What's the point of the other ship's transporter?

[Gagarin]

Asking for speculation, fandom, novel, TV shows, and any tech manual insight...

Often, when one ship transports crew from it's transporter room to another ship, the crew materializes in the other ship's transporter room. That's pretty much the standard practice.

In the case of cross race/nation/empire/power transporter activities, we see people transporting from one chamber using Federation Sparkle and then appear in the Klingon chamber in Klingon Red. What role did the Klingon transporter have in the transportor operation? When one side energizes, what does the other do?

Is there a standard the major powers agreed to that allows transporter beam 'take over' on ship to ship? Do they synch up using common algorythms?

Why even use the other ships pad at all?

This is especially common in the Movie-Era sfx. But I remember this happening throughout the TV shows.

 

[danellis]

A large part might be manners: it's just not polite to beam your diplotatic team into the ladies' changing room!

dJE

 

[C.E. Evans]

Site-to-site transport is usually done in an emergency situation, IMO. Otherwise, a ship's designated transporter room is likely the normally chosen area to receive guests and new crewmembers beamed over from another ship or facility.

I'm sure there are different transporter protocols in place for when a ship is directly beaming someone up (active mode) and when someone is being beamed to a ship from someplace else (passive mode).

 

[Pauln6]

Essentially, to prevent transporters from instantly rectifying any invasion situation, they need to place story limits on their use. The limits were very poorly defined and often inconsistent.

My own view is this:

Transporting is more difficult, dangerous, and energy inefficient than they let on. The safest mode is transporter unit to transporter unit while wearing transponders (usually contained in communication devices or belt buckles but the units will have built in transponders). Transporting to anywhere else in a ship is dangerous because ships are moving and their systems power fields may interfere with the signal enough to throw off the beam (like mobile phones and hospital equipment).

Transporting to a planet is safer because the ship can maintain a synchronous orbit, although transporting inside buildings is considered a risk without a transponder signal or precise co-ordinates (and an assurance that nobody is going to wander across the coordinates mid-transport). This is why we see away teams beaming down to clear areas outside most often.

The biggest problem I have is transporting people without transponders to act as a signal relay. I don't think this should be possible because it can resolve too many story issues (being captured, being invaded etc). An invasion force can only be transported to the brig if you can hack their own signal and beaming your opponent's captain off his bridge can't be done either. Physical contact with a person allows their signal to be uploaded into your transponder too (so Gillian jumping in the beam will work or sending in a strike team to kidnap someone can still work).

Beaming in using somebody else's transporter pad is safer in terms of safe arrival but riskier since the transporter monitor can disable any equipment you are carrying by simply not replacing its energy when you materialise or keeping you trapped in their pattern buffers until you degrade and die. Further, one assumes that transporters have firewalls to prevent people using the system without permission so this would also have to be overcome. Once again, sending in a strike team to secure the enemy transporter room is the best way forward depending on how well-guarded and well-monitored they are.

 

[Timo]

Out of interest, how often do we see the transporter signal actually changed "mid-flight"?

In DS9 "Dramatis Personae", a Klingon ship emerges from the wormhole, and O'Brien says he's "reading a transporter signal" and thinks somebody aboard initiated a transport. Thus, the signal has no doubt been created by the Klingon transporter. Yet the signal is still in transit when the Klingon transporter explodes - and sure enough, it first appears on the Ops transporter in the red colors of Klingon systems, but is finally materialized out of the amber sparkle of the Cardassian transporter. Now, that's more or less logical: the original Klingon machinery might have dictated a Klingon color, even a few seconds "posthumously", but it could not complete the process. However, in the hands of a good operator at least, transporters can process signals from foreign units...

In ST3, the Klingon ship beams its boarding party to the Enterprise with a blue Federation signal, making it look as if the Enterprise transporter was doing all the work. That's a bit foolhardy, letting your enemy control your every atom like that. But Klingons have done that before (to their peril in "Day of the Dove"!) - and Kruge's ship might well have been damaged in the preceding fight, rendering her transporters inoperable for a while. They do work again later in the movie, though.

Apart from those two, are there really examples of the transporter beam changing color or showing suspicious color?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shikarnov]

Could it possibly be a safety/difficulty issue? While it's technically possible to beam over to another ship, wouldn't the risk of materializing halfway inside a bulkhead be significantly greater than beaming onto some large plane on the surface of a planet. It would seem to be a lot less of a gamble to send a pattern into the recipient ship's antenna/buffer/array/whatever and then let that same ship handle rematerialization.

 

[B.J.]

I'm also thinking safety, but from a different perspective. Linking up to the destination's transporter also means that you go through their biofilters, scrubbers, and whatnot. You don't carry through any germs that are harmful to them, but benign to you (and therefore wouldn't be removed by your own transporter).

 

[SpyOne]

I agree with the above: It is both for reasons of protocol and safety.

No matter how safe the transporter is, it is safer to transport with a unit on both ends of the trip.
Also, the transporter room is essentially the front door of a ship: the corridors are designed with the idea that people will be arriving and departing there. As a matter of politeness, it is where guests arrive. Much like how if I was beaming to your house, I would probably beam to the spot right outside your front door and then knock. At most, I might beam to a spot just inside your front door if you were expecting me: essentially you had already said "come in", and I am now in the entryway.

 

[Gagarin]

Out of interest, how often do we see the transporter signal actually changed "mid-flight"?
Apart from those two, are there really examples of the transporter beam changing color or showing suspicious color?

Timo Saloniemi

Star Trek VI.

I don't remember ever seeing Federation Blue/Sparkle when transporting to another ship's transporter room. From my recollection, it always changes. But I don't remember other specific ones.

 

[Timo]

Star Trek VI.

But was that ever a Federation transporter?

It would probably have been better to use the BoP's transporters for inserting and extracting the assassins. No marks left in the Enterprise transporter logs, no chance of the heroes pulling the plug, a Plan B if Kirk raises shields before the assassins return...

I don't remember ever seeing Federation Blue/Sparkle when transporting to another ship's transporter room. From my recollection, it always changes. But I don't remember other specific ones.

Hmh? Our TNG or DS9 heroes didn't seem to transport to alien transporter rooms much - that would have meant building a somewhat superfluous alien set. They carefully avoided showing the Klingon transporters in "A Matter of Honor", for example.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gagarin]

Star Trek VI.

But was that ever a Federation transporter?

It would probably have been better to use the BoP's transporters for inserting and extracting the assassins. No marks left in the Enterprise transporter logs, no chance of the heroes pulling the plug, a Plan B if Kirk raises shields before the assassins return...

I don't remember ever seeing Federation Blue/Sparkle when transporting to another ship's transporter room. From my recollection, it always changes. But I don't remember other specific ones.

Hmh? Our TNG or DS9 heroes didn't seem to transport to alien transporter rooms much - that would have meant building a somewhat superfluous alien set. They carefully avoided showing the Klingon transporters in "A Matter of Honor", for example.

Timo Saloniemi

In ST VI, the Klingons materialize in the Enterprise transporter room after Kirk gives the order to 'energize'. After the dinner, Chang uses his communicator to ring the battlecruiser "beam me up", and the Klingons dematerialize. Federation blue is used for both situations. One where Kirk seems to initiate, the other where Chang seems to initiate.

The assasins appear on the battlecruiser and beam away using Klingon Red, and they DID beam from Enterprise.

I actually think they would very much want the assasins to come from Enterprise and leave a trace back to there. Or at least the transporter log would have been altered. Or there's no transporter log on the Enterprise-A.

I suppose I'd have to watch 80 percent of TNG again to find some specifics, but I know I had the impression and question of 'why does it look Klingon on one end, and Starfleet on the other?' from that material, too.

 

[muzzleflash]

The idea of transporting to and from anywhere without equipment seems completely impossible to me. For example, if you beam down to a planet, what is controlling the reassembly of your atoms on the surface of the planet? The transporter? From thousands of kilometers away?

I realize we're just supposed to accept that the transporter works with technologies beyond our understanding, but there's also common sense telling me that this shouldn't be possible at all.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

I think the color of the other ship's transporter sparklies is because transporters normally work like one ship sends out the signal, and the other ship picks up the signal and loads it up using their own system.

 

[Gagarin]

I think the color of the other ship's transporter sparklies is because transporters normally work like one ship sends out the signal, and the other ship picks up the signal and loads it up using their own system.

So how did they learn to work together?
A subspace treaty and agreement on a universal-mode or language for the transporters?

Similar things happen in real life... even countries that 'hate' eachother had to find ways to communicate with each other, requiring some cooperation.

Think USSR-USA 'hotline'.

 

[Pauln6]

The idea of transporting to and from anywhere without equipment seems completely impossible to me. For example, if you beam down to a planet, what is controlling the reassembly of your atoms on the surface of the planet? The transporter? From thousands of kilometers away?

I realize we're just supposed to accept that the transporter works with technologies beyond our understanding, but there's also common sense telling me that this shouldn't be possible at all.

This is one of the REALLY stupid things about NuTrek, where they transport across interstellar distances into the engineering section. If Scotty and Spock were using a Federation transporter why couldn't they piggy back onto the Enterprise's transporter (and there are transporters in the Secondary hull) - a FAR less risky move and Spock, with his massive brain, would have known that, and Scotty, with his vast knowledge of transporters would have been able to achieve it. Another dumb scene using 'comic relief' as an excuse for idiocy, although a warp fluctuation causing Scotty to end up in the same place could have led to the same scene result without making the characters appear (even more) stupid.

 

[Timo]

I don't think that transporting involves any "reassembly" at all. A more descriptive term might be "degradation" - the target is phased into another realm where he, she or it can travel at lightspeed without being impended by walls or the like, but only stays in that other realm for a limited time or distance. Think of it as being thrown through the air... The target then degrades back to our realm without the need for help from machinery, just like a thrown rock will fall all on its own without needing a catcher, and will fall more or less where the thrower aimed it.

Using a catcher at the other end sounds superfluous, then, and indeed we see very little indication that the transporter rooms at the receiving end would be vital for the transporting process. Only in a very special arrangement does the receiving end become an active participant - as specifically technobabbled in TNG "Interface".

In ST:TMP, Kirk doesn't beam directly to the Enterprise because that ship's transporters are down. But that doesn't mean it would have been impossible for him to beam there. Rather, we learn that he beams to Scotty to find out what is wrong with the repairs and how the schedule could accommodate the scramble that Kirk wants. (Plus he wants the free scenic ride around his ship...)

Good point about the assassins probably wanting to leave a trace in the E-A transporter records. Still, they could have been using the BoP's transporters to avoid interception, as getting the job done was more important than directly implicating Kirk. Valeris could forge the records afterwards anyway.

When Kirk beams the Klingons aboard, he's apparently following TOS precedent of bringing invited guests aboard via the ship's own transporters. When Chang beams out... Oh, well. Perhaps he just calls his ship to warn them that Kirk's transporters will soon whisk him there? After all, a guy in the Enterprise transporter booth is seen crewing and apparently operating the controls.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SpyOne]

I don't think that transporting involves any "reassembly" at all. A more descriptive term might be "degradation" - the target is phased into another realm where he, she or it can travel at lightspeed without being impended by walls or the like, but only stays in that other realm for a limited time or distance. Think of it as being thrown through the air... The target then degrades back to our realm without the need for help from machinery, just like a thrown rock will fall all on its own without needing a catcher, and will fall more or less where the thrower aimed it.

There are episodes that support this (Realm of Fear leaps to mind), but it disagrees with the Tech Manuals and a lot of the on-screen jargon: there are "Pattern Buffers" and a "Matter Stream" involved. Most tellingly, there is a "Heisenberg Compensator": the most famous Heisenberg in science or engineering is Werner Heisenberg, whose most famous work is the Uncertainty Principle, which applies to subatomic particles. In brief, it states that for certain pairs of physical data, such as position and momentum, increasing the accuracy of the measurement of one decreases the accuracy of the other, so it is impossible to know both with great accuracy.
So it logically follows that, if a Transporter needs a Heisenberg Compensator, it needs to know both the position and momentum (or some other such pair) of sub-atomic particles with high accuracy.

Sorry, that wasn't meant to be ranty: I love the description, and as I said it fits a few episodes perfectly.

One tiny point though: while the Transporter is pretty fast, it can be significantly slower than lightspeed and still function as seen on screen: they have a range of ... 45,000km I think. Light covers that distance in 0.15 seconds, so the transporter could work at 1/100 lightspeed and still fit on screen evidence pretty well.

Using a catcher at the other end sounds superfluous, then, and indeed we see very little indication that the transporter rooms at the receiving end would be vital for the transporting process.

Using your system described above: we have seen on screen people worried that, if the sending transporter is destroyed before the person materializes, the person will be lost forever. Apparently, the transporter needs to keep functioning to "open the door" at the other end of the trip. Having a transporter on both ends grants redundancy: both of them are holding the "door" open, so if either one fails the other ensures transport will succeed.
Usually superfluous, but occasionally a life-saver.

 

[Pauln6]

One tiny point though: while the Transporter is pretty fast, it can be significantly slower than lightspeed and still function as seen on screen: they have a range of ... 45,000km I think. Light covers that distance in 0.15 seconds, so the transporter could work at 1/100 lightspeed and still fit on screen evidence pretty well.

That doesn't fit the evidence of the new movie though, where Scotty claims that standard Federation transporters can send a signal over millions of kilometres or where the ship is light years away and within a warp bubble. I can see how transporting onto another ship while both ships were at the same warp might work but I think transporting from a non-warp transporter to a location (other than a transporter receiver) on a ship at warp is a death sentence on so many levels. Except of course that it isn't! Don't get me started though.

 

[Gagarin]

One tiny point though: while the Transporter is pretty fast, it can be significantly slower than lightspeed and still function as seen on screen: they have a range of ... 45,000km I think. Light covers that distance in 0.15 seconds, so the transporter could work at 1/100 lightspeed and still fit on screen evidence pretty well.

That doesn't fit the evidence of the new movie though,

Yeah, well, we won't worry about that. =)

 

[SpyOne]

Yeah, it may be assumed as a given that anything I say about Star Trek does not apply to nuTrek unless I specifically say otherwise.
Let's try not to turn this into a discussion of nuTrek's conflicts with established facts, like the range of transporters or how one might transport while at warp.