Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Recreation Commons => Topic started by: Elok on September 10, 2018, 03:09:12 AM

Title: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Elok on September 10, 2018, 03:09:12 AM

So they beam down to the planet: Kirk, McCoy, Spock, and Warrant Officer McSweeney.  Something horrible happens and McSweeney dies.  The others use their phasers on whatever killed McSweeney, or otherwise stabilize the situation.  Then Kirk says, "Hey, Scotty, McSweeney bought it again.  Can I get a mulligan here?"  Scotty swears picturesquely under his breath, digs through the transporter log archives (he may have it bookmarked, given how often this happens), and a shimmer appears over McSweeney's corpse.  A few seconds later McSweeney is regenerated as an exact copy of the iteration the transporter made of him when he first beamed down.  All he's missing is the last half hour or so.  They can fill him in.
I know why this doesn't happen: it would destroy all dramatic tension and raise further, still more troubling questions.  But I'm sure it's been asked many times over the years.  Is there a canon or accepted in-universe reason why they can't use the transporter that way?  The only limitation I can think of is memory usage, that the complete transporter map of a person is too big to hold onto outside of RAM or something.

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Lorizael on September 10, 2018, 04:13:14 AM

Yeah. There is no log that holds the person. The information for a person is stored in a "pattern buffer" that destabilizes after some time/when there's space weather/when the deflector dish is being rerouted through the EPS conduits to divert secondary power to the phaser array...

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 10, 2018, 04:43:44 AM

Maybe it's illegal.   Seriously; where's the end of it once you can do stuff like that?

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Geo on September 10, 2018, 09:36:17 AM

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on September 10, 2018, 04:43:44 AM

Maybe it's illegal.   Seriously; where's the end of it once you can do stuff like that?

Living the last day of your life again forever!

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Elok on September 10, 2018, 02:00:47 PM

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on September 10, 2018, 04:43:44 AM

Maybe it's illegal.   Seriously; where's the end of it once you can do stuff like that?

So ban it.  What's the penalty?  Death?  I don't think The Federation is allowed to do that, and anyway, "don't come back from the dead or I kill you" is a pretty sad deterrent.
Lori, I can't even tell if you're making that up or if it's official ST Lore.

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Lorizael on September 10, 2018, 02:21:30 PM

The minimal fact of there being an unreliable, temporary pattern buffer is canon. The rest... /me shrugs

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: E_T on September 10, 2018, 07:25:20 PM

Although it was recently done very well in Doctor Who (Heaven Sent), well sort of...

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: E_T on September 10, 2018, 07:33:04 PM

Beside, the Redshirts almost always die... typically in a horrible fashion...

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: E_T on September 10, 2018, 08:03:33 PM

Although, I do recall one story where a transporter was used as a sort of long term lifeboat for a few individuals.  Not all of them made it (had still degraded over time and were "lost").  IIRC, the pattern buffer was put in some sort of maintenance loop that cause it to keep refreshing the buffer contents, instead of having them re-materialize on the platform.  Whomever it was, had survived in the buffer for a very, very long time.

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: ColdWizard on September 11, 2018, 01:32:37 AM

TNG episode "Relics", wherein Scotty survived 75 years in a jury-rigged buffer. The other crew member degraded.

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: E_T on September 11, 2018, 05:29:37 PM

Transporter clones...

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Geo on September 11, 2018, 08:53:07 PM

Quote from: E_T on September 10, 2018, 07:33:04 PM

Beside, the Redshirts almost always die... typically in a horrible fashion...

Not in TNG!

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: E_T on September 11, 2018, 09:48:21 PM

One of the reason TNG wasn't as fun...  Still good overall, but...

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Elok on September 11, 2018, 10:06:01 PM

They also didn't have things like the transporter malfunctioning and splitting Kirk into good and evil halves.  Darn that busted evil filter.

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Lorizael on September 11, 2018, 10:25:56 PM

Apparently redshirts weren't the most likely to kick the bucket in TOS...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRp92HXDlgY&feature=youtu.be&t=1m50s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRp92HXDlgY&feature=youtu.be&t=1m50s)

(hopefully that skips you to 1 minute, 50 seconds)

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 11, 2018, 11:49:53 PM

Meh.  59?  Over a thousand.  If Starfleet deaths off-screen count, what about the four crews entirely wiped out +the very heavy casualties in the M4 games?

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Lorizael on September 12, 2018, 12:08:40 AM

Whole crews being wiped only bring the percentages closer together. You'd need some instance in which no gold shirts were harmed but all the red shirts were wiped out to tip it the other way.

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 12, 2018, 12:38:24 AM

I don't trust their base data, I don't trust the answers.

What kind of nerd would I be, anyway, if I let that 59 pass?

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Lorizael on September 12, 2018, 01:14:30 AM

/me shrugs.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_casualties_%2823rd_century%29 (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_casualties_%2823rd_century%29)

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 12, 2018, 01:46:59 AM

I'm just going to point out, before I look, that the crew percentage figures given in the video were fanwank.  Place no faith in a stranger's butt-pull numbers...

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 12, 2018, 01:53:52 AM

Okay - MA actually gives you the same 59 (Leslie and Galloway count, if one assumes adventures shown out of order instead of mystery resurrections) if the whole ships aren't counted.

-But the %#s for how many wore what are still non-canon butt-pull.

Title: Re: Why can't Captain Kirk get a mulligan?
Post by: Lorizael on September 12, 2018, 02:07:58 AM

Well, by the 25 red shirt and 10 gold shirt deaths count, as long as there were at least 2.5 times as many ops as command personnel...