Nasty transporter tricks. Bad Trek crimes.

[Flangepart]

Has anyone else wondered what kind of bad things could be done with a transporter?
Just occured to me, that is one piece of Trek Tech that i'd not want to see missused. Ever wonder if there are people who live in the Federation, and like their ascestors, wear Duridium foil over their heard to keep the Romulin from beaming out their brains?
After the borg, i'd think paranoia was a Liiiiiitle bit more previlant, if ya know what i mean.
Does the 24th century NYPD have a "Special technology crimes unit."?

[trekgeezer]

I know one thing you have to watch who's at the controls.  Getting stuck in a rock or a concrete wall wouldn't be much fun.  

They had a mishap in the first season of Enterprise when they were beaming a guy up in wind storm . He had leaves and sticks integrated into him.

[Ash]

It could be handy to rob a bank using a site-to-site transporter like the one Wesley Crusher made in the episode "The Game" on Star Trek: TNG.

You could go in, get the cash and beam right out!
No crazy police car chase!

Hehe!

(No! I don't condone bank robbery!)



Post Edited (06-23-04 23:57)

[trekgeezer]

I wish I had one to get to work in the morning, I have to drive about twenty miles through a construction zone.

[JohnL]

Not to mention that you can use it to stay perpetually young, cure any disease, cure crippling injuries, place someone in suspended animation for an indefinite period of time...

[Fearless Freep]

One aspect to keep in mind is that the universe of Star Trek in which the transporter exists has a different set of cultural values, etc..then today.  i don't personally agree with Roddenberry that human-kind will eventually be like that (the elimination of conflicts, etc...) but the transporter exists in a society where such pranks are just not done.

It's the same sort of anachronism of "what pranks would you pull if you had a mircowave in the 15th century"  Well a high speed, self contained, rat-popper would probably come to mind to someone from that time but...while occasionally someone will accidentally microwave a pet or something, it's not something you really see being done even as a prank.  The technology interfaces with the society in such a way that it's not something that obviously occurs to us.

[mudguts]

really.... children, at the end of the day the witch was really good and gave the children lollies.  The politicians were burned at the stake and no-one had to pay taxes.

after completely dissassociating her component molecules she moved to a different country and reformed in a very comfy bed. she brought herself a cuppa tea and a very LONG THICK carrot to pleasure herself... with her trusty tractor beam

the tachyons and wild geese flew over head.

superluminal objects made broadcasts on the hyper comm

and  she warped herself with that carrot

it was s**t science fiction then
its even worse now

there is supposed to be a component of science  in science fiction

the next time you read the catch call  "anti matter"  ask your self which one... positrons?  anti protons? anti hydrogen? anti petrol? anti rock?  or is it matter and it dont matter?

for me.... tv science fiction has never been on par with led zeppelins stair way to heaven  and boy that song SUCKS

[trekgeezer]

The only reason the transporter exists  in Star Trek is budgetary. When selling the show  cost was always a concern and showing this big ass ship landing on new planet every week would've run the budget up.

Ever wonder why in the episode The Enemy  Within when they can't use the transporter and Sulu and company are freezing to death they didn't just shuttle down and get them? It was early in the series and they had no shuttle mockup or model, plus it would have ruined the plot by taking away the urgency.

Oh and by the way mudguts some Australian scientist have actually transported sub atomic particles.  And that would be anti-hydrogen they use for the warp engines along with deuterium. Warp drive using this combination is theoretically possible. The only made up bit is dilithium crystals which control the reaction.  (It is theoretically possible but it would actually take all the energy in the universe to make it work and besides according to our understanding of physics all FTL travel is pure poppy-cock, so any science fiction story featuring it is pure fantasy.)

[Fearless Freep]

all FTL travel is pure poppy-cock

Actually, that's not quite true.  Some particles travel FTL but they cannot slow down  to light speed.  LS seems to be more a barrier than a high end.

[trekgeezer]

I was talking ships and our capability to make them go FTL. Star Trek and many other science fiction venues get around this by having the ships travel outside  normal  space.  Star Trek and SG-1 call it subspace; B5, Star Wars, and many others call it hyperspace.

[Prophet Tenebrae]

Yeah, tachyons go faster than light but most sci-fi prefer the usage of a venue other than real space. I think the record for number of methods of superliminal travel has to go to David Brin. He had about 5 levels of hyperspace, FTL, jump nodes and so on - I think he said something like "If you're going to break the speed of light - why just one way?"

But yes - don't try and reconcile Treknobabble with actual science, it's not even consistent within itself. According to some website - they've even quoted the power output of warp reactors in dynes - a unit of force, the equivalent of saying I'm 5lb high.

Whether *real* FTL is possible or not... well, I think it would be naive to assume that we have a sufficient grasp of the universe we live in to give a definitive answer on that.

The people in ST also seem to - with irregular exceptions - have an infallible moral compass. I mean, if the Federation wanted to be really nasty in a war, just use nanites to rip enemy population into constituent atoms. Although, I think they only ever beamed explosives aboard enemy ships once. Given that the Federation must surely have invasive transporters (am I the only person that thinks the Federation should stop sitting on all that tech they have and use it?) so they could just beam some anti-matter aboard the enemy ship and boom.

[Ash]

As an assasination technique, you could beam any object that doesn't belong inside a human being into one.

Imagine beaming a 3 foot dildo inside someones internal organs.

OUCH!!

[Prophet Tenebrae]

They already used that - in season 7 of DS9, some Vulcan guy went nuts and was using a weapon that transported bullets into the target.

[trekgeezer]

Prophet Tenebrae wrote:


> The people in ST also seem to - with irregular exceptions -
> have an infallible moral compass.

That's why I like DS9 better than the other modern Treks, Sisko was totally dedicated to Starfleet, but he did some stuff you would never see Picard do. He once poisoned the atmosphere of a planet so he could catch LCDR Eddington  the traitorous security chief  who was actually a Maquis leader. While in a plot  with Garak  to try and trick the the Romulans into joining the war against the Dominion he was an accomplis to murder and sabotage and told himself he could live with it.

He was told by Ezri Dax that Worf was actually  intimidated by him. He even punched Q in the nose once.  "Picard never hit me!" , "I told you I'm  not Picard!"

[Fearless Freep]

That's why I like DS9 better than the other modern Treks

That's why I disliked DS9 and the later Treks

Gene Roddenberry had a vision for what humanity would become.  While I disagree that humanity will actually become like that, it's nice to think that we will someday get beyond our interpersonal issues and conflicts and be ready to face the universe as a united species not so bent a pettty selfishness;  with something close to actually having a moral compass that's actually applied consistantly.

Roddenberry didn't want any internal conflicts within the crew of the enterprise; he wanted to present a picture of the future where humanity had learned from it's mistakes and had moved on to something better.  That was Picarard's central argument against Q; "we're not like that, anymore" because Q's argument was "you haven't changed, you're still just savages"

When Roddenberry moved out of the picture and died, the Star Trek universe lost that vision of what the future of humanity could be like and it denigrated into just another B-grade sci-fi TV series (or set of series) albeit  with a big effects budget and larger starting audience then most.

Utlimately, Roddenberry believed Picard would be right; Berman took the series into a place when Q was really right