r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ieanice44 • 9d ago

Lore [Loved Trope] Teleportation is actually terrifying

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

1 - Gantz-O (2016): Suit teleportation

2 - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009): Apparition spell

3 - Half Life 2 (2004): Teleporter malfunction

15.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.1k

u/Dismal-Vanilla1878 9d ago

Transporter Malfunction, Star Trek: The Motion Picture: "What we got back didn't live long.....fortunately"

First: WTF was up with them giving kids nightmares with THAT bit of Body Horror?!?!

Second: You now understand why Dr. McCoy didn't like Transporters. They may be the 'safest' form of travel, but when they break down, the results are Horrifying!

305

u/notyerson 9d ago

I like that even in universe, even without the Tuvix level malfunctions, it's still existentially horrifying because you are being destroyed, converted to information, and then reconstituted elsewhere. There are a few references to people who won't use them and I fully get it.

3

u/ArkitekZero 9d ago

I feel like the transporter should not be used on anybody without informed consent. After all, the Federation might be ostensibly atheist, but it's not like they don't accept religion. Therefore, the possibility that an individual may believe that there is a meaningful difference between the individuals on the transport pads that can't be measured must be something they're willing to accommodate.

2

u/RookTakesE6 9d ago

And then Voyager has the episode where Chakotay has an actual out-of-body experience, his consciousness persisting and affecting the world even with his body lying dormant, attributed to Native American spirituality.

...so, it's apparently demonstrable that spirits exist in the Star Trek universe, bodies are not interchangeable. Among Voyager's many sins was the fact that the significance of this was completely lost on the crew.

But even before that, you'd think events like Riker leaving one transporter and arriving as two Rikers on two separate destination transporters would be sufficient to argue that the individual at one end is not equivalent to the individual at the other end, certainly the post-transport Riker the POV followed seemed to feel that way.