Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 5 the Enemy Within
This was never what I would consider a good episode in that the base concept that a transporter accident could split a human in to two distinct people based on an arbitrary psychology split is ridiculous. Good and evil Kirk? How about the Kirk who believes professional wrestling is real and the Kirk who thinks it’s fake? As far as a personality trait can influence the physics of a transporter it’s equally valid.
Being the curious monkey that I am this accident makes me wonder a lot about transporters (image courtesy of the Curious George t shirts). Trek canon states that the transportee is dematerialized in the transporter and rematerialized at the other end but with this yellow powder glitch it kind of implies that the transportee is actually horrible killed on one end and a new clone is created on the other. How else could them make an exact replica unless it’s building one from scratch using the recorded pattern? Isn’t that exactly how replicators work? If so doesn’t this mean that every time you get in a transporter you are killed and a new one of you is created? Also in the Day of the Dove they talked about the Klingon transport patterns being trapped in the transporter computer so theoretically if you hooked your transporter to your replicator couldn’t you replicate yourself thousands of times? Seems like an easy way to take over the Enterprise or even any planet. Just mass clone yourself armed to the teeth and march to victory.
the Infamous Dave Inman
2 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Sgtsmi1es December 27, 2014 at 6:37 pm
I now want to see a plotline where the bad guys use the replicators to make Killbots to eliminate the enterprise crew. Couldn’t probably use energy weapons on them though, in Next Gen it was set forth early on that phasers couldn’t be used in compartments on the enterprise unless the plot allowed it. Just put machine guns on them; seems like characters in Star Trek are surprisingly vulnerable to bullets: http://youtu.be/7OCKDEdtWys?t=2m4s even holographic ones xD
Dave December 30, 2014 at 7:58 pm
I totally agree. For that matter why not have about 10,000 holographic security officers with guns show up every time there is an intruder problem?