Author: Alan N. Shapiro
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How the Transporter Really Works
Over the decades, the copious science fictional “explanations” of how Star Trek’s beaming technology really works, or might some- day be able to work, have undergone dis- cernable paradigm shifts. The original notion was that of the dematerialization-rematerialization, matter-to-energy conversion and back physical transporter.
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Darmok
After Captains Picard and Dathon are transported to the isolated world’s surface, the Tamarians use an ionospheric particle scattering field to block all attempts by Enterprise-D technicians to beam Picard back from the planet, and to make any communication with the two men impossible.
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Arena
In the pre-Klingon and pre-Borg Original Series episode Arena, Captain Kirk is involved in a one-on-one duel against an antagonistic and radical alien Other, the Gorn commander. The episode is entitled Kaijû Gôn tono Taiketus, or Duel With the Monster Gorn, in Japanese dubbing.
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Amok Time
On their way to Altair VI (in the solar system visited by Forbidden Planet’s United Planets CruiserC57D) to represent the Federation at a postwar presidential inauguration on a rebuilding world, the Enterprise senior officers must contend with an increasingly irritable and violent Mr. Spock.
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All Our Yesterdays
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to the planet Sarpeidon, the only natural satellite of a star, Beta Niobe, which is going to explode as a supernova. Although it has been previously established that a “civilized humanoid species” dwells on the planet, Enterprise sensor scans strangely indicate that there is no intelligent life remaining anywhere on that world.
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A Taste of Armageddon
The Enterprise is en route to the NGC 321 star cluster to try to establish diplomatic relations with Eminiar VII, the most technologically advanced planet in the area. More than fifty years earlier, the Federation starship U.S.S. Valiant was listed as missing in space after it transmitted a report from Eminiar and then vanished.