Star Trek: Mark Two (JBR Mega-Rant

7.0 BASIC MECHANISM [see footnotes, postscripts]

It is generally accepted among non‐Trekkie SF fans that Star Trek “transporters”, hereinafter abbreviated to TPs, are an insanely gross piece of quasiscience best kept decently offstage. Unfortunately, the Trekkies have trouble grasping this, and insist on plots that focus on infeasible TP phenomena. My suspension‐of‐disbelief glands can't take very much more of this, so in the hope of scaring scriptwriters into avoiding the subject I am obliged to go into the awful details.

The TP's operational specifications are roughly as detailed below:

RESOLUTION:: Unlimited. Inter‐ and intra‐atomic bonds are reconstituted correctly. Indeterminacy has apparently been abolished in the Star Trek Universe.
PROCESSING:: Formidable. Whole (sentient!) landing parties are routinely shifted across from “in tray” to “out tray” in a matter of seconds.
RANGE:: In “Tomorrow is Yesterday” (ST:TOS1), the sergeant is beamed down while the Enterprise is five minutes past Earth and receding at warp eight.
LOAD:: See “The Voyage Home” (ST:TMP4); two whales plus 400 tonnes of sea‐water are no trouble.
MOTION:: Somehow permits you to move in transit (while you aren't made of matter!?) without coming out as mince. This shouldn't be legal. In fact, won't any change after you're scanned be lost in transmission?

7.1 STAGES OF OPERATION

The target is located by orbital‐range sensors, and scanned down to subatomic structure, to provide a “TP pattern” (a spying device).
It is carefully disassembled (“energised”) by remote control, with a matter‐to‐energy total conversion system – a weapon, perchance?
This energy is sucked up from its previous location and temporarily stored in the TP mechanism (a handy long‐range energy‐vampire).
The TP pattern file is consulted to guide materialisation; copies are kept, and files are editable (see “Unnatural Selection”, ST:TNG2).
The appropriate quantity of energy is sent from the TP mechanism to its intended destination, wherever that is (Zzap! Another weapon).
The energy is assembled into matter (“materialised”) according to the pattern (a replicating machine; blibble^blibble_blibbleblibble).

7.2 SAMPLE SPIN‐OFFS [see footnotes, postscripts]

If the TP was in use by 2209 (“Realm of Fear”, ST:TNG6) its society‐smashing practical applications should have transformed the Federation long before ST:TOS!

Information – If you can scan it, you can own a copy; run stages (A) and (F) above, using ship's energy banks. Unshielded equals piratable.
You can try reading an enemy's mind by long‐range neuroanalysis, or alternatively you can summon up and torture a copy in your holodeck.
TP pattern files can be sent by subspace radio modem (“The Vengeance Factor”, ST:TNG3; the Enterprise reads a planetary database from in warp), or indeed by post; thus communication is equivalent to transportation.
Simplify your redundant DNA for easier data‐compressed transmission!

Transport – Turbolifts are obsolete. If I was Picard, I'd program my alarm clock to beam me up out of bed, into uniform, onto the command seat, with a freshly brewed cup of Earl Grey sitting on the armrest.
If transponders are necessary, just beam them down onto your cargo!
Most sorts of freight or passenger craft are obsolete; go by phone.
Patrol/survey craft are still necessary, but inessential equipment (like Wesley) can be stored as data and useful energy instead of mass.

Economics – Junk matter (tablescraps, space‐dust, Romulans, stars) can be converted into vast amounts of energy and fed into your warpdrive.
Any item can be produced if you have the data and the energy; chicken sandwiches, gold ingots, Galaxy class starships, Romulan ribosomes, megacredit notes, functional cloaking devices, Mona Lisas, dilithium crystals, spare Datas, industrial‐scale TPs, Tasha Yars, and so on.
Only shielded TP patterns and raw mass/energy can remain “valuable”.

Medicine – You can edit files in transit? Who needs surgery?! Abolish infections; cancel wounds or wear and tear; and replace failing neurons.
Why should anybody die (and stay dead) if they have TP backup files?
Don't call it surgery; it's a beauty salon makeover! “Okay Doc, edit my body into a latest‐model warpshuttle with holodeck‐computer grade brain, and built‐in facilities for TP‐editing plus rolling backups!”

Military – Attacked by Romulans? Insert chunks of Faster‐Than‐Light antineutronium into their engines! Convert every tenth atom into energy and just leave it where it is! Subtract the fire button from their control console! Seize their ship by beaming guerrilla nanites into its TP computers! Suck them straight up into your batteries and throw away the pattern!
What do you mean, they'll have shields up (cf. “Ménage à Troi”, ST:TNG3)? They transport through shields – tacitly in “A Taste of Armageddon” (ST:TOS1) and “Encounter at Farpoint” (ST:TNG0); explicitly in “The Wounded” (ST:TNG4).
Otherwise, resort to throwing hideous things at them. Beam up and then redirect their missiles! If you beam enough neutronium to one spot you get a huge explosion and/or a black hole! Antimatter is as cheap to create as matter! If they shoot back at you, put mirrors in the way!
The shuttlecraft manoeuvre out of “Best of Both Worlds” (ST:TNG4) can be refined; e.g. “Déjà Q” (ST:TNG3) implied that shuttles are transportable.
If they blow away your deflector dish, just beam on a replacement!
If you ever resort to self‐destruct, don't use puny explosives; fill the whole region with a smooth fifty–fifty blend of matter and antimatter!

7.3 THE REPLICATOR ARGUMENT [see footnotes]

The Star Trek TP's first line of defence against such uses goes like this: “Ah, yes, pattern materialisation is indeed how Star Trek Universe replicators work; but they are only a little‐developed offshoot from TP technology, and so they don't have the resolution to duplicate anything at all complex.” This, in my humble opinion, is sheerest hogwash; replication is simply transportation minus the magic remote‐scanning‐and‐disassembly stages, and has to be perfected before the TP. If, as in “The Enemy” (ST:TNG3), your TP can assemble a live Romulan in sickbay, beamed from the planet below, then despite the episode's claims it must (as part of this process) be able to assemble Romulan ribosomes in sickbay out of data and energy.

7.4 THE SOULS ARGUMENT

Shouldn't the monistic materialism of TPs clash with the Star Trek Universe's normal mystical dualism (personified by Deanna Troi)? Doesn't the TP imply that a mind is nothing but a functional arrangement of matter/energy? Wasn't McCoy right to moan that TPs don't actually transport you at all? They just rip you apart and build a replacement elsewhere! Does it matter? Do TPs conserve identity? Orthodox TPs (unlike my own “Mark‐two TPs”) imply there are no “souls” in the Star Trek Universe. I'll gladly accept psionic phenomena (ESP, psychic healing, etc.) as a convention in SF; but be consistent!

The Star Trek TP's second line of defence is a superficially neat piece of logical judo, using the monism/dualism clash to excuse the limitations on gross uses of TPs in the orthodox Star Trek Universe. It goes something like this: “Ah, yes, TPs are indeed souped‐up replicators; but sentient entities have immaterial souls, which can only be transmitted, not duplicated.” That's as useless as a theory can get; contrary to the evidence, over‐complex, internally confused, and no solution to the original problem!

7.5 MYSTERIES [see footnotes, postscripts]

How can TPs fail to notice “stowaways” (“Dagger of the Mind”, ST:TOS1), McCoy's extra “katra” (“The Search for Spock”, ST:TMP3), and the sentience of “life, but not as we know it” if they have to distinguish souled from soulless cargoes?
What are souls? Matter, or energy, or an emergent property thereof?
Who needs them? They aren't necessary for physical existence, life, happiness, or Turing‐testable intelligence; personality, memory etc. are mere biochemistry (hence Pulasky's patent mindwipe: “Pen Pals”, ST:TNG2). The Ferengi can't sell them, the Borg can't use them to power reactors (by embryo‐farm soul‐vampirism)… so what good are they?
What things have souls? Data? Data while deactivated? Frozen bodies? Ova? Embryos? Babies? Wesley? Morons? Neanderthals? Chimps? Tribbles? Viruses? Brain‐parasites? Symbiotes? Copies of the Moriarty program? How many souls has a two‐headed man got? Or a split personality? Or a pregnant woman? Or a Borg vessel? Or one Borg? Or Locutus? Or Q?
Mark‐one TPs are the perfect experimental apparatus for testing these questions; so why aren't the answers common knowledge in the Star Trek Universe? Or at least, why does nobody tell TP‐phobes that souls aren't affected?
How does any of this stop me using TPs as outlined in 7.2, to abolish money, starships, ageing, and that pesky Romulan Star Empire?

7.6 PER ARDUA AD ABSURDUM [see footnotes]

The big problem for dualism is: what causes a soul to appear? Deanna can detect both Worf and Data, so it's not just human embryology; which implies the answer “the creation of any suitable brain”. Hmmm: doesn't this include copies of Data's brain assembled by a replicator? For all we know, Dr Sung built him using a TP in the first place! And if any brain created by TP matter‐to‐energy assembly summons a fresh soul… where does the disintegrated original's soul go? Won't it assume it's dead?!

Or do TPs send “bereaved” souls a sort of forwarding address (“Don't worry, your body's over here”)? If so, it's another gross subsystem… “Oy, Romulan soul! Your body went that‐a‐way! Wesley, you're promoted; kill yourself and transmigrate your soul into yonder Romulan commander's empty carcase! Or on second thoughts, let me help – take that!” (So how did anybody discover the need for this extra TP subsystem, then?)

1993 Footnotes

7.0: Actually, TPs have begun to look more feasible since people started talking about nanotechnological assembler/disassemblers. But once you've got those…
7.2: If (say) megacredit notes are claimed to be unreplicatable, I'll just replicate the printing press instead; and if corpses are replicatable, how about temporary corpses? After all, practically the whole ST:TOS crew have been dead at one point or another!
7.3: Incidentally, what would Picard get if he asked for “a cup of Earl Grey”?
7.5: These questions are hardly academic; they are the obvious criteria for giving entities voting rights, or letting them in your church!
7.6: For the benefit of non‐Latin‐speakers: per ardua ad absurdum = “through hardship to the ridiculous”.