Film Theory: 3 DEADLY Truths About the Star Trek Transporter 

I do

Hi mat

your mom HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA HAHAHAHAHAH laugh

Hi bro🎉

You guys are awesome 😊😊😊❤❤

Man, I feel this whole situation. As a person obsessed with philosophy I’m also “never trust a teleported machine! Do you want to be Cutty Sarked?!” But yes, teleportation devices that destroy you are not really an eminent threat to worry about. 😂

At first when I scrolled down to the comments they formatted kind of weird so that this one ended with "[I] don’t think that’s something I gotta worry about fo..." And I thought the joke was that the commenter got transported right in the middle of it...

In the first place it's debatable if it's even possible to make something like that. I mean on the surface it makes sense but ... how do you convert stuff to energy? how do you capture and transfer that energy with zero loss? Even if you put aside the issue of it "killing you and making a copy" there is still a lot about it that doesn't make a TON of sense. it's very early SCi fi tech that has just enough science in it to sound cool but not enough to actually work

@@metazoxan2 That is one thing it seems like MatPat didn't touch on. If you think about it for a second based on what happens and not what Kirk says in TOS they aren't transferring that specific energy. They are transferring the pattern which is just data, hence the "bandwidth" issues so it doesn't matter if the matter to energy isn't perfect. They use energy from the ship on the other end otherwise how would they have formed the transported Riker in the Riker incident if they never broke down the other one? And as it has been mentioned elsewhere, the poop thing is because in the future they were running out of the fuel they had used in the past. In most of Star Trek they use saved patterns, energy, and possibly some base elements/ingredients as well to save energy to create things with replicators. I don't know why MatPat didn't touch on this, probably either not enough research or more likely to save time and simplify the video.

Dude I am that dad 😂🤟

I was looking through to see if anybody had caught that yet. I was so about to say it lol 😂

I was shifting through the comments to see if anyone else was going to mention this. Thank you. You are doing the Prophet's work over here.

I wanna like this comment but it has 69 likes, and i cant ruin that (welp its too late the 69 is ruined)

...paused the video and went to the comments - looking for THIS...

yes this i was coming to say this

yes!! this and another medical officer, i can't remember her name, i believe it was dr. polaski? but she replaced dr. crusher for a little while in TNG and she refused to use transporters. the theme of medical officers being skeptical of transporters is definitely somewhat telling

interesting stuff there is something to this however we are melding and confusing most of it i.e. awareness and consciousness are not physical things but the non physical part of our existence part our mind and self, however they do require physical structures they are dependant upon for function such as a brain. So maybe there is physical death of the physical body but somehow (through technomagic) the non physical forms can be preserved while they wait for their bodies to be re-assembled? Though I cant make sense of how your pattern can exist without its body regardless of whether it can even be conscious and aware or not

not exactly, they pull you apart and put you back together by mimicing the pattern at the start. To a person they create at the end of the transport there is no difference than the person that went in. But they're not the same, teleporters make changes, they correct errors, they remove parasites and foreign bodies that shouldn't be there. The end result is never the same as the original, although people have teleported so many times it's hard to tell where the original was. Teleporters in the shows can cause diseases by malfunctioning but they can also be used to cure diseases. The information passing through the buffer is too much for a person (outside of data) to modify in real time so they use algorithms to make changes and if new parasites or conditions are discovered patterns can be added to the buffers to deal with the new parasite or condition. in the episode riker was cloned he didn't realize anything went wrong but he did notice the transport took longer and that he almost didnt' make it off the planet but it turns out the one that they were trying to take off the planet ended up stuck there for years while the "new" riker continued his life. The clone was so close to the original that it believed it was the original.

@@supernova743 every person who beams is a clone. The original is destroyed. At first I thought this must be a problem, like how does a soul stay. Some sci-fi say that the first teleporters or jump drive subjects come thru whole and alive, but there is no consciousness in the body on the other side. I liked Deja Vu when they teleported him back in time into an ER with a sign on his chest “Defib Me” not that that is how defibs work, but I liked the idea.

if I recall, the "creatures" Brocolli saw were actually people that were trapped in the beam or something?

Sometimes the characters get frozen mid-movement when being dematerialised, and at other times they can move and talk still.

3. there is a difference between being conscious AS the teleporter dematerializes you, as compared to BEING fully dematerialized. How would your keep conscious when you dont have a brain?

Yeah at that point Scotty was just stored as information in the transporter memory buffer. Think of it as his blueprints, it wasn't literally him.

@@SanityTV_Last_Sane_Man_Alive Dunno, ask an AI.

Also the wounded soldier that Nurse Chapel tried to save on J'gal, but they later had to purge to allow new transports to come in.

If I'm not mistaken in Star Trek Enterprise another scientist also tried to rescue his son from being trapped in a transporter.

Sorry. I saw your comment after I made mine. Have an updoot,

Closest we got was in Star Trek IV (aka The One with the Whales) where Kirk says "Scotty, bean me up."

@@usm05065 No, _I'm_ your father.

In Enterprise, I don't remember the episode, but I thought they said to an alien species that they used the transporter as a humane way to execute someone. In the episode, someone had to die and Captain Archer choose to be that one and they used it to execute (transport) him to another part of the ship for him to retake the ship. Not quite an execution but the closest to that story line that I remember.

There was an episode in TNG where a few stranded starfleet members were to be executed, and the effect for it was similar to the transportation effect. They even say it's a painless execution in the episode. Other than that, I don't think so

​@alexanderawe8031 'Angel One', or, as someone else at my college referred to it, 'Planet of the Stewardesses'?

That is so horrific.

I'm reminded of the Hitchhiker's Guide series, where Trillian once sent herself out as a stream of transporting matter/energy haphazardly, not caring where she ended up, or if she died.

Likely because the show (loosely) implied that all involved chose to return to their 'proper' age rather than deal with the paperwork of suddenly have the Captain of your Flagship being a thirteen year old. What was funny to me was that it was shown Roe chose to stay a child a little longer to get a feeling for the childhood she never had. . .and of course we never got to see that in any of the episodes going forward. . .Pity the formulaic approach meant that Roe got very little screen time.

i might be misremembering but didn't it cause those de-aged to act more childish, effectively changing their personality?

reason being their special effect budget got better!

Not the budget that got better, but the fx got cheaper and easier

in the first movie, a person dies horiffically in a teleporter accident... I"m surprised im the only person who seems to have thought of that.... unless I somehow missed that in this video.

​@@SanityTV_Last_Sane_Man_AliveTwo people, in fact.

@@SanityTV_Last_Sane_Man_Alive "What we got back...didn't live long. Thankfully." You'd think that would have come up as example since he mentions the possibility.

1:01 "Eating good" Ah, mattpat talking about things he has no clue about

@@slevinchannel7589fr, no Matt we haven’t gotten any new start trek. It died long ago.

@@Melanie-Shea Yeah BUT Starship Goldfish exists, so the spirit lives on. In General, i alwas ready to recomend some 'Small Content rerators ' epic 'Masterpiece of a Pilot' but this one is even literally about Starships

That wasn't just in deep space nine, the mirror universe was introduced in the original series, and spock had a goatee

​@@Melanie-Sheayeah it died but it has been revived

Yes

I support this, I want to see this, this is a great question, I NEED ANSWERS

Well yes but actually no

I need to see this

3 in 1s are horrible, 3 products will usually have bad ingredients and can't fill in the role of 3 good products.

That's how you can tell Star Trek is true sci-fi. Sci-fi fantasy like Star Wars is like, "look at the lasers! Pew pew!" True sci-fi introduces a fictional technology, then theorises all the ways it could go wrong.

@@plus12gaming Gatekeeping aside, Trek is more "science fantasy" but in the tradition of harder-hitting philosophical scifi. Star Wars is also science fantasy but leans into being a Pulp Action/Adventure.

@@seantheimp Not trying to gatekeep, people can like whatever they want. There's definitely a bit of fantasy in Star Trek, but I was pointing out that it more closely follows the traditions of exploring the implications of technology rather than having them more as a backdrop.

​@DontReadMyProfilePhoto.133bot

Did it? Was there a weaponized transporter chief whose job was to transport the enemies crew into space every time their shields went down? Or to transport all the air out of the room?

Considering you can create organs using the replicator I agree this would be possible.

They do this in Enterprise (a clone army made from teleportation and the limitations of it explaining why it did not happen later) and DS9 (transporter medical therapies are explored in many episodes and used to explain why half dead crew members are back to health by the next episode).

@@bigsprucerabbitry6238 I didn't watch this entire series. I'll check it out, thanks!

They sort of touched on that when Picard, Ro, Guinan and Keiko were turned into kids for the duration of the episode.

There are so many flaws with how the transporter was conceived and implemented in Star Trek, I just try to ignore thinking about it. It's a "quick transportation" device and I leave it at that. Because if you think too much into it? You start seeing how it doesn't make sense. It's unfortunate. I wish they'd come up with a "micro wormhole" device instead, kind of like what we see in Stargate SG1, except that it's portable, and the device comes with you instead of being left behind.

That's a really good point. It's easy to forget that emotions are triggered by chemicals

Alternatively, it's the dematerialisation and rematerialisation process that they experience. The actual moment of transport the target is a disassociated stream of energy. So it took longer for them to dematerialise/rematerialise, but Scotty would have been unaware during his time in the pattern buffer.

@@SeaalCox Most of the human experience is chemical - the transporter-phobe's experiences were likely freaking out in retrospect rather than in-situ.

I like this theory, however the act of perceiving is also chemical. Light passing through eyes converted to electrical signals interpreted by the brain. The recognition of what you're seeing/experiencing, all comes from chemistry and physiological responses. So if you are able to be aware you should also be able to understand that awareness leading to those stressors.

@@beardsmcguiness8463 That's the thing - they aren't actually memories of him being aware while being transported, but rather an imprint caused by the energy added to his pattern that the human brain perceives as a memory due to having no other context for it. It's just like how you can trick yourself into having memories of an event that never happened, or that happened to someone else but you remember it happening to you. At least, that's the essence of the theory I'm positing.

I WONT BREATHE UNTIL HE MAKES A THEORY ON IT I might die-

With regularly updated memory logs in case anything super drastic happens ala. instant vaporization.

SNW Season 1 M'Beng's daughter is stored in a Transport buffer because she's terminally ill and he's holding out till he can find a cure for her.

There was a TNG episode where they did that with the doctor who replaced Crusher. She was rapidly aged, and then returned to normal.

Didn't they have an episode where they like transported a tumor out?

@Democlis I was going to mention that too. There was an episode where they did that. I can't remember who it was though. If memory serves me, it was TOS. It could have been TAS too.

Would that also reset their memories to the time of the older pattern though? Effectively reverting all they had learned between then and the now?

And you can beam yourself into another universe. Or beam yourself into the same space as your past self from yesterday, while simultaneously erasing your memory of everything that happened today. Or divide your personality into arbitrary sections, and put each into its own copy of your body. And people say The Force makes Star Wars "too unrealistic". 😁

@@t.tiredtypist9819 Likely not for there was the one episode where Picard and the rest of the away team were beamed aboard and became young and still maintained their adult memories, though it may have been a special situation, but thats not stopping you from setting up ways for yourself to go over what you've done over the years to refresh after ever time you de-age.

@@stevenscott2136 Your speaking about the Mirror universe with the Terrain Empire then yes. As for beaming yourself into other points of time I've not seen those unless those were caused by external forces or alien technology. Dividing a personality would be a way of lobotomizing but it was also shown that doing so caused instability for the two Kirks were not able to function separately for one was unable to make decisions and the other was to frantic

@@somebodykares1 Interesting point. I haven’t watched all of Star Trek yet, so I’m not qualified to offer any more information, it was pure speculation on my part, but thanks for your answer. It would be very interesting to see a character attempt to do this and the potential psychological results of deaging themselves repeatedly.

Yeah, technically they're not conscious while in the transport buffer. But the pattern shouldn't be in the buffer more than a few seconds, so they don't notice usually. TNG had Scotty stored in stasis for decades and to him no time passed.

Yeah. I think perhaps they are describing the moment just as one is being turned into energy and the moment just as someone is finished being recreated - not the actual state one is inside the buffer . There have been too many people examples in Trek of people being in the buffer for an extended period and experiencing it as a few seconds. Feels like MattPat didn’t do his usual level of research on this one as there are a lot of other areas he seems to misunderstand . For example, the whole poop discussion did not happen until the crew of the Discovery had been sent like 3000 years into the future - and given as Voyager was constantly having issues securing matter for their replicators in the later years , that suggests that they only determined they could reconstitute poop far after the majority of Star Trek series’ have been set.

When held in the buffer the pattern is stored, not the energy. Do with that as you will.

It might just be during the few seconds at the start of transport not the end of transport for we've seen allot of characters react to something thats happening in front of them while they are being transported, but they don't react to stuff happening around where they end up until they are fully there.

I was just thinking the same thing.

because at that time they had over 1000 transports an hour across the entire galaxy and maybe had 1 or 2 mishaps with it over along period of time. like 2 to 5 years. meaning that as long as your crew keeps it in working order and all the safety precautions stayed in place it was almost impossible to have a mishap. every concern he brings up was over the lifetime of the technology.

OMG! That scene to THIS DAY freaks me out.

@@DrMarten Right!? And then that line toward the conclusion of it! "Enterprise...what we got back...didn't live long....fortunately." Shivers!! Such an underrated scene!

@@DrMarten That scene utterly horrified 12 year old me, seeing it in the theater for the first time. Those screams...

Wow. I feel old now.

There were a few references to this kind of thing. In SNW season one, the doctor's daughter. Something similar in ENT. I feel like Voyager used the buffer to hide refugees once. The pattern buffer is just a piece of hardware where your pattern is stored as data.

@@jotosai4447 they hid a telepathic species from ship inspectors.

And yet he was still conscious? According to this video, he was aware the entire time, but decomposed to atomic vapor.

In "Day Of The Dove", Kirk used that technique to keep Commander Kang's Thlingan assault force stored.

Because when you have no visuals, you have to rely on good writing and acting to make up the difference. That's what made 1930s and 1940s Hollywood so great. Film was super expensive and lighting sucked, so they needed actors who were able to show emotion very strongly to offset the lighting, and who could do almost every scene in one take to save on film

Money wasn't put into it. Luv was put into it. Pay our writers properly for what they do

Same with Doctor Who back in the classic era

this is alos why modern ghmaing sucks as wonder as modern GPus ar they also alos caused AAA devs to fucus more time on cinima level GFX waither thang good gameplay@@filmandfirearms

​@@filmandfirearmsThe problem with the older kinds of films and series you're talking about are the *overly* theatrical acting, basically being a campy play that is recorded by camera. Being able to record subtle acting led to better films and series, well, before they became *only* visuals and no stories, or limp woke stories.

Aaaaaaaaaa that's gross (and grotesquely fascinating) 😂

The episode's name is Realm Of Fear. No. Barclay saw SOMETHING in the transporter beam. And the episode establishes Transporter Psychosis is an out dated fear by the time of TNG. Barclay's transporter phobia is due to IRRATIONAL fear of it, IE, convinced he has the condition after using the transporter and looked up the symptoms and convincing himself he has them.

@@XX-sp3tt It was a living create in the midstream of the beam.

Yeah, he thought he was suffering from Transporter Psychosis but when the being inside the stream was real, grabbing Broccoli's arm and causing a physical effect (his arm got freezer burn).

It weren't people, but some alien species who got trapped in the signal

YES

He did

@@dinoz2113 he made that comment 2 weeks ago when the video wasn’t posted, they probably know anyway

Genius idea 💡

Sound a bit like the novel 'Spock Must Die!' by James Blish.

My Bad. Tachyon was used in that novel 4 years earlier. @@tomkerruish2982

thats not what happened. the patient eventually got rescued by one of those all-powerful beings and wasn't injured anymore EDIT: wait are you talking about S1 or S2?

@@shieldgenerator7 S2 in a flashback to when he first met nurse Chapel

Honestly, I haven't watched this, so I dunno if it's true or not, but regardless, those are some of the most horrifying words strung together, thanks I hate it, have a lovely day. XD

103 likes and no comments? Let me fix that.

And then it happened again to Boimler.

My assumption is that everyone knows how it works and accepts that. It's worth the sacrifice, to a society that hasn't known anything different.

So what about the people trapped in the transporter beam who were conscious and reduced by Lt. Barclay?

@@GamerFromJump the funny thing is, matpat was right about the whole “perfect alibi perfect assassin” thing, William Boimler got recruited by Section 31 to do space cia war crimes

Thats just a theory tho

... or because Discovery's writers are gross and wanted a gross-out moment.

I cant imagine them just dumping waste into space either. Why not recycle every resources available.

fuel and matter are not the same thing. You are talking about the outlet plug you plug your 3d printer into, mat pat is talking about the plastic the 3d printer used to actually print.

They still need energy to convert the matter. They probably use both- it’s easier to convert the matter than to create it from energy. I mean, even chemically speaking feces is made of mostly carbon and so is food.

Nah. Dilithium isn't actually fuel. It's what they use to control and catalyze the antimatter that they *actually* use as fuel. In modern-day terms, think of antimatter as the uranium used in a nuclear reactor and the dilithium as the control rods.

i looked it up and nobody actually said it in the show. but the actor who played scottie, James Doohan had an autobiography called beam me up scottie and i think that is why people thought it was said in the show.

I don't know, I think Seth Brundle would disagree.

Who?

That can easily be explained as all the changes that Picard went through while being pure energy were not registered in any device and they restored a Picard without those memories.

@ProfessorPrel That's the Mandela effect of course. For those that don't konw the Mandela effect was named after Nelson Mandela an leadner with 2 death dates. So it works like this if you remanber "It's an Trap" and your firend remanber;s "It's A Trap" form Retrun of The Jedi they are not the person you konw form the universe you konw.

In fact, he says that they did say it.

@@lap456of course it could be Sheldon Cooper practicing his imitations,because you are watching the wrong show. It’s a trap.

and that abomination that was discovery with Lorca

I don't remember that, of course I haven't watched it in a couple years.

It was their science officer. Hence why they needed to pick up Spock on the way to sub in. @@JackalopeBunny

@@JackalopeBunny what happened was the people were only half materialized due to a malfunction. They were torn apart atom by atom in agony and died with a single scream as their atoms scattered into oblivion when forming at the transporter. Everyone was panicking and it all ended with "they're gone" , at least if I remember the conversation right.

My biggest issue is in TMP (1979?). Just a few hours after the horrifying and tortuous death of two crew members in the transporter, Admiral Kirk forcibly transports McCoy against his will, knowing full well McCoy hates the transporter and had just witnessed the gruesome death and had to console the transporter operator. And Admiral Kirk had rushed the crew and ignored the risks. The first court martial we see after this event is not until TVH and its for something completely different. For comparison, even if planes are considered safe, if I personally witness a plane crash or worse-rushed a plane to take off after being told of risks, I'm probably not gonna be flying for a while...and the FAA would investigate while police take me into custody.

You beat me to that fact before I posted it. Good thing I scrolled the replies.

@@Hando316 Beat me up, Scotty!

Scotty beam us up is close enough

It was very VERY close to being said in the show, but never exactly like that. The Mandela effect in effect here.

@@mainstreetsaint36 No, I am your father.

Energy can be transformed from one type to another

The fact that they do not do that in the series implies that it is not possible to transform the type of energy matter is converted into during transport into a type that is usable. @@pesokapower5372

Maybe they have a dark secret. Red shirts are disposable aren't they?

@@Robb403that’s TOS. After TNG it’s the gold shirts due to a department uniform swap

considering they regularly go into space without space suits and can just breathe in space like it's fine, i don't think they follow the same rules as us

Age limit was 25 for it to be effective actually, they explain why in one of the later episodes.

How does that imply "shortcuts"? The late 24th, early 25th Century starships have the ability to replicate matter and create realistic simulations on the Holodeck in realtime. Surely having some code in the transporter operation (bio filters?) that applies a surgical operation during dematerialization would not be beyond the technology of the day as per the lore?

@@marvinmallette6795 they say something about it in the episode saving pattern buffer space.

@@WatchMeEatCrisps I must have disregarded that as the pure nonsense that it is. Any "data" storage used to maintain a common "pattern" of data would also be viable as "data" storage for an unknown pattern. This indicates that the "pattern buffer" has enough room to not require any work-arounds to save space. The Transporters routinely transport a wide variety of species and cargo, and the data storage requirements for work-arounds would be rather significant. Better to use the storage for the pattern buffer itself. Furthermore, the transporters are counted on to work with unknown species, who do not exist in a transporter database. This would require sufficient pattern buffer capacity making any space saving measures entirely unnecessary. Finally, DNA is a "pattern". Hypothetically, one could "regrow" a clone of an organism in transport from a sample of its DNA, preserving pattern buffer capacity for spinal and cerebral purposes. *Note that this would likely automatically cure any wounds inflicted during combat, such as Picard's heart.* Insufficient Pattern buffer capacity is not something that can exist under normal operating conditions, and have the transporters function as well as they do. Any such capacity issues would limit the transporters to those with compatible DNA, making individuals such as Spock and Mr. Data incompatible with transporter operations. And the notion of space saving is not required as an explanation for the events depicted in the episode. The events are otherwise still congruent and compatible with the existing lore of the series. Also, the events are more dependent upon CRISPR technology than data compression technology.

It was said in the Star Trek cartoon, surely.

Was also said in a movie. 😄

Also stellar dust collected from outside the ship with the bussard collectors. Or refueling whenever they get the chance to dock on a station.

they dont even need that. They can just use raw energy. Though logically they would recycle waste but it probably wouldn't be turned straight to food but just dumped into the main power supply.

@@aerozord Yeah, but there has to be *some* energy wasted in the transfer between matter to energy and vice versa. That's just thermodynamics for you. So it may be more efficient to keep bits of matter around that can be restructured on the fly.

McCoy also refused to use the transporter in that movie (at least at the beginning, it's been forever since I've seen it so I don't remember if he used it later on), instead shuttling to the ship when reporting for duty. I know he used the transporter in the TV show and other movies, but his rant showed that at least some people had issues with the technology in-universe.

@@Donna-nu8ul He refused because he didn't want to come back to the ship. I think Kirk beamed him by force

So, are shuttles. Voyager featured dozens of shuttles crashes though, miraculously I don't remember anyone dying in any of the crashes.

@@BobMcBobJr Even in the future, the power of the airbag is amazing!

@@BobMcBobJr I can recall at least one instance, Tuvok and some redshirt crashed on a moon of a planet inhabited by people who age backwards. Redshirt died in the crash and Tuvok runs into some children from the planet who survived a shuttle crash themselves. He tries to save them from some supposed monster on the moon that's apparently hunting the children.

A FILM THEORY

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

He will, if he doesn’t I’ll give you 1 million dollars

If I'm not mistaken, the reason he's so terrified is because someone died mid transport. Their scream haunts me. My brother warned me when he showed me the movie because I was sensitive back when I was a kid.

I was thinking it might be more like you only experience it while actually in transit, but if you’re just stored then you’re just computer memory. Which means that maybe if you’re directly beamed without being stored in the buffer and experience the whole thing then the whole ship of Theseus thing doesn’t apply, but if you’re stored then it does

Since they have the pattern of you're brain when you're teleported, they can reset you're memory to the before teleportation.

That story haunts me. I read it twice and I remember every word. 'Longer than you think'...he didn't attack his Dad tho :)

Good question! We've never seen what happens when someone de-aged stays that way. There could be long-term side effects from staying in that state that makes it not worth it.

I would guess that it's because the brain always stays intact in those cases, so if you continually deaged someone, their body may be youthful forever but their brain would still age and wither. The only way around that would be to "deage" the brain, which would erase any memories or experiences made since the brain template they use was created, at which point you're not deaging, you're just cloning.

Similar reasons why the Trill didn't tell everyone symbiote compatibility was actually very high -- moral, ethical, and societal consequences. What is the value of one life if you can just duplicate, recreate, or restore it (de-age) at will? Who gets these benefits? Transporters use a lot of energy. Even if you can give everyone access, how often are they allowed to use it? Where are the lines drawn? Not to mention usually these miracle-uses are under extreme conditions (e.g. Thomas Riker's existence wasn't a mere fluke of the transport, it required very specific, very unlikely environmental conditions); the risk of getting the desired result would result in unintended consequences.

They used it to save the life of the Doctor (played by Diana Muldaur) by basically de-aging her to before she had a disease. But then they didn't use it when Worf was paralyzed.

@@wbcc3388 Wait, you mean Pulaski?