I just happened to see the beginning of TNG: "The Masterpiece Society". The genome colony on Moab IV was established "200 years ago", which would be around 2168, and was obviously isolated since. The people there (albeit otherwise technologically advanced - they know what a tractor beam is!) have never heard of the transporter, and they are even more astonished when the Enterprise away team appears out of thin air.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
Well, when did the original colonists leave Earth and how long did it take them to find and travel Moab IV? It's conceivable that the colonists left Earth when the transporter was still in the prototype/design/testing phase for cargo applications when they left Earth.
Another possibility is that some of the original colonists may have known about the transporter but this knowledge was simply lost to the ages. As Geordi said in that episode, "Maybe necessity really is the mother of invention." Living in an insulated and utopian society, I can't imagine the colonists having a need for the transporter since we've only really seen them in use for transporting people and cargo over really long distances. The colony was fairly small, so I doubt the colonists would take the trouble to build one or use one. The information may have not been passed on, or the information did survive in the databanks but was never reviewed or anything for the colony's lack of needing it.
A third alternative is that it's possible that Starfleet developed the transporter and kept the project largely underwraps for a while. Look at how nervous all of the Enterprise's crew is at using it for bio-transport at their point in time. A bit of proof to offer for this is that Starfleet always seems to have the best transporter systems with the best scanning resolution. Sisko made a comment to Yates about the newest version of the transporter system and how she should upgrade to it from her current one. This implies to me that either Starfleet R&D led and leads the development of the transporters, or that a corporation with a lucrative government contract and many ties to Starfleet is doing that.
As for the tractor beam, my impression has always been that the scientists weren't making improvements to a tractor beam but were inventing it from the ground up as a possible way to combat the problems from the stellar core fragment. Sounds like she was doing a lot of tinkering in her spare time with near impossible ideas since she admitted herself that she'd have no way of powering her tractor beam.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by Bernd: I just happened to see the beginning of TNG: "The Masterpiece Society". The genome colony on Moab IV was established "200 years ago", which would be around 2168, and was obviously isolated since. The people there (albeit otherwise technologically advanced - they know what a tractor beam is!) have never heard of the transporter, and they are even more astonished when the Enterprise away team appears out of thin air.
Finally, for the first time, an Enterprise continuity issue that is actually an issue!
Luckily, it's not insurmountable. The time span is well into that nebulous zone where inaccuracies of even thirty years wouldn't be all that big of a deal... to borrow a frequent example, I could say that the United States was founded 200 years ago without any historians complaining, when it's actually 225. The policy of assuming all year references are exact is nothing more than a timelining convention because, if we don't do it, we have nothing to work with!
Brace yourselves: Enterprise did indeed break continuity by a few decades. Never thought you'd hear it, did you?
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
I agree.. i knew something bugged me about the transporter, but I couldnt place the source, so i didnt have a valid 'continuity' argument without getting flamed for being mean to everyone's new favorite show.
Another thing that bugged me is that they said the last reported case of transporter psychosis (caused by your neural net not being put back together right) was about fifty years after enterprise. Doesnt this mean that before that, bad things like that probably happened to quite a few people before they refined the transporters more?. Just the impression i got.. the should be careful about how often they use the thing
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Perhaps the medical community first *acknowledge* there was something called 'transporter psychosis', or Starfleet didn't really want to acknowledge the fact that their super-cool technology causes sickness (much like the alleged Gulf War nerve gas thing).
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Or the radio-active armoured-piercing shell dilemma.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Actually, I think the explanations presented here already pretty much fix this issue. As mentioned, the "200 years" wasn't exact, so all we can really say is that colony was founded relatively soon after ENT. At the time of ENT, transporters are still new, so they would only be slightly less new when the colony was founded. Take into account the travel time, and the colonists probably left when transporters were just being invented. Therefore, they probably never heard of them, or, if they did, it was just a passing thing that wouldn't get passed down over time.
So, given the ENT timeline for transporters, it actually makes more sense for the colonists to be unaware of transporters, than if they had known about them.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
The inaccuracy argument makes sense. If the people (there were always supposed to be scientists among them) really have no idea of it, they would have started their journey years before 2151 when the transporter didn't even exist in theory. It would also mean that the transporter is not an old Vulcan technology. Even if our pointed friends had avoided to show it to the humans, sooner or later someone would have discovered that they have something like that.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike: Another thing that bugged me is that they said the last reported case of transporter psychosis was about fifty years after enterprise.
"Realm of Fear" (TNG) said that the first diagnosed case of transporter psychosis was in 2209, not the last.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Another non-issue. "200 years ago" and an uncertain journey-time makes it possible for the colony to have left before transporters (which I noted in "Broken Bow" aren't called just 'transporters' anyway) were invented or became commen knowledge. Maybe they heard of a matter-transmission device, but only initial reports that it might now be possible to transport people at all.
Relax, chaps, when Enterprise decides to violate continuity big-time, you won't need to refer to obscure eps of TNG or DS9 (or even, as if it mattered, TOS or Voyager). Sooner or later they'll feature a Ferengi or Romulan. . . 8)
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Actually, I think TNG and DS9 ruined continuity with the Ferengi ages ago. Quark was on Terak Nor for years before "The Last Outpost". Vash was partners with a Ferengi (who looked nothing like Rom. No, he didn't. Shut up) years before "The Last Outpost". And other stuff that I can't remember. And yet the Federation still managed to have no contact with them? Was Starfleet ignoring them on purpose? Or, to put it scientifically, were they just a bit shit at the diplomatic meeting stuff?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Quark on Terek Nor only proves that the Bajorans and the Cardassians had contact with the Federation. The Federation did have information on the Ferengi, perhaps from Bajoran milita groups.
Vash might have been a Federation citizen, but she never really seemed to me the type of girl who liked keeping the authorities abreast (so to speak) of what she was doing and who with.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
So no members of Starfleet ever saw a Ferengi before 2364, or if they did it wasnt reported or explicitly desribed for the rest of Starfleets benefit (it seems likely the Federation was concerned about the Ferengi as a military rival.. some might have seen them and then classified the data until it was deemed necessary to reveal it after they had been assessed.. similar to the Hansens being contracted to study the Borg ten years before 'Q-Who')
The Cardassians knew of them and did business with them. The Cardassians really didnt share much data with Starfleet after that big war they had just fought. Bajorans who were in contact with Starfleet might have described the new species. That might be how we knew of the name of this new species before we even met them.
Obviously, by Encounter at Farpoint the general knowledge of Ferengi was scuttlebutt.. it was rumored they ate their business partners..
[ October 22, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Ok, now explain how they went from terminally silly to occasionally respectable? And why did they have such bad posture at one point in history? Religious practice? Genetic tampering? Lowest-bidder problem with the beds?
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
Well, it has to do with the teraphasic field generated by certain stars, such as Delphi Ardu (in 'Last Outpost') and Xendi Sabu (in 'The Battle'). It seems that, for fourlobed being with green pyrocytes in their blood, it causes severe retardation and bad directing
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Firstly, yes Bernd, that's probably the closest we've got thus far to a legitimate continuity error.
As everyone's proven above me, it's a fairly easy exercise, however, to rationalize it out and make it work. "200 years ago" could indeed have been more like 225. The flight out to Moab IV (which was pretty out-of-the-way in the 24th century) could have taken 15 years using wimpy warp-2 capable ships. That puts their departure in 2128, which could easily be before the invention of a cargo-only transporter by some Vulcan researcher, which will later be refined for biological use.
What I find more intersting is that no member of the collective intelligence-gathering network of Star Trek geekdom could present this info until now, three or four months after we've known that the show would have transporters. Let's face it, this implied early limit on transporter development from "The Masterpiece Society" is so obscure that Okuda could never be expected to note that. When it takes four months for fandom to do their worst to find a continuity error, how the hell can anyone lay any blame on the producers for "missing" this with a straight face?
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Agreed. And since we've even come up with an explanation, we are obviously the lords of all cheesedom. Or something.
And regarding the Ferengi: Sorry, don't buy it. Apparently every alien race in the galaxy had contact with them, as did several members of the Federation, and yet Starfleet had nothing on them, beyond "they're very capatilist, and a bit scary"?
Besides, how shit would a Starfleet admiral have to be to want to classify the Ferengi? Especially the early TNG Ferengi? Or did Vice-Admiral Toto of Starfleet Intelligence have a morbid fear of the winged monkeys from the Wizard of Oz?
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
quote:When it takes four months for fandom to do their worst to find a continuity error, how the hell can anyone lay any blame on the producers for "missing" this with a straight face?
I'm not blaming them. I never expected Okuda or anyone else to find obscure evidence pro or contra the use of transporters or any other technology. If they wanted transporters for the new series, they would have made them possible also against canon evidence. First the premise, then the continuity. The will to make the look and feel visually different from what we know, like in the cases of the shuttle launchers and the tractor beam, was not there.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
This is even better. Later in the episode (at least according to the script), Geordi says about the transporters:
"It won't affect her DNA at all, there s been a century of evidence to prove that."
1) Did Geordi blurt out a figure in the heat of the moment?
2) Were DNA tests relatively inaccurate (with respect to the immense standards of the 24th century) in Archer's and even Kirk's time?
I would think that we can tell *today* if DNA has been affected by transport.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
It could mean that since a century transporters just became more precise, and didn't affect DNA anymore.
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
quote: I would think that we can tell *today* if DNA has been affected by transport.
How would we do that when we don't know how transporters work and therefor what affect they would have on DNA? You wouldn't be referring to recent interesting experimens in quantum physics would you?
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Well, I suppose we can check the DNA before and the DNA after and see if there are differences.
But I admit I'm pressed for a qualified scientific opinion here. Last time I took Biology was in ninth grade.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
"It could mean that since a century transporters just became more precise, and didn't affect DNA anymore."
Shouldn't that mean that everytime Kirk and Archer's crews used the transporter, they'd grow an extra nose, or turn into fish, or make you look like Meatloaf (going by the Star Trek pattern that altering your DNA immedietly changes your physical appearence)?
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
In a realworldscience sense, early transporters might've knocked out one-in-a-trillion base pairs here and there, occasionally causing what would resemble radiation-induced mutations in one's genome.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Tony Blair is a Vorlon.
Anyway, I think we're getting off the point here. Geordi really says that there is a century of evidence proving that transporters don't change DNA. Maybe you just couldn't *prove* it back in Archer's time?
[ October 23, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
Hey ho, has any one here actually watched the TNG episode "The Battle"? It establishes that in the early to mid 2350's, the Federation starship Stargazer, commanded by Captain Jean Luc Picard, was traveling throught the Maxia Zeta system, when an alien ship appeared on its sensors. The Stargazer went in to establich First Contact with the ship, but when the Stargazer approached the ship, which would later turn out to be a Ferengi ship, fired on the Stargazer, hammering its shields with intense fire. Realizing that the Ferengi ship used old light speed carrier waves as its sensor systems, and realizing that jumping to high warp and pulling out abreast of the Ferengi ship would leave two sensor images of the Stargazer on the Ferengi sensors: the image of the Stargazer moving to warp speed, and the actual Stargazer alongside the ship. While the Ferengi were still confused by the two images, Picard ordered for full weapons fire on the Ferengi ship, effectively destroying it. This manuever was later termed the Picard Manuever. The weapons fire from the Stargazer actully crippled it self, and Picard ordered abandon ship. The crew "limped through space for weeks" before help arrived.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Great. Now how about a five minute summary of "Home Soil"?
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Oh dear god no.
Yes Jack, we've seen "The Battle". Er, was there a point?
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Why oh why did you explain the Picard Maneuver over a question about Ferengi first contact?
