Teleporters: The Death Machines You Don't Want

I remember being a kid and realizing that transporters just make a clone of you somewhere, right after it kills you.

Many years ago I was inadvertently involved in teleportation experiments. They involved copious amounts of alcohol to achieve the desired, or sometimes undesired, effects when I would wake up and wonder how the hell I got wherever the hell I was. Oddly enough the experiments stopped when I quit drinking. 🤔

Regarding the initial question about the ship, the same thing happens to us humans already. Our cells keep replacing themselves until none of the original cells that you were born with exist. So when someone that knew you in your childhood meets you later in life and says "gee, I didn't recognize you, you look like a different person"... they a right, you really are a different person. You yourself might remember the person you used to be but you simply aren't that person anymore.

The movie "The Prestige" illustrated this idea pretty well. "It took courage to climb into that machine every night, not knowing if I'd be the man in the box, or in the Prestige." -Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman)

In the Star Trek TNG episode "Realm of Fear", Lt. Barclay is transported and the audience gets to see how it is inside the transporter beam. As it is presented, it seems the person is never disassembled but remains intact and conscious as the scenery around changes from the origin to the arriving points. It is as if there is a "tunnel" that the person goes through. This is more consistent with the concept of a wormwhole. Maybe Simon could explore this in a future episode.

Teleporters. How Simon is able to host different channels on the same viewing day.

There was a sci-fi pilot a while back that never made it but they made it a point to address this. They were getting ready to teleport to a planet's surface and hopped into the teleporter, which just moved the space they were in through hyperspace and deposited them on the planet. Before they teleported, they talked about how they couldn't believe the dark days of teleportation when people actually disintegrated themselves and made copies at the other end and how glad they were they stopped such nonsense with the dimensional transport.

Loved the scene where the crew beam up Archer (Enterprise), who was about to be murdered, and fall over themselves to apologize to him for using the teleporter on him, as everyone was terrified of it.

There was a sci-fi series I once read where the main character was an assassin, and had to simultaneously eliminate four targets on four separate worlds in another star system... so he used a tachyon transporter to instantly go from Earth to each of these worlds. Except he stayed on Earth, and the transporter just made four photocopies of him on each world, with varying degrees of accuracy (memory issues, breakdowns of the nervous system, physical mutations, etc -- it was a handy plot hook to give the copies a challenge to overcome to complete their missions). Meanwhile, the original just took a conventional starship to leisurely fly from Earth to this other solar system to check on his photocopies progress -- and to eliminate his flawed copies, of course, who had no idea they were just copies :P

I remember watching the original Star Trek on tv with my father and when they were teleporting my father said to me "that would HURT". That CREEPED ME OUT as a child. I was old enough to know that it was actors and special effects BUT the IDEA of it "hurting" creeped me out big time.

Does no one remember the movie "The Fly"? It's a really good example of how bad things can go even if a Teleporter were possible and worked ( mostly ) correctly.

The transporter scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture where the people suffer an agonizing death is easily the most realistic one in the canon. Also the one in Star Trek: The Next Generation where they're testing it with fluid containers that come back broken.

Just when you think Simon couldn't possibly have another channel on YouTube, you'd be wrong. Thankfully they are all worth watching.

This is explicitly the reason Bones refuses to use the teleporter

Scotty often operated the teleporter. In fact most of the main cast performed jobs that were beneath their station because it was a TV show, and the actors needed screen time. And the oft alluded to fact that Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty" on the show only means he never said those four words in that exact order. He said words to that effect many times.

Funny thing about perfect/flawless teleportation, once you have gotten teleported, you are absolutely convinced it is safe. Despite you, actually dying and a clone being in the new location thinking it is the original. Since the clone remembers being teleported (but not the dying part) he thinks it is safe and will actually transfer the whole conciousness.... And everybody except the most paranoid ppl would constanlty die and be replaced by clones. All while being 100% sure they are still the person that they were when they got first teleported. Now, to creep you out. When you follow that logic. Who can guarantee, that the same thing doesnt happen to you while you sleep. Your Monday you goes to bed, dies in the night and your Tuesdays you wakes up.

I have been waiting for big brain to talk about McCoy's freak out over transporters

This channel is freaking awesome. Great work Simon and team of basement slaves

Even if the teleported you have the same memories as the original you, the original you essentially die and cease to exist. So, even though the teleported you are an exact copy, the original you walk into the teleporter to your death. The new you has the memories of your whole life, but is another wholly different person. The original you never wake up from your disassembly (death). I wouldn't get teleported because I don't want to die, even if the teleported me goes on living as me.

I recently heard a story about a card board box being teleported as a test, it mal functioned and endlessly created copies until the entire universe was filled with card board boxes. Super campy but good lol