Star Trek: 10 Character Fates Worse Than Death
6. Winding Up A Transporter Duplicate And Getting Marooned As A Result
In the Next Generation episode "Second Chances," the Enterprise arrives in orbit around the planet Vervala IV, which was once the site of a research outpost, which was hastily evacuated eight years previously. Commander Riker was involved in the evacuation, having been the last person to leave the planet via transporter before a disruption field made that impossible.
Now, a break in the disruption field makes it possible for a return to the planet's surface, so Riker leads an away team to retrieve some lost data. Expecting to find only a decaying outpost and some research, he's more than a little surprised to find... himself.
A transporter works by dematerializing a person's matter before translating that into energy. On the receiving end, the process is reversed, and a person's energy is returned to a state of matter, but as any fan of Star Trek knows, they don't always work as expected.
Eight years before "Second Chances," Riker's beam-out worked, but due to the nature of the disruption field, it was reflected off the atmosphere in such a way as to duplicate the signal. Lieutenant Riker was therefore marooned on the planet for eight years while he was simultaneously rescued and went on to become Commander Riker.