Around 1964, Gene Roddenberry came up with the now legendary “transporter” effect for Star Trek, mostly out of necessity. I don’t think he believed that teleportation technology would actually exist within 300 years or so, but as a writer’s device, the transporter solved a myriad of production problems for Roddenberry’s planned TV series. Compared with having to build complex miniatures to show the USS Enterprise landing on a new planet each week, “beaming” actors off the set was a much simpler effect to insert each week.
“Land a ship fourteen stories tall on a planet surface every week?” Roddenberry exclaimed to writer Stephen E. Whitfield in his classic 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek. “Not only would it have blown our entire weekly budget, but just suggesting it would have probably ruined my reputation in the
