re: #57 BlueCanuck

Every good story has to have, what I learned, a maguffin. For Star Trek the maguffin was the transporter system. It allowed them to get from the ship to where ever they were going seamlessly. One good series of books that actually pays a good attention to physics is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Space battles actually take hours instead of minutes. Only thing that isn’t really “science” is how the space ships move. But I guess you could say it’s theoretically possible.

If you’re talking about a MacGuffin, that’s not what it is. “MacGuffin” is a term for the main driving force of the plot, but the thing itself is never really defined in detail.

With a few exceptions, the Star Trek plots are rarely about transporters as the driving force of the plot.

A MacGuffin would be something like the Shankara Stones in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. They spend the whole movie trying to find them, and as soon as they’re found, the movie is over. You never really see the Shankara Stones do much of anything except light up (and burn a guy, and supposedly restore a village).

The briefcase contents in Pulp Fiction, the chest in Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest and the letters of transit in Casablanca are all MaCguffins.