Star Trek: The Experiment

I don't think I'm giving anything away here by saying that while on the Klingon Encounter Mission, we are transported from one room onto the Enterprise. Yes, beam me up Scotty, we are beamed. We start off in a square gray room with video monitors and doors in front of us; the light go out, the air whooshes, and little flickers of light surround us for no more than 3 seconds, then the lights are on and we are standing on a transporter pad. Yes, the circular transporter pad, lighted floor, no monitors, no doors - just some Starfleet Lieutenant telling us we've been beamed through a temporal rift into the future. This room is not the same color, size, or anything as the one we were in less than 3 seconds before. How did they do it?!

Since I couldn't afford the Behind the Scenes Tour, Max and I were trying desperately to work this question out on our own. We rode 4 times on Day 3 just to see if we could figure it out. My first clue to the Experiment was the small print for the Behind the Scenes Tour that said you would have to sign a Confidentiality Agreement. My second clue was realizing that the first thing that happens to you as you pass through the doors for the Borg Invasion ride is a bioscan. Here is my theory:

11 years ago after many trials and errors, the government finally discovered transporter technology. We all know that Star Trek has been an inspiration for years and many things we have today can attributed to the franchise. (Let's face it - that flip phone? that's Kirk's communicator!) Once they discovered the technology and safely tested it on inorganic objects, it was time to test it on live animals and humans. This must have worked on the small scale, but I think maybe there were some issues with how far people could be transported. Like any government agency, they are only happy when something has been tested for 20 years on thousands of people. But the urgency was so great, "we have it, we need to perfect it, it has to be done now"; and so Star Trek the Experience was born.

How many people would volunteer to be dismantled at the molecular level if we aren't sure if we've got this totally right? A few, but not enough to get those conclusive 20 year results. What better way to have the volunteers coming in droves if we make it an amusement ride! When the Experience opened 10 years ago, it was only the Klingon Encounter - hundreds of thousands of people, fans, paying to be materialized elsewhere. Then once it was evident that yes these people can be transported, it was important to know if there were any cumulative effects - hence the Borg Invasion with its entry bioscan was born!

Let's face it, the Klingon mission is better, everyone who's been on it knows it. Since the admission, became an unlimited day pass, what do these hundreds of thousands of people do? Get transported multiple times and then get scanned once or twice depending on how slow that Klingon line is. So, they get a good luck at us on the cellular level after we've raced to be transported a few times. And now, hopefully and conclusively, they have all the evidence they need to prove that they have perfected materialization with no long term or cumulative effects. And so, they are closing down the Experiment and we should see transporter booths being erected all over the planet within 3-5 years.

Imagine: dinner in London, dessert in Sao Paolo! Beam me up again :)







And no, you can't smile when standing next to a Klingon or an Andorian. They'll think you are up to something and kill you where you stand. There are no questions before or after - and if you were a good Trekkie, you would know that!