NegativeNullChief O'Brien at Work #3 - I am a God
SurpWhat’s the point of the platform he stands in front of if he can just beam anyone to any part of the ship or from any part of the ship to anywhere ?
Maven (famous)In my personal head cannon…
They can teleport from the transporter room to another spot and from another spot to the transporter room.
But they also don’t need to immediately rematerialize people immediately (the pattern buffer).
My theory is that they eventually learned that they can teleport people from within the ship, to the transporter room, not materialize them, and then send them from the transporter room to wherever they need to go.
So the room is still important in a lot of ways but once they learned they don’t have to walk there they stopped bothering.
That’s the in universe head canon but as for what actually happened it’s more likely to be what the other person said about it just being nicer for the story.
Lem JukesMemory Alpha basically says this is actual canon and cites TNG Brothers as its source.
Site-to-site transport
A site-to-site transport was a special type of transport in which an object or person was transported from one site directly to another, neither site being a transporter platform. A site-to-site transport was accomplished by first transferring the transporter's target from the site of origin to the pattern buffer of the transporter, in the same manner as the usual "beam in" procedure; instead of being routed to a transporter platform, however, the matter stream was diverted to a second site, in
LETS GOO
skulblakaThe teleporter pad is also a stationary location relative to the ship that doesn’t move around. The teleporter probably has its coordinates hardcoded. A teleporter tech who isn’t as much of a wizard as O’Brien is probably relies on that pretty regularly.
O’Brien just happens to be capable of teleporting people to and from arbitrary locations because he’s a master of his craft. But if you get your calculus wrong in an emergency you’re going to teleport your captain and away team halfway through a bulkhead, or collect a thousand pounds of loose dirt alongside them and only half an ensign.