You raise a good point. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Some fanwankery math. When they teleported onto the Enterprise from Hoth it was going at warp speeds and presumably at least Warp 3 since they were in a hurry (Scotty later was said to maybe be able to get them up to Warp 4).

That means they were moving at 27 times the speed of light. So let's say it takes four seconds for the complete phase-in of the teleportation effect from the first hint of that whine to the final molecule being in place.

So, to put it in local terms, when they first started to appear the Enterprise was on the surfage of the Earth and when they finished it was 3.1 times farther away than the moon.

That's some fancy shooting.

More seriously, I do think that from a "creating a new canon" point of view, the super-transporter may be their biggest mistake. How many "problems" in future movies are we going to have to just pretend that this technology doesn't exist? Enemy ships in quantrant X should now not be met with a cry of "send the fleet to battle" but rather "gather everybody on Treasure Island and we'll just teleport onto the enemy ships while their still 900 lightyears away!"

There was similar technology introduced in an early TNG episode. It turned out that using it more than once or twice caused genetic damage (or something) that eventually killed the people using it. If the writers care enough to explain with super-transporting isn't used in future crises, they could use a similar explanation.

TNG also explained that teleporters could be used to cure disease by simply not re-assembling the disease part and that major discovery was also never again explored (I've not claimed Star Trek has ever been good at consistency; I just think this issue with the transporter is one that was so prominent that it will stick out to the general new audience apparently rediscovering Star Trek because of the new movie).

Of course, it would seem that within a few years the Federation should have post-TNG technlogy in many areas since Spock apparently knows all that stuff.

Maybe at the beginning of the net movie Q can show up and say "oops, let me clean all of the inconsistencies!" and snap his finger claiming it is done and all now makes internal sense.

I don't remember the issue of transporters not being able to transport into non-gaseous environments. Maybe I'm just Trek Brainfarting, though. In Wrath of Khan wasn't there a scene where they were worried about transporting into the cave, blind, and rematerializing inside solid rock? It may not be Wrath that I'm remembering that from though. Anybody recall?

As lame as that would be, that is so Star Trek that it wouldn't surprise me at all. Thank Zeus that Rick Berman is no longer helming the franchise, though, or that may have actually happened.

And yes, in Wrath of Khan they were concerned about transporting inside solid rock, which wouldn't feel too good.


Yes, too, the brilliant original series concept of the transporters for saving all those expensive and air-time-consuming shuttle trips was almost instantly regretted when it sapped every bit of drama from the show unless the transporters were consistently malfunctioning for any return trip.

They are gonna regret Universe-wide, light-speed transporting ... if they don't already. It was beyond stupid. There are so many stupid things in this film, it amazes me. And none of it was necessary. But how fantastic a job they did that no one, me included, seems to care.


On the other hand, to the very casual observer ... once you can teleport someone, it doesn't seem to register that there would be a distance limitation or that you'd have to "hit" a moving target with a stream of actual molecules. In fact, that almost seems quaint.

Or we're just so used to putting up with stupid things in Trek that it's just par for the course. I mean, come on. There are probably only a couple dozen episodes out of all the hundreds that you can't spend all day nitpicking.

True (and honestly, for me that is part of the fun), but at least for most of the movies, I've found them a bit better about it, at least internally.

This one is just extremely poor writing from one end to the other with some pretty fun characters carrying it along.

And since, against my better judgment, I've spent too much time trying to figure ways around all the lame stupidities, it's a shame they didn't come to my door with a hefty check for one last re-write.

(Of course, they'd have had to push the Disney folks out of the way, who'd be on my front step with my monthly consultation fee.)

All of this Star Trek conversation reminds me of a panel from the Logan's Run comic adaptation (I always thought this line was from the movie, but when I watched it again, it's not there... kind of like iSm's CE3K tower...):