We could solve many environmental and climate change problems if only the promise of teleportation had come true.
I first saw beam-me-up magic on the original Star Trek series: Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and crew standing in the transporter room, their figures dissolving into glittery confetti and then reanimating on one of the strange new worlds they’re exploring.
If we had teleportation technology, we wouldn’t need roads or cars or trucks or planes or trains. We wouldn’t have to pave paradise and put up a parking lot. There would be no transportation emissions.
Just dissolution, followed by reconstruction in another location.
Star Trek was on in my house growing up, and so I watched it with my older siblings, but I wasn’t a Trekkie. Campy sci-fi wasn’t my preferred genre, and Kirk was too much of a dashing swashbuckler and Romeo for my tastes, but the story arcs could be complex and raise interesting moral dilemmas about the human condition.
The teleportation special effects mesmerized me. In 1966, that kind of production cost a lot of money because they had to make the audience believe. I believed. The visual effect was created by filming backlit aluminum powder or Alka-Seltzer in water dropped through an upside-down slow-motion camera, then compositing it over actors on the transporter platform.
I learned this bit of trivia at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour, a museum of sorts in Ticonderoga, New York, a 2-hour drive north from my home. I had the honor of driving three Trekkies to this exciting destination, two of whom had once attended a Star Trek convention. I was slightly out of place as a casual Star Trek admirer among true acolytes, but the crew welcomed me as one of their own.
Our tour guide, wearing the uniform of the captain himself, walks and talks us through meticulously detailed, recreated sets of the original series. The transporter room is the first stop on the tour. We also see the engineering room, the curved hallway, Captain Kirk’s personal headquarters, sick bay, and the capstone of the tour: the bridge, where we are granted permission to sit in Kirk’s command chair and feel the awesome power and responsibility he faced as commander of the starship Enterprise.
What an experience! Sure, the attraction appears to have been built inside an old tire store or pharmacy building with a cheap façade slapped on, and the only restrooms are two porta-toilets in the parking lot (no thank you), but the sets themselves and the aura of the final frontier are worth the price of admission.
On the return trip, even though I was still the entrusted driver, I daydreamed of teleportation and occasionally took one hand off the wheel to practice Spock’s Vulcan “live long and prosper” hand sign.
Once home, to keep the spirit alive, we decided to watch a couple of episodes: “Space Seed” from the first season, in which we’re introduced to the genetically engineered warlord, Kahn, who inspired the later movie, “The Wrath of Kahn”; and from the second season, “Mirror, Mirror” which took advantage of things that can go wrong with the dazzling teleportation technology and introduced a parallel universe containing an evil Kirk and crew.
The original set tour was an interesting and original experience. But on my next trip to Ticonderoga, I’m going to visit the famous fort, built by the French to protect a portage shipping route that bypassed the rapids in the narrow passage between Lake Champlain and Lake George, and played a prominent role in the French and Indian War as well as the Revolutionary War. They didn’t have teleportation back then either.
