Why does everyone face the same way on the transporter?

Question

When the away team prepares to beam down, they invariably assume the transporter formation: standing upright, usually with arms slack aside, all facing the camera. When they beam down, they reappear in the same formation and poses, as that's how the transporter works.

However, they do this even when it makes little sense, such as when beaming into uncertain, hostile environments (where they usually proceed to draw phasers and look around in a defensive circle. Sometimes it gets more silly - on a few occasions, they prep their phasers, holster them, beam down, and immediately draw phasers again.

We know that the transporter works with any formation or pose; people and objects have been beamed lying down, holding large objects, holding each other in emergencies. But routine transportation always involves everyone standing facing the same direction.

Why do they do this? Is it somehow related to how the transporter works? Or is it purely for out-of-universe reasons?

Answer 1

The short answer is that it seems to be standard policy for Starfleet personnel to transport with both hands free, facing the front of the transporter. There are a few instances in Enterprise, Voyager and TNG where the crew beam into hostile situations with their phasers drawn or standing in a circle (or both) but these are very much the exception rather than the rule.

                      TNG : Legacy                                             TOS: Day of the Dove

As to why they keep their weapons drawn (and their hands inside the circle), the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Technical Manual seems to suggest that it's a question of transport efficiency for a person to keep their whole self directly above the transport pad.

... transport platform. Performance is somewhat degraded if the unit must target the subject off-platform, especially in widely separated areas of the station. The most efficient transports occur between platforms of like design, and even between platforms of dissimilar design, as in a beam-out from the ops platform to one aboard the Defiant. Since all transports involving living entities are zero fault-tolerant, degraded system performance is related only to a decreased amount of mass delivered per unit time. Transports employing lower resolution scans of nonbiologics may tolerate nanometer-scale voids and 0.001 percent molecular recombination errors.

Answer 2

Out of universe, having made a few basic films, I would imagine that the neutral pose would have allowed for them to make the transition from one location to the other more convincing and believable to the viewer. I also think they probably reused transporter effects, so having a similar pose each time would have allowed them to save money.

Answer 3

I can't remember ever hearing an "official" explanation, but I could imagine several possibilities in-universe:

1. Maybe a "standard pose" made it easier on the system, sort of like reading stock phrases to help a voice-to-text system today. More complex poses might have led to longer transporter "render" times, higher chance of transport error, or some other problem. (This could also be a holdover from the early days of transporter use, rather than still being a problem.)

2. It allows the transported people to arrive in a non-threatening manner, to avoid seeming aggressive to anyone who might see them appear.

3. It's the position that keeps their "options open" the best. If you're transporting into a hostile environment, will you want to be holding your weapon or will you need your hands free? Will you be able to use your equipment openly, or will you need to hide it? Will you be on unstable ground? Will you be facing the right way? Best not to commit to any one thing; just arrive with your hand on your holster and your feet planted solidly, ready to react to whatever you find.

Obviously those are just conjecture, but they do match up pretty well with the way things have played out in various episodes at different times.

Answer 4

This probably has more to do with the limitations of the primitive special effects used in the original series more than anything else. I'm sure having the actors stand as still as possible with their arms tightly pressed against their bodies was preferred stance for post processing. This probably continued on even as the technology improved because it was just what everyone was used to doing. I found some evidence to support this below:

"To create the effect, Anderson set up a slow motion camera, inverted on its axis, and pointed at a dark production stage. He then back lit the focal plane and sifted aluminum powder down through the frame creating a sort of sparkling snow effect. This footage was then later, using an analog masking and post processing technique, layered over the outline of the actors.

If you’ve ever wondered why the transporter seems to freeze the people in place before beaming them down, it’s because composting (sic, compositing) the image over a moving actor was simply too time consuming. Freeze framing them allowed the film crew to use only a single mask in order to create the effect."
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Answer 5

I think the most logical reason is that's the direction where you're looking at the operator and other people in the room before you leave, to receive last-minute instructions and intelligence, and to give the "energize" order.

As far as why they check their phasers only to immediately holster them, I don't have a reference, but I seem to remember it being mentioned as a safety regulation. Having a phaser accidentally discharge mid-transport would be bad. It's not worth the risk unless you know you are likely to come immediately under fire.

Answer 6

I would guess that there is a politeness factor. You want to look at the dude operating the transporter and not show the guy your butt. Also, it's probably an unspoken social convention, like always facing forward in an elevator.

Answer 7

In addition to the good answers here about assuming 'the position' for transport, there's also the annular confinement beam to consider.

It doesn't come up very often, but the annular confinement beam is basically the thing that keeps the matter in the matter stream going to the right place at the right time. It's also implied that it sort of 'holds' an object within the transporter beam, so that they don't just hurp-durp off the transporter pad during the beaming process. While there have certainly been larger objects beamed off the pad, it's often implied that the ACB is roughly the size of a transporter pad. We can probably safely say that it is adaptive to the size of the objects in transport, but that they operate on the assumption that the object is going to hold. very. still.

When Roga Danar shoves the blue transporter fairies out of the way during The Hunted, the ka-blooey is the result of the annular confinement beam malfunctioning. When the transporter malfunctions and turns two folks into screaming psychedelic special effects during Star Trek: The Motion Picture, that's the annular confinement beam not doing what it's supposed to do.

So it's kind of one of those things that, even though transporter technology is hands-down the safest way to travel in Star Trek, it's really fine with everyone if you just maybe don't test it. I like to think that one of Yeoman Rand's original job duties was to coach people on where to stand during the beaming process. "Please keep your arms and legs inside the matter stream at all times. Thanks for beaming with us today. Buh-bye. Buh-bye. Buh-bye now."

Answer 8

If you could imagine yourself in the place of a transporter traveller, I should think you'd turn to face out toward the operator, or at least face toward the center of the room. I think that's what I would do, not because I've seen it countless times in Trek episodes/movies, but because it's what we as humans would do instinctively. Of course there is out-of-universe justification - assuming a pose and orientation most easily reproduced on the destination set, but I think there is a valid in-universe explanation rooted as much in human behaviour as practicality (giving attention to the transporter operator).

It's been played with to mild comic effect within the show, as when Lwaxana materializes on the Enterprise-D's transporter pad facing the chamber wall, with her back to everyone in the room (and the camera). Presumably, this is a result of inexperience with transporter travel.

The "weapons drawn, defensive circle" scenario seems pretty obvious. The weapons checked/set but holstered could be justified by the often repeated statement: they are armed for defensive purposes only. Materializing somewhere with weapons drawn would seem to be an overtly hostile stance, not consistent with Federation values and Starfleet policies (unless they know they are beaming into a hazardous/hostile/tactical situation).

Answer 9

When the crew is being beamed down, there are many unknowns about what the conditions are on the planet where they are being transported to. They probably wouldn't be able to know which direction to face as they are being beamed down, let alone know whether or not to have a Tricorder, Phaser, etc. in their hands unless they know exactly what is going on at the time.

The transporter operator and/or the ship's computer would most likely be able to tell which direction is optimal and translate their rotation in relation to their surroundings. Since the computer is dematerializing them and rematerializing them in a far away place, then why couldn't it figure out which way the crew should be facing since it is also advanced enough to make sure they aren't being beamed into the side of a mountain, underwater, in lava, etc.?

If the computer/operator was the one which controlled the exact position of the crew, then the direction they were facing in the ship would be irrelevant. Therefore, there would be no reason why they wouldn't be facing forward when they are being transported off-world.

Answer 10

In or out of universe, it would be awkward and weird to step on the pad facing the back of the room, and then look over your shoulder to ask the operator to please energize.

Beaming up facing away is likewise awkward, and could also be momentarily alarming if you're unfamiliar with being beamed: you would at first glance appear to be in a very confined space.

Instead, starfleet would want visitors' first view of the ship to be a nice open room with a (hopefully) pleasant face to greet you. Presumably, the system can rotate you to face the right away. When Lwaxana was beamed up facing backwards, the system may have been confused by the fact that she chose to kneel for that one.

Answer 11

The transporter is filmed from the controller's position. If people didn't face it, You would get lots of scenes with Dazzling Disappearing Derrieres.

Answer 12

There is one possible answer missing:

I think it's better for the operator to see if something might go wrong with the persons he is going to beam. So he'd be able to interrupt the beam process.

This is easier/better to observe when seeing them face-to-face.

Answer 13

I agree that facing forward was more effective. It allowed them to show readiness and also see what was going on on the planet's surface...though I've always thought that 4 plus travelwrs should look different ways so as to guard from any direction. I have noticed though that the shoes seem to dematerialize after the rest of the body. I wonder how and why that is.