From: mwgertz+@cs.cmu.edu (Matthew Gertz)
Subject: Re: USA Article: Scotty
Organization: Dept. of ECE, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 13:39:54 GMT


Spoilers on upcoming season 6:


gerlach@greyrock.mso.colostate.edu (Scott Gerlach) writes:
>rt16+@andrew.cmu.edu
>(Robert Edward Timlin) writes:
>
>>   C'mon people! If you're using the transporter, have it power surge during
>>an ion storm or something and beam him through time. Heck, the same thing
>>beamed them across dimensions in "Mirror, Mirror", then why not time? Plus,
>>it's REVERSIBLE (theoretically). Sheesh, they wouldn't even have to be 
>>creative with that one. ARGH.
>
>I agree, your suggestion is more plausible than being held in
>molecular stasis for 70+ years.

Really?

I'd have to go the other way on it.  We've seen people stuck in transit 
before, although not for so long, and usually intentionally (the Klingons
in "Day of the Dove," the soldier-who-was-a-weapon from the TNG episode
whoxe name I can't recall, Pulaski (when she was being de-aged), Garrovick
and Kirk in "Obsession"), and it wouldn't stretch my imagination too much to 
have something rigged up to hold the pattern for 75 years: it is just a 
pattern, after all.  From a plot device point of view, if Scotty got stuck
in the beam somehow (perhaps losing some vital piece of data information
about his pattern), I could see the science officer saying, "Well, we can't
extract him now, but the way transporters are eveolviong, I'll bet we could in
a few years."  So they leave him like that, but something happens en route
back to base and the ship is lost, spinning around for 75 years until
the Ent-D finds it.

I do recall something similar from a comic book series from the 80's known
as "Micronauts: The New Voyages," in which one character was stuck in
pattern until Our Heroes were able to go to the transmission platform
and retrieve him several months later (the character ended up having 
severe damage from the process, and attacked Our Heroes, but that's beside
the point).  One would hope that they wouldn't let Scotty just walk away from
such an incident; there should be *some* corruption of data over all that 
time, requiring some period of recovery.

(Follow-ups about whether or not a transporter *could* hold a person
that long, or beam them through time, ought to go to r.a.s.tech, I guess.)

The idea of "beaming" between times, though, would really stretch my
suspension of disbelief to its breaking point (almost as much as "Sela"
did 8^)  Every idea I could think of to justify it sounds much more
contrived than a simple suspension of pattern.  In fact, my attitude
towards Scotty coming forward improved when I found out that it *wasn't*
going to be time travel.  (I'm still not sure *why* they're doing it;
TNG does fine without much help from the original series.  I hope he ends
up on DS9 and not TNG -- I can't see his character fitting in well on
TNG, especially since it would distract from the already well-established
leads (Picard and Data)).

>  Here's another:  While beaming up to
>the ship from Starfleet HQ (in San Francisco), Scotty is caught up in
>the temporal distortion caused by the return of the crew from their
>adventure in Time's Arrow II.  Picard & company rematerialize in the
>24th Century with a very upset Scottish crewman in their midst.

This is exactly what I was afraid *would* happen, and what I was hoping
Paramount would avoid (and which apparently they have).

>If this looks familiar to anyone, you must have read this idea when I
>posted it to rec.arts.startrek.creative about a month ago.  Any
>Paramount people out there listening to us fans?  I've seen several
>other ideas that are at least a plausible as the two in this post, and
>all more plausible than being held in the pattern buffer for seven
>decades.

Hmm, well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one...



-- 
Matt Gertz, mwgertz+@cs.cmu.edu
Dept. of ECE, The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.