How many different transporter visual effects have there been in the various Star Trek shows and movies?
Several dozen, at least, if we could all episodes in which some alien has the ability to teleport a person or object. Just from TOS alone, episodes could include “The Gamesters of Triskallion”, “The Which Survives”, “The Cloudminders”…
in the original Star Trek the transporter effect was a glass of water with sparkles in it and they would swirl it around to get the effect…so incredibly low tech and so cool at the same time.
I know in the later series it seemed like every spacefaring race had it’s own individual transporter effect, but I don’t seem to recall any from TOS. Do you have any pics of the different ones you mention?
Not handy. The only distinctive one that comes to mind is from “That Which Survives”, in which an android defense mechanism, designed to look like the long-dead alien outpost’s leader, uses a transporter effect that seems to shrink the android down to a line before disappearing.
I vaguely recall that other transporter effects consists of a rapidly alternating the image between showing the actors present, then showing them absent, present, absent, present, absent, faster and faster until they remained absent.
If someone knows a place where TOS episodes are posted online, I could find examples readily.
By the way, don’t overlook the NextGen example from “The High Ground”, in which the alien IRA has an “interdimensional” transport of some kind. As I recall, it looks like the actor just walks behind a bluescreen.