So im watching a tos episode and the away team can’t contact the ship and the ship is drawn away from the planet. Now I recall this as sorta a common plot device in star trek. communication is not always blocked but basically the ship has to leave the away team on a plane to deal with something. Here is the thing. Why don’t they ever launch a shuttle to stay at the planet. I mean maybe more than one. This is especially true come tng where the shuttles I think tend to have transporters. I mean feels like a no brainer to me.
It makes so much more sense to send a shuttlecraft in the first place, in every case, even if the mothership isn’t going anywhere and transporters are fully operational.
Is there air? You don’t know. But you’re going to beam me down in nothing but my pajamas? Hell no. I’ll take a shuttle with its shields and weapons and life support systems.
well I think the idea is their sensors are so good they know for sure.
Yeah, but what about all the episodes where they didn’t detect any danger? That’s like half of TOS. By TNG it’d be hubris if they still believed they could know for sure.
They make it out to be like airline travel. It happens but considering the trillions of transports that go fine every day type of thing its barely a blip. Now granted though in tos their primary mission is to go to where no one has gone before I could see your point. You would assume a bit higher caution than going to a colony well within the federations borders.