VOY 3x26: Scorpion Part 1
Is there some kind of Starfleet form I can sign to opt out of transporter hacks you “just came up with”?
VOY 3x26: Scorpion Part 1
Is there some kind of Starfleet form I can sign to opt out of transporter hacks you “just came up with”?
I’m always a bit disappointed with how safe and PG Star Trek is. Because transporters would be an awesome way to put some gruesome body horror into the series.
It really is the scariest thing by far on any ship. The ‘science’ behind transporters basically makes it a murder machine if it works correctly. I want to see what horrors beyond imagination can occur when that thing messes up or is deliberately sabotaged.
You say that, but the warp core is also pretty nasty stuff. Not only is it full of flesh melting radiation and coolant, but a slight knock will cause it to explode, at least on any ship built in the 24th century.
At least you can not use a transporter. You kind of scuffed if you’re on a warp core powered ship and it suddenly goes up in smoke.
Well sure, the warp core is inherently dangerous. But they seem to have a good grasp on the radiation aspect as well as general safety. It’s also a fairly acceptable trade off to sail among the stars at faster than light speed.
But the transporter? I consider it an inherently evil and untrustworthy device. It basically kills the user, sends an energy beam and reassembles an entity at the other end that thinks it’s the person who just stepped on the pad.
We know this is how it works, because we’ve seen incidents that clearly show us. In TOS ‘The Enemy Within’, Kirk is split into two people. And similarly, in TNG’s ‘Second Chances’, the transporter again splits Riker into two people.
Logically, if the transporter sent and reassembles the actual matter, clearly it wouldn’t be able to make perfect copies. You’d end up with two half scale copies at best. So, the matter used to reassemble is not the same matter that was disassembled. Therefore, the transporter inherently murders anyone who uses it.
So nooooo thank you, I’m taking the shuttle.
In the first film, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” a horrific transporter accident occurs in the first act. It’s kind of a plot point as the Chief Science Officer (a Vulcan we only briefly meet at Starfleet HQ) is killed along with another poor soul, necessitating Mr. Spock’s return to his seat. It’s fairly graphic, you hear screaming and see deformed humanoid shapes in the transporter “light show” on the ship’s platforms… the transporter technician says “oh no, they’re forming” shortly before what’s left of them is beamed back down to San Francisco. Starfleet ground control then confirms to Kirk and Co that “what made it back didn’t live long.”
Later (like only three or four scenes later), we are told that Dr McCoy doesn’t want to use the transporter to board the ship -likely because of the obvious inherent danger of the device- but is ordered to beam aboard by Kirk. His worry is then played for laughs… as if not an hour ago two people got melted and died. It’s a bizarre shift in tone, only made weirder by the framing of Bones as an old Luddite for being scared to use it.
And Bones had no problem using it in TOS, so it didn’t even make much sense.
The danger of the transporter is not really talked about in TOS, outside of accidentally sending folks to the Mirror universe. Wait, I’m just realizing… so, on top of possibly causing untimely (not instant enough for my liking) death and nonconsensual cloning, any old transporter can also accidentally create a portal to fully up-and-running interplanetary fascism. It’s just a dangerous technology all the way down.
Geordie: Reg, transporting really is the safest way to travel.
Reg: Didn’t one of them turn you into a ghost last week?
ENT did a little bit of body horror with the transporters since they were still new in-universe. One of the away team was beamed up during a storm, and some branches and leaves blew into the beam and became integrated into him when he rematerialized. He got better.
I’m hazy on the specifics, but in DS9, someone sabotaged the transporter and the contact they were supposed to meet burned alive during rematerialization. That was pretty gory for Trek.
Galaxy Quest went all the way and turned the pig-monster inside out lol … and then it exploded.
Same thing happened to Jeff Goldblum but he got weirder
I don’t get the reference, but I want to. What movie was that?
The Fly?
Yes.
Well, it creates a copy of you in another place and renders the real you apart atom by atom. That’s pretty metal IMO.
No thanks