[Futureguy]

Originally Posted by Saquist

Trust me I know. That's why I spoke of corresponding systems used for tracking.


Future guy had some good ideas...
I think there is a dramatic way to do everything. I KNOW...because watching John Woo's direction of Mission: IMPOSSIBLE 2 should how just walking by a door can be made dramatic with a little flair.

Thanks...

[Akula2ssn]

Also even today with a perfectly functioning targeting and guidance system you can lose target lock. Fighter jets need to be relatively stable in order to maintain lock even after a missile has left the rack. If a fighter has to begin evasive maneuvers before the missile reaches the terminal phase of flight, it will lose missile lock and the missile will likely not find its target. That's why you want to have more than one fighter so that if one has to evade, missile guidance can be handed over to the next plane. The missile itself really doesn't know target range course speed or altitude. It just knows what direction the target is.

[Futureguy]

Originally Posted by Akula2ssn

That's actually not quite accurate of what a


Or maybe we could go with a Monty Python style animated monster suddenly come in off screen and eat her.

Maybe, as in "Monty Python and The Holy Grail, the animator suddenly dies and the cast is saved. Perhaps something similar is what happened to the transporter, only use the Gremlin from Shatner's episode in the Twilight Zone as the culprit. (or even Shatner himself as the perpetrator) .......I'll go hide in a corner now after picking on Shatner.......lol

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by Akula2ssn

Yeah that's nothing really special that's what's called walking into the target. It's a method as old as the machine gun.

It's not the same method. Spitting out bullets has a much larger scatter pattern than a beam. No, we're talking ALTB, GBI and EKV. If any of those methods were as simple as walk into the target then the Star Wars platform would be a reality right now. Rather untill recently they've had all sort of problems with effective calculations for viable intercept.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by Futureguy

Would the transporter have stayed locked on a dead body? IDK.......I give you that one...

If memory serves, a dead body was transported in TOS in 'Catspaw'...................although the transporter didn't seem to 'know' he was dead, however, until he bellyflopped off the pad. IIRC.

Which might make one wonder if the aliens 'magic' in that episode 'hid' the body from the ship's sensors and tricked them into thinking the man was alive.

But even at that, a body is just an inanimate object, so since transporters beam those every day, it would seem likely that a dead body shouldn't be impossible to beam as long as a lock was still in place.

Though Ira Graves dead body was beamed into space..................though that was inside an inanimate object. Although presummably his body was beamed up to the ship from Gravesworld in the first place.

I'm digressing................

[Futureguy]

Originally Posted by kevin

If memory serves, a dead body was transported in TOS in 'Catspaw'...................although the transporter didn't seem to 'know' he was dead, however, until he bellyflopped off the pad. IIRC.

Which might make one wonder if the aliens 'magic' in that episode 'hid' the body from the ship's sensors and tricked them into thinking the man was alive.

But even at that, a body is just an inanimate object, so since transporters beam those every day, it would seem likely that a dead body shouldn't be impossible to beam as long as a lock was still in place.

Though Ira Graves dead body was beamed into space..................though that was inside an inanimate object. Although presummably his body was beamed up to the ship from Gravesworld in the first place.

I'm digressing................

Wasn't sure...If the transporter (sensors) and operators were strictly "looking" to transport a live body, would it then ignore a dead one? (no bio signature?) Though I understand a transporter COULD transport a dead one if that was the intention.

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by Futureguy

I think the first statement, as a part of the writing, would have been the better way to take the scene. Amanda could have even pushed Spock out of harm's way and taken a strike from a boulder herself, just as the transporter engaged. Lock would have still held on everyone except Amanda who was possibly then dead or moved "too far" out of the "field" by the boulder to stay locked. Would have made giving her life a sacrifice to Spock as a token of "love", bringing his human emotions (momentarily) to the surface, then tying in with his being emotionally compromised in his fight with Kirk. 20/20 hindsight is great to re-write the script...lol

No really this is a good idea and it doesn't rely on faulty plot device but it's just a dramatic and it could have been just a tad graphic so that emotion was sure to come to the surface for the Kirk Spock confrontation....you throw in some flash backs of that event between then and the fight and it becomes clear Spock has lost hold of his faculties...

At that moment the audience becomes attached to the character...instantly. That's exactly how you do it...

[Pauln6]

I've always been a fan of limiting the transporter capabilities not expanding them to fill plot holes. I have no problem with transwarp beaming - it's difficult, it's dangerous, we only use it in dire emergencies - fine. My problem is with beaming across interstellar distances because that capability is a game-changer for enemies as well as heroes. Its not sending the transporter signal that is the problem its the capabilities of long distance scanners and sensors. Long range sensors can detect the presence of a ship's beacon but can also take an accurate scan of its interior? How? What implications does that have for enemies transporting people or weapons on board, especially cloaked vehicles that are light years away? If sensors can detect incoming scans and transporter signals, how is it possible to beam onto a vessel covertly?

Transporter pad to transporter pad makes more sense for long distances, since one would expect the receiver pads to have beacons to draw in the incoming signal and the local equipment would kick in to reform the person e.g. a chain of transporter stations like the Stargate Bridge, but even there you should only be looking at doubling the standard distance, helpful within a solar system, not over light years unless you build thousands of stations and even then planetary orbits would affect where you could get to.

If the recipient transporters automatically draw in unexpected signals it has logical safety implications (no transporting into random people or bulkheads), and logical security implications (the pad systems can disable carried weapons and automatically set off security alarms for unexpected transports). You can also deal with the distance issue more logically, since the transporter signal is sent via subspace, linking the pads is easily justifiable, the issue is really whether you can maintain a confinement beam over such a distance. I would question whether that was possible over such a long distance without a massive power supply dedicated to that task but assuming that linking two pads is simply a case of sending a signal, you would at least halve the amount of energy each pad has to supply and double your distance.

They created a house of cards with peacemeal stories and any adjustments have wider imlpications. They should apply some common sense and put the genie back in the bottle fast.

One other thing I would also change is the use of transporters without a local scanning device. How can the ship take a quantum scan of somebody if they don't have a localised scanning device to record and transmit the information? Logically, this is why Amanda was harder to beam than Kirk and Sulu, since they were signalling the ship for a precise lock. Illogically, despite being aware of the gravitational flux, Spock didn't have the foresight to take communications devices for the refugees he wanted to beam onto the ship.

To summarise, I would have placed the following limitations:

1. Short range transports only (maybe 100,000km) unless being sent to a transporter pad within subspace communication range AND you have a massive power source dedicated to maintaining an anular confinement beam and even then the chance of cell damage is above acceptable norms. Two transporter pads in tandem could double the range with no increased risk.
2. Transporter pads automatically detect and draw in all incoming subspace transporter signals (unless the person has been able to hack the security protocols to bypass this) and automatically trigger an alarm when rematerialising to give enough time to disable weapons and allow a security team to be ready and waiting.
3. Nobody can be transported at all without a communicator, bio-belt monitor, implant, or transporter tag (like Insurrection) attuned to the relevant transporter unless it's pad to pad. The local device performs the quantum scan and is then able to transmit that data to the subspace signal when transport is initiated. This would also prevent Amanda death silliness.
4. Transwarp beaming is fine as it is.

[kevin]

That's far too rule bound for any Trek - it'll never happen.

Plus in any Trek having some sort of 'tag' has never been a requirement for successful transport every time, so it wouldn't make sense it suddenly is. More plausible, yep, but hardly the most vital thing. Not that I object to placing technological limitations on systems for plausibility's sake (too much outright 'magically does anything and everything' technology becomes incredibly dull after a while) but it's unlikely to be so retrofitted at this point.

Transwarp will probably be 'forgotten' about (much like apparently the rest of Trek 'forgot' about the incredibly easy beaming at Warp in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' in favour of it being really not a wise idea by TNG) or referred to as something which is still very experimental or something that reinforces it hasn't replaced regular transport.

If they even bother referencing it at all (and frankly, I don't really need a line that 'corrects' it in future films, just do what generally TOS did and 'forget' about it and move on), that is.

Although, the question about range is perhaps interesting because the question is whether the ability to transport itself is limited to a range or whether it's merely Federation technological limits are the problem with the range and ability. In Trek over the years other races have been shown to have the ability to transport people over much larger distances than the Federation has been able to, and to do so safely (notwithstanding these are usually plot device extensions of range, but nonetheless they still exist in certain alien cultures) over multiple light year size ranges.

Which mostly the Federation has been unable to do.

I think there was an episode that had a planet with a transporter range of tens of thousands of light years (probably a VOY ep) but in that case it was partly tied to their planet's geology or something.

However, that does raise the question of it actually being possible......................but just not something the Federation has been able to master.

[Futureguy]

Originally Posted by kevin

That's far too rule bound for any Trek - it'll never happen.

Plus in any Trek having some sort of 'tag' has never been a requirement for successful transport every time, so it wouldn't make sense it suddenly is. More plausible, yep, but hardly the most vital thing. Not that I object to placing technological limitations on systems for plausibility's sake (too much outright 'magically does anything and everything' technology becomes incredibly dull after a while) but it's unlikely to be so retrofitted at this point.

Transwarp will probably be 'forgotten' about (much like apparently the rest of Trek 'forgot' about the incredibly easy beaming at Warp in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' in favour of it being really not a wise idea by TNG) or referred to as something which is still very experimental or something that reinforces it hasn't replaced regular transport.

If they even bother referencing it at all (and frankly, I don't really need a line that 'corrects' it in future films, just do what generally TOS did and 'forget' about it and move on), that is.

Although, the question about range is perhaps interesting because the question is whether the ability to transport itself is limited to a range or whether it's merely Federation technological limits are the problem with the range and ability. In Trek over the years other races have been shown to have the ability to transport people over much larger distances than the Federation has been able to, and to do so safely (notwithstanding these are usually plot device extensions of range, but nonetheless they still exist in certain alien cultures) over multiple light year size ranges.

Which mostly the Federation has been unable to do.

I think there was an episode that had a planet with a transporter range of tens of thousands of light years (probably a VOY ep) but in that case it was partly tied to their planet's geology or something.

However, that does raise the question of it actually being possible......................but just not something the Federation has been able to master.

I believe in the TOS episode with "Gary Seven", the Enterprise's transporter system caught his transport to Earth by (mistake?) and he materialized on the Enterprise transporter pad. Apparently the Federation's technology was compatible, but less capable than those who sent him.