Why didn't enemies just beam onto NX-01?

[malbers]

I was wondering how, with all the people that Enterprise NX-01 fought that had transporter technology, why did those enemies not beam boarding parties or bombs on board? Enterprise was not equiped (that I know of) with technology to prevent beam-ins.

[malbers]

I am aware of the times it happened, for instance the final episode. And during the borg incident. I guess I am mostly wondering about the bomb thing.

[ZaphodiLe]

The solution: technobabble :)

[Steveo]

Treknobabble. I would imagine the reason is simply that it would have killed the crew and destroyed the ship, which doesn't make for a good storyline mid way through a series.

[TFMF]

may have somthing to do with transporter technology not being as reliable or common but i'm not sure why - good question

[TetsuoShima]

I think Steveo is right, stories are very often filled with stupid things to make the story 'work', ...

 

A common question about such a 'stupid/obvious thing' is: why did/didn't they do that? Philosophical reply is: If they didn't/did, there would not be a story!!!

 

A dissapointing answer, I know, but very often (if not always), it's the truth.

[TFMF]

OOOO - another less pesimistic answer - transporters arn't as advanced and so can only transport two or three at a time say - giving the attackrs transporting onto the ship a tactical disadvantage.....

[Elessar]

The answer to about 80% of questions about Star Trek can be answered "because it wouldn't have worked". In cases where there's at least a decently plausible Trek-verse explanation, the fact that it served the story purposes should be abandoned in favor of the story-line idea, IMO.

 

Besides the fact, there are two answers. First of all if you want to destroy an enemy ship, you're not about to beam your people over there and then destroy it. You send a boardin party when you want to capture someone or confiscate something, not destroy. It's not easy as clockwork to beam a team to a ship, destroy it and get off in time, it would require the Trek equivalent of a SF team, that's why we see Starfleet do it so rarely in any Trek.

 

And in this case I had thought they encountered few hostile species who had transporter technology. Off hand, who that they encountered had it?

[Steveo]

I am sorry to rain on the treknobabble parade, but there has never been any suggestion of an explaination through the 4 seasons as to why transporters aren't used more. If I had to guess, not many species seemed to have it. The transporter was underused on Enterprise itself as well, perhaps it was merely a case of it being impractical in the early years of the technology.

[TetsuoShima]

Yes, it would be possible that for example the power-drain of the first transporters was very big. Since converting living matter to energy and back doesn't seem to be the simplest task in my opinion.

 

So I suppose that with these first models and the first starships (which were obviously a lot less powerfull than later variants) had trouble using them inder combat-situations where the weapon systems were also taxing the power-systems...

 

But that's all just guestimating, I'm doing there...

[Wazer]

On enterprise they didn't use their transporters all that much because they still didn't trust them. At the start of the show they had just been approved for people transport so everyone was an continued to be distrustfulof the technology. You are being dematerialised so if it goes wrong you will most likely die.

 

As for transporting bombs that seems impractical for destroying ships it is very difficult to transport during a battle as the ships are moving unpredicably and it is even harder at warp. Better to disable with phasers and torpedoes before boarding.

 

[theaveng]

I was wondering how' date=' with all the people that Enterprise NX-01 fought that had transporter technology, why did those enemies not beam boarding parties or bombs on board? Enterprise was not equiped (that I know of) with technology to prevent beam-ins.[/quote']

 

.

 

(1) The enemies *did* beam on board however.....

 

(2) Very few races had transporters. In the show, transport technology was still rare. They moved around using the old techniques of shuttle-cars.

 

troy

[Tenebrae]

I think it does seem like there weren't actually that many races with transporters in Enterprise, even relatively more advanced ones and even then, they didn't seem to trust them that much.

 

As to transporting bombs aboard ships, well - it's been done a couple of times but it's never really used as a tactic because, well... yeah, treknobabble.

 

Example: We know full well the Dominion have invasive transporters because they've beamed aboard the Defiant more times than I can count (you'd REALLY think they'd do something about that) but when they're taking DS9 in Call To Arms, they don't use any board parties (as far as is shown).

 

This doesn't really make ANY sense. Especially as they could obviously have beamed aboard the Defiant which was moving slowly and didn't even have it's shields raised. A few dozen Jem'Hadar onboard and they could have stopped the minefield being completed... but they didn't and presumably because that would have stopped there being a big battle.

[bbbb]

Yeah, that whole beaming thing was pretty dumb in the final episode of ENT. What a terrible way to end such a great series of Trek. ENT was new, fresh and full of potential. So unfortunate that they did not fully capitalize on what they had built. I'd love to see the series premiere again just to see Archer and Trip tease T'Pol again.