Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

Captain Syrup said:
Yeah. They simplify the transporters and overcomplicate the weapons.

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I don't even think the Zat rules are even all that complicated. The first shot affects the nervous system by sending an electrical shock directly to the nerves, sending the person into shock from the pain. The second shot burns an already burned nervous system again, which kills them. So a person can recover from the first shot given enough time, similar to how some people survive lightning strikes.
 
"Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock (1/8) Movie CLIP - A Damn Illegal Thing (1984)"

transcript said:
WAITRESS: [...] What'll it be?
McCOY: Altair water.
WAITRESS: That's not your usual poison.
McCOY: To expect one to order poison in a bar is not logical.
WAITRESS: Got it.
ALIEN: To your planet, welcome.
McCOY: I think that's my line, stranger.
ALIEN: Oh, forgive. I here am new. But you are known, being McCoy from Enterprise.
McCOY: You have me at a disadvantage, sir.
ALIEN: I name not important. You seek I. Message received. Available ship stands by.
McCOY: How much and how soon?
ALIEN: How soon is now. How much is where?
McCOY: Somewhere in the Mutara Sector.
ALIEN: Oh. Mutara restricted. Take permits many. Money, more.
McCOY: There aren't going to be any damn permits! How can you get a permit to do a damn illegal thing? Look, price you name, money I got.
ALIEN: Place you name, money I name. Otherwise, bargain, no.
McCOY: All right, dammit. It's Genesis. The name of the place we're going is Genesis.
ALIEN: Genesis!
McCOY: Yes, Genesis! How can you be deaf with ears like that?
ALIEN: Genesis allowed is not. ...It's planet forbidden.
McCOY: Look, my backwards friend! Genesis may be 'planet forbidden' but I'm damn well...
CIVILIAN AGENT: Sir, ...I'm sorry, but your voice is carrying. I don't think you want to be discussing this subject in public.
McCOY: I'll discuss what I like, and who the hell are you?
CIVILIAN AGENT: Could I offer you a ride home, Doctor McCoy?
McCOY: Where's the logic in offering me a ride home, you idiot! If I wanted a ride home, would I be trying to charter a space flight?
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Screamer_2 said:
They overthought the Star Trek transporters. Quantum patterns, Heisenberg compensators, and pattern buffers that invite endless technobabble and convenient malfunctions.
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Speaking of transporters, do they ever go into the ethical concerns of them? I swear it gets brought up in one of the episodes.

When I think about them, it always puts me in mind of another fantastically well written bit of sci-fi, Alpha Centauri, which touches on it a little.
As Sister Miriam puts it so well “And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?”

(I miss well written sci-fi so much)
 
Mussolini’s Merkin said:
Speaking of transporters, do they ever go into the ethical concerns of them? I swear it gets brought up in one of the episodes.
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It's touched on occasionally. There's Second Chances, with the Riker transporter clone, which sort of breaks how transporters were meant to work up to that point (which was that they don't duplicate/destroy you, but literally disassemble and reassemble your particles, which is why they have a pattern buffer, the heisenberg compensator, and a "matter stream"). The closest we get to an existential issue is McCoy's distrust of the transporter flinging his atoms to god knows where.

Stargate managed to plot-hole itself into a similar ethical problem, which only cropped up when they decided that the stargate doesn't just open a wormhole that you walk through, but actually "digitises" and "transmits" you through as a radio signal (this so they could set up a requirement to "rescue" teal'c from the gate's pattern buffer in a race against the clock, while Col. Mayborne wants to sacrifice him and reboot the gate in order to resume off-world operations). It set up a bunch of issues that they then had to work their way around in subsequent episodes and broke a bunch of prior assumptions in the process.

This is what happens when people overthink things.
 
Ultraman Orb Dark said:
There's an episode of TNG where the neurotic Lieutenant Barclay was afraid of transporters, but he got over it by the end.
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Ahh man, I forgot that one! It introduces a whole new raft of issues as well, out of nowhere, just for that episode's plot to work. So now you're conscious inside the matter stream and can see other things in there, even interact with them, but time and space lose meaning. A process that takes just a few seconds on the outside takes longer than you'd think on the inside.
 
teriyakiburns said:
Ahh man, I forgot that one! It introduces a whole new raft of issues as well, out of nowhere, just for that episode's plot to work. So now you're conscious inside the matter stream and can see other things in there, even interact with them, but time and space lose meaning. A process that takes just a few seconds on the outside takes longer than you'd think on the inside.
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Imagine if Scotty had to be conscious the whole time he's stuck in that pattern buffer.
Also what about the guys who's pattern degraded? Did they feel themselves degrade?

God what nightmare technology. Honestly when I saw that transporter death in the Star Trek motion picture it nearly scared me as a child. If I existed in that timeline I would totally be like McCoy and Pulaski, "Put me on a shuttle, I'll take my chances with that instead!"
 
Been rewatching TNG with my friend (she's never seen any trek before and has been enjoying it, starting with some heavily curated TOS episodes.) Anyway tonight we should make it to Best of Both Worlds. I'm excited.

Season 1 of TNG wasn't nearly as much of a slog as I remembered it being.
 
Rabo 2: Electric Boogaloo said:
Also what about the guys who's pattern degraded? Did they feel themselves degrade?
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TMP - yes
TNG - no

Your consciousness is basically frozen the instant the transporter activates to beam you up to the moment it finishes beaming you down, so for the guy being beamed there isn't that slow fade in/fade out effect. It's just an instant blink from one location to the other. So if your signal degraded over a few centuries and you died you would've just instantly died from your POV.

Honestly I'd argue that dying is actually the better option when shit goes wrong with transporters. Every time a transporter fucks up and you don't die there's a 50/50 chance you're replaced with an evil doppelganger who tries to kill your friends or you go insane and slowly disintegrate into a parallel dimension.
 
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UnKillFill said:
In "The Most Toys", do you think the (non-Ferengi) space-Jew would have let Data go if he had pointed out he was not actually the only Soong type android? Lore is still out there floating in space somewhere at this point.
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If that had occured, Dr Soong would still (secretly) live. I wonder why he didn't make any more androids in his hideaway. Oh wait he made the one of the wife that divorced him..? I'll have to see that one again. Love Fionnula Flannigan. She's in the club of actors that was on 3+ trek series. And undoubtedly would have been another legendary honey had she appeared on TOS.
licensed-image.webp
 
UnKillFill said:
In "The Most Toys", do you think the (non-Ferengi) space-Jew would have let Data go if he had pointed out he was not actually the only Soong type android? Lore is still out there floating in space somewhere at this point.
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That would have been a good way to throw him off stride for a second to crush his skull
 
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