"What we got back, didn't live long.....Fortunately."

[T'Girl]

Wouldn't, then, have Scotty and the hapless redshirt in "Relics" also have been aware of the passage of time ...

Given Barkley's experiences, yes Scotty would have been aware of something, some passage of time. Now whether he was fully aware of 75 years of sharp personal perceptions, or instead a vague surreal existence in the recycling matter stream, is debatable.

Scotty was obviously confused for a half minute after materializing, one possibility is Scotty hallucinated in the matter stream limbo.

There is also the consideration that Scotty had a visible head injury, the laceration on his left forehead. This by itself could have been the cause of his confusion.

 

[Timo]

I'm still trying to figure out why transporter systems on-board Federation starships keep relying on components found in the engine room. Never made much sense to me.

I think blssdwlf in another current thread made an excellent suggestion regarding this. Transporting always involves massive violation of conservation of momentum (a huge linear and angular momentum difference between a guy standing on a planet and a guy standing in the transporter room of an orbiting or hovering starship). Perhaps the system dumps the momentum into the engines, or draws it from there?

Of course, that would suggest that the engines are directly related to the engineering room. Which doesn't really sound plausible. The engineering room would otherwise seem to be involved only in providing power for the engines, not in actually directly propelling the ship.

But dumping of momentum would in any case be achieved through the usual magic of artificial gravity and inertial damping. The machines responsible for this might well be located right next to the main powerplant, in the High Energy Magic department, so that Lt. Stibbons could directly supervise.

Scotty would have been aware of something, some passage of time

But that would mean that his "survival" method would not have allowed him to survive. After all, his only hope was to stop time from passing.

If Scotty is aware, then he also metabolizes, and will starve within a week. Which of course won't matter much because he's already dead of thirst. Which probably didn't hurt as he had already suffocated at that point.

Timo Saloniemi