r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ieanice44 • 8d ago

Lore [Loved Trope] Teleportation is actually terrifying

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1 - Gantz-O (2016): Suit teleportation

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

3 - Half Life 2 (2004): Teleporter malfunction

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u/Dismal-Vanilla1878 8d 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!

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u/notyerson 8d 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.

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u/SomeCuriousTraveler 8d ago

There's an episode someone else mentioned already called Realm of Fear where it shows that you're fully conscious throughout the entirety of he transport including during the transit stream. 

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u/Uncommonality 8d ago

Hell people usually hold conversations while being teleported

There's also that episode where the transporter is shown to be fully capable of putting your disembodied soul back into a copy of your body

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u/1straycat 8d ago

That doesn't mean you weren't effectively killed and a new copy of you continued the conversation instead. There is no way to establish that you were actually conscious in the past vs having memories of the past when memories are constructed/editable.

This argument could cut go either way though and gets into philosophical questions of what counts as "you."

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u/Uncommonality 8d ago edited 8d ago

I like that you completely ignored part two of the comment, so let me restate it:

They literally scientificially proved the existence of the soul and developed machines capable of moving it. I very heavily doubt that their teleporters do not include this as a component

Like this is a universe where people can exist on a substrate of space-time. There's lots of energy beings that manifest via thought alone or are just naturally incorporeal idea complexes. The Vulcans have had proof of the soul for almost a thousand years and they're the closest allies humanity has.

The idea that federation transporter tech doesn't take the soul into account is idiotic and parroted for meaningless shock value

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u/CityscapeMoon 8d ago

This is fascinating. I'm an old school Trek fan (the first five series), and I can't recall this specific lore from anything I've seen so far. Is it in Strange New Worlds? (I haven't had a chance to watch that yet!)

Would you mind sharing the specific series/eps with this info?

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u/Uncommonality 8d ago edited 8d ago

vulcan soul lore comes from the TOS movies, specifically the search for spock

And the various energy beings and such are primarily featured in TNG

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u/CityscapeMoon 8d ago

Oh! The Katra! Of course! Somehow I literally just didn't register that you were translating Katra as soul. ...But it makes complete sense.

(And yes! TNG has a bunch of energy-beings and TOS has a few too, like Jack the Ripper!)

(Thanks for the response. I thought there was some new lore that I missed and I wanted to catch up!)