basis of a breakthrough Scotty made sometime between then and 2387?

Has it been established in any novels yet where and when Scotty created transwarp beaming? (Perhaps in SCE, post-"Relics"?) That's something else that leads me to believe it's not the same as subspace beaming. They'd already done it in TNG, but Scotty is credited as the inventor. You'd have thought they'd at least mention that.

Of course they didn't mention it, because it's not something they had in mind. Can't you understand the concept of using your imagination to resolve plot inconsistencies? I'm not saying they intended this. I'm not saying there's "evidence" of it or anything like that. I'm saying it's a handy thing to imagine as a way of helping us fit the idea of transwarp beaming into the Trek universe as we already know it.

 

[SD70ACe]

EDIT: This first part was a response to Paul's post, not yours, Christopher. Yours had not appeared when I hit "post."

Also bear in mind that STXI transporters can also displace matter, whereas the transporters in other Trek incarnations could not. (Save for air, of course.) So I think we're really looking at a notably divergent transporter technology than that of previous Trek.

Can't you understand the concept of using your imagination to resolve plot inconsistencies?

Of course. If not, I wouldn't be such a big fan of Trek lit. But at the same time, it doesn't need to be an inconsistency at all. It could just be brand new different tech. Hell, for all we know, Scotty didn't invent transwarp beaming. Spock Prime did, and just didn't want to take credit for it.

 

[Christopher]

Also bear in mind that STXI transporters can also displace matter, whereas the transporters in other Trek incarnations could not. (Save for air, of course.) So I think we're really looking at a notably divergent transporter technology than that of previous Trek.

Says who? The only matter the transporters in the film displaced was water/coolant when Scotty beamed in. That's a fluid, not a solid, so it could be almost as easily displaced by an annular confinement beam as air, dust, etc. It's just a matter of pushing it aside. If a swimmer can push aside water using only moderately more effort than it takes for a runner to push aside air, then there's absolutely no reason why the same ACB that pushes the air and dust out of the way to allow someone to materialize without suffering fatal embolisms couldn't just push a little harder and clear water (or a waterlike coolant fluid) out of the way as well. It's completely illogical to claim it requires a "notably divergent technology."

 

[SD70ACe]

The water/coolant was in a sealed tank. There would have been nowhere for the ACB to push the liquid to. Unless the ACB vaporized it, perhaps? That would make more sense, now that I think about it. No displacement necessary!

Now, the two disparate workings of the lock-on system seen in the film, on the other hand...

 

[JB2005]

What? The tank wasn't full...so the ACB could just move it aside...

 

[Christopher]

Well, Word of God is that it wasn't water but some form of coolant, so it wasn't necessarily incompressible like water is. Even if the pipe system had been completely filled and airtight, it still might've been possible for the liquid to be compressed in volume. (Just as the air in the transporter room must logically be compressed when something is beamed into it. Come to think of it, transporters must have some kind of compensators in their ventilation systems to prevent a dangerous rise in air pressure if something large, or a large group of people, is beamed aboard. Or maybe the transporter dematerializes a volume of air in the chamber equivalent to the volume of what's beaming in. Still, theoretically, if it's just an ACB pushing air aside, you could blow open a ship's hull just by beaming in a large volume of material at once and creating an overpressure shock equivalent to that of an explosion.)

Anyway, in this screencap, it looks like there's a narrow airspace at the top of the pipe -- and in the whole sequence, Scotty's kicking up quite a lot of bubbles as he moves through it. That suggests that there's enough air inside the pipe system to leave room for compression even if the coolant is incompressible.

 

[F. King Daniel]

When setting up the transwarp beaming, Spock brought up a schematic of the Enterprise on the shuttle's console (you don't get a great view, but it's visible). Perhaps they were still in sensor contact, or maybe Spock was just using a schematic to find a nice open space on the ship (he'd be unfamiliar with this Enterprise) for use in his calculations.

Now, the two disparate workings of the lock-on system seen in the film, on the other hand...

MANUAL TARGETING MODE ENGAGED was flashing on the console when Kirk and Sulu were falling. If a black hole opening a few miles below isn't cause to bork the targeting sensors, I don't know what is. They were still using the manual mode when Amanda fell out of the beam a little later. Or are you talking about something else?

 

[Christopher]

^Just a reminder that this is the Trek Lit forum, not the "nitpick details of the movie ad nauseam" forum, so if you guys want to debate a technical question specific to the film and unrelated to the literature, I suggest doing so in the Trek XI forum.

 

[datalogan]

I don't remember the exact line from the movie, but NuScotty did state that he was the one to come up with the idea of long-distance transporting (in addition to transwarp beaming). He said that he theorized NOT ONLY that one can transport from one planet to another (which was easy) [long-distance transporting], but ALSO that one can transport to an object in warp [transwarp beaming]. Spock refers to transwarp beaming, but they are certainly using some kind of long-distance beaming in addition to the "transwarp" aspect. And then the long-distance beaming is used later in the movie, as mentioned before, without the transwarp part of it.

This long-distance beaming is not named in the ST09 movie. But I like the reasoning that Christopher L. Bennett has given here. For the sake of storytelling and being able to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible, let's just say that the technique was indeed the same "subspace transportation" that La Forge and Data speak about in "Bloodlines". This means that regardless of how lucky Kirk and company happen to be in the movie, the technology was later found to be unstable, unreliable, and energy-entensive. And maybe there's also some fairly cheep method of blocking it around sensitive compounds like Starfleet Command.

So now we can all be happy in the knowledge that this crazy tech has been placed safely back in the bottle and will not rear its ugly head to cause problems in Star Trek stories for the near future.

As an aside, I would further recommend that this technology was something Prime Scotty postulated and experimented on prior to being on the Jenolan. It seems to make more sense given that NuScotty was working on the tech as early as the 2250s. And it would further support the conversation in "Bloodlines" where Data, La Forge, and Picard all have memories of this tech being know. They weren't talking about it like it was a really new tech, which it would have had to have been if Scotty worked on it after the Jenolan (because he only got off the Jenolan about a year and a half earlier).

 

[Pauln6]

I think that transwarp beaming will cause less problems for Trek-lit because it was already established as being possible but difficult on a number of occasions in TNG. All the movie did was bring that story possibility into NuTOS novels. The long distance beaming is the 'game-changer' because it opens up multiple story possibilities that would potentially change the way ships travel around (requiring shields raised at all times, which one assumes they never do normally (beyond navigational deflectors) because it is too energy intensive). So overall, I agree that it should be labelled as subspace transporting so that those limitations can keep the genie in its bottle except in dire emergencies.

 

[BillJ]

I think that transwarp beaming will cause less problems for Trek-lit because it was already established as being possible but difficult on a number of occasions in TNG.

It can't be all that difficult... Spock was able to do it from what looked to be an old, busted shuttle in pieces with no hardware modification at all.

Just put in a simple formula and away you go. It should be much easier from Starships and larger Federation facilities simply because they have better equipment and more power dedicated to the task.

 

[Pauln6]

I think that transwarp beaming will cause less problems for Trek-lit because it was already established as being possible but difficult on a number of occasions in TNG.

It can't be all that difficult... Spock was able to do it from what looked to be an old, busted shuttle in pieces with no hardware modification at all.

Just put in a simple formula and away you go. It should be much easier from Starships and larger Federation facilities simply because they have better equipment and more power dedicated to the task.

That was definitely a dumb plot hole in my view. I've said in the past that I would have favoured Kirk being beamed directly to the outpost under guard (Rand) and finding that Spock was already there working with Scotty to modify the system to allow him to beam to the Narada. Then when Kirk arrives, cue mind meld and they modify the plan to beam Kirk and Scotty to the Enterprise, which is the safer option. If they were really keen on a CGI snow beast they could have sent Kirk out to work on some external equipment.

This would have 1) introduced Rand; 2) avoided the ludicrously convoluted cave scene; 3) demonstrated that it takes a lot of work to transwarp beam; 4) removed the need for NuSpock to waste an escape pod when there is a base on the planet; 5) removed the need for us to wonder why Scotty didn't notice an escape craft distress call; and 6) reduced the distance to the Enterprise (by removing time wasted walking to the outpost).

On balance though I don't think may writers will be adopting the process of just entering an equation as it's just too silly.

 

[Stevil2001]

That's our job as tie-in writers, to treat it all as one cohesive reality.

Don't you mean two realities?

You may not "need" to "shoehorn" anything in, but I and my fellow tie-in writers do need to reconcile it all as much as we can. And since this is a thread about the impact of transwarp beaming on ST novels, well, there you go.

Has it been established in any novels yet where and when Scotty created transwarp beaming? (Perhaps in SCE, post-"Relics"?) That's something else that leads me to believe it's not the same as subspace beaming. They'd already done it in TNG, but Scotty is credited as the inventor. You'd have thought they'd at least mention that.

SCE stopped publishing years ago, and the film's new. They couldnd't establish it because it was made up for the film...

Actually, the Scotty timeline in the trade paperback edition of What's Past does indeed mention Scotty's perfection of the transwarp beaming equation.

 

[BillJ]

I've said in the past that I would have favoured Kirk being beamed directly to the outpost under guard (Rand) and finding that Spock was already there working with Scotty to modify the system to allow him to beam to the Narada.

I'd have just dropped the whole 'transwarp' beaming nonsense and had a line about using multiple subspace relays to boost the transporters range.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Is Scotty's perfection of the transwarp beaming formula placed post-"Relics" in the What's Past timeline, as I suspect?

 

[David cgc]

It's under "2380s," without giving a specific year. It does assume that Scotty-Prime had been fiddling with transwarp beaming since he'd first entered Starfleet, just as nuScotty had.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Thanks!

 

[Pauln6]

I've said in the past that I would have favoured Kirk being beamed directly to the outpost under guard (Rand) and finding that Spock was already there working with Scotty to modify the system to allow him to beam to the Narada.

I'd have just dropped the whole 'transwarp' beaming nonsense and had a line about using multiple subspace relays to boost the transporters range.

That has the problem of involving a layer of technobabble that they were trying to avoid (transwarp is just a corruption of warp, which is iconic and essential to the Trek mythos). I thought subspace relays were traditionally set up to boost communications range, being set up in a network every 20 light years or so throughout 'occupied' space. If that is the relay you are talking about then the signal would be travelling even further than what we had in the movie! If it's just blather to achive the in-story effect then it still carries the problem of being simple and repeatable. It seems to me that from a Trek writer's viewpoint you need the process to be complex, dangerous, and not easily repeatable.