• knotthatone@lemmy.one
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    2 years ago

    There’s some hand-wavey technobabble about annular confinement beams and whatnot but the real reason was because TOS didn’t have the money or time to show a shuttle land or receiver pad sent down, etc. It was cheap to depict and the audience bought it without much explaining (step into booth, shimmer, be someplace else).

    It was just a sciency-looking version of what I Dream of Jeannie did.

      • knotthatone@lemmy.one
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        2 years ago

        I think transporters would work better if they just said they pushed you through a subspace portal of some kind vs. the whole matter-to-energy-and-back again process described. That sidesteps some of the thornier physics issues and makes more sense why it would work at a distance.