Star Trek: 10 Things You Need To Know About Transporters

The first obvious use of the emergency transporter came in Star Trek: Nemesis. This was used by Data to rescue Captain Picard, though at the cost of his own life. It was a small device, fitted with its own power source, giving it the ability to send a signal back to the Enterprise-E without having to rely on either that ship or the Scimitar's, power sources.

By that year, it was still considered a prototype due to its limitations. Earlier incarnations of emergency transporters were closer in design to those standard personnel transporters found aboard most starships and starbases. These were designed to send larger groups at a time, often used during evacuation procedures.

By the 32nd Century, these smaller transporters became standard practice, embedded into Starfleet Combadges. Star Trek: Discovery's third and fourth seasons seem to have done away with standard transporter rooms altogether, as the combadge contains enough power to send the wearer from ship to planet, whereas this was beyond the capabilities of earlier models.

A combination of the personal transporters and the pattern buffers allowed the crew of the Discovery to escape disintegration as the ship exited a void, as part of their search for the cause of the DMA.