Editing Transporter (Star Trek) (section)

===Reliability===
Aside from external influences causing disruptions in the normal operations of transporters, the technology itself has been known to fail on occasion, causing serious injury or usually death to those being transported. This was demonstrated in Star Trek's 1979 film debut, ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture]]'' when a malfunction in the transporter sensor circuits resulted in insufficient signal being present at the ''[[Starship Enterprise|Enterprise]]'' end to successfully rematerialize the two subjects, and [[Starfleet]] was unable to pull them back to where they had dematerialized from. The transporter system attempted to rematerialize what little signal was available, and despite the efforts of [[James T. Kirk|Kirk]] and [[Montgomery Scott|Scotty]], the system failed and both subjects vanished from the transporter pad and back to Starfleet, where both subjects died from radiation and disfiguration.  Kirk, visibly shaken by what he had witnessed asked, "Starfleet, do you have them?", to which the response was made "''Enterprise'', what we got back didn't live long, fortunately".

By the time of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|The Next Generation]]'', transporter technology has advanced considerably, meaning that accidents are now remote, if not near impossible. In the episode "[[Realm of Fear]]", [[Geordi La Forge]] states that there have been no more than two or three transporter accidents in the preceding ten years. Reference is also made to the advancement of transporter technology in the same episode, where [[Miles O'Brien (Star Trek)|Chief O'Brien]] states that each individual transporter pad has four redundant scanners whereby in the event a scanner fails the other three will take over, and that he has never lost anyone having been a transporter operator for over 20 years.

In "[[Rascals (Star Trek: The Next Generation)|Rascals]]", four adult ''Enterprise'' crew members were beamed off a shuttle and rematerialized as children still in their adult-sized clothing. The incoming "matter stream" had a commensurate drop in mass; the operator had initially thought the reduction in mass meant "we may have lost one".

In the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'' episode "[[Tuvix]]", a transporter accident combines both the physical and behavioral aspects of [[Tuvok|Lt. Tuvok]] and [[Neelix]] into a single being wearing a melange of each other's clothing. Notably, Tuvix was of equal mass of both Tuvok and Neelix combined. When they were later separated, Neelix and Tuvok were both wearing Starfleet uniforms.