Sharing of Technology

[Mikey]

Can't we just settle for the episode and the writers being completely stupid?

I think we've taken that as a given...

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Yet, despite what we've seen of the Kazon, they must have had some smart people working for them if they were able to build the transporter

The whole thing just makes no sense at all.

So they were smart enough to build a WHOLE TRANSPORTER SYSTEM, but not a control module?

Wait... I'm getting dizzy from these circles...

A mechanic can build a car but it's far more difficult to build a battery. It may have been like that.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

It's not all that hard to build a battery, in fact the basic principle is quite simple. Most of the work in battery design is just optimizing it to get the greatest voltage (technically, something called EMF, but voltage will do for our purposes) for the longest time. Hell, push two appropriate electrodes into a lemon and you have a battery of sorts!

[Captain Picard's Hair]

In any event, if you can build something as advanced as a transporter, whose function seems to involve principles of quantum mechanics, then a computer to run the thing shouldn't be too hard. Once you have a computer, it's not much harder to customize it for a particular application - witness Earth, 2008!

[Blackstar the Chakat]

True, but getting a good battery made is difficult. Does Seska seem like the type to wait around and try to build her own while there's a perfectly usable unit flying around nearby?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Perhaps, but if we are to assume that Seska *could* have built it herself as you have done, then we run back into the problem of the episode being moot.

Why do we keep going in circles here? I'm getting dizzy

[Mikey]

Yes, she does - because if they could have built the rest of the transporter since her arrival (they patently did NOT steal it, going by the dialogue from the show) then the computer module for it would have taken a day and a half to make given the same level of expertise.

[Teaos]

No it wouldnt. As we've said the rest of the transporter was a mechanical operation. Placing coils and tinfoil and some twist ties together. Building a computer command modual which is all likely hood is a very specialised bit of hardware is a TOTALLY different field. Its not apples and oranges its apples and rocket science.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The workings of a transporter are hardly "coils and tinfoil and some twist ties together," in fact it's one of the most advanced and complicated tech in all of Trek. If they can do that - from scratch - in less than two years from a time when nothing of the sort had been conceived of, than the computer should be child's play. As I said, once you have the basics of computer tech down, customizing it for a particular application isn't all too hard.

[Teaos]

Computers are not that easy to build and programme.

As an example look at making any sort of animated movie like shrek.

The amount of work that goes into writting the programes and doing the work to get even basic stuff to work runs into several hundred man hours of work. And thats with people who are highly trained in that field (My brother does that exact job).

They couldnt just slap togther a generic computer plug it in and press enter.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

But, compared to building a TRANSPORTER in such a timeframe, having never conceived of such a tech? Absolute child's play.

I just don't think you comprehend the magnitude of the task the Kazon are to have completed in building a transporter.

[Mikey]

Computers are not that easy to build and programme.

But transporters are? Come on.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Putting something together is one thing. With the right parts, manpower, and time, you can build anything. But programming something is totally different. It took me a week to build a tic-tac-toe program, when I had the tools and instructions on hand. I never did get it to work right.

A team working around the clock to make a video game using a pre-existing game engine can take a year and still have glitches. Now we're talking about creating a program from scratch to control one of the most sophisticated devices in Star Trek, and a glitch could mean you end up scattering someone's pattern across space or some horrible transporter malfunction. Now why would the Kazon waste years working on creating a program when Voyager had working program they could steal?

[Captain Seafort]

Putting something together is one thing. With the right parts, manpower, and time, you can build anything.

The problem is that they had neither the parts (since the Kazon had nothing even resembling a transporter everything would have to be built from scratch), nor the manpower (since Seska was the only one who had any knowledge of transporter technology beyond "it makes people disappear".

[Captain Picard's Hair]

OK, taking a break from this repetitive argument that's getting us nowhere, how about this one: would the module even work with the Kazon's transporter? It's hard to believe that the Kazon could have an exact replica of Voyager's transporters - it would have to have been adapted to fit the Kazon ships. Plus, it would have to interact with a completely alien main computer system (going back to what we discussed regarding the Doctor). Would the "drivers" or 24th century equivalents thereof even been compatible with the Kazon ship? At minimum, Seska should have had to modify the programming to fit the Kazon ship, but what we actually saw was the module being plugged in and transports being done within minutes!