Transporters ar le weird. The way Dr. M’Benga keeps people in the transport buffer until there is a cure for their disease (Rukiya) or until medical facilities are no longer overrun (Battle of J’Gal) is presented as a hack. How is it not standard procedure?
Also he has to materialize them from time to time because their pattern degrades. So is it not a digital image of sorts? How can it degrade?
What would happen to the people if the buffer were to lose power or malfunction in any way? Even a small risk of anything adverse plus the degradation while being stored would make this not acceptable from medical viewpoint.
I have to wonder why the pattern must be lost in the process of materialization. I’m not saying they should keep them forever, but if they can just not delete the patterns when sending people on a dangerous away mission, they’d leave open the option of restoring them to a back up state if they get killed (or worse).
Of course, while that would raise a lot of questions to be explored in a single episode, it would lower stakes and fundamentally changes the stories they can tell, so I’m not surprised they writers don’t do it.
The pattern is clearly meant to be more than just data too, because they have used previous transporter logs when they need a healthy snapshot to compare to a crewmate who is ill. It seems to be some kind of superstitious energy reserve that is that person, and no you can’t just siphon some juice out of the reactor and use previous scan data for reasons that are generally presented as technical ones, but could really only logically be ethical ones.
I can imagine the Klingons having a kind of special forces unit where they do copies like this and if the copy makes it back, the two versions fight to the death to see who the “real” one is.
I’d guess that’s not exactly in the manual. And given the inherent danger and any legality issues, that’s something people don’t often share if they figure out how to do it.
Transporters ar le weird. The way Dr. M’Benga keeps people in the transport buffer until there is a cure for their disease (Rukiya) or until medical facilities are no longer overrun (Battle of J’Gal) is presented as a hack. How is it not standard procedure?
Also he has to materialize them from time to time because their pattern degrades. So is it not a digital image of sorts? How can it degrade?
What would happen to the people if the buffer were to lose power or malfunction in any way? Even a small risk of anything adverse plus the degradation while being stored would make this not acceptable from medical viewpoint.
I have to wonder why the pattern must be lost in the process of materialization. I’m not saying they should keep them forever, but if they can just not delete the patterns when sending people on a dangerous away mission, they’d leave open the option of restoring them to a back up state if they get killed (or worse).
Of course, while that would raise a lot of questions to be explored in a single episode, it would lower stakes and fundamentally changes the stories they can tell, so I’m not surprised they writers don’t do it.
The pattern is clearly meant to be more than just data too, because they have used previous transporter logs when they need a healthy snapshot to compare to a crewmate who is ill. It seems to be some kind of superstitious energy reserve that is that person, and no you can’t just siphon some juice out of the reactor and use previous scan data for reasons that are generally presented as technical ones, but could really only logically be ethical ones.
I can imagine the Klingons having a kind of special forces unit where they do copies like this and if the copy makes it back, the two versions fight to the death to see who the “real” one is.
No DNA fixes either, I guess to not break the universe, but still wtf.
There are loads of examples where they edit the image before rematerializing. Like removing an illness or fixing age or splitting Tuvix.
I’d imagine the eugenics wars have something to do with why they don’t except in extenuating circumstances.
Kinda implies it’s an analogue process. More like an AM radio than a digital image.
I’d guess that’s not exactly in the manual. And given the inherent danger and any legality issues, that’s something people don’t often share if they figure out how to do it.