How Star Trek’s Most Famous Technology Became A Nightmare

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 16 seconds ago

In Star Trek, the most famous technology isn’t the awe-inspiring starships or the game-changing replicators. No, the most famous tech is the transporter. It’s the ultimate sci-fi idea because,  at the press of a button, you disappear from one spot and reappear somewhere else. This futuristic technology became so synonymous with Star Trek that it spawned a famous phrase that was never even said on The Original Series: “Beam me up, Scotty!” However, this cool technology was a real boogeyman in the first episode of the TOS prequel series Enterprise.

In the Enterprise premiere episode “Broken Bow,” the transporter is a new and relatively fearsome technology. The producers thought that it would humorously subvert our expectations by showing Star Trek characters who are genuinely spooked by the franchise’s most famous technology. However, the producers learned to fear the transporter for entirely different reasons: thanks to a major complication, the scene of Archer beaming up became the most difficult shot in an episode with over 300 effects shots.

Scream Me Up, Scotty

In the Enterprise premiere episode “Broken Bow,” characters like Archer and Tucker are wary of the transporter, which is (in the 22nd century) relatively new technology. Once you watch enough Star Trek, you’ll know those fears are well-founded. On a bad day, the transporter can melt your body, split you into twins, merge you with someone else, turn you into a child, or send you to an evil Mirror Universe. On a good day, the core technology still involves vaporizing your original self and reassembling your body and mind in a new location. It’s freaky to the extreme, which is why Dr. McCoy never trusted the transporter.

In the first episode of Enterprise, the crew of the titular ship is similarly fearful of this new technology. Nonetheless, Tucker uses it to rescue Archer from certain death in one of the coolest moments of the entire episode. However, director James L. Conway found this scene more frustrating than cool. That’s because the effects team setting up the transporter effect had to work with the live footage of Archer running from his Suliban pursuer. As you might imagine, this is far more difficult than a normal beaming sequence, which used blue screens to make things easier for themselves.

Your Atoms: Scrambled Or Over Easy?

Unfortunately, Conway had not used any blue screens when filming Archer’s exciting run-and-gun fight with his pursuer. On the special features for the Enterprise Season 1 Blu-ray, Visual Effects Supervisor Ronald B. Moore (not to be confused with Trek writer and producer Ronald D. Moore) admitted that his team “took so much time setting up that shot” precisely because it “took a lot of time to make it work right.” Even though it was “simply a transporter,” Moore told (as mentioned in the introduction to “Flying Starships”) Archer actor Scott Bakula that the transporter was the most difficult shot out of more than 300 effects shots.

Franchise executive producer Rick Berman was exceedingly pleased with “Broken Bow,” but he and writer Brannon Braga later agreed that they jumped the gun (or should that be phase pistol?) by introducing transporter technology so quickly. Nonetheless, this introduction ripped the Band-Aid off by giving them the most difficult transporter shot in Star Trek history. After that, no special effect could challenge them ever again. Plus, Ronald B. Moore and his team deserve special credit for pulling it off. Not only did they execute a dramatic and awesome-looking effects shot, but they did something that once seemed impossible: they made the transporter seem cool again!