Star Trek

I'd a sketch where every transporter accident we've seen happens to one guy (probably Harry Kim) all at once.

Um, let's see... duplicated, duplicated with superego and id separated, regressed to preadolescence, merged with another person^* now I start reading Memory Alpha, debris embedded in body, swapped with Evil Universe counterpart, lost clothes, time travel (what the hell?), pattern shifted to holodeck and integrated into active program (which somehow deactivates the safeties because of course), turned invisible and intangible, spontaneous generation of a Borg drone, and agonizing death.

And good old fashioned just fading out of existence.

Para, you forgot Suspended Animation ("Relics", TNG) as an option.

Primarily so they can store him for later abuse after they get bored of the current round.

edited 1st Feb '15 9:50:58 AM by MisterNoh

the lives and deaths of Harry Kim. They should not happen all at once but on the same ship. Like 4 Harry Kims running around with different problems. Including a Terran Empire HK where the terrans won.

I didn't include Relics because I didn't think of it it was intentional, if a total kludge never meant to happen.

Now I'm remembering the end of "Lonely Among Us", where the entity escaped by beaming "energy only", and then Picard slipped back into the computers somehow, and they restored him by reconstituting his pattern and just kind of hoping energy-Picard had wandered into the transporter system when they were ready. Pretty sure energy-Picard died and they made a clone.

edited 1st Feb '15 8:12:48 PM by TParadox

Isn't everyone dead and just a clone though? Isn't that how the transporter works?

I thought it moved matter on a subatomic scale using TV magic.

That would be a badass reveal tho. Everybody is just in a room somewhere controlling thier "avatars" across space. And nobody really dies on planet side. The people who beam down are just space-golems. Clones would get messy.

Before they nailed down a lot of nitty gritty, the novelist who wrote the print adaptations of TOS episodes asserted the transporter works by convincing all the particles in your body that they're really at the place where you wanted them to be, so they jump there. Which is a lot less horrifying than the "take you apart and put you back together at the other end" explanation.

Tech manuals try to assuage the horror by stating that you're reconstructed perfectly at the other end because the scan is at a quantum level. (Compared to replicators building stuff at the molecular level. Also this is why replicators cannot create life.)

The transporters also have the Heisenberg Compensators, an unabashed Hand Wave on the scientifically unfeasible nature of all transporters and teleporters.

You could have a teleporter that doesn't rely on quantum scanning. It'd just have to rely on space folding or something.

You folks all know that transporters in Star Trek only came about because effects shots for shuttles and the Enterprise itself landing on planets were hella expensive back in the Sixties, right? They were never supposed to make sense and were simply a cop out.

Any explanation the fans come up with is better than Roddenberry himself ran with back in the day.

Shuttles are unsafe too. They're always exploding and killing Riker's imaginary holodeck wife or Wesley's classmates or crashing on some shitty planet or something.

Yeah, with transporters taking care of routine ship to site transit, shuttles basically became the device to get people in trouble.

There are episodes where Picard takes the Enterprise a few days off course to let senior staff members get places rather than sending them in shuttles. It's ostensibly because the ship is faster than a shuttle, but shuttles get crashed or captured all the time.

Or both.

If I recall correctly, Rasmussen (the time-travelling con man) was written with Robin Williams in mind (another near miss from when they intended the Traveler for him), but Matt Frewer could probably have a successful career as a Jim Carrey impersonator.

Yeah, it was something to do with Williams being booked up with Hook. Not that Williams isn't an amazing actor, but he is almost too big of a name to really disappear into a role like that. Especially a role that really banks on the twist of them being a nobody. Whoopi Goldberg wasn't quite as big a name when she took on Guinan, and thus didn't overwhelm the role with star power.

I always thought Williams did a good job in that episode of Homicide.

Is it wrong that I would be totally ok with just watching Data and Hutchinson talk for days?

It bugged me, tbh.

Data can fake a personality based on whoever he wants, eh? Just copy Riker. Cruise-control for life.

It was a very broad imitation, but Hutch had a very broad personality.

edited 3rd Feb '15 8:42:54 PM by TParadox

They both just so enthusiastic about meaningless bullshit. It's somehow so interesting to watch.

Turns out Roddenberry was a jerk. SHOCKING REVELATION.

Nothing new here. The more I learn about him, the more I get the feeling Roddenberry may have had an interesting vision of a future utopia (of which I happen to be very fond BTW), but at the same time he apparently lacked a lot in any quality needed to actually be part of this utopia.

edited 6th Feb '15 4:52:27 AM by C105

That's as old as the Bible. The ones who bring visions of Utopia and lead others there usually don't get in, for one reason or another.