Senior officers arent always summoned to the bridge for some trifling anomaly, of course. There are plenty of times when the ships plunged into Red Alert and everyones expected to high-tail it to the bridge. Except that, as Red Alert means all hands to battle stations, the traffic coming the other way must be fairly horrendous at this point, with everyone queueing for turbolifts and hordes of schoolchildren getting ready to evacuate in case someones let Troi drive again. Maybe its considered risky (or just lazy) to use the transporter under those circumstances, but if youre a night shift ensign whos suddenly found themselves staring down a Romulan warbird, surely youd want the captain on the bridge sooner rather than later? Now that everyones gotten over the transporterphobia displayed in Star Trek: Enterprise, there are all sorts of ways they could be using the transporter, because its an insanely powerful piece of kit if you adopt a more villainous mindset. The next time there are intruders on board, just beam them all into a holding cell, combadges or no. The transporters been shown to be capable of locking onto people who are falling, so running around shouldnt be too much of a problem. Also, keep a stock of large blast panels in the cargo bay, and the next time your shields are knocked out, beam them into the path of any oncoming torpedoes. The transporters an amazingly powerful weapon - its just a shame everyone in the Federations too nice to realise it.
