Continuing the series on technology in Star Trek: the transporter technology.
In the original series, the transporter appeared able only to transport things to or from the transporter room. One had to be standing on one of the “pads” in order for it to work (and I recall an episode in which they were transporting someone unfamiliar with the transporter, and someone had to tell him to move over and stand on the pad). It was apparently a touchy mechanism, and someone had to be operating the controls and watching what was happening.
In Voyager, some of these limitations seem to be lifted. They could, and often did, transport people or things “directly to sick bay” or “into cargo bay 2”. They could transport an entire shuttlecraft from a planet's surface into the cargo bay. They could transport someone from the bridge to sick bay. And, while the transporter room was still there and appeared still to be attended by a transporter operator, Ensign Kim often operated the transporter from his controls on the bridge.
This didn't seem like a good change to me. It allowed for rescue mechanisms that weren't available in the original series, but it opened the whole thing up to inconsistencies and odd questions. If they can transport someone fron one part of the ship to the other, why did people have to race down to engineering during an emergency? When every second counted, why didn't they just transport them there? Why did security teams have to spend valuable time walking to where the intruder was, rather than being instantly transported to a spot nearby? And why have a crew member standing in the transporter room when the whole thing can be controlled from the bridge?
Sometimes simpler is better, in stories like this, and sometimes removing too many limitations to the technology just breaks the whole thing apart. And by the way: I actually preferred the visual effect of the transporter in the original show to the one on Voyager. The latter was snazzier, but the image of people dissipating into particles better fit my image of what the transporter was doing than did the shimmer of blue light.
2 comments:
If they can transport someone fron one part of the ship to the other, why did people have to race down to engineering during an emergency?
Perhaps for the same reason we don't use the lifts during fire emergencies. And being stuck in a non-working lift must surely beat being stuck in mid-transport as a collection of disembodied molecules!
And why have a crew member standing in the transporter room when the whole thing can be controlled from the bridge?
This one's easy: union rules :-)
Speaking of inconsistencies, though, I used to love those episodes of Startrek where they would encounter some mysterious being who could walk through walls, or float up and through the ceiling, and yet who nonetheless could fall to (and not through) the floor.
Ah! I never thought about how it was conveniently used as a plot device, but ignored in other situations. Interesting.
My feeling about the transporter is that it kills people. As soon as my body is vaporized, I pretty much figure I'm dead. (Well, I don't figure at all.) Yeah, that new person down on the planet might look just like me, and she might think she's me, but she's not.
Is there anything to stop them from making multiple copies? (I think there was a "transporter accident" episode on TNG in which they find a duplicate of Riker, accidentally created by the transporter years prior that nobody knew about.) The "pattern" is in the transporter, and they can store people there for some period of time. What's to stop them from making multiple copies from that pattern?
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