Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 5 the Enemy Within
This was never what I would consider a good episode in that the base concept that a transporter accident could split a human in to two distinct people based on an arbitrary psychology split is ridiculous. Good and evil Kirk? How about the Kirk who believes professional wrestling is real and the Kirk who thinks it’s fake? As far as a personality trait can influence the physics of a transporter it’s equally valid.
Being the curious monkey that I am this accident makes me wonder a lot about transporters (image courtesy of the Curious George t shirts). Trek canon states that the transportee is dematerialized in the transporter and rematerialized at the other end but with this yellow powder glitch it kind of implies that the transportee is actually horrible killed on one end and a new clone is created on the other. How else could them make an exact replica unless it’s building one from scratch using the recorded pattern? Isn’t that exactly how replicators work? If so doesn’t this mean that every time you get in a transporter you are killed and a new one of you is created? Also in the Day of the Dove they talked about the Klingon transport patterns being trapped in the transporter computer so theoretically if you hooked your transporter to your replicator couldn’t you replicate yourself thousands of times? Seems like an easy way to take over the Enterprise or even any planet. Just mass clone yourself armed to the teeth and march to victory.
the Infamous Dave Inman