this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
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The computer is capable of beaming people wherever in perfectly ideal conditions, at least. In order to preserve drama, it seems like every nine seconds they're encountering some random magical rocks in terrain, a negative space wedgie, equipment failure, battle damage, etc., etc., that's preventing the transporter from Just Working. Since otherwise we'd have to assume the Enterprise crew are blisteringly idiotic for just not using the transporter to Deus Ex Machina themselves out of whatever the danger is this week as a first resort every single time. ("The Breen dropship has drilled through the hull and boarding parties are on decks 7, 8, and 9! Let's all stand around in a foggy hallway and pew-pew ineffectually at each other rather than just beaming the fuckers out into space!)
I theorize that an experienced transporter operator is required to beam through interference, radiation, through shields, at warp speed, or whatever other previously described limitation of the transporters needs to be overcome to make the plot work today. So it's not just sliding the sliders -- It's how you slide the sliders. Otherwise you might get get yourself Barclay'ed...
I mean, I've seen the Computer beam them up in most sub-optimal conditions. Usually, on away missions, using the shuttle. And I, of course, understand that the real answer is "because the plot demands it". But it still annoys me a bit.
If the transporter really worked they would just transport people out of caves all the time. Saying they can't do that makes zero sense that rocks would block a subspace transmission. It's not going through the rocks, it's circumventing them through another dimension.
They try to hand wave it away by saying that they can't get a sensor lock, but wouldn't you in that case just lock onto the entire interior of the cave, and beam all of it to the surface. You'll probably transport a lot of useless boulders as well but who cares. It's not like you have a weight capacity.
Maybe they tried that but discovered a small problem with beaming the away party plus 2000 tons of unsupported rock above their heads.
They just have such ridiculously OP tech that you can solve virtually any problem with ease. For instance:
You could even automate the process. Automatically purge rock from the pattern, since obviously no part of the away crew are made of rock.
Until you transport a Brikar ensign and they materialize without their skin 💀
Beam them into a cargo hold, with gravity disabled
The computer can do all of that, including managing shields, it's just slower, and has safety checks installed to prevent itself from unpowering or blacking out modules.
Human operators have a "chaos factor" and can do stupid things like diverting power from shields (down to 1%) to recharge the phaser banks just a bit faster, in-between enemy volleys.
At least, that's what we want to tell ourselves to ensure that there's still jobs aboard fully autonomous luxury gay communist spacefaring vessels ;)