Questions of culture's attitude to the transporter

[Darth Tanner]

But by that premise Star Trek shuttles are all super fast because they don't have toilets so when someone is taking it out for a trip they must be soiling their pyjamas - obviously its just a stylistic issue but it puts that episode where Tom & Janeway are on a multi day mission in a shuttle in a new light.

I didn't realise people argued that Star Trek was faster than Wars since the olde days...

I also thought the ICS fuel consumption figures implied most ships are stopping off to refuel in the background if their doing galaxy hopping jumps. I always preferred the mainstream EU where fuel doesn't seem to be a concern, I understand some of it even has hyper matter as a free fuel source you can collect at will once your already in hyperspace.

[DarthPooky]

Also keep in mind that *looking* more high tech doesn't necessarily mean that something actually is more high tech

Oh don't worry I'm not falling for the style over Substance fallacy. My friend is. I tried explaining to him how much more advanced wars tech is. Than he brings up red matter and teleporters thinking that because supposedly wars doesn't have them trek must be more hi tech. Don't wory I can all Ready think of several flaws in his argument. It just made me think and want to Discuss.

[biostem]

Also keep in mind that *looking* more high tech doesn't necessarily mean that something actually is more high tech

Oh don't worry I'm not falling for the style over Substance fallacy. My friend is. I tried explaining to him how much more advanced wars tech is. Than he brings up red matter and teleporters thinking that because supposedly wars doesn't have them trek must be more hi tech. Don't wory I can all Ready think of several flaws in his argument. It just made me think and want to Discuss.

NP. I would even go in a different direction with this; This about how prolific and available technology is, and how that translates to how advanced it is. For instance, the fact that smartphones are commonplace nowadays points to personal computers and electronics being cheap and readily available. In Star Trek, almost all large starships are confined to major superpowers, with individuals rarely owning anything, (the only exceptions I can think of are Neelix's shuttle, Quark's shuttle, and Cassidy Yate's transport). Meanwhile, Luke, a backwater kid, had his own landspeeder and T-16 atmospheric craft, (the latter of which, IIRC, could be modified for limited space travel).

As many have pointed out, in Star Wars, their technology has sort of plateaued - sure there are still advances to be made, but if ANH is any indication, Luke's used landspeeder was worth about 2000 credits, and plus the 15k credits promised to Han, he said they could have bought a ship for about that much... you don't see that kind of availability in Star Trek, and shots of Earth show hardly any traffic...

[DarthPooky]

Darth Pooky, can your friend accept that the Federation can be outclassed by other settings? Isn't it enough for him the Starfleet could outperform the UNSC or any navy from Mass Effect in space, or does he think that they'll be able to survive a Dalek invasion?

Oh he admits that the empire would waist the Feds. He's just hung up on the brain bug that allot of people seem to have that the Feds have better tech. I should have pointed out things like exploding Consuls and a warp core ware if you so much as snease on it. It will blow up in your face.

[Batman]

In defense of the Warp Core, that was mostly a problem with the Flight I Galaxies and USS Voyager*, by and large those things seem to be reasonably stable. The exploding consoles (I've yet to see an exploding consul in Trek ) are more a sign of idiotic engineering than lower tech. Yes, when you insist on using high energy plasma for everything (instead of such a highly advanced and exotic tech as, I dunno, electricity), sometimes things literally blow up in your face.

*And frankly, if I were Voyager's Warp Core I'd blow up at the earliest opportunity too just to get away from those yahoos.

[DarthPooky]

In defense of the Warp Core, that was mostly a problem with the Flight I Galaxies and USS Voyager*, by and large those things seem to be reasonably stable. The exploding consoles (I've yet to see an exploding consul in Trek ) are more a sign of idiotic engineering than lower tech. Yes, when you insist on using high energy plasma for everything (instead of such a highly advanced and exotic tech as, I dunno, electricity), sometimes things literally blow up in your face.

*And frankly, if I were Voyager's Warp Core I'd blow up at the earliest opportunity too just to get away from those yahoos.

Point taken I forgot about that

[Darth Tanner]

Oh he admits that the empire would waist the Feds. He's just hung up on the brain bug that allot of people seem to have that the Feds have better tech. I should have pointed out things like exploding Consuls and a warp core ware if you so much as snease on it. It will blow up in your face.

Some of their tech is certainly better.. they have huge advantages in some applications of sensor and medical technology as well as replicators and transporters. Overall though they don't have the advantages where it would count in a military confrontation, ie fire-power, speed, energy generation and industry.

(I've yet to see an exploding consul in Trek )

I think there might have been one in the original series featuring the Roman themed world.

In Star Trek, almost all large starships are confined to major superpowers, with individuals rarely owning anything, (the only exceptions I can think of are Neelix's shuttle, Quark's shuttle, and Cassidy Yate's transport). Meanwhile, Luke, a backwater kid, had his own landspeeder and T-16 atmospheric craft, (the latter of which, IIRC, could be modified for limited space travel).

I'm not sure that is that convincing, those applications (T16 & landspeeder) in Star Trek would be taken by transporters for most people so that only 'sports enthusiast' would remain and we simply don't see civilian life in Star Trek sufficiently to judge if people have access to that sort of vehicle or not) despite the massive amount of content of Star Trek series it largely deals with military explorer ships outside of Federation space.

In Star Wars films at least the only actual space ships other than military and political/economic super entities we see are small transports, most of whom are smugglers. Obviously in the EU we have things like Lady Luck and Booster owning a Star Destroyer but again Booster was highly unusual (and a bit of a shitty idea if you follow the implications of a private individual paying to operate even a disarmed Star Destroyer) and we see similar private yachts independently operated in Star Trek (the crazy guy who wanted to steal Data had a significantly larger ship than Lady Luck)

Obviously we know from things like the Death Stars and the industrial facilities like Kuat and Fondor than the Empire would have massively superior shipbuilding capacity but we don't see that much of a difference between the two in terms of how civilian life has access to interstellar travel.

[DarthPooky]

[quoteSome of their tech is certainly better.. they have huge advantages in some applications of sensor and medical technology as well as replicators and transporters. Overall though they don't have the advantages where it would count in a military confrontation, ie fire-power, speed, energy generation and industry.
][/quote]

Iv always assumed that wars sensors and medical tech. Is at least equal or most likely more than trek. Because as iv said before on this thread. Wars civilisation has been around a lot longer than trek civilisation. on the replicator part. The fact that the empire was able to build most of the death star 2 in six months. Could indicate that there might be replicators. And the Hanes manual work shop to the death star book mentions replicators as well.

[Borgholio]

Wars sensors are shown to be at least as good as Trek sensors, and in some cases better...able to track ships moving at hyperspeed which is faster than Trek subspace sensor packets can move.

Med tech is definitely better - they can build fully artificial limbs that cannot be distinguished from real flesh (only a handful of individuals in Trek have been able to do that), and they have Bacta, which acts as a sort of miracle cure agent. Simply dunking you in a tank of Bacta has been shown to help repair frostbite, exposure, and physical trauma caused by a Wampa attack. All in one magic fluid. The thing about Trek med tech is we see it used far more often so there are many things we see that are not witnessed in Wars such as bone knitters and flesh-repair tools, and some Trekkies use that as evidence that it doesn't exist in Wars. There's a fallacy which states, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". So if you look at Wars tech overall including the few samples of medical tech they show on screen, it makes sense to assume they have other forms of technology that function the same (or better) than in Trek.

[biostem]

Wars sensors are shown to be at least as good as Trek sensors, and in some cases better...able to track ships moving at hyperspeed which is faster than Trek subspace sensor packets can move.

Med tech is definitely better - they can build fully artificial limbs that cannot be distinguished from real flesh (only a handful of individuals in Trek have been able to do that), and they have Bacta, which acts as a sort of miracle cure agent. Simply dunking you in a tank of Bacta has been shown to help repair frostbite, exposure, and physical trauma caused by a Wampa attack. All in one magic fluid. The thing about Trek med tech is we see it used far more often so there are many things we see that are not witnessed in Wars such as bone knitters and flesh-repair tools, and some Trekkies use that as evidence that it doesn't exist in Wars. There's a fallacy which states, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". So if you look at Wars tech overall including the few samples of medical tech they show on screen, it makes sense to assume they have other forms of technology that function the same (or better) than in Trek.

There are some other little bits of med tech we see in SW that aren't talked about much - like how Lars lost his limb and had access to an anti-grav chair in backwoods Tatooine. There's of course the durability and quick fitting of Luke's prosthetic hand, and Bacta. You also can't discount the neural implants on Lobot. More importantly, many of these examples are *not* taken from top-end facilities, either.

When talking about sensors, Trek people often forget the scale of said scans - the Empire was searching for the Rebels across an Entire galaxy, meanwhile people routinely evade Trek sensors by hiding in caves whose rock has some metal deposits.

[Batman]

Let's be fair here-the Empire searched for the Rebels across their entire galaxy by spamming a fuckton of probots. That's not really indicative of sensor capabilities, it just means they can afford to build fucktons of probots.
Also, tricorders. When was the last time Wars handheld sensors were capable of dètailed scans of your genetics and determining the people who're about to kill you are actually your kids?

[Borgholio]

I can only recall one handheld scanner in the entire OT and that's the one Han uses when searching for Luke on Hoth. It did seem bulkier than a tricorder but we are never shown it's range or other capabilities.

[Purple]

I can only recall one handheld scanner in the entire OT and that's the one Han uses when searching for Luke on Hoth. It did seem bulkier than a tricorder but we are never shown it's range or other capabilities.

We can make reasonable speculations though. For one, the fact that Han uses it indicates that the device is not top of the line military grade equipment but something that would be available to a smuggler or the rebels. Secondly, the way he uses it would indicate that he has trust in it finding Luke in adverse conditions and over a huge area. Since he can't really know where Luke is beyond a general idea. This does not give us any hard numbers but still.

[DarthPooky]

I'm not sure that is that convincing, those applications (T16 & landspeeder) in Star Trek would be taken by transporters for most people so that only 'sports enthusiast' would remain and we simply don't see civilian life in Star Trek sufficiently to judge if people have access to that sort of vehicle or not) despite the massive amount of content of Star Trek series it largely deals with military explorer ships outside of Federation space.

Well I don't think we have seen any civilian use of transporters from the Few episodes that have shone earth or any other planet thay just seen to walk evey ware. It could be a rusult of limiting transportation by the communist Feds or that thay are not practical for civilian use.

[Borgholio]

My vote is for the communism aspect. Just look at how common it is for people to own cars in North America and Europe, or motorcycles / motorbikes / bicycles in other more crowded / less developed nations. Only in the poorest or most isolated regions is personal transportation unavailable. I cannot fathom how people can't afford cheap personal transportation unless the state prohibits it.

With that said, the Nu-Trek depiction of personal transportation is a stark contrast to TNG. In the first half hour of the film you see wheeled motorcycles, hoverbikes, classic gas-burning automobiles, and well-maintained road networks to support them. Not to mention large numbers of fliers and shuttles in the skies over San Francisco (some of which have to be privately owned).

[Batman]

My vote is we simply don't 'see' enough of civilian life in the Federation. 'Everybody just walks everywhere' doesn't work today even in a single city, leave alone on a global scale. People obviously have some means to get close enough to their destination they can walk the rest of the way in a not-ridiculous amount of time, and the most likely suspect for that is the transporter.
People don't need personal transportation when cheap (or possibly even free) public transportation is available, and the transporter is infinitely more flexible than trains or buses (not to mention faster).
But as I said in the beginning, we don't see enough of civilian life, so I can't say that's the setup they actually use. It's just one I consider likely.

[bilateralrope]

Well I don't think we have seen any civilian use of transporters from the Few episodes that have shone earth or any other planet thay just seen to walk evey ware. It could be a rusult of limiting transportation by the communist Feds or that thay are not practical for civilian use.

The appearance of them just walking everywhere is only possible in three scenarios:
- Everything is within walking distance. Not likely.
- Vehicles are banned. Also unlikely.
- Transporters can easily cover most of the distance leaving people to walk the rest.

Yes, transporters could transport everyone to their exact destination. But allowing people to suddenly materialize anywhere could be a privacy and safety risk. It seems much better to have designated materialization zones and people walk from there to their destination.

[DarthPooky]

I didn't mean walk every ware literally just that that's almost all of what we see. Also having some sort of public transporters is possible as other people have pointed out. Transporter stations instead of bus stops maybe.

[FedRebel]

My vote is for the communism aspect. Just look at how common it is for people to own cars in North America and Europe, or motorcycles / motorbikes / bicycles in other more crowded / less developed nations. Only in the poorest or most isolated regions is personal transportation unavailable. I cannot fathom how people can't afford cheap personal transportation unless the state prohibits it.

With that said, the Nu-Trek depiction of personal transportation is a stark contrast to TNG. In the first half hour of the film you see wheeled motorcycles, hoverbikes, classic gas-burning automobiles, and well-maintained road networks to support them. Not to mention large numbers of fliers and shuttles in the skies over San Francisco (some of which have to be privately owned).

Playing with the SDN theory of a Communist coup some point between TUC and TNG, that could explain the sharp cultural disparity. Granted nuTrek is a divergent timeline, but the POD was relatively recent (ENT is still canon) and there's nothing to suggest a cultural revolution.


On the whole, little of the TNG era is seen, bits of San Fransisco and New Orleans...and rural France, with focus on established main characters (and it's TV, can't exactly afford to glue plastic on a Dodge Intrepid and dub it a 'Jupiter 6')

OTOH, Harry Kim was confused by a 1930's pickup truck, and it took the ship's 20th Century aficionado to explain what it was.

[DarthPooky]

OTOH, Harry Kim was confused by a 1930's pickup truck, and it took the ship's 20th Century aficionado to explain what it was.

I don't think I remember that episode. What was it about.

[Borgholio]

They found a pickup truck floating in space and it eventually led them to a world where Amelia Earhart was found in a stasis tube.

[DarthPooky]

Oh that one OK thanks.

[Crazedwraith]

OTOH, Harry Kim was confused by a 1930's pickup truck, and it took the ship's 20th Century aficionado to explain what it was.

IIRC he asked 'what is it; an early form of hovercar?' Which implies hovercars exist and very well maybe in private ownership akin to regular cars.

[biostem]

OTOH, Harry Kim was confused by a 1930's pickup truck, and it took the ship's 20th Century aficionado to explain what it was.

IIRC he asked 'what is it; an early form of hovercar?' Which implies hovercars exist and very well maybe in private ownership akin to regular cars.

Which just annoys me - they have to know what wheels are, and if he knows what a hoverCAR is, he must realize it's a modification of the word "car". If they had some other term for smaller ground vehicles, then I could understand...

[jwl]

Well I don't think we have seen any civilian use of transporters from the Few episodes that have shone earth or any other planet thay just seen to walk evey ware. It could be a rusult of limiting transportation by the communist Feds or that thay are not practical for civilian use.

The appearance of them just walking everywhere is only possible in three scenarios:
- Everything is within walking distance. Not likely.
- Vehicles are banned. Also unlikely.
- Transporters can easily cover most of the distance leaving people to walk the rest.

Yes, transporters could transport everyone to their exact destination. But allowing people to suddenly materialize anywhere could be a privacy and safety risk. It seems much better to have designated materialization zones and people walk from there to their destination.

They can do everything on the internet? It is possible to work, shop, socialise solely on the internet now, it's just people choose not to.