Transporter (Star Trek)
In the
Star Trek fictional universe,
transporters are
teleportation machines. The devices convert a person or object into an
energy pattern (called
dematerialization), then "beam" them to a target, where it is reconverted into matter (
rematerialization). The target can either be another transporter or a virtually arbitrary specified site.
Star Trek creator
Gene Roddenberry's original plan did not include transporters, instead it called for the characters to land the starship itself. This quickly proved to be both unfeasible and unaffordable for the tightly-budgeted series, however in later series it did occur (see
Star Trek Voyager). Transporters were thus devised by the creators of
Star Trek to avoid having to build expensive shuttle sets and film model shots. They were first seen in the pilot episode "
The Cage". They are commonly used, and commonly malfunction or are misused.
The show itself does not go into great detail about transport technology. The
Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual claims that the devices transport objects in real time, accurate to the
quantum level.
Heisenberg compensators remove uncertainty from the subatomic measurements, making transporter travel feasible. Further technology involved in transportation include a computer pattern buffer to enable a degree of leeway in the process. The Heisenberg compensators are the result of a great deal of artistic licence; when asked how it worked, the show's technical adviser,
Michael Okuda, said "Very well, thank you."
The latest "Mark" for transporters, as revealed in
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is the "Mark VII", which is capable of handling unstable biomatter.
Additional enhancements to some transporters include a device which can (at the operator's command) detect, and then disable or destroy, an active weapon, and a bio-filter to remove contagious
microbes or
viruses from an individual in transport. The transporter can also have tactical applications; under certain circumstances it may be possible to transport weapons such as
photon torpedoes to detonate at remote locations, as seen in the
Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dark Frontier".
In
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Captain
Kirk and Lt.
Saavik carry on a conversation during the course of a beamout, suggesting that the transporter is also capable of teleporting moving
sound waves. Later in the same movie arc, in
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, two people are seen jumping into the same transporter beam, signifying that it is possible for two objects, or in this case people, being transported to join together and yet remain alive.
The transporter usually orients people so they face the appropriate direction when they rematerialize, although in "
Manhunt" Lwaxana Troi rematerialized backwards, to imply she was not tech-savvy, and for comedic effect. In "
Bloodlines", it appears a transporter (or the transporter operator) altered a person's position in transit to stop them from falling over.
Limitations include range up to 40,000 kilometers from the TOS-era onward (the TNG episode "
Bloodlines" features a dangerous and experimental "
subspace transporter" capable of interstellar distances) and the inability to transport through
shields (unless it is needed for the plot, in which case a method of "penetrating" the shields is discovered). According to the TNG technical manual, the transporter cannot be used to move
antimatter, but this rule has been broken a few times where the plot demands. In TOS, people were "frozen" (immobilized) during transport, but by TNG, they could move their arms and legs while being transported. This was actually due to the limitations of the special effects used on TOS, but it became a vital plot point in the episode "
Realm of Fear".
The transporter was invented in the early
22nd century by noted scientist Dr.
Emory Erickson, who became the first human to be successfully transported according to the episode "Daedalus" (
ENT). It is implied, however, that the devices were widely used for the purpose of shipping cargo before they were ever "approved" for human use. Further experiments in
2139 led to Erickson's son, Quinn Erickson, being transformed into an "energy being" that was suspended in space until he was recovered by his father on board the starship
Enterprise (NX-01) in
2154, although Quinn did not survive the recovery process.
Notable transporter malfunctions/abuses include
* "
Vanishing Point": Suggests possible consciousness whilst dematerialized. Following Hoshi Sato's first experience with a transporter, strange things happen. She thinks that she is becoming invisible, and phased (still alive, but can pass through object, similar to a ghost), and that similarly invisible phased aliens are trying to destroy the ship. When she steps onto a transporter to follow them, she wakes up and discovered that it was all just a dream, and the events that seemed to happen over the past few days actually only took a few seconds when her pattern was in the buffer.
* "
The Enemy Within": A transporter makes two nearly identical copies of
Captain Kirk after he beams up, one good, one evil.
* "
Mirror, Mirror": A transporter swaps a returning landing party with their counterparts from a
parallel universe.
*
Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Two Starfleet officers, Commander
Sonak and Admiral
Lori Ciana, are killed in a transporter accident.
* "
Unnatural Selection": A disease affecting
Pulaski is cured, and the damage it has done removed, by transporter.
* "
Relics":
Scotty managed to keep himself in the buffer of a transporter, unaging, for seventy years.
* "
Rascals": Interference from a spatial anomaly causes four characters,
Picard,
Guinan,
Ro Laren, and
Keiko O'Brien, to physically but not mentally regress into children when they beam from a shuttlecraft. Later, the transporter's stored record of each individual is used to restore their bodies.
* "
Second Chances":
Commander Riker was once "cloned" by a transporter when beaming through a distortion field. The duplicate took on
Commander Riker's middle name (becoming
Thomas Riker), and appeared again in later episodes.
* "
Realm of Fear": Lieutenant
Reginald Barclay discovers worm-like creatures in the transporter. This is the only time where we see a first-person view of someone being transported.
* "
The Next Phase": Lieutenant Commander
Geordi La Forge and Ensign
Ro Laren are made invisible by a Romulan cloaking experiment.
* "
Deadlock": A baby is delivered by transporter.
* "
Tuvix": A transporter accident melds
Tuvok and
Neelix into one being.
* "
Drone": A highly selective transporter accident caused a super-
borg drone to be created.
* "
Scorpion, Part I": After a conventional signal lock fails during an emergency beam-out, engineer
B'Elanna Torres successfully transports an away team back to the ship by locking onto their bones. This became known as a
skeletal lock.
Despite these episodes, transporters are generally considered safe, and the transporterphobia of characters like Dr
Leonard McCoy, Lt
Reginald Barclay, and Dr
Katherine Pulaski is not understood. Presumably shuttle crashes occur more often than transporter accidents, but are just less interesting in plot terms. A
transporter accident is caused when a person using a transporter is somehow not reassembled correctly. This can be caused by human error, but safeguards in the system make this very unlikely. Computer malfunctions are also highly unlikely in the more advanced systems, and are only caused by extremely unusual conditions.
On
Star Trek: Enterprise, the crew mainly use the ship's shuttlepods; the transporter is used very rarely, as it is new and not quite trusted. Nevertheless, the transporter of the NX-01 has been used for actions such as intra-ship beaming and beaming of an object/person in motion, which would not be perfected for another century.
The discontinuity of the transported object causes theoretical problems in the
metaphysical field of
identity. This is akin to the
Ship of Theseus problem. If
Captain Kirk, for example, is beamed to a planet from the Enterprise, he is dissassembled, and later molecules are reassembled to create a 'new' Captain Kirk. Is this new 'copy' the real Captain or merely a copy? And, if the new Kirk is merely a copy, what happens to the real Kirk? Also, related to identity, is the issue brought up in "
The Enemy Within", is if these two Kirks are
qualitatively identical (simply the same Kirk copied, somewhat like one is a clone of the other), or
quantitatively identical (the two Kirks are the exact same thing, a person taking 'stock' of the universe's contents would count these as
one thing). These seem like meaningless questions to many, and in fact has been spoofed at least once on
Enterprise, but they are very important to the metaphysician as it has many uses in
analogous argumentation.
*
Physics and Star Trek*
Replicator (Star Trek)*
Quantum Teleportation*
Personal identity*
The Duplicates Paradox*
"Transporters, Replicators and Phasing FAQ" by Joshua Bell
