posted
There have been complaints about how short the transport time in Enterprise is compaired to that in TOS. Tell me: did they have transport biofilters in TOS? Could that explain the transport time difference?
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Biofilters? I wanna say that biofilters didn't exist in the TOS era either. However, they did have some sort of decomtamination process that could be accomplished while standing on the pad. It was basically a blue flashing light. You can see it in "The Naked Time" when Spock and the crewmen beam back up from Psi 2000.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well, the first Gateways book mentioned a biofilter in the transporter, but that's hardly canon...
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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The transport time in Enterprise has never struck me as something to be concerned about. But, thinking on it, I can see how it might be one of those things that needs rationalization. The real world reason is probably they don't want to spend so much time showing special effects that aren't essential to the plot (especially with only, what, 44 minutes to tell the story now instead of 48 or 50 minutes when TOS aired?).
There are two ways I can see of rationalizing this. The first is perception. The Enterprise transport time does take longer than TOS's transport time. Less time may be taken to dematerialize and rematerialize the subjects, but more time is spent in the buffer and being routed to the emitter than it took in TOS. That extra time is en route is being editted out for our sake.
The second way of rationalizing it (and what I actually prefer) is that Enterprise's transporter uses a rapid-speed scanner/assembler for dematerializing and rematerializing the subjects. Let's look at what we got. We have the crewman in "Strange New World" getting his molecular mixed in with debris. In "The Andorian Incident," we see three security officers beaming down on the singular pad. The scanner isn't separating out the patterns, but, to be fast, it's scanning and sending everything through the transporter beam as one large pattern. Any technical difficulties (such as on "Strange New World") can screw up the pattern.
This could also lead into what was found to be a cause of transporter psychosis and why almost everything later, everyone stands on their own little pad that's a part of the big pad. As some sort of backup, the novelization for Star Trek IV has a scene where Kirk is angry at Gillian for jumping into his beam because it's so dangerous. Not canon, to be sure, but something that I added to the mixture. By the TNG era, higher-resolution scanners and more advanced equipment makes it possible for people to be holding onto each other (like Data, Worf, and Locutus in "Best of Both Worlds, Part II") and be transported safely.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I dug around my head for a suitable metaphor, so bear with me here. Unlike Car Trek, no pictures. Sorry
(let's get all SAT-style, for starters) Speed : Transporter : : Closeness : Razor
Stop laughing. It's the middle of the night.
In the 2150s, we're using old-style barbershop blades. Incredibly good at removing pesky facial hair (or whatever else turns your crank), but one little slip, and oops, let's see if I can write my name in blood on the door across the room. Similarly, these transporters are relatively speedy at dematerializing, but don't have groovy safety features like filtering out pesky germs and deactivating weapons and avoiding transporter psychosis and ensuring a piece of bird shit that was just about to hit you doesn't get embedded in your scalp.
By Pike and Kirk's era, we've moved on to those first really crappy safety razors your grandfather might still use. Safer, yes, but hardly producing results that are smoother than an android's bottom. Similarly, Pike and Kirk's transporters have gotten the whole Volvo treatment for dealing with possible nastiness, but at the expense of speed.
Finally, by the later TOS movies, we've managed to retain (and supplement) safety while improving speed back down to Enterprise levels. T'was the dawn of the great era of Shick.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
OK, try this for an explanation that doesn't "throw out" anything from TOS on OR Enterprise:
Yes, the transporter in Enterprise is as fast as a TNG transporter (and significantly faster than TOS ones). It also has the "moving subject feature" more commonly associated with TNG transporters (as when it beamed up Archer while he was running in "Broken Bow"). It also has some obvious flaws, like the inability of the ACB to screen out windborne debris ("Strange New World") and the yet undiscovered problems associated with reassembly errors (like "transporter psychosis" ["Realm of Fear", TNG]). Let us suppose that as each of these problems is encountered, a "fix" is developed for it. Each fix makes the transporter safer, but also slows down the process or imposes operational limitations on it. (A more effective ACB, for example, may keep out debris, but require a stationary subject. A more careful manipulation of the matter stream may reduce or eliminate the errors in reassembly that cause transporter psychosis, but may require a longer processing time in the pattern buffer.) Thus it is possible to have the fast, but flawed transporters in Enterprise, the slower, more limited ones of TOS, and (as transporter technology progressed), the increasingly more capable units shown in movies after TMP leading up to the ones used in TNG/beyond.
Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
But without the shaving metaphor. I agree with them both anyway. Plus, it seems to me (without actually timing it, mind) that TOS transports varied wildly in the amount of time dedicated to the effect.
posted
I think in TOS they did have bio-filters. Now I could be completely on crack .. but did they not use them (biofilters) in Enemy Within.. when they seperated and re-essembled the duplicates in that episode??
posted
I'm not sure I'd give TOS transporters biofilters. Consider that they were capable of beaming up boxes without the operator having any knowledge of their contents. That next storage container could be full of replacement tunics or mad scientists, and you apparently can't be sure until you open it up and take a look.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Of course, referencing "The Enemy Within", the transporters were apparently also capable of operating themselves when no-one else was even in the room. Not to mention that they did so by taking random matter from who-knows-where and assembling it into a pre-stored pattern.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
While "The Enemy Within" remains one of the first and best examples of the science-fictional evil twin concept - the twist that Kirk needs his dark side in order to be an effective commander has always reminded me of TNG's "Tapestry" where Picard's skewering did more to shape his adult character thanhe'd ever admit - in actuality it presents as many problems as Star Trek V.
Where did the extra matter come from? How did the process work anyway? Why the delay between the two halves materialising (apart from a plot device to keep the evil one unknown to the crew). And why split into evil and not-evil sides? Why not the half that cares about personal hygiene, and the half that doesn't? You could have the bad half go round unshaven, belching, pissing in corners, whuole the good half spends far too much time dusting people's consoles. . . Actually, it sounds just like Lister and Kryten. 8)
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