Transporter (Star Trek)
A transporter is a fictional teleportation machine used in the Star Trek universe. Transporters allow for teleportation by converting a person or object into an energy pattern, then sending it to a target location or else returning it to the transporter, where it is reconverted into matter. The command often used to request activation of the transporter is "Energize."
Introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series in 1966, the transporter had predecessors in teleportation devices in other science fiction stories, such as the 1939 serial Buck Rogers. The name and similar concepts have made their way to later science fiction scenarios, in literature, games, etc.
The transporter was originally conceived as a device to convey characters from a starship to the surface of a planet without the need for expensive and time-consuming special effects to depict the starship or another craft physically landing. Malfunctioning transporters are also often used as a plot device to set up a variety of science fiction premises. The transporter has become a hallmark of the Star Trek franchise; the famous catchphrase "Beam me up, Scotty" refers to the use of the transporter on Star Trek: The Original Series, operated by the character Montgomery Scott, presumably at the request of Captain Kirk. Transporter technology has been used in many subsequent Star Trek series.
Design
On Star Trek: The Original Series, the transporter was portrayed as a platform on which characters stand before being engulfed by a beam of light and transported to their destination. The transporter's special effect was originally created by turning a slow-motion camera upside down and photographing some backlit shiny grains of aluminium powder that were dropped between the camera and a black background; later series would eventually use computer animation for the effect. On The Original Series, the transporter operator would activate the device by moving three sliders on a console. In the sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the sliders were replaced with three touch-sensitive light-up bars, which according to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual were designed as a homage to the original sliders.Narrative function
Creator Gene Roddenberry's original plan did not include transporters, instead calling for characters to land the starship itself. However, this would have required unfeasible and unaffordable sets and model filming, as well as episode running time spent while landing, taking off, etc. The shuttlecraft was the next idea, but when filming began, the full-sized shooting model was not ready. Transporters were devised as a less expensive alternative, achieved by a simple fade-out/fade-in of the subject. Transporters first appear in the original pilot episode "The Cage".Transporter accidents
Many episodes of Star Trek series feature transporter accidents as a plot device: a malfunctioning transporter fails to rematerialize a person or object properly in some bizarre way that creates a science-fictional problem or ethical dilemma that characters must resolve. In various episodes, transporter accidents have been used to send characters to a parallel universe, or back in time; to split a character into two distinct individuals, or merge two characters into a single individual; and to regress adult characters to children, among a variety of other effects.Portrayal
Fictional history
According to dialogue in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Daedalus", the transporter was invented in the early 22nd century by Dr. Emory Erickson, who also became the first human to be successfully transported. Although the Enterprise has a transporter, the crew does not routinely use it for moving biological organisms. Instead, they generally prefer using shuttlepods or other means of transportation unless no other means of transportation are possible or feasible. The capability is rare; in "The Andorian Incident", the Andorians, technologically far superior to Starfleet in many regards, are explicitly stated not to possess the technology. In "Chosen Realm", a group of alien religious extremists who hijack the ship is unaware of it to the point that when Archer insists on sacrificing a crew member and claims that the device disintegrates matter rather than teleporting it, he is unhesitatingly taken at his word. The crew aboard the 23rd century USS Enterprise frequently use the transporter. By the 24th century, transporter travel was reliable and "the safest way to travel" according to dialogue in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Realm of Fear".According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Homefront", Starfleet Academy cadets receive transporter rations, and the Sisko family once used a transporter to move furniture into a new home.
Despite its frequent use, characters such as Leonard McCoy and Katherine Pulaski are reluctant to use the transporter, as the characters express in the Next Generation episodes "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Unnatural Selection", respectively. Reginald Barclay expresses his outright fear of transporting in "Realm of Fear".
Capabilities and limitations
The television series and films do not go into great detail about transporter technology. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual claims that the devices transport objects in real time, accurate to the quantum level. The episode TNG: "Realm of Fear" specifies the length of a transport under unusual circumstances would last "... four or five seconds; about twice the normal time". 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. When asked "How does the Heisenberg compensator work?" by Time magazine, Star Trek technical adviser Michael Okuda responded: "It works very well, thank you."According to The Original Series writers' guide, the effective range of a transporter is 40,000 kilometers. The TOS episode "Obsession" however, appears to indicate that the transporters' maximum range, during that time period in Star Trek history, is actually around 30,000 kilometers. Transporter operations have been disrupted or prevented by dense metals, solar flares, and other forms of radiation, including electromagnetic and nucleonic, and affected by ion storms. Transporting, in progress, has also been stopped by telekinetic powers and by brute strength. The TNG episode "Bloodlines" features a dangerous and experimental "subspace transporter" capable of interstellar distances and the Dominion had the ability to transport over great distances. The 40,000-kilometer limit is also referred to in ENT: "Daedalus". It was established in TOS episode "Arena" that the transporter cannot be used when the ship's deflector shields are up.
Starfleet transporters from the TNG era onward include a device that can detect and disable an active weapon, and a bio-filter to remove contagious microbes or viruses from an individual in transport. The transporter can also serve a tactical purpose, such as beaming a photon grenade or photon torpedo to detonate at remote locations, or to outright destroy objects. The TOS episode "A Taste of Armageddon" mentions Vendikar materializing fusion bombs over targets of enemy planet Eminiar VII in the course of theoretical computer warfare.
Klingon transporters, as seen in Star Trek III, have a harsh red light in contrast to Federation blue, and operate with complete silence. Presumably this is to enhance the combat effectiveness of Klingon boarding parties. It is not made clear whether Klingon transporters are more risky for the boarders, but the warlike Klingons are likely not to be concerned about transport casualties in combat.
Whenever a person or object is transported, the machine creates a memory file of the pattern. This has been used at least once in every Star Trek series to revert people adversely affected by a transport to their original state.
Various episodes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager have introduced two anti-transporter devices: transport inhibitors and transporter scramblers. Inhibitors prevent a transporter beam from "locking on" to whatever the device is attached to. Scramblers distort the pattern that is in transit, literally scrambling the atoms upon rematerialization, resulting in the destruction of inanimate objects and killing living beings by rematerializing them as masses of random tissue; this was gruesomely demonstrated in the DS9 episode "The Darkness and the Light".
Transporter operations can also be curtailed when either the point of origin and/or the intended target site is moving at warp velocities. In the TNG episode "The Schizoid Man", a "long-range" or "near-warp" transport was required as a transporter beam cannot penetrate a warp field. To deposit an away team on the planet Gravesworld while at the same time responding to a distress signal, the Enterprise would only drop out of warp drive just long enough to energize the transporter beam. Geordi La Forge personally performed the delicate operation, which involved compensating for the ship's relativistic motion. After materializing, Deanna Troi commented that for a moment she thought she was trapped in a nearby wall, to which Worf replied, "For a moment, you were". In later stories, it was confirmed that the transporter would work at warp only if the sending and receiving sites were moving at equal velocities.
In his book The Physics of Star Trek, after explaining the difference between transporting information and transporting the actual atoms, Krauss notes that "The Star Trek writers seem never to have got it exactly clear what they want the transporter to do. Does the transporter send the atoms and the bits, or just the bits?" He notes that according to the canon definition of the transporter the former seems to be the case, but that that definition is inconsistent with a number of applications, particularly incidents, involving the transporter, which appear to involve only a transport of information, for example the way in which it splits Kirk into two versions in the episode "The Enemy Within" or the way in which Riker is similarly split in the episode "Second Chances". Krauss elaborates that: "If the transporter carries both the matter stream and the information signal, this splitting phenomenon is impossible. The number of atoms you end up with has to be the same as the number you began with. There is no possible way to replicate people in this manner. On the other hand, if only the information were beamed up, one could imagine combining it with atoms that might be stored aboard a starship and making as many copies as wanted of an individual."