Current Events > In Star Trek, why don't they use the teleporter to move things inside the ship?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Is it like a running gag, or staple, or part of the backbone of the show, its DNA/etc, to have things go wrong in such a way.....

.... that they cannot ever show the teleporter being used to move things from one place to another within the Enterprise

#floatingphasers,
#onegunonanalienworld

Budget

They do sometimes. Theyve transported people from one part of the ship to sick bay in an emergency. And theyve transported dangerous people in and out of the brig.

But like all stories, they forget about technology when it would undermine the plot. When they call security, they always walk or run there instead of transporting, giving the bad guy the time to talk or attack or escape before security arrives.

Scotty

Take us home.

Ricemills posted...

Budget

Ironically, budget constraints is why the transporter was created in the first place. They couldnt afford to show the ship landing on a different planet in every episode.

Hejiru posted...

They do sometimes. Theyve transported people from one part of the ship to sick bay in an emergency. And theyve transported dangerous people in and out of the brig.

But like all stories, they forget about technology when it would undermine the plot. When they call security, they always walk or run there instead of transporting, giving the bad guy the time to talk or attack or escape before security arrives.

Bad guys moving, teleporter too slow

...

Security!!!!

Hejiru posted...

Ironically, budget constraints is why the transporter was created in the first place. They couldnt afford to show the ship landing on a different planet in every episode.

I mean in universe.
Those transporters should be costly to use and only be used when it's the most viable choice.

It's called a site to site transport, and it is done, sometimes. It wasn't done in earlier shows because of more limited technology. Later on it is done for things like transporting someone directly to sick bay for treatment, or for entering areas of the ship that can no longer be accessed conventionally.

In the far future, everyone has personal transporters and use them whenever they are in a hurry.

Hejiru posted...

But like all stories, they forget about technology when it would undermine the plot. When they call security, they always walk or run there instead of transporting, giving the bad guy the time to talk or attack or escape before security arrives.

I like how this works in video games. Suddenly doors and elevators just doesn't work for no reason, or people nag you if you try to leave and solve the problem, or the menu item for fast travel is just grayed out for no reason.

My favorite was the PSG1 in MGS1. They went waaaaaaay out of their way to stop you from grabbing it early, for obvious plot reasons. But I'm talking, doors that don't open even when you have the card, Meryl nagging you for trying to go backward, people calling you on the radio to nag you for going backward.

But the craziest thing is they identified an exploit that lets you get through a door without having the card key equipped, which would let you get the PSG1 early, and rather than fix it outright, they just made it so that it only works if you have the key in your inventory, lol. Believe me, I tried everything, and they thought of everything.

The real question is why they don't have weapons like the FTL game where you just transport a bomb into the enemy's reactor core whenever their shields go down.

At least Stargate teleported nukes.

pegusus123456 posted...

The real question is why they don't have weapons like the FTL game where you just transport a bomb into the enemy's reactor core whenever their shields go down.

I imagine the biggest thing is that it requires you to lower your own shields to do it, which means it's not really a feasible tactic unless you're only fighting a single enemy.

There's also the matter that because you have to have taken their shields down first in order to beam anything over, by that point you may as well just keep hitting them conventionally like you had been doing.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

I imagine the biggest thing is that it requires you to lower your own shields to do it, which means it's not really a feasible tactic unless you're only fighting a single enemy.

There's also the matter that because you have to have taken their shields down first in order to beam anything over, by that point you may as well just keep hitting them conventionally like you had been doing.

That is an excellent point

They do it sometimes.

In The Original Series it was called Intraship Beaming and from The Next Generation onwards Site-To-Site transporting.

It wasn't done very often because it utilized a lot more power than transporting from the Transporter pad and the coordinates had to be very precise or the transportee could materialize inside a wall, bulkhead or floor

CassandraCroft posted...

the transportee could materialize inside a wall, bulkhead or wall.

Or even a wall!

Someone tell posts 14 and 15 to unblock me, I wanna see them talk about Star Treks

pegusus123456 posted...

Someone tell posts 14 and 15 to unblock me, I wanna see them talk about Star Treks

#15 here. I don't have anyone blocked. I think it's a ridiculous feature.

I did quote #14, so maybe that's why?

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

#15 here. I don't have anyone blocked. I think it's a ridiculous feature.

I did quote #14, so maybe that's why?

Yeah, that'd be why.

Maybe it's the guy who didn't like my Demon Slayer opinion, that's the only one I know of who blocked me lol.

Foppe posted...

At least Stargate teleported nukes.

Thats because in Stargate shields didnt block transporters so they didnt have to lower shields to use them (at least generally although I think the writers made a mistake on that once or twice). Asgard beaming tech could be jammed, but that was separate from shields. Ring transporters just straight up couldnt be blocked, as far as I can remember, but they needed a platform on both ends.

Because a fly might get in the teleporter

It uses more energy to teleport from one part of the ship to another versus using turbolifts, so it's not resource practical.

It is far more energy-efficient to teleport than using a shuttle between ships or to a planet.

And while using replicators use energy to make food and drinks, the cost for doing so is far less than the cost of traditionally cultivating, transporting, storing, and serving an infinite amount of options. Plus, I think crew have certain credits that only allow them to use replicators x number of times in a given period.

rick_alverado posted...

Ring transporters just straight up couldnt be blocked, as far as I can remember,

At some point they developed a way to have a barrier just outside the gate. If you didn't have the right codes, anything sent through would essentially vaporize

I want to remember that a TNG episode started with Enterprise buying some exotic material from a merchant ship, and Data transported it with a shuttle because it was too unstable to teleport.

In Discovery they eventually go the farther future and everyone has a personal transporter and they use it to move from one room to another in a quick blink. But I think they just do it for the visual spectacle.

emblem-man posted...

At some point they developed a way to have a barrier just outside the gate. If you didn't have the right codes, anything sent through would essentially vaporize

Thats the stargates youre thinking of, and the barrier is called an iris, which they installed in the first episode. I was talking about the transport rings.

Ahh, the rings in space?

The rings that pops up from the ground around you and teleports you to another set of rings that pops up from the ground.

The in-universe explanation is that there is a delicate power-balance taking place on a Starship at all times. They shift power to and from systems depending on what's going on. There are multiple episodes where they divert power to transporters, or take power from them to boost another system. I imagine that when travelling at warp speed, the transporters are just completely offline.

If people were constantly using transporters to move themselves or objects around the ship, that would be a constant power drain. Other systems would suffer. Its preferrable to have shields and life support operating at 100%, than to beam people into Ten Forward to get their drink on.

rick_alverado posted...

Thats because in Stargate shields didnt block transporters so they didnt have to lower shields to use them (at least generally although I think the writers made a mistake on that once or twice). Asgard beaming tech could be jammed, but that was separate from shields. Ring transporters just straight up couldnt be blocked, as far as I can remember, but they needed a platform on both ends.

The ring transports weren't using a platform as much as they had rings on the other end, too.

There was one episode where they used the rings on a spaceship to get rid of a monster while the ship was in motion. The rings on the outside of the ship did transfer the monster, but it also destroyed the outside rings. So I don't think when they use the ring transporter it's ever the same set of rings each time.

I think the Wraith and Ori ships could block teleportation with their shields?

Amakusa posted...

The ring transports weren't using a platform as much as they had rings on the other end, too.

There was one episode where they used the rings on a spaceship to get rid of a monster while the ship was in motion. The rings on the outside of the ship did transfer the monster, but it also destroyed the outside rings. So I don't think when they use the ring transporter it's ever the same set of rings each time.

By platform I just mean the thing that the rings come out of. A lot of ships had a platform on on the underside of the ship itself for transporting down to planets, or that instance with the Kull Warrior that you are referring to.

Foppe posted...

I think the Wraith and Ori ships could block teleportation with their shields?

I don't remember the specifics of the Ori ships, but Wraith ships could block transporters. That was separate from shields though, as Wraith ships didn't even have shields.