Well, maybe in the books or whatever, but on the show they were pretty free to just give the transporter a magic power and then forget about it next week; hence this thread.
Anyway, let’s face it; the very premise of the transporter causes huge problems. It’s either a suicide + perfect clone box, or “merely” a perfect clone box. If it kills you, no-one would want to use it. If it doesn’t, everyone would keep backups of themselves in case they die. What kind of responsible parent wouldn’t make regular backups of their kids’ pattern buffer?
The Tholians appeared in Enterprise. I don’t recall if they spun a web, but I definitely remember audience tension that we knew they spin webs but the Enterprise crew didn’t.
It’s actually a pretty contentious topic in philosophy. One I am always happy to go into, but for sure would be a hijack here. There have been past threads, I can’t seem to find a good one though.
FTR though, it was part of the (short) Enterprise Mirror Universe segment - which did NOT include any prime universe characters interacting, just the Mirror Universe Enterprise crew interacting with elements from the prime universe. And it does tie back to the TOS event. And, extra credit, the Enterprise design team worked really hard to make the tholians look like the TOS (given very different productions values!)
The tholians are apparently very interested in any tech related to time dispersal. The second time they show up on Enterprise was part of a free-for-all gathering of various alien species trying to get ahold of a 31st century time-ship currently in the possession of the Enterprise.
Memory alpha mentions them being referenced in DS9, but that was not one of the shows I followed, so someone else can speak up about it.
ISTR a Gorn appearing on Enterprise, as well as some Romulans and, I think, a few other species that were first encountered on TOS. Remember in Balance of Terror, when they communicated with the Romulan ship, saw Romulans apparently for the first time and were surprised that they had Vulcanesque features, yet I am almost certain there was an encounter with Romulans, face to face in Enterprise.
For all its flaws, Enterprise had a nice gritty feel to it. All the other series just felt too sanitary.
The Gorn appeared in the Mirror universe multi-parter I mentioned, rather than the prime timeline, but yes.
The Enterprise runs into a Romulan mine-field, and is only communicated with via non-visual information - pretty much an ultimatum to get the hell out of their area.
In the later seasons, there is a covert Romulan effort to influence Vulcan, but I’ll stop there due to spoilers.
Ha! You mean that you wouldn’t even have enough manners to wait until they were finished? LOL
If I remember the episode correctly, the Enterprise disabled one Tholian ship with a single phaser burst, so I’m thinking it was markedly superior. Imprisoning it and waiting for it to run out of energy would then be the correct strategy.
There’s that interphase cloaking device the USS Pegasus had. Memory Alpha suggests it was followed up with a couple of times, but it was mostly ignored.
You can handwave it away a bit since it was a treaty violation… but it would be the ultimate in dual-use technology and have immense industrial applications, like creating ultra-high-density materials, exotic multi-crystalline alloys, or stuffing an infinite amount of useless shit in your closet.
