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Path: utzoo!linus!wivax!decvax!tektronix!tekecs!orca!davidl
From: davidl@orca.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: could Spock return?
Message-ID: <1419@orca.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 27-Jul-83 01:26:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: orca.1419
Posted: Wed Jul 27 01:26:38 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 02:57:54 EDT
References: sri-arpa.3099
Lines: 36


	Yes, the transporter was used in an animated episode (more than one, if
memory serves) to restore old people to youth.  An extremely dangerous concept,
plotwise, which is just another flaw in Star Trek's believability.  (In the
live-action series, Rodenberry probably would have prohibited this gimmick for
the same reason he made it impossible for characters to initiate a beam-up
using their communicators from the surface: it made it all too easy for a
character to thumb his nose at danger, and too easy to get out of it.)
	However, I have this habit of trying to explain bozo mistakes like this
within the framework of the work of fiction (in this case, the Federation
universe).  Now, suppose that transporting someone is VERY expensive.  (You may
suggest that the frequency with which it was done implies that this is not the
case.  Read on.)  Note that Starfleet is a military organization, and compare
transporters with military jets in our own armed forces.  High-performance
fighter aircraft are among the fastest things flying today, and the Air Force
uses them every day because they can accomplish tasks which nothing else could
do.  However, they are monstrously expensive to use and maintain.  
	Now, there are several instances I can think of where fighter aircraft
technology could have civilian uses.  Transporting blood and drugs to
hospitals, injured people likewise, Federal Express, who knows?  Yet no private
organization could afford to maintain these beasts, even assuming that this
would not be construed as a violation of national secrity.  Therefore fighter
aircraft are used only by the armed forces, and only for specific kinds of
duties.  Exceptions are rare.
	Now apply this back to Star Trek.  Transporters are used by Starfleet
because they can accomplish the job as nothing else can.  However, they are too
expensive for the civilian uses the concept suggests, and they are in such
heavy use (or have so much downtime: you remember how unreliable they are) that
experiments such as bringing injured people back to health are performed only
in the gravest, most immediately mission-threatening circumstances.
	However, I think that idea could be the basis of a fine story.  See
also "Theory and Practice of Teleportation" by Larry Niven (in the collection
"Inconstant Moon," I think).

		- David D. Levine
		...decvax!tektronix!tekecs!davidl