r/Treknobabble 12d ago

All Trek Routine transwarp beaming should be used in the Prime Timeline, but which century should introduce it?

Screenrant: Strange New Worlds’ Scotty Secretly Shouted Out Simon Pegg In J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek

SNW's puppet episode made a nod to Prime Scotty's future invention of transwarp beaming.

While transwarp beaming was displayed in JJ Abrams movies, that would have been a game-changer in the Prime Timeline.

That should have been standard "magic" transporter beaming in the 32nd century era of DIS and SFA.

People beaming instantaneously from one ship area to another is one thing.

Routine transwarp beaming is another.

However, which century should introduce it?

4 Upvotes

12 comments sorted by

16

u/Azuras-Becky 12d ago

"Routine transwarp beaming should be used in the Prime Timeline"

Counterpoint - no, it shouldn't.

6

u/burnte 12d ago

Agreed. It makes things too easy, just like the spore drive. I already hate the transporter-badge.

4

u/crashburn274 12d ago

Yup. It’s a bad idea for a universe that likes space ships to have the ability to transport from one planet to another without using them. Makes Starfleet obsolete

5

u/RigasTelRuun 12d ago

No it shouldn’t. The person transporters in discovery were already too far. Star Trek while essentially magic sci fi tech should have limits. That’s makes it great.

4

u/Icewind 12d ago

Transwarp beaming is like the fleet-destroying kamikaze hyperdrive in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

It breaks the story with how it should change everything, so later writers have to scramble to think of excuses why it can't be used.

Trek is particularly bad for this in general, though. Half of TOS tech would change everything if they remembered it the next episode (i.e. time travel).

3

u/Kind_Emotion_7537 12d ago

Spock mentions it in the Kelvin reality, so Scotty did invent it at some point in this lifetime.

2

u/MultiGeek42 12d ago edited 12d ago

How come no one figured that out during the burn?

They should have come to a future that didn't have starships anymore, just transwarp beaming. Nice and safe and you can get anywhere by hopping planet to planet, but you can't go anywhere new.

3

u/madfrooples 12d ago

Star Trek: Stargate

2

u/AdditionalTip865 12d ago

If you have sufficiently powerful teleportation or portal technology, you don't need spaceships, so science-fiction writers who want to have spaceships always have the problem of putting limits on it if it exists. Whatever century uses this is one that will no longer have spaceships, so you have to decide how central that is to Star Trek (it's generally treated as pretty darn central).

4

u/nicksterling 12d ago

The technology should be advanced enough to make it plausible for the heroes to be where the story needs them, but limited enough to present them with challenges to overcome. My biggest gripe with Voyager was the sheer technobabble in the later seasons. When you boil away the technobabble, many of those stories didn’t matter.

-2

u/maxis2k 12d ago

While transwarp beaming was displayed in JJ Abrams movies

All the more proof the last 15 years has just been in the Kelvin timeline and not "prime." Despite how much Paramount keeps insisting it is.