This season keeps sounding better and better. In this epsiode, the gang runs into the inventor of the transporter (I'm guessing this is yet another instance of Vulcans holding back). The guy is apprarently on the ship to experiment with extending the range of Enterprise's transporters well beyond 20,000 kilometers (though I thought it was only around 2,000 kilometers, according to "Raijin", I think). In any case, he wants to do it by shifting a transport beam through subspace.
Huh? I thought transporters ALREADY did that. I guess it could be a different sort of thing he's talking about, but still - I hope they'll come up with some fitting tech for us to pick to pieces.
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"I thought transporters ALREADY did that."
Subspace transporters do. And TNG established that, even then, such technology was notoriously unreliable.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Right, right...
Mark
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
So far, I doubt we have enough on transporter history to allow ENT to actually contradict anything.
I just have to express my profound disappointment that the inventor of the transporter appears to be human.
I mean, sure Cochrane invented warp drive, but only after everybody else had invented it first. The Trek universe seems set up so that everybody has to invent warp on their own - the Federation (and probably the pre-Fed Vulcans, too) has actually made that into a law! However, there is no such pressing need for everybody to invent their own transporter. Are we really supposed to believe that the upstart Earthlings invented this device for the rest of the Alpha quadrant or what? (Not for the Klingons, that's for sure...)
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I'm assuming the epside title refers more to Daedalus losing his son Icarus during their flying experiments, than the chance of a Daedalus-class ship appearing. . .
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
quote:Originally posted by Timo: I just have to express my profound disappointment that the inventor of the transporter appears to be human.
You expect ENT to actually make something interesting and different out of the 22nd century?
They probably don't want to 'confuse' the 'occasional viewer', and make it a human-only party (where human should be read as American). Or even more likely, they didn't even consider an alternative.
I suspect the chances are quite high that this Emory fellow is from Montana...
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Hey, Star Trek is about the HUMAN race. Always has been, from the very beginning.
That being said, I have no preconceived notions about how this episode will turn out, good or bad.
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
This concept reminds me of "The Stars My Destination," in which everyone moved around by a form of mental teleportation. The limit was usually around 5000 miles and no one had ever teleported through space, until the hero manages to do it.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Do you mean tesseracting? There's been at least two seperate stories I've read where all people have to do is be able to visualize and understand five-dimensional space. Once their mind accepts it (we're hard-wired for three dimensions, you see) they can freely move through time and space.
Mark
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
Teleportation by the power of the mind was referred to in The Stars My Destinations as jaunting, after the man (named Jaunte) who first demonstrated the phenomenon. All you do is visualize the destination (where you must have previously visited), and off you go!
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Just make sure you remember the positions of all stars and other visible astronomical phenomenae, or else you'll travel back in time as well. Anne McCaffrey said so.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
(Pern = awful. The Stars My Destination = pretty good.)
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
(Though, re: Pern: was it the stars? I thought it was just "visualize your destination," and the Brave Heroine and her Talking Telepathic Dragon Friend were just so amazingly special and neat that they found out they could travel through time too. And then they showered McCaffrey with awards.)
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
You know, Dragonsdawn was pretty good. And some of the others weren't bad. Or maybe you don't.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
(I have a low opinion of the pre-novel material, and the few other novels of hers that I have read [mostly of the "Ship Who Did Something" genre] have not raised my level of appreciation.)
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Well, she isn't my particular favorite either. But I did enjoy some of them. I liked the aforementioned Dragonsdawn the best specifically because it provided a comparatively-firm science fiction background to her mostly-fantastical writings.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Dragonsdawn was good. And by and large I liked the main plot arc, about finding the AIVAS and devising a counter to the Thread planet. But then once she's gone and done that, she just let it go off into this Dragonlance-type franchise involving the adventures of minor characters (ooh, yes! Let's see all the main action again, but this time from the perspective of a minstrel, or a fisherman, or something!).
And then there's the sloppiness of it all. Not one single mention of the AIVAS in Dragonsdawn that I remember. The novella where a rescue mission from Earth arrives, yet are convinced that one loony old man and his harem are the only survivors. They leave, and you never hear anythking of the rest of humanity ever again. Two thousand fucking years, and no-one else considers maybe popping over to have a look at this weird phenomenon? There are all sorts of other plot holes involving the southern continent and its abandonment, this is why I don't read fantasy anymore. . .
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