Transporter - Cage & WNMHGB

[Tino]

That's sadly true. I thought they had some great elements from the beginning,
like noone knowning where Earth is and what humans are. They made the very first
episodes very explorer-like and I missed that in later episodes.

 

[Broccoli]

UnknownSample said:
That doesn't mean you can't claim a longer transporter process as canon, for Pike's Enterprise, but I choose to view it as one of those early things they changed later, like Spock's emotionalism in The Cage... the shouting of orders, and the smiling at vegetation. Vulcans weren't even supposed to be unemotional, yet. Stick that in your canon....

You are 100% correct! :thumbsup:

Yet...I'm sure ENT-bashers will rationalize that with the fact that "not everything was fully set in stone yet." However, that, of course, wouldn't apply to the transporter effect, because, you know, it defeats their point.

 

[Kryton]

Don't forget the classic Spock line from WNMHGB..."Irritation? Ah, yes...one of your EARTH emotions."

I have a copy of the original pilot version where Kirk replies to Spock's reference to the fact that "one of his ancestors" was a human with "Pity, having bad blood like that...but you may learn to enjoy it one day." The bolded part didn't make it into the final edit, so it's cool to have a copy of it that includes it (it's a classic line, developing BOTH characters quite a bit in the first few minutes of the episode.)

 

[Nerys Myk]

UnknownSample said:
The first time we see a transporter work, it's supposed to be a very eye-opening, startling experience for the viewer (and maybe for the executives they were selling the pilot to), so the effect is dragged out much longer, to be impressive, and so as not to go by too quickly, I suppose.

That doesn't mean you can't claim a longer transporter process as canon, for Pike's Enterprise, but I choose to view it as one of those early things they changed later, like Spock's emotionalism in The Cage... the shouting of orders, and the smiling at vegetation. Vulcans weren't even supposed to be unemotional, yet. Stick that in your canon....

Exactly. In show the transporter was treated as an everyday thing. No different than you or I hailing a cab. Something that was pretty much taken for granted.

On the otherhand the transporter in ENT was a new piece of equipment barely out of the experimental phase and looked up with some trepidation. In the first few seasons it was regulated to transporting cargo amd in ememrgencies humanoids. When they had to board a ship, visit a planet or space station the prefered means was a shuttle pod. Other less sophisticated tech: The universal translator required a human operator rather than the automatic and often instantaneous UT seen in TOS and TNG/DS9/VOY. The phase pistols were shown to less versatile than phasers ( but a raygun is raygun no mater what you call it ) The ship lacked shields and relied on the less sophisticated charged hull plating. Phlox's menagerie was a change of pace from the magic salt shakers and scanners seen in TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY.

 

[Nebusj]

Nerys Myk said:
On the otherhand the transporter in ENT was a new piece of equipment barely out of the experimental phase and looked up with some trepidation. In the first few seasons it was regulated to transporting cargo amd in ememrgencies humanoids. When they had to board a ship, visit a planet or space station the prefered means was a shuttle pod.

I'll credit Enterprise for getting it reasonably right in making the transporter be a less used thing and a bigger deal when used, and it worked to their advantage that in the Xindi Mission they were forced to get over their transporter nerves in a hurry because there were bigger things going on. Unfortunately the only episode that really tried to focus on the Wonder of Being Transported was ``Sato Puttering Around In That Story That Didn't Really Happen'', which was crafted all right but came out fairly limp.

Other less sophisticated tech: The universal translator required a human operator rather than the automatic and often instantaneous UT seen in TOS and TNG/DS9/VOY.

Er ... it did? I remember, like, one scene where it malfunctioned and Archer had to control-alt-delete reboot his and then everything was fine again. Otherwise it was maybe a throwaway line that Sato had got the universal translator matrix on and we don't have to make the dialogue reflect a language barrier anymore just like in the previous 640 hours of Trek.

The phase pistols were shown to less versatile than phasers ( but a raygun is raygun no mater what you call it ) The ship lacked shields and relied on the less sophisticated charged hull plating.

This was a real gyp, as far as technology goes. You can call them phase pistols and photonic torpedoes and hull plating if you want, but that's just a search-and-replace on the words phaser, photon torpedo, and shield. There's no difference in how they act or what the scenes have to play like, which is probably part of why the show felt awfully familiar when it should have felt fresh.

Phlox's menagerie was a change of pace from the magic salt shakers and scanners seen in TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY.

The menagerie was more talked about than used, really; most of Phlox's work was from the nice medical scanners and surgical implements. There'd be a dusting of bloodworms or whatnot on top, and now and then something would be a magic bag of tricks to grow an instant clone or give a beagle protective mimicry camouflage, but not enough of the strange or wondrous stuff.

(This may sound hard on Enterprise but what it amounts to is I wanted to see more wondrous and imaginative, all over.)

 

[Nerys Myk]

Some fair points. Though, I'm not sure "wonder" was the emotion associated with the transporter.

As for the UT, from my recollections it took a bit more on ENT to get the translations than Uhura announceing "incomming message Captain." Given to time contraints of TV prolonging the translation process would slow down the story telling, unless the story focus was translating an alien message.

Sure the menagerie was mostly talk but it did provide for a difffernt sort of sickbay. Phlox had a nice balance beween high tech medicine and natural medicine.

Ray gun, laser, phaser, phase pistol its all the same. So unlees they went with a non energy beam weapon there are bound to be similarities. Same for the torpedo weapons. With hull plating I thought they found something different enough yet still workable. The ship needs some sort of defense and they weren't energy fields. Of course the show felt familier. Star Trek has certain associations and the producers would have been fools to ignore them.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Tino said:

GeorgeKirk said:
This is one reason why a lot of us ignore Enterprise. In "The Cage", use of the transporter was obviously a bigger deal than in Kirk's time. The transportation process took longer and the transporter was complicated enough that it took two people to operate.

My, isn't that a great reason to ignore en entire series just because the transporter
effect was faster than it was 100 years later? *lol*

Exactly. This kind of trivial nonsense is a good part of why no one takes trekkies seriously as a target audience and why Paramount is now willing to basically ignore the "hard-core" Trek fans and just hand the Franchise over to some smart people who they hope will do something different and clever with it - J.J. Abrams and company.

Way overdue.

 

[Basil]

UWC Defiance said:

Tino said:

GeorgeKirk said:
This is one reason why a lot of us ignore Enterprise. In "The Cage", use of the transporter was obviously a bigger deal than in Kirk's time. The transportation process took longer and the transporter was complicated enough that it took two people to operate.

My, isn't that a great reason to ignore en entire series just because the transporter
effect was faster than it was 100 years later? *lol*

Exactly. This kind of trivial nonsense is a good part of why no one takes trekkies seriously as a target audience and why Paramount is now willing to basically ignore the "hard-core" Trek fans and just hand the Franchise over to some smart people who they hope will do something different and clever with it - J.J. Abrams and company.

Way overdue.

Different and clever than the last 20 years of "Star Trek," especially that dreck called "Enterprise," would be a welcome thing.

Nonetheless, Abrams, Orci, Kurtzman, and others keep making comments that they actually respect the original series and that strongly suggest fans of the original series won't be left out in the cold, either. Seems they're keeping in mind what the "hardcore trekkies" want as much as anyone else.

 

[tharpdevenport]

As I recall, the speed of the transporter in TOS varied from episodes, and I think the color changed once or twice, too.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Nerys Myk said:


Ray gun, laser, phaser, phase pistol its all the same. So unlees they went with a non energy beam weapon there are bound to be similarities. Same for the torpedo weapons. With hull plating I thought they found something different enough yet still workable. The ship needs some sort of defense and they weren't energy fields. Of course the show felt familier. Star Trek has certain associations and the producers would have been fools to ignore them.

With "phase pistols"...they should have been mor elike the LAser Gun soldier from G.I. Joe (with the red safety pads on his uniform). A rifle-size gun fueled through a line to a back pack generator. That would have made me happy.

"phtonic torpedoes" -- how about atomic weapons? Fusion missles? Something a little different, and less high tech..

"tricorders"/portable scanners would be similar in needing backpack processors

Shields? -- It would be nice if it wasn't so..."measurable" hat they heck is 15% hull plating? If you have 3 inches of steel , and it gets hit, how do you measure the damage? i think the uncettainity of what the "next hit" can do would make it more exciting. :thumbsup:

 

[David cgc]

Personally, I really hated that they switched from the spatial torpedos (which were cool and retro) to "photonic" torpedos in the third season (which were the same special effect, and same prop painted silver). At least they kept the grappler, and didn't replace it with a tractor beam.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Morpheus 02 said:

Nerys Myk said:


Ray gun, laser, phaser, phase pistol its all the same. So unlees they went with a non energy beam weapon there are bound to be similarities. Same for the torpedo weapons. With hull plating I thought they found something different enough yet still workable. The ship needs some sort of defense and they weren't energy fields. Of course the show felt familier. Star Trek has certain associations and the producers would have been fools to ignore them.

With "phase pistols"...they should have been mor elike the LAser Gun soldier from G.I. Joe (with the red safety pads on his uniform). A rifle-size gun fueled through a line to a back pack generator. That would have made me happy.

"phtonic torpedoes" -- how about atomic weapons? Fusion missles? Something a little different, and less high tech..

"tricorders"/portable scanners would be similar in needing backpack processors

Shields? -- It would be nice if it wasn't so..."measurable" hat they heck is 15% hull plating? If you have 3 inches of steel , and it gets hit, how do you measure the damage? i think the uncettainity of what the "next hit" can do would make it more exciting. :thumbsup:

Backpack tech just doesn't look "futuristic' I guess. Too 1950s maybe.

The plating was polarized. I asume that as the polarization got weaker its effectiveness lessened. One you hit 0 all you have is the metal plate and then explosive decompression. So tracking it might be useful.

 

[UnknownSample]

Exactly. In show the transporter was treated as an everyday thing. No different than you or I hailing a cab. Something that was pretty much taken for granted.

I didn't want to quote the whole thing, but Nerys Myk and Broccoli are agreeing with me, seemingly, but go on to say very different things than what I was. Just thought I'd point that out, why I'm not sure.

If Enterprise had started doing good stories, then I'd have started caring about continuity.

Berman had a habit of setting up grandiose and interesting basic premises for each series, then perhaps just assuming the writers were up to exploring them properly, or assuming great scripts would materialize, just because the basic idea for the new show was so good. No, not "good" exactly... he used the trick twice of setting a new series in a new quadrant, as if shifting the action to a new area of space, away from the boring old Alpha Quadrant, would generate great scripts by itself. Well, if he made the A Quad boring, he's going to do the same for the others (and the 22nd century), once he gets his hamfisted mitts on them, and that's what happened. It's like trying to solve all your problems by moving to another city, when the problems are within you.

I was saying nothing against original Trek, by the way.

 

[Nerys Myk]

UnknownSample said:

I didn't want to quote the whole thing, but Nerys Myk and Broccoli are agreeing with me, seemingly, but go on to say very different things than what I was. Just thought I'd point that out, why I'm not sure.

No worries. I agreed with your point and went on to make some of my own. The transporter SFX is a flashy piece of film making, but to the NCC-1701 crew no big deal, the NX-01 crew had a different opinion.

 

[Ronald Wimmer]

The transporter from the cage took longer to saturate the buffers with energy. Ignore NX-01,it was made for a dumb downed impatient audience. A Baton Rouge class ship would have been more in keeping with the timeline.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The transporter in ENT was intended primarily for cargo transfer. Although certified safe for humans it wasn't intended as such, at least according to the first episode.

I can imagine a simplified transporter console, like we saw on ENT, for shifting cargo between the ship and planet.

Must admit though, I preferred "The Cage" 2-man transporter console (it was the helm/nav one from the bridge, IIRC), which made the process of teleporting human flesh without murdering it seem suitably complex.

 

[C57D]

I

That's what I think as well. It was just another STAR TREK-series, nothing serious
was changed. As if having a female captain or being the first Starfleet-vessel is such
a huge departure from what we're used to see. It's not. I would never have minded as
series that was based on Earth or a planet or a submarine.

I think that's what really got ENT kicked out. It was just another STAR TREK-series,
and a quite weak one. The same stories over and over again, only a very few good
character-episodes and too much mindless action. Too bad 'cause in general,
I really loved ENT's setting.

I would have loved ENT to have been lasers (or maybe even better some sort of gauss gun?) nukes, shuttles, no transporters or phase(rs) pistols or photon(ic) torpedoes. And DEFINITELY no 24th C technobabble! All seat of your pants, rough and ready, "final frontier", right stuff. Stumbling through first contacts and creating the PD from their errors. First W4 long range Earth ship. A Daedelus class or something similar. But keep it a bit rough and ready too. Exposed systems and seams, and looking like it will fly apart every time it goes onto warp. Very Millenium Falcon style.
BUT we didnt get that........did we?!!
THATS (for me) whats wrong with ENT.

 

[Kor]

In ENT, in short order they mostly forgot about the new/experimental nature of the transporters, so that it served the exact same purpose to the story that it did in every other iteration of Trek.

Edit: Oh look, this is a zombie thread back for our brains. BRAAAAAAAAAAIINS!

Kor

 

[T'Bonz]

DON'T bump ten-year-old dead threads. If necessary, start a new one.