Hello all! Today’s video is revisiting a subject as promised. Last part we looked into
how the transporters of Star Trek are supposed to work and the amount of crazy conversion
that has to go on to complete a transporter beam in. If you haven’t seen that video
then just be aware that there will be a bit of jargon in this one, which the prior helps
to explain. Anyway, today I’m looking into the dangers and hazards of Transporters as
well as how they can go wrong beginning with the development of the device over time.
The transporters, at least the Starfleet variety were developed in 2121 by Emory Erickson through
much trial and error with some test subjects losing their lives in pursuit of teleportation.
The most obvious error in transporting at this time was simply the fact that a transported
creature would not rematerialize fully, or at all. This could be caused by degradation
of the matter pattern or a mistake in the recombination of molecules. As mentioned previously,
the longer a pattern remains in the matter stream, the greater the chances of some of
that matter to degrade, becoming unusable in the reconstruction of the pattern. With
time, and improving iterations of the device, this error was mitigated to the point where
it is seldom encountered with counters such as the matter steam being rematerialized when
the safe storage time of 420 seconds is near and even the feats of Captain Montgomery Scott
which enabled a matter pattern to be preserved, with only 0.003% corruption over 75 years.
However another matter stream in a similar state of suspended animation degraded by 53%,
far too much damage to be compensated for. So transporters make for poor suspended animation.
A very painful instance of a transporter malfunction was seen in the motion picture when Commander
Sonak and another officer beamed aboard the newly refitted Enterprise. An undiagnosed
error caused the pattern buffer to mess up the matter stream and the signal was sent
back to Earth in hopes that the backups would save them. What was materialised, amid agony-ridden
screams, quote, “Didn’t live long, fortunately.” Another issue that was common in earlier transporters
was simply when the phase discriminator, responsible for picking out what was part of the target
and what was surrounding matter, was not as refined. In 2151, Crewman Ethan Novakovich
beamed up from a planet surface mid storm and much of the debris, kicked up from the
winds was also scooped up as it entered his dematerializing form and taken as part of
the matter stream. When he reappeared, he was unconscious and the debris was laced throughout
his body. These were fortunately only skin deep and later surgically removed with the
crewman making a full recovery. By later days, this is generally not an issue,
probably because of devices such as the Annular Confinement Beam as well as better imaging
scanners. However, directed energy weapons still have enough “ompf” behind them to
pierce the transporter beam and if they hit at the correct moment, they can even vaporise
the disassembled molecules, so that when the subject reappears, they do so with an injury
akin to being hit by the shot. From 2209 to 2319, a condition was diagnosed
called transporter psychosis, where repeated, but compounded errors in re-materialisation
would eventually cause damage to the minds and body of the users. This was rare, but
a major issue until the adaptation of the multiplex pattern buffer.
What is strange however, are the numerous effects that can occur mid transport. By all
factors, a person theoretically should not remain conscious at all in beaming, but it
seems that in frequent cases, a person is aware of the process. At least the beginning
and ending phases as they vanish rematerialize, they’re probably not aware of their time
as a matter stream in the pattern buffer or being beamed through space.
But in several instances, it is recorded that a person’s mind can play tricks on them,
such as Hoshi Sato’s entire delirium where she experienced dream-like, anxiety fuelled
hallucination mid transport, in the five seconds it took for the beam to complete. Kind of
like when your alarm goes off and you dream you got up for work, brushed your teeth and
put your clothes on, only to wake up properly to a call from work asking where are you because
you actually only dreamed the start to your day.
That was too specific. During a transport by Reginald Barclay, he
encountered a microbe that the bi- filters did not recognize due to its obscure nature.
These “Quasi-energy microbes” interfered with a successful materialisation of the paranoid
lieutenant and caused ongoing symptoms where parts of him seemed stuck in transport. Worse
off however, was the crew of the USS Yosemite who had encountered the microbes first and
tried to beam them out, only for they, themselves to be trapped mid transport. Their mid transport
state, where they remained conscious and able to move somewhat, was eventually solved when
Barclay managed to grab hold of one, which seemed to prompt the Enterprise transporter
to complete the cycle and materialise the trapped crew.
In another state of incomplete transport, Brad Boimler was once the test subject for
a modified transporter, seldom a good idea, and was reassembled out of phase by a slight
margin. This effect was purely cosmetic, although it caused him to hum with the same sound produced
by the transporter, or more accurately the transporting molecules. Eventually, his form
simply realigned itself properly with no ill effects.
In an instance that has never been recreated, that was only discovered in 2369, Commander
William Riker was duplicated in a transporter accident. During 2361, Lieutenant Riker beamed
up to the USS Potemkin through a distortion field around Nervala IV, but unexpected and
a strong energy surge interfered with the matter stream and the transporter chief initiated
a second transporter containment beam to hold his pattern. However, this proved unnecessary
as the transport completed, but the second beam, in spite of being shut off, somehow
duplicated the pattern and bounced back to the planet’s surface. This could only have
happened if the phase differentials of the distortion and the second transporter beam
were identical, an incalculably small chance. This led to a copy of Riker materializing
both on the transporter pad and the planet surface, both identical in every way.
In some even stranger accidents, 2266 saw Captain Kirk become duplicated, but in a very
different way. This was during the TOS era when things were still rather vague when it
came to portraying consistent technology, but a strange ore resulted in the duplication
error. Except in this instance, Kirk’s very psyche was split with one filled with all
his positive emotions and one with all his negative. The two were eventually reintegrated
at great physical and mental toll to Kirk and the effect was catalogued as the “Alfa
Effect”. In the opposite way, we saw an accidental
merger of patterns when Tuvok and Neelix were merged into Tuvix when lysosomal enzymes of
an orchid flower mixed the patterns together mid transport. I assume this either changed
the signatures of the matter streams and confused the transporter, or literally merged them
somehow, but it’s definitely something that the transporter should not have allowed to
happen. Of course there was the error which revealed
that the transporter as effectively an immortality machine used to reverse aging but that’s
not important. In seriousness though, the transporter has been used in this fashion
twice, once to revert the artificially aged Doctor Pulaski based on her original age.
This was limited by two factors that we know of however, the aging was being caused by
an outside influence (not natural degradation), and the beaming was not reversible should
a mistake occur, nor safety guaranteed. If the process failed, her pattern would have
been scattered to the solar winds. The more notable version however saw Picard
and several others reduced to children in age, but this was caused by rare “molecular
reversion field” that messed with the pattern, causing the reassembly of their DNA to lack
the rybo-viroxic-nucleic structure. Despite it being an accident, this sort of knowledge
is going to definitely interest someone, so the only reason I can see that it didn’t
go any further is that perhaps there would have been some dangerous long term effects?
I dunno. I would say that almost all of these cases
of de-aging, duplication and merging, one problem sticks out to me based on how the
transporters are described to work. When someone is shrunk down to child size, or a duplicate
Riker is created, where did the extra matter come from that formed them? The point of the
transporter is that the molecular structure that makes you, you, is transferred in its
entirety, not simply copy, pasted. But these instances seem to contradict this unless we’re
talking about a quantum duplicate suddenly popping into existence, which I think is nigh
impossible? Or where did the excess mass of Adult Picard go when he was regressed into
a child? Quantum physicists go! Then again, one of the biggest issues with
the transporter, is that it can be effectively used to traverse to different universes and
beam through time. When the matter stream is brought to a subatomic state, its relation
with the fabric of reality seems to get a bit tenuous and the smaller something is,
the more likelihood of things happening to it, in my limited understanding anyway. Regardless
of the real world science being used to give Star Trek something to grasp onto, the transporter,
has seen people cross over with the mirror universe several times.
This is attributed to the relative “closeness” of the mirror universe. Not physically close,
but in terms of overlapping realities, it’s a very close neighbour to the prime reality.
Going subatomic in a matter stream, especially if an alternate you is also doing the same
thing in the same place and the same time, it’s entirely possible for the matter streams
to slip between universes. This has happened once in 2256, 2267, 2370, 71, 72, 74 and 75.
So actually this seems to happen a lot, at least until the late 2600s when the mirror
universe’s “proximity” to the Prime pulled it too far away for crossing to be
easy. As for beaming through time, well if the avengers
can do it by shrinking then I imagine the same thing applies to a stream of subatomic
particles. Aside from passing through any micro wormhole or rift in time that may happen
to be along the trajectory of the stream, a high level of chronitons can contaminate
the beam, and as these particles themselves travel through time in any direction, they
can pull a matter stream to the correct location, but in the wrong time. Done by accident in
2371, dropping an away team back in 2024, by the 29th century, Starfleet was using temporal
transporters as part of its time-fleet. So in this instance, a mistake led to a development
of a new technology. There are several more instances of transporter
accidents, but often these are attributed to tampering, there are even assassination
devices that can deliberately scramble a beam for example, but I wanted to provide a wide
array of potential issues that are more natural in occurrence. The transporter is a very dexterous
device in terms of what it can accomplish, which is why there are entire professions
within Starfleet dedicated to its operation. It constantly sees modification for specific
uses; upgrades and safety developments as new issues arise making it one of the safest
ways to travel in Star Trek. Nonetheless, I do like a good transporter
storyline because it reflects the uneasiness that I would definitely feel about stepping
into such a murder box. Yeah, no, I wouldn’t touch one of those things. Give me a folded
space gateway over being disassembled and shot across space. What about you? Think of
any more transporter issues and of course, would you use one? I’ve been Ric and thank
you for watching this part two on transporters, if you want to see a breakdown on how they
operate for the most part, (I did leave our stuff about Heisenberg compensators) the video
is linked below. So until the next one, thanks again for watching and I’ll see you next
time, goodbye!