Questions of culture's attitude to the transporter

[jwl]

Ideally you'd watch it first because it came before just about everything else on that list.

And read the entire golden age of comic books because they came before star trek (etc.) ?

[Batman]

And superhero comics figure into this because...they came before everything in a list of televised SciFi. Yes, that makes sense.

And I can't recall Bones having any problems with the transporter during TOS? He refused to beamed up to the refit E-Nil in The Motionless Picture but I suspect that had nothing to do with beaming and everything with him for all practical purposes having been press-ganged.

[Borgholio]

And superhero comics figure into this because...they came before everything in a list of televised SciFi. Yes, that makes sense.

And I can't recall Bones having any problems with the transporter during TOS? He refused to beamed up to the refit E-Nil in The Motionless Picture but I suspect that had nothing to do with beaming and everything with him for all practical purposes having been press-ganged.

He would constantly refer to it as a damned contraption, and bitch about having his molecules scattered every which way.

[SilverDragonRed]

Did he still use it despite the bitching?

[Borgholio]

Did he still use it despite the bitching?

Most of the time, yes. Sometimes he was forced to against his will like in TMP.

[SilverDragonRed]

The TMP example doesn't make sense to me. If I remember correctly, the previous two people using the transporter were turned into Wendy's chili because of ADM Krik. That sounds almost as messed up as an alien culture who happily clones a person who just hung themselves and transplants the memories to the new body. I at least hope they hosed off the transporter pad before telling Bones that everything was working normally.

[Borgholio]

The TMP example doesn't make sense to me. If I remember correctly, the previous two people using the transporter were turned into Wendy's chili because of ADM Krik. That sounds almost as messed up as an alien culture who happily clones a person who just hung themselves and transplants the memories to the new body. I at least hope they hosed off the transporter pad before telling Bones that everything was working normally.

That scene where you hear them screaming inside the transport beam has haunted me to this day. It is truly a blood-curdling scream.

[DarthPooky]

Its a basic assumption that all tech and all their capabilities will remain the same yeah. You can't say 'well jedi will be useless because there is no force in the milky way'. But that's not really the same as needing to 'explain why Star Wars does have transporters'. What ever random act of god that made them crossover can make sure all the tech works everywhere.

Iv always considered that in the star wars vs. star trek scenario that the to would exist in the same universe Just in different galaxy's of course. There for the physics and rules would be the same.

[DarthPooky]

That scene where you hear them screaming inside the transport beam has haunted me to this day. It is truly a blood-curdling scream.

TOTALY AGREE any time I watch TMP I always fast forward that see. It creeps the crap out of me to as well and also makes my OCD worse since its a fear based disorder.

[Lord Revan]

what really helps to sell (not that it needed any help) is that most of the time when the Transporter malfuntions it's either silly (like the episode where it split Kirk into 2) or clean where they tap the console and then say "I lost him" or words to that effect but in TMP you see and hear when Transporter painfully twists the victims into something that belongs in WH40K not Star Trek and then follows with the line that what ever came back from the other side didn't live long.

[Borgholio]

what really helps to sell (not that it needed any help) is that most of the time when the Transporter malfuntions it's either silly (like the episode where it split Kirk into 2) or clean where they tap the console and then say "I lost him" or words to that effect but in TMP you see and hear when Transporter painfully twists the victims into something that belongs in WH40K not Star Trek and then follows with the line that what ever came back from the other side didn't live long.

They parodied that scene in Galaxy Quest.

"We have beamed up the pig-lizard. It is inside out, and still alive."

*SPLORCH*

"And it just exploded."

[Batman]

That scene in TMP gets on my nerves to this day. If the Big E's transporters aren't up to snuff yet, why use them at all? It's not like transporters are pad-to-pad-only, just lock them down and use the transporters at Starfleet Command instead (Kirk asks the guys dirtside to 'boost your matter gain' so we know there's a transporter system at the other end)? Or how about using the space station's transporters, which were operating normally? Beam up to station, beam over to Big E, problem solved.

And I don't see how those two people dying was in any way Kirk's fault. He didn't order Starfleet to use the Big E's known to be iffy transporters.

[Me2005]

Two possible answers to SW's apparent lack of transporters:

1) They didn't need to invent them because they started with a big-movie budget and could afford shuttlecraft.

2) They do have them, they just have a minimum transportable-size (rather than ST's maximum of about a Volkswagen), much more limited issues with interference, and no range restrictions. They're called Hyperdrives and must be mounted on something approximately star ship/fighter sized.

That scene in TMP gets on my nerves to this day. If the Big E's transporters aren't up to snuff yet, why use them at all? It's not like transporters are pad-to-pad-only, just lock them down and use the transporters at Starfleet Command instead (Kirk asks the guys dirtside to 'boost your matter gain' so we know there's a transporter system at the other end)? Or how about using the space station's transporters, which were operating normally? Beam up to station, beam over to Big E, problem solved.

My world just exploded. I've also been scarred by that scene, and it never occurred to me that they should have just used the other endpoint's pad. The only reasonable explanation is that transporting pad-to-pad is always safer than pad-to-nothing, and we just see a very skewed version of the success of the transporter. So in that case, transporting from the station/planet/other ship to the E must have failed more often in the scenes we aren't seeing.

[SilverDragonRed]

I thought Kirk had shoved the transporter chief aside and tried to finished the job, but after watching the scene again, realized I was mistaken on the count. So, yeah, all the blame goes to whoever decided to not hand those two a shuttlecraft like they did for Kirk.

[Batman]

Kirk didn't even know they were transporting until the 'transporters are redlined' alarm sounded and did his best to compensate once he got to the transporter room.

[Borgholio]

The only reasonable explanation is that transporting pad-to-pad is always safer than pad-to-nothing, and we just see a very skewed version of the success of the transporter. So in that case, transporting from the station/planet/other ship to the E must have failed more often in the scenes we aren't seeing.

I don't recall if it's outright stated in any of the series or movies, but it's implied that pad-to-pad transport is better in some way. Either it's faster, uses less energy, allows increased range / reliability, or some combination of the three.

[SilverDragonRed]

Pad-to-pad is supposed to be more accurate than just to a random sport, and adds some redundancy to the process.

[Elheru Aran]

The general thought (if I recall the old TNG TM correctly) was that pad-to-pad is indeed redundant; you use the technobabble at the other end to re-incorporate the various atoms into a whole body. With pad-to-site, you have to basically kind of... throw a ball and then somehow catch it at the other end, so to speak, without moving from your own location.

Obviously in any kind of realistic transporter system pad-to-site is probably impossible without some form of mobile pad. Also, you shouldn't be able to go pad-to-pad between ships without incompatible pads. It'd be like trying to go Windows-to-Mac.

[Lord Revan]

I assume you meant to say either "with incompatable" or "without compatable" (which are pretty much the same thing), it really depends on how the transporter system works, like the WH40K system could easily be pad-to-site or even site-to-site since it involves sending the person or object being transported thru the warp to the destination so all you really need is a system that open a portal at point A and then at point B (and close them also obviously), however a trek style transporter would be pad to pad.

[Batman]

My knowledge of WH40K admittedly starts and stops at 'properly painted Space Marine figurines look nifty' so why would opening a portal at the receiving end without a receiving teleporter be so much easier than a Trek-style transporter doing it?

[Lord Revan]

My knowledge of WH40K admittedly starts and stops at 'properly painted Space Marine figurines look nifty' so why would opening a portal at the receiving end without a receiving teleporter be so much easier than a Trek-style transporter doing it?

cause trek style teleport devices break the target into data which is then reasembled at the target site, now if you transport from pad to pad you can make use of the target site computers to make everything is at right place when you rematerialize, with WH40k style teleporters or at least how I understood it you create a short live tunnel thru the warp (kind of like the Eldar Webway but weaker and non-permanent) but you're more or less intact during the trip, granted the immaterium has other dangers which is why teleporting is rare.

so the difference is between breaking you down to peices and then reasembling you peice by peice in a very limited time frame versus creating a tunnel between point A and point B thru an alternative dimension.

[Batman]

Um-Trek transporters seem to be able to do it just fine without a receiving transporter pad throughout most of the franchise?
And even within the telvised and movie materiel the actual workings of the Trek transporter are...muddy, at best, most of the operational details come from out of canon sources like the TMs.

Not that I see how establishing a tunnel through the Warp without a teleporter at both ends is any easier than what you think a Trek transporter does.

[Lord Revan]

Um-Trek transporters seem to be able to do it just fine without a receiving transporter pad throughout most of the franchise?
And even within the telvised and movie materiel the actual workings of the Trek transporter are...muddy, at best, most of the operational details come from out of canon sources like the TMs.

Not that I see how establishing a tunnel through the Warp without a teleporter at both ends is any easier than what you think a Trek transporter does.

while they're vague about the exact details what I said is more or less how transporter function is described in canon trek as for the why, remember the rematerialization needs very accurate sensor readings (as the molecules in your body need to be in certain order to work properly) and fast computers (as transporting never takes that long).

where as a short time warp-tunnel isn't something that needs all that much computing power and most of it's to make sure you don't fused into stone or something similar on the other end, come to think of I can't remember a single instance of pad to pad teleportation in the WH40K fiction I've read, it's almost always pad to site.

[DarthPooky]

They didn't need to invent them because they started with a big-movie budget and could afford shuttlecraft.

That doesn't count because my questions are in suspension of disbelief form of SIFI debate.

[Batman]

That's why he ended that sentence with a smiley.