Would you go through the transporter?

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2004-09-23 06:13pm

Then where did Riker get two souls or energy patterns from? If they are unique to every living person, wouldn't one of the Riker bodies have fallen to the ground dead? And if he was conscious during the entire transport, when was his consciousness split in two? Do they both remember the transport as continuous? This would certainly discredit the Barclay scenario as proof that you don't die in a transporter, since one of these Riker "souls" must not be the original..

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-09-23 06:16pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:Then where did Riker get two souls or energy patterns from? If they are unique to every living person, wouldn't one of the Riker bodies have fallen to the ground dead? And if he was conscious during the entire transport, when was his consciousness split in two? Do they both remember the transport as continuous? This would certainly discredit the Barclay scenario as proof that you don't die in a transporter, since one of these Riker "souls" must not be the original..

Except we also have the issue of Picard. They couldn't simply just take records of Picard out of the system to recreate him, they had to use his specific life energy.

Gustav32Vasa · Post by **Gustav32Vasa** » 2004-09-23 06:19pm

Col. Crackpot wrote:how many tens of billions of people live in the federation? Not to mention that this technology is used by every alpha quadrant power, the borg, the dominion.... etc etc. Thousands of people are killed in the world every day in transportation accidents now.

I thought that in the episode with Barcleys transporter phobia Troi said that billions in the Federation are using transporters every day and no accidents.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2004-09-23 06:33pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:Then where did Riker get two souls or energy patterns from?

The technobabble atmosphere seems to be the only possibility on offer.

Geordi's technobabble on the subject was a massive energy surge in the distortion field which had the exact same phase differential as the containment beam which lead to he duplication.

Of course that doesn't really tell us much but I am would assume that this massive energy surge somehow duplicated the special life energy or whatever you call it, something which is beyond Federation science at the moment.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2004-09-23 06:48pm

Alyeska wrote:
Bob the Gunslinger wrote:Then where did Riker get two souls or energy patterns from? If they are unique to every living person, wouldn't one of the Riker bodies have fallen to the ground dead? And if he was conscious during the entire transport, when was his consciousness split in two? Do they both remember the transport as continuous? This would certainly discredit the Barclay scenario as proof that you don't die in a transporter, since one of these Riker "souls" must not be the original..
Except we also have the issue of Picard. They couldn't simply just take records of Picard out of the system to recreate him, they had to use his specific life energy.

So you're saying that the transporter could not copy Picard because of his special life energy, but it could clone Riker and his life energy (or "soul")? Does he have no "soul"? Or only half a soul now?

The properties of a transporter seem to contadict themselves all over the place. The problem is compounded even worse with Tuvix... what the hell is going on with their "special life energies"?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-23 06:49pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:
So you're saying that the transporter could not copy Picard because of his special life energy, but it could clone Riker and his life energy (or "soul")? Does he have no "soul"? Or only half a soul now?

The properties of a transporter seem to contadict themselves all over the place. The problem is compounded even worse with Tuvix... what the hell is going on with their "special life energies"?

best guess with the riker problem is that the conditions on the planet he was being beamed up from had some special properties in the atmosphere that made it possible for the transporter to duplicate his consciousness. no other real solid explanation for that fubar.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2004-09-23 06:56pm

TheDarkling wrote:
Bob the Gunslinger wrote:Then where did Riker get two souls or energy patterns from?
The technobabble atmosphere seems to be the only possibility on offer.

Geordi's technobabble on the subject was a massive energy surge in the distortion field which had the exact same phase differential as the containment beam which lead to he duplication.

Of course that doesn't really tell us much but I am would assume that this massive energy surge somehow duplicated the special life energy or whatever you call it, something which is beyond Federation science at the moment.

HOLY SHIT!

The sky made a new soul just to inhabit an empty body? Why are they not worshipping this planet that makes new souls?

Or maybe this special life energy isn't really all that special anyway...

Not that it really matters. Even if the transporter keeps your special life energy intact (which seems to contradict many episodes and explanations), that isn't necessarily the same as your soul so it doesn't mean that it isn't doing some harm to you in a spiritual sense. If you technically stop existing for short periods of time, it really does have a lot of religious implications, especially for religions that have laws against harming your own body or touching the dead (perhaps even if they come back).

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-09-23 07:26pm

TheDarkling wrote:The technobabble atmosphere seems to be the only possibility on offer.

Geordi's technobabble on the subject was a massive energy surge in the distortion field which had the exact same phase differential as the containment beam which lead to he duplication.

Of course that doesn't really tell us much but I am would assume that this massive energy surge somehow duplicated the special life energy or whatever you call it, something which is beyond Federation science at the moment.

That's not how it happened. There was a pair of beams in tandem on Riker and the atmosphere bounced one of them back to the surface, thus causing the transporters to assemble one of them there and one on the ship. The atmosphere acted as a beam splitter, it didn't actually create anything. The transporters did the work.

Metrion Cascade · Post by **Metrion Cascade** » 2004-09-23 09:18pm

Praxis wrote:
Metrion Cascade wrote:
Alyeska wrote:Are you people fucking blind? The transporter does NOT kill you. You remain concious throughout the ENTIRE event and can even move and interact within the matter stream.
Which contradicts all sorts of stated aspects of transporter operation, but can't really be disregarded.

::slaps B&B for that and for Paris saying ships can't turn at warp::

Question, Alyeska...what do you do when you can't find any reconciliation between contradictory events? Like Odo getting knocked out by a rock on the head when his head isn't even real?
I remember that, and I remember being confused about it. However, I forgot when it happened.

Could it have happened after the changelings had turned him into a human? Or was it before?

It was before we found out who his people were. The episode where a guy came from the Delta Quadrant with a key that changed shape to fit its lock much like a Founder. Odo thought it might be related to him. Basically no reconciliation is possible. He couldn't have been knocked out, and it would be the height of stupidity (and dereliction of duty) for him to fake being knocked out simply because that's what would have happened to most humanoids.

Metrion Cascade · Post by **Metrion Cascade** » 2004-09-23 09:21pm

Col. Crackpot wrote:
Metrion Cascade wrote:Excuse me, all ye transporter-bashers. Out of 178 TNG episodes I can only find 3 that involve anything funky going on with the transporter. One of those being the Barclay thing which doesn't really count as anything going wrong with the transporter itself.

Other incidents:

-Picard, Keiko O'Brien, Guinan, and Ro changed to children in TNG: Rascals (can't find anything about the cause)
- William Riker duplicated in TNG "Second Chances" (environmental interference)
-Commander Sonak killed in ST:TMP (bona fide accident)
-Kirk split in TOS "The Enemy Within" (caused by transporting a substance that damaged the transporter)
-Tuvix created in VOY "Tuvix" (caused by transporting an organism that reproduced by melding existing lifeforms)
-Weyoun 5 killed in DS9 "Treachery, Faith, and the Great River" (cause unknown, but most likely terrorism)
- Dax, Bashir, and Sisko sent back in time in DS9 "Past Tense" (extremely rare chroniton burst that required the presence of the cloaking device)
- Kirk and co. sent to mirror universe in TOS "Mirror, Mirror" (ion storm)
- EMH's mobile emitter infected by Seven of Nine's nanoprobes in VOY "One" (can't find anything about the cause)
- LaForge and Ro pushed out of 'phase' in TNG "The Next Phase" (caused by beaming off of a Romulan ship with a phase cloak)

There are various episodes involving the Mirror Universe on DS9, but IIRC the travel between universes in those episodes was deliberate. I also remember one transporter assassination on DS9 but can't find the episode reference. But like most of the above, it was caused by outside interference.

Now...anybody got the number of transporter trips we've seen? I'd be fine with counting a trip where multiple people are beamed at once as a single trip, since most of the accidents involving multiple people affected every person being transported. If we can find that, I'd love to compare the rate to accident rates for planes or cars.
how many tens of billions of people live in the federation? Not to mention that this technology is used by every alpha quadrant power, the borg, the dominion.... etc etc. Thousands of people are killed in the world every day in transportation accidents now.

Yeah. And in the Barclay episode, LaForge estimates that there have been "2 or 3" transporter accidents (probably counting the two on the E-D) in the past ten years.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2004-09-23 10:39pm

Gil Hamilton wrote: That's not how it happened. There was a pair of beams in tandem on Riker and the atmosphere bounced one of them back to the surface, thus causing the transporters to assemble one of them there and one on the ship. The atmosphere acted as a beam splitter, it didn't actually create anything. The transporters did the work.

Not exactly, the atmosphere did not act as a beam splitter since the beams were already split (or duplicated) as you say in your first sentence.

The transporter chief was using two transporter beams to beam Riker up but he shut one of them down when the first beam did the job, then the second transporter beam miraculously bounced off the atmosphere and reintegrated him on the planet.

This only happened because the second transport containment exactly matched the atmosphere which meant it maintained its integrity instead of the new pattern just turning to goup.

The atmosphere of the planet was responsible for him re materialising (something had to be and we are specifically told that it was the atmosphere) and so it is too much of a stretch to assume that something in the atmosphere allowed the duplication.

Of course if you have another theory I'm all ears.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2004-09-23 10:54pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:
HOLY SHIT!

The sky made a new soul just to inhabit an empty body? Why are they not worshipping this planet that makes new souls?

They have moved beyond worshipping weather conditions I would imagine.

Or maybe this special life energy isn't really all that special anyway...

It is special in that it is unique to each person and cannot be replicated by federation science.

Not that it really matters. Even if the transporter keeps your special life energy intact (which seems to contradict many episodes and explanations),

Such as?

that isn't necessarily the same as your soul so it doesn't mean that it isn't doing some harm to you in a spiritual sense.

Is there any reason to suppose it does? Considering that the process isn't a cloning but just transformation and transportation and then transformation back into what the person started off as.

Obviously the Bajorans or Vulcans (both believe in a soul of some kind) have no problem with the transporter so they either rate the “energy” as the soul or they believe there is some mechanism in place that keeps the soul linked to the body during transport (most likely it would be the Prophets in the Bajoran’s case).

If you technically stop existing for short periods of time, it really does have a lot of religious implications, especially for religions that have laws against harming your own body or touching the dead (perhaps even if they come back).

They don't stop existing, they become intelligent “energy” beings (although they may not be able to act independently like Picard was) which is not something all that uncommon in Trek.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-09-23 11:32pm

TheDarkling wrote:Not exactly, the atmosphere did not act as a beam splitter since the beams were already split (or duplicated) as you say in your first sentence.

The transporter chief was using two transporter beams to beam Riker up but he shut one of them down when the first beam did the job, then the second transporter beam miraculously bounced off the atmosphere and reintegrated him on the planet.

This only happened because the second transport containment exactly matched the atmosphere which meant it maintained its integrity instead of the new pattern just turning to goup.

The atmosphere of the planet was responsible for him re materialising (something had to be and we are specifically told that it was the atmosphere) and so it is too much of a stretch to assume that something in the atmosphere allowed the duplication.

Of course if you have another theory I'm all ears.

Firstly, the second beam existed to boost the power of the first, in essence, double the power of the transporter beam as a whole. How they explained in the episode was that the boosted signal got split by the bad weather on the planet.

Secondly, it had to be the transporter that re-assembled him on the planet as well as on the ship. How could a storm magically reassemble him when he's data on an energy beam? The transporter can re-assemble things, but bad weather certainly can't.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2004-09-23 11:52pm

Gil Hamilton wrote: Firstly, the second beam existed to boost the power of the first, in essence, double the power of the transporter beam as a whole.

That is never said, we are told the transporter chief almost lost Riker so tried using a second beam but it is never stated it was for power reasons (if Beam A isn't powerful enough to get through then a Beam of equal power will also be unable to get through).

The concern seemed to be that he wouldn't get a proper pattern from the first beam so he was intending on combining both patterns to get a complete one.

How they explained in the episode was that the boosted signal got split by the bad weather on the planet.

Where?

I don't see them saying that anywhere, they clearly say that the Transporter chief terminated the second transport in mid beam and the atmosphere reflected it back, I see no reference to the atmosphere splitting off the boosted signal.

Secondly, it had to be the transporter that re-assembled him on the planet as well as on the ship.

We are told the transporter chief terminated the beam and that the storm was the reason he (Thomas Riker) maintained integrity.

GEORDI
The Transporter Chief shut it
down, but somehow... it was
reflected back to the surface.

PICARD
And another Wil Riker materialized
there.

RIKER
How could the second pattern have
maintained its integrity?

Geordi's tone indicates he's making his best guess.

GEORDI
The containment beam must have had
the exact same phase differential
as the distortion field.

I also have a problem with the transporter supposedly reintegrating the person on the planet and not having any record of the event.

How could a storm magically reassemble him when he's data on an energy beam? The transporter can re-assemble things, but bad weather certainly can't.

Bad weather in trek is capable of what ever the writers need it to be, Geordi's best guess is above as you can see and his reason for the transporter depositing Thomas Riker on the surface is the storm.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2004-09-23 11:56pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote: The properties of a transporter seem to contadict themselves all over the place. The problem is compounded even worse with Tuvix... what the hell is going on with their "special life energies"?

Tuvix is another indication that it isn't a simple cloning process, if it was then the crew could simply have pulled up the patterns of Tuvok and Nelix from their beam down, added some power and had functioning versions of the two just missing a few hours memory.

The fact that they were unable to do this further indicates it isn't a simple cloning process.

nasor · Post by **nasor** » 2004-09-25 03:34pm

Alyeska wrote:READ THE FUCKING THREAD! Transporters DO NO KILL YOU.

So we have one episode (the Barkley episode) indicating that you remain conscious throughout the transporter process and a second episode (the Scotty episode) indicating that you don’t. Perhaps the discontinuity between when the original is destroyed and the copy created is so short that it’s imperceptible to the victims. In any case, the Scotty episode seems to absolutely disprove the idea that a person is conscious throughout the entire transportation process.

And when you add that to the fact that virtually every word ever written about how transporters work fits with the destroy original/create copy model, it seems reasonable to conclude that transporters do, in fact, kill you.

Morilore · Post by **Morilore** » 2004-09-25 08:31pm

*looks at Trek episodes

GAAAAAAHHHHH!!! METAPHYSICS!!!

*looks at posts in thread

GAAAAAAHHHHH!!! PSEUDORELIGION!!!

Me? If I was fucked anyway, I'd do it, but under any other circumstance: no way in hell.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2004-09-25 09:47pm

JME2 wrote:Eh, I'm still haunted somewhat by the accident sequence from The Motion Picture.

Well... I don't think it's fair to condemn the whole programme because of a single slip-up.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2004-09-25 11:35pm

nasor wrote: And when you add that to the fact that virtually every word ever written about how transporters work fits with the destroy original/create copy model, it seems reasonable to conclude that transporters do, in fact, kill you.

If transporters did in fact kill and copy then incidents like that in the motion picture wouldn't matter.

Scotty could just tell Earth that their clone was corrupt and that Earth should use their scans from the beam up to produce a new clone down there.

Why in "Our Man Bashir" did it take up the entire station to store the thought patterns of a few crew members who suffered a transporter accident, surely if they are just clones the computer regularly has to hold that information.

Metrion Cascade · Post by **Metrion Cascade** » 2004-09-26 07:50am

nasor wrote:
Alyeska wrote:READ THE FUCKING THREAD! Transporters DO NO KILL YOU.
So we have one episode (the Barkley episode) indicating that you remain conscious throughout the transporter process and a second episode (the Scotty episode) indicating that you don’t. Perhaps the discontinuity between when the original is destroyed and the copy created is so short that it’s imperceptible to the victims. In any case, the Scotty episode seems to absolutely disprove the idea that a person is conscious throughout the entire transportation process.

And when you add that to the fact that virtually every word ever written about how transporters work fits with the destroy original/create copy model, it seems reasonable to conclude that transporters do, in fact, kill you.

If I get really drunk I lose time too. Doesn't mean I'm dead and wake back up.

Morilore · Post by **Morilore** » 2004-09-27 05:47pm

How do you know? Have you ever been dead and woken back up? Do you really know that every time you go to sleep you aren't dying and when you wake up, it is a different soul in your body?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-27 06:19pm

Morilore wrote:How do you know? Have you ever been dead and woken back up? Do you really know that every time you go to sleep you aren't dying and when you wake up, it is a different soul in your body?

there's no justifiable reason to believe in either souls moving bodies or that we die each time we go to sleep. either scenario would lead to far too many unexplainable mechanisms. occam's razor handily defeats them.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2004-09-28 12:17pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:This means Scotty's been locked in there by himself for roughly 200 years from his perspective!
How could he be conscious the whole time and still be the Scotty we know and love?

Because Scotty is God.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2004-09-28 01:18pm

Iceberg wrote:
Bob the Gunslinger wrote:This means Scotty's been locked in there by himself for roughly 200 years from his perspective!
How could he be conscious the whole time and still be the Scotty we know and love?
Because Scotty is God.

Yeah, but wouldn't this make him more the mindless, gibbering kind of god that you read about in the works of Lovecraft?

Morilore · Post by **Morilore** » 2004-09-28 02:45pm

Darth_Zod wrote:there's no justifiable reason to believe in either souls moving bodies or that we die each time we go to sleep. either scenario would lead to far too many unexplainable mechanisms. occam's razor handily defeats them.

The point was that Metrion said that it didn't mean he was dead if he loses time. I pointed out that he didn't know that, but I should have pointed out that in order to resolve this debate we need to define exactly what the hell "death" is supposed to mean - because if you died and an identical clone of you with all your memories was created and awoke a moment later, it would think it had just passed out, and from its perspective, there was no death.