Star Trek Transporters In Combat

A brief summary: A transporter beam is a low-energy, super-high bandwidth, full-duplex, subspace link between two points. Without the high bandwidth you can't transport molecules, and without the full-duplex the molecules might all turn into energy on your side. Oftimes you can transport through your own shields, and rarely you can transport through your opponent's shields.

Even when you can, because your crew has more experience shooting high-energy, low-bandwidth, simplex weapons at your enemy, you rely on that for accuracy and accountability.

A good starting point for discussing the repercussions of the StarTrek transport system would be Section 7 of Justin Rye's famous Star Trek Rant (http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/trek/0.html)

You can also find an assessment of Heinlein's predictions and an excellent dissection of the common pitfalls in people's thinking about time.

Picard's brother owns a vineyard. (Jean-Luc Picard is captain of the Enterprise on StarTrekTheNextGeneration.) That's cool--I dig gardening. But what does he do without migrant workers to pick the grapes? They never say, "Use the transporter to beam the juice from the grapes into the barrels. If they did, they wouldn't need surgeons cutting open Picard's chest; they could just beam in the new artificial heart.

Transporter field dynamics preclude it. Okay, I just made that up, but you know something like that'd be the justification if necessary.

Surgeons use micro-transport and micro-replication all the time. None of it is "point-n-click". That's why they are still surgeons.

I disagree, they never use transporter technology the way they should. They can beam themselves into the heart of a Borg ship when the plot requires it, but they can't beam in a truckload of photon torpedoes when they're getting their asses kicked. I think surgeons are around because no-one in the 24th century ever figured out that they could beam fat globules out of your blood stream to avoid a stroke.

They transport only in carefully controlled circumstances, only specific materials masses and distances, and when they have time to plan.

They don't transport "in" a truckload of photon torpedoes, because transporter beams are too easy to jam - even certain planetary ionospheres can do it. (There's also the issue from whom they beam them - another StarFleet? ship that's also under attack?)

If transporters are so easily jammed that they couldn't be used to transport weapons, I would be more concerned about sending people through them than I would in sending weaponry.

Now recall that they >do< use transporters offensively. They transport bio-weapons, such as genesis spores, very long distances. And the "antimatter spread" from the episode "Best of Both Worlds" appeared to be a crude but un-jammable transport of antimatter into the enemy ship's fields.

The "anti-matter spread" appeared to be some sort of missile weapon, without the destructive force you would expect to see from slinging anti-matter at a target. In my opinion it was merely a ploy to distract the Borg so that Worf and Data could penetrate their shields (which were capable of defending against a photon-torpedo, but not a shuttle craft). And while they were there, why didn't they leave behind a bomb? But, you bring up a good point about transporting bio-weaponry. If there is indeed a problem with transporting photon-torpedos, why not transport some other sort of weapon, like tribbles. In the book KobayashiMaru (I don't believe the text is canon, but I will reference it anyway) Scotty is in the academy simulator against the no-win scenario, and he decides to transport a photon-torpedo onto the enemy klingon ship. Although the ship is destroyed before he gets a chance to. (Actually, he beams all of the torpedoes in the junctions between the shields of the attacking klingon ships, annihilating all of them. His next step is to jettison the warp core to blow up that sector of space, but his ship is destroyed before he can get around to it. -- gsf)

What are the size limits on a transporter? In the fourth Trek film, the crew managed to transport two whales and the water surrounding them, but I don't think I've ever seen transportation of anything larger. And that may have been a special case jury-rigged by experts; just because Scotty can do it doesn't mean that the average engineer can.

Maybe the whale and the water had a very high Huffman compression ratio. ;-)

Oh, no. I have been debating trek-tech with a trekker who uses the term "canon". I surrender immediately.

I used the term canon merely because I didn't want to be accused of referencing source material that would be categorized as "fiction" within the Star Trek universe ;)

The mention of Picard's brother reminded me of what I thought to be the strangest tech-impossibility ever on the show: The conversation between the two Picards where one tells the other "Oceanographers will be elevating the ocean floor soon, imagine what they'll be able to see on the sea's floor ..." To which I have to ask, "Where's all the water going to go?"

There's only x amount of land mass on the earth as well, so I suppose raising the ocean floor will cause it to be lowered somewhere else.

Your knowledge of geology is laughable. Early on in the Earth's history, there wasn't ANY land. It was all created by volcanoes bringing up lava and earthquakes raising the seafloor.

Not according to current models, at least as I understand them. It is now thought that the crust stabilized into more or less the same plate tectonics seen today (though the specific plate formations were of course rdically different) long before the surface would have cooled enough for a significant amount of water to have condensed. By the nature of plate tectonics, there would have already been mid-plate continental shelves and inter-plate ravines; while the early oceans did not resemble those of today at all, they certainly did not cover the whole landmass. The current ocean topography is relatively recent - for example, the Panamerican ismthus formed less than 6 million years ago, as the South American plate was pushed to the northwest by the African and Antarctic plates). Of course, I am not a geologist; the models may have changed in the past ten or so years since I studied the subject. Any confirmation (or refutation) would be appreciated. - JayOsako

Which brings up an interesting aside, The amount of water on the earth, at any given time, is relatively constant (baring a cometary impact). Scotty removed a portion of that water, with the whales, and did not replace it until the 24th century. This disruption in the bio-sphere may have been the actual cause of the whale's extinction. But this is just a theory.

I haven't seen the movie in a while, but the earth has a LOT of water on it. You could easily yank a few cubic kilometers of it without anyone noticing. And as for raising the ocean floor... well, doing so would raise sea level, unless the ocean floor was being lowered somewhere else or water was being removed. But really... there are better ways to look at the bottom of the ocean. We do it now, with robots. -- SimonHeath

You could also transport the enemy off their bridge into (a) your brig, or (b) hard vacuum (so sorry).

In Voyager, this is one of the first things the Kazons did when they stole a transporter.

General answer, as I recall it, is...

The transporter beam does not work through shielding.

This limitation came up in a number of episodes where the landing party could not beam up because the ship was under attack.

The transporter will work through shielding when it is germain to the plot (It's usually explained by matching some shield frequency or something). In order to use their technologies effectively a star fleet crew must learn how to twist the storyline so that use of their technology is interesting to the viewer

Apparently some indirect uses of the transporter are possible in the "Next Generation" Enterprise: they seem to be able to transport stuff out into space, even with shields up.

(Still, I think they could make better use of transporter technology for medical applications. And their use of Holodeck technology, particularly the Voyager doctor, seems arbitrarily limited. But hey, it's just a science fiction story. ;-) -- JeffGrigg

You may (or may not) recall that Naomi Wildman (Voyager) was born by "Caesarian Transport" - just the sort of application you were looking for. I would assume hooking up an artificial heart to a human being would require more than simply beaming it in.

I do agree they under-use their transporters, though. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, they could have eliminated all the goofing around in the Mutara Nebula by simply beaming a giant boarding party from the space station onto the Reliant - just like the Klingons did when they attacked Deep Space 9. -- BillTrost

I also wonder why they don't beam in, say, a robot with a phaser, which zaps somebody, then beam it out, beam it back in, have it zap somebody else, etc. You could do this with a few dozen robots at once and take over a large station quite quickly. I know they have the robotics technology, but even if they don't, you could do the same thing with humans. Of course, the problem is that the folks at Paramount aren't studying the technology for possible plots; they're writing episodes and using the technology in the plots. Which is a classic writing mistake. -- BrentNewhall

The replicators on Deep Space 9 were programmed, in the event of revolt, to materialize phasers and shoot at anyone who was not of the Cardasian race. (And shields activated on all main doors - set to allow only Cardasians to pass.) This was discovered some time after the Federation took over the space station - and accidentally triggered the defensive programming. -- JeffGrigg

Worse than not studying the technology for possibly plots, they keep introducing new technology without looking at how it would/should affect future plots. For instance, in one Next Degeneration episode, they had some Terrorists who had some sort of interdimensional transporter that let them transport through shields and without leaving any sort of energy trail. The new transporter was bad for your health, however, so the whole point of the episode was to get the Terrorists to stop using the transporter. No one bothered to ask the question of whether you should care if a photon torpedo gets sick... -- BillTrost

Like that line in AlanMoore's Watchmen: "Teleportation works fine, assuming you want things to explode on arrival."

All this is very good, but if they had used those ideas of yours instead of their own one TNG episode of what, 45 min.?, would be reduced to 15 min. Now that's not very funny, right? They have to do it this way. A bit stupid, yes, but still TNG is good, and so are all the other series. -- Night Blade (RealNamesPlease)

In the last enterprise show they were able to beam people to the reptile ship for a rescue. They could have beamed a damn bomb aboard to blow it up. Jeesh.

Does anybody remember a 1st season TNG episode in which Wesley Numb Skull puts two -- count 'em, two! -- nanobots together and lets them "interact." Then they escape and develop intelligence and reproduce like crazy and start eating the main computer's core memory and threaten to blow up the ship. Remember this beauty?

Oy.

This <ahem> "story" points out a huge problem in Star Trek writing. Namely, the writers of Star Trek Drek had no clue what the use or value of technology was, is, or will be. Thusly, they could take any scientific or technolological development, no matter how profound (nanotechnology, in this case) and turn it into a gimmick useful for exactly one episode. Vay!

I remember. If anyone forgot, please let me know how.

Oh, that's easy. I once wrote a tiny bit of fan fiction for TNG in which Moriarty is recreated and decides to make a study of the "5 year mission" of the enterprise. Reviewing all the starlogs he's astonished to find that the crew have apparently forgotten, over and over again, events that occurred within periods as small as a week. New technologies and medical techniques that save lives but never appear again, alien species that mysteriously appear and disappear, and reappear with completely different cultures, even personal histories and character traits that are completely forgotten by all the crew from one week to another. Moriarty appears on the holodeck and calls a meeting with the bridge officers, presenting these peculiarities. Picard and Riker shake their heads gravely, realizing that a massive conspiracy is afoot. Data, studying the logs, explains that even his positronic brain has been completely reconfigured from one week to the next. Troy attempts to reconcile the crews memories with the contents of the logs, and collapses in tears.

At this point Q appears, arches an eyebrow at Moriarty, and the two walk, arm in arm, off the holodeck and through a nearby wall. Picard announces that teatime's over and they must get back to the important mission of delivering stembolts to Epsilon 6. All return to their duties with an air of efficiency and grace.

Moriarty and Q meet in 10-forward with Gynan. Gynan serves them both a beer and joins them. Q pipes up, "My dear Professor, it is not ethical to tell the rats they're in a maze ..." --PeterMerel

I remember neelix' organs being stolen by Vidians. They needed replacements for their own organs because of the Phage, a viral plague or something causing every organ (including skin) to fail eventually. the emh kept Neelix in sickbay (which is rigged with holographic emitters), temporarily substituting his missing organs by holographic ones untill the crew could get the real ones back.

See: PlotEnablingDevice

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Earthlings call it Science Fiction my furry 3 eyed friend.

Some Earthlings, notably JoeSixPack?, may say Star Trek is ScienceFiction, but part of the point of this page is that StarTrekIsNotScienceFiction?. At best it is SF-inspired fantasy developed specifically for US commercial TV in the sixties, then allowed to mutate and spawn.