199 replies to this topic

[Nicholas Taggart]

That might be how it would work with some theoretical real transporter, but it just isn't how it works in Star Trek.

[Johnny Henning]

Then how did both Rikers have the same mass?

it's a conspiracy, I tell you!

Edited by Johnny Henning, 04 January 2013 - 07:37 PM.

[Christian U]

Turns out real teleportation wouldn't work by sending some kind of waves across the distance, anyway, but with quantum-linked molecules. Or, uh, something like that. I didn't really understand it

[Nicholas Taggart]

Because technobabble

[steveuk]

Then how did both Rikers have the same mass?

it's a conspiracy, I tell you!

One of them was a Skrull.

[Mike]

Technobabble or not, Drs McCoy and Pulaski both had philosophical aversions to using the transporter.

[Nicholas Taggart]

*Seriously, why waste all that energy actually sending EM waves ("energy cargo") to the target site when you could simply send the pattern and reassemble it from the pervasive quantum particles that exist throughout the universe at every point? Just tell the people they are being "sent" through the transporter.

Because it would be evil, I guess.

[Johnny Henning]

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Transporters have proven to be a boon to society and if they essentially kill everyone who uses them, on a collective level, you don't notice it.

Every successful society has a dark, dirty secret at its core.

As STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS promises to show us.

Edited by Johnny Henning, 04 January 2013 - 07:46 PM.

[Nicholas Taggart]

Technobabble or not, Drs McCoy and Pulaski both had philosophical aversions to using the transporter.

McCoy because he was worried about having his atoms scattered back and forth across space, Pulaski because they were unsuccessfully trying to make a female McCoy and just copied as many of his character traits as possible.


There was an episode of Next Gen about Lieutenant Barclay's transporter phobia. Troi helped him get over it, justifying her dubious position on the ship.

Edited by Nicholas Taggart, 04 January 2013 - 07:48 PM.

[Christian U]

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Transporters have proven to be a boon to society and if they essentially kill everyone who uses them, on a collective level, you don't notice it.

I had the same train of thought some years ago and thought that a short story with a Federation-like civilisation finding out just that about their transporters might be a lot of fun.

I think Simmons did something like that in his Hyperion novels, didn't he?

[Todd Gross]

Could be he's Section 31 - IIRC Enterprise established they predated the formation of the Federation. And while it didn't happen in TOS, you see Starfleet officers wearing black uniforms for special ops a few times in TNG and Voyager.

Section 31:

The organization's title came from the original Starfleet Charter, Article 14, Section 31, which allowed for extraordinary measures to be taken in times of extreme threat.

[The Lorcan Nagle]

Does it really matter if the Transporter kills you and produces an identical copy when you arrive? You have continuity of consciousness after the Transport, after all. The novel Glasshouse by Charles Stross actually includes teleportation via nanotech dissasembly - you enter a teleport gate, have your brain copied and body disassembled, and your brain and body pattern are transmitted to the destination where an identical copy is made from the reservoir of feedstock (much of whic was the bodies of people who stepped through.

Then how did both Rikers have the same mass?

The Federation has the technology to convert mass to energy and vice versa. It's just that the writers didn't think far enough ahead to properly contemplate how that level of power would change a society.

[steveuk]

Does it really matter if the Transporter kills you and produces an identical copy when you arrive? You have continuity of consciousness after the Transport, after all. The novel Glasshouse by Charles Stross actually includes teleportation via nanotech dissasembly - you enter a teleport gate, have your brain copied and body disassembled, and your brain and body pattern are transmitted to the destination where an identical copy is made from the reservoir of feedstock (much of whic was the bodies of people who stepped through.

That would be a deeply personal issue, and one that Star Trek has decided to avoid dealing with by not having physics work that way in their universe.

The Federation has the technology to convert mass to energy and vice versa. It's just that the writers didn't think far enough ahead to properly contemplate how that level of power would change a society.

True, but you can add it to the list of things that might make the Federation in general (and Earth in particular) a socialist utopia.

[Arjan Dirkse]

I think we went into this philosophical discussion in excruciating depth in an old Blade Runner thread...

I think it doesn't matter. The identical copy which is built from "local molecules" is for all intents and purposes the same person. Technically, the original is killed, but who cares?

[Nicholas Taggart]

They've shown transportation from the point of view of the person being transported. It is the same person and they are conscious while being transported.

[steveuk]

I think we went into this philosophical discussion in excruciating depth in an old Blade Runner thread...

I think it doesn't matter. The identical copy which is built from "local molecules" is for all intents and purposes the same person. Technically, the original is killed, but who cares?

Aside from the fact that some people would of course, there's also the issue of a soul.

I can't imagine that anyone with genuine faith would be comfortable with the process?

But, as already noted, that's not a problem in Star Trek.

[Dave Wallace]

Scientific ideas conflicting with people's religious beliefs? That would never happen in real life!

[Christian U]

I don't believe in an eternal soul, but I would be way uncomfortable with that process.

It's how immortality works in a lot of sci-fi novels, of course: backing up your consciousness, downloading it into another body when you die.

[Jason Hendriks]

I had the same train of thought some years ago and thought that a short story with a Federation-like civilisation finding out just that about their transporters might be a lot of fun.

"Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly. It's a short story, and you'll never look at Star Trek the same way again. It was also (loosely) adapted into an episode of the 1990s "Outer Limits" series.

I think Simmons did something like that in his Hyperion novels, didn't he?

Yeah, a couple actually, sort of.

In Hyperion they had these things called farcaster portals that could instantaneously transport someone to a different place across the galaxy. One of the characters had a house with each room residing on a different planet. The catch there, though, was that

Spoiler

the artificial intelligence that created and managed the farcaster "web" was leeching processing power off of the people who used it and was plotting to kill off the human race.

And then there the cruciforms that were used in the Endymion novels which

Spoiler

were used to resurrect people traveling at high speeds (necessary after the destruction of the farcaster network) after they were crushed into red paste after rapid acceleration.

Edited by Jason Hendriks, 05 January 2013 - 11:29 AM.

[Mike]

I love this sequence:



This isn't reality. This is fantasy.