I Left My Soul on the Transporter Pad

Very pleased with the writing in the first few episodes of “Enterprise”. The showrunners are making a good faith effort to avoid the insufferable preachiness of the previous incarnations — and the vessel looks more like a spaceship and less like a hotel.

The idea of the Transporter is introduced in this series: a device which has served as the Deus Ex Machina in many, many episodes of the franchise. As a writer, the Transporter allowed you to proceed with a lot of confidence. You could always write yourself “into a corner” and then use the Transporter to get yourself back out. Who knows how many times something exploded somewhere — but the Transporter had a “lock” on the folks in danger and they appeared in Transporter Room 3 (the only one the Next Generation ever used) completely unharmed.

I’d bet that it was hundreds of times. But the philosophical problem is: does the Transporter move everything?

The Enterprise carries people of many cultures and religions, but no one seems to protest the use of the Transporter on religious grounds. Many religions assume the existence of an immaterial Soul: eternal, immutable, and indestructible. Not composed of matter — but of something else.

If the Transporter transforms matter into energy and sends it, how does it interact with this idea of the Soul? It seems natural to think that such a device would leave any immaterial Soul behind: so whatever landed on the Transporter pad on the other end would simply be a hunk of meat. Following this argument: “transportation” would be euthanasia — a very rapid way of killing someone.

And yet, the writers of the show don’t want to forsake this plot device, and so it’s never discussed. Like the staggering problems presented by the Holodeck (the more you think about that thing, the more impossible it seems).

[BTW: And many thanks to the person in Canada who seems to be buying all my books.]