# Any other Brundle-esque teleporter accidents in movies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 28, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550 "2006-08-28T17:20:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/21 "2006-08-29T00:03:37Z")
Octavia Butler did something like that (It wa time travel, but she did end up embedded in a wall) in **Kindred**. There’s also James Patrick Kelly’s “Think Like a Dinosaur,” which was made into an **Outer Limits** episode. You can listen to it [here](http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/dinosaur/). ---
**Author:** ![The\_Mad\_Hermit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5ac83/32.png) [@The\_Mad\_Hermit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Mad_Hermit)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/22 "2006-08-29T00:14:46Z")
[QUOTE=alphaboi867] It was Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Wasn’t the female victim meant to be Kirk’s wife? [/QUOTE] According to the novelization of the movie, the female was Kirk’s girlfriend ( someone asked by Starfleet Command to settle the new Admiral down so he would accept the desk job) and the male was the replacement for Spock, named Xon. The crewman-in-the-deck was due to a spatial anomaly, not a transporter accident. James Blish went further in his novel Spock Must Die!- Spock was duplicated on Organia when they attempted a long-distance transport so he could find out where the Organians went, because the Klingons started a war against the Federation in violation of the Organian Peace Treaty. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/23 "2006-08-29T00:20:15Z")
[QUOTE=The Mad Hermit] The crewman-in-the-deck was due to a spatial anomaly, not a transporter accident. [/QUOTE] I think you’re right, but wasn’t there an episode of TOS when the ship was hijacked and they had to transport from point to point within it, risking materialising inside a wall? (and did that actually happen, or was it only mentioned as a risk?) ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/24 "2006-08-29T00:51:47Z")
I’m pretty sure that Jean-Luc Picard was cloned in the transporter at least once. Or was that a time travel incident? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/25 "2006-08-29T01:02:19Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] I think you’re right, but wasn’t there an episode of TOS when the ship was hijacked and they had to transport from point to point within it, risking materialising inside a wall? (and did that actually happen, or was it only mentioned as a risk?) [/QUOTE] Yes, forget the title but it was when they had taken some shipwrecked Klingons on board. I never bought that. Intraship beaming would be much less risky than ship-to-surface beaming – the ship’s computer **knows** where all the bulkheads are. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/26 "2006-08-29T01:55:44Z")
Another episode of TNG where Barclay sees some monsters in the in-between place when he transports. The monsters turn out to be Federation personnel who got trapped there some time before. ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/27 "2006-08-29T02:07:24Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris] Another episode of TNG where Barclay sees some monsters in the in-between place when he transports. The monsters turn out to be Federation personnel who got trapped there some time before. [/QUOTE] That sounds creepy! Can someone find out what episode that is? (If this is a doublepost, I apologise. The Boards said the thread didn’t exist. Transporter mishap? I think so.) ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/28 "2006-08-29T02:50:25Z")
I looked it up. The episode was called _Realm Of Fear_ > **[Reginald Barclay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Barclay)** > > Reginald Endicott Barclay III is a fictional engineer from the Star Trek media franchise. On television and in film, he has been portrayed by Dwight Schultz since the character's introduction in the Star Trek: The Next Generation third season episode "Hollow Pursuits." Schultz played the character for five episodes and one feature film (Star Trek: First Contact) of The Next Generation, as well as six episodes of the series Star Trek: Voyager. Barclay also appears in non-canon Star Trek novel ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/29 "2006-08-29T03:07:10Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Yes, forget the title but it was when they had taken some shipwrecked Klingons on board. I never bought that. Intraship beaming would be much less risky than ship-to-surface beaming – the ship’s computer **knows** where all the bulkheads are. [/QUOTE] Might be more a concern of precison rather than accuracy. Yes the ship knows where all the walls are. But is the transporter accurate to 2 inches, 2 feet, or 20 feet? ISTR they made it a point to transport out into the middle of wide-open spaces a lot. [QUOTE=Diceman] I’m pretty sure that Jean-Luc Picard was cloned in the transporter at least once. Or was that a time travel incident? [/QUOTE] On at least one occasion, the Romulans cloned him the old-fashioned way, with the intent of eventually using the clone as a spy within Starfleet (after removing the troublesome original, of course). That plot never came to fruition, but the clone did become a rather renowned Romulan general during the Dominion Wars. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/30 "2006-08-29T03:07:35Z")
An Isaac Asimov story about the effects of a transporter breakdown, reviewed here: [http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/Asimov/Stories/Story130.html](http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/Asimov/Stories/Story130.html) ---
**Author:** ![Randall\_Flagg\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/22d042/32.png) [@Randall\_Flagg\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randall_Flagg_1)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/31 "2006-08-30T15:00:40Z")
There was another episode of TNG where scotty has been stuck in a transporter buffer for 50 years and is released by Jean Luc Not a movie but a great short storie by Stephen King called “The Jaunt” in Skeleton Crew which deals with some wierd teleportation effects. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/32 "2006-08-30T15:21:06Z")
[QUOTE=The Mad Hermit] According to the novelization of the movie, the female was Kirk’s girlfriend ( someone asked by Starfleet Command to settle the new Admiral down so he would accept the desk job) and the male was the replacement for Spock, named Xon. [/QUOTE] What about the message from the other transporter pad, the outrageously unemotional response (probably from some bored crapless ensign) telling us that what returned didn’t survive for long. Was it some sort of a nod to fans who had heard of the new series or a note to them to stop writing in and asking about the new Vulcan character they were promised? 😉 [QUOTE=The Mad Hermit] The crewman-in-the-deck was due to a spatial anomaly, not a transporter accident [/QUOTE] Yeah, some poor yellowshirt from engineering. The anonalies were pockets in time weren’t they? Was it just my impression or did engineering really start losing crew members when we got to the Next Generation? ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/33 "2006-08-30T19:13:03Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] If there were teleporters IRL, I expect a malfunction would produce the same result as a bad cable TV transmission – i.e., you would come through with some blocks of your flesh just plain missing, or not properly reassembled down to the molecular level. Either way it would kill you. But you wouldn’t end up gene-spliced with something else – something that **could** do that would be an even bigger technological challenge than teleportation itself. [/QUOTE] I believe that was Crichton’s conciet in _Timeline_- things didn’t line up quite right after a few trips through the quantum foam (or whatever) and you had some people with funky scars and lack of blood to extremities due to “transcription errors.” ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/34 "2006-08-30T19:22:43Z")
Major Nelson was frequently vindictively teleported to strange places, or transformed completely, by Endora on **Bewitched** ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/35 "2006-08-30T19:28:04Z")
[QUOTE=GargoyleWB] Major Nelson was frequently vindictively teleported to strange places, or transformed completely, by Endora on **Bewitched** [/QUOTE] I think you’re conflating two shows there, bubbaloo. Nelson was _I Dream of Jeannie_’s protagonist; you’re thinking of Darrin Stephens. ---
**Author:** ![Autumn\_Almanac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d26b3c/32.png) [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/36 "2006-08-30T19:34:24Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] And it exploded. [/QUOTE] I opened the thread to mention that scene. What a great movie. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/37 "2006-08-30T21:04:15Z")
[QUOTE=Randall\_Flagg] Not a movie but a great short storie by Stephen King called “The Jaunt” in Skeleton Crew which deals with some wierd teleportation effects. [/QUOTE] An excellent story. [spoiler]Turns out that although _physical_ transportation of your body is instantaneous, the experience that your mind undergoes is nowhere near it. Anyone unfortunate or dumb enough to go through the jaunt gate while awake will endure untold eons of a black silent void — blind, deaf, numb, cut off from the world, with only his own thoughts to occupy him, for a seeming eternity. At the destination end, madness and a quick death are the usual results. [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/38 "2006-08-30T21:05:03Z")
Well, I’m not getting in the damn thing, I’ll tell you that. Oh, and Stephen King wrote a moronic story about teleportation. I think it was called “The Jaunt”, which I assume was meant as an homage to Alfred Bester. (Nice idea, but King should stay away from science fiction as he has the mind of a bright eight-year-old.) ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/39 "2006-08-30T21:15:18Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] I think you’re conflating two shows there, bubbaloo. Nelson was _I Dream of Jeannie_’s protagonist; you’re thinking of Darrin Stephens. [/QUOTE] But I remember that episode…it was the one where Gilligan finds the cursed Tiki idol in Hawaii and then sneaks onstage as a dancer during Ricky’s big show… :smack: Of course you are correct…loss of TV trivia is the first sign of early onset demetia ☹ ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550/40 "2006-08-30T21:33:54Z")
Of course as always, Douglas Adams sums it up nicely: I teleported home one night With Ron and Sid and Meg. Ron stole Meggie’s heart away And I got Sidney’s leg. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-brundle-esque-teleporter-accidents-in-movies/370550.md?page=3)