There's a disturbing secret hiding in plain sight in Star Trek. Everyone you love in the show, everyone you've loved on the show, has died. They've died over and over. They've died twice or three times or even four times in a single episode. They're back the next week, only to die again.
All those times Reginald Barclay hated the transporter? He was right. He went in. He died.
So wait, what? A great little video from CGP Grey explains teleportation works, at least in Star Trek terms. The transporter on the ship breaks down the atoms of each person and thing that steps in, reassembling them on the other side. But that original? That original dies.
It's sort of like the replicator. There's not a bag of Earl Grey, hot, sitting somewhere inside it. Instead the replicator has to have specific instructions on how to arrange whatever atoms are hanging around into the cup, the water, the Earl Grey tea itself, everything.
If the Star Trek transporter opened a wormhole each time, it would be a much simpler (though more energy intensive) proposition. You step in a portal and step out on the other side. Nightcrawler in X-Men is said to step in to his own dimension, probably because the alternative is dying and being reborn every panel.
And think of poor Thomas Riker in "Second Chances." Survives years on a planet only to be killed again in order to be "rescued." When Scotty was stuck in the transporter in "Relics," he was actually dead for decades on end. Those crewmen that died in the transporter in the first movie? Perhaps it was a mercy killing instead of dying over and over again.
I'll take the shuttle, thanks.
Source: CGP Grey
