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This always bugged me about the transporter effect...

Yar, Riker, Troi and Data are being transported. The effect shows them surrounded by irregular clusters of points of white light, mostly around their midsection, with white rays extending vertically up and down to mostly envelope a cylindrical space surrounding each.

... we always see it from the point of view of an external observer (even if there isn't one). We never see it from the point of view of the characters. Presumably it looks quite different if you're the one being beamed somewhere.

Has that ever happened on-screen?

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45

The Next Generation episode "Realm of Fear" has Lieutenant Barclay see something during transport:

During transport, Barclay has an awful vision of a worm-like creature swimming in the matter stream and biting his arm.

During the episode, his view of being transported is shown:

A view of the transporter room looking back towards the transporter controls from the transporter pad. La Forge and O'Brien are at the controls, and a display is on the wall behind them. The view is partially obscured by a milky light effect with numerous spots of varying brightness distributed through it.

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  • I think there were actually a few (very few admittedly) episodes where they had a POV camera in the beam, weren't there?
    – eidylon
    Commented Oct 4, 2011 at 20:43
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    +1 for one of the absolutely best episodes of TNG ever.
    – BBlake
    Commented Oct 5, 2011 at 2:02
  • @eidylon - I don't doubt there are, but that's the one that came to mind straight away. That said, I can't think of any others but am sure there must be =)
    – Rob
    Commented Oct 5, 2011 at 8:15
  • I no longer have it but I swear the tech readout for the transporters had the transporter create a statis field around the object being transported essentially stopping time. So I am guessing it would look like flash out fade in.
    – Chad
    Commented Oct 7, 2011 at 18:24
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    The Memory Alpha page for "Realm of Fear" actually explicitly mentions at the bottom under "Continuity" that the view from inside the transporter is used only one other time in the Voyager episode "Prototype".
    – Meg Coates
    Commented Jun 1, 2012 at 15:14
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There are two times when we see a transport from the POV of the transportee.

From Voy: "Prototype" (unfortunately in monochrome due to the subject being a robot)

View of the Voyager in space, obscured by an increasing density of white spots until it whites out, then clears in reverse to reveal the interior of Voyager.

And TNG: "Realms of Fear" (from the perspective of Mr. Barclay).

A view of the Enterprise transporter room as Barclay begins to beam out, with an vertical striping effect of white lines from top to bottom that expands into a static-like overlay as he starts to fade out. From his point of view a snow effect thickens to complete white-out then fades to reveal the interior of his destination. Finally from the perspective of the terminating transporter the snow effect fades out to leave him standing.

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5

The older PC game Star Trek: Voyager — Elite Force shows something remarkably similar to the slightly occluded view experienced by Barclay in "Realm of Fear".

In Elite Force, the person being transported sees their vision clouded by particles, a fade to black, and then a fade-in and the particles disappear.

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2
  • I'm struggling to find an example where it doesn't cut to a loading screen.
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 10:51
  • Is there a reference for the canon status of this game? I ask since it doesn't match well with the two examples (from TNG and VOY) shown in those series...
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Commented May 13, 2021 at 14:14

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