Random Teleportation: Difference between revisions

Sometimes characters or devices with the power of teleportation suffer from a specific form of [[Power Incontinence]]. They just can't control where they're going. Depending on the range of their powers, they could end up on the other side of the galaxy or two feet to the left of where they're standing. Or [[Tele Frag|inside a wall]]. Whether this is the result of a limitation of the power, a desperate gambit to get out of somewhere in a hurry when there's no time to properly designate a target location, or plain old human error, sometimes teleportation is just random.

 

 

[[Million-to-One Chance|If you're lucky, you can control when it happens.]] See also [[Teleporter Accident]].

{{examples}}

 

* In ''[[Irresponsible Captain Tylor]]'' this happens when they use their [[Warp Drive|Hyperdrive]] without inputting a destination.

* Also occurs in ''[[Macross]]'' / ''[[Robotech]]'' when the Macross ends up near Pluto, [[Portal Cut|along with a chunk]] of [[Mass Teleportation|the island]] it had been sitting on.

 

* Magik of the [[New Mutants]] is reasonably good about getting where she wants to go. ''When'' is another matter.

 

== Fan Works ==

 

 

== Film ==

== Live Action TV ==

 

** In the novels, her powers (like those of many other ghosts) were actually activated by touching her own nose - but every time she sneezed she covered her nose and ended up triggering her power.

* In ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'', when the Green Ranger first tries to use his teleportation power, he accidentally appears in an underground bank vault, which leads to the rest of the team learning about his criminal past.

** It is not a matter of the Doctor being bad at piloting it, more so that it was designed to have 6 people control it at once.

** Although River Song seems to manage a smooth ride just peachily on her own, while simultaneously implying the Doctor is a crap driver who 'leaves the brake on'.

** In the finale, {{spoiler|Starbuck enters a series of random coordinates as the Cylon homebase launches the last of it's defenses and begins to explode around them, based on the notes to the recurring music connected to her father and the final five cylons. Galactica ends up jumping to a point in orbit of Earth (ours, not the radioactive one from earlier in the series)}}

* ''[[Stargate]]'', at least once a season.

* Almost as often in ''[[Star Trek]]''.

** In the Original series, the Enterprise winds up in the 60's. Not to mention the [[Mirror Universe|"Mirror, Mirror" universe]].

** In [[Deep Space Nine]], Sisko winds up in the [[Mirror Universe]] as well, though not accidentally.

* ''[[Sliders]]'': Random place in random ''universe.'' "Why don't they wind up a mile in the air?" is eventually answered; built into the technology is sensors that won't let the portal send them someplace absolutely deadly, and also keeps them in the same general area of California (we find ''that'' out when the sliding radius [[Real Life Writes the Plot|changes when production is moved to LA]].)

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]''. When they're first beginning to control dragons and learning to teleport, you can sometimes screw it up. During excavations inside a weyr once, the weyrfolk came across a dragon and rider who'd been entombed in solid rock after making a misaimed teleport.

* The ''Space Hawks'' Choose Your Own Adventure Books feature the Emergency FTL Jump, a last-resort escape method that skips the usual safety checks and calculations. It's mentioned that this kind of blind jump has the potential to strand the pilot in space {{spoiler|though in practice, there's only one book out of the six in which the emergency FTL jump will kill you}}.

* In the book ''Casting Spells'', when Chloe finally inherits her magical powers, she ends up teleporting her love interest around accidentally by thinking of him. Oops.

* Frank Pollard from The Bad Place by [[Dean Koontz]] can teleport, but suffering from amnesia, he does it unconsciously and goes all over the place, especially while sleeping. His powers aren't under control until near the end of the novel, when he regains his memory.

* In the [[Larry Niven]] story "One Face", a misjump brings the crew to apparently the wrong system. Turns out after a while that it's the right system, but they've appeared billions of years in the future, when Earth is no longer habitable.

'''Crowley''': You just send 'em. Best not to worry about where they go. }}

** {{spoiler|Aziraphale being Aziraphale, the soldier is eventually revealed to have arrived in his own bedroom in his parents' house.}}

 

== Tabletop Games ==

 

** It's said this is the fate of anyone who jumps from the edge of the city of Sigil in ''[[Planescape]]''

** ''[[Forgotten Realms|Nybor's Joyful Voyage]]'' spell.

** A teleportation mishap cost the elf wizard her arm in ''Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God'', although in that case it might've been demonic sabotage rather than bad luck.

* ''[[Paranoia]]''. In older editions, the Teleport mutant power could strand you just about anywhere if you failed a Power check when using it.

** In the [[Ciaphas Cain]] '''HERO OF THE IMPERIUM''' series, Inquisitor Vail has a shield that automatically teleports her to a random nearby location whenever her life is threatened. Yes, it's just as hilarious as it sounds.

* In ''[[Traveller]]'', a Misjump caused a starship to travel multiple parsecs in a random direction, which could easily result in the death of the crew if the ship ended up in an empty area of space without a source of fuel. It could be caused by using unrefined fuel (hydrogen) or failure to provide annual maintenance for the jump drives. The different races in [[Traveller]] often have rituals to make them less nervous when they go into jump because of the fear of a misjump.

** One ''[[Traveller]]'' adventure involved exploring a ship that had been trapped in jumpspace as a result of a Misjump.

== Video Games ==

 

** Also, she apparently not only teleports through space but through time to some degree as well; there are multiple versions of her.

** In the original, the initial cascade resonance warps Gordon to random spots in Xen. It also did the same to the various aliens, later on. In ''Opposing Force'', this was the secondary fire of the [[BFG]] - it would drop you down an endless void, or transport you to an area where there was some ammo for your other weapons. Happens as part of ''Blue Shift'''s finale.

* In ''[[King's Quest III]]'' you could learn an optional random teleportation spell that takes you to a random screen in the area. This is useful for getting out of dangerous situations (as long as you don't randomly end up in the same place).

* In the old computer game [[wikipedia:Daleks (video game)|''Robots'']] and its derivatives, one of the tools available to the protagonist randomly teleports them to any empty square. Since there's no guarantee their new position will be any safer than their old one, this is generally reserved as a last resort. Some versions label this move as a 'safe' teleport, while also having a completely random one that can warp you right on top of an enemy for an instant death.

* One of the Geo Panel effects in ''[[Disgaea]]'' is warp, which teleports the character on the panel to a random panel of the same colour.

* In ''[[Nethack]]'', you can catch teleportitis from different circumstances in the game. Unless you have a ring of teleport control or the teleport control intrinsic, you end up teleporting randomly every few steps.

** There's also a ring of teleport in [[Crawl]] that does just this and... let's just say that it's become a genre staple, along with spells and scrolls that randomly teleport you on demand and some way of gaining control of all your teleports.

* ''[[Nox]]'' had a spell that teleported Jack randomly across the current area, except in the very final dungeon, where it inevitably teleported him to the final key.

* In order to reach the endgame [[Bonus Boss]] Kirin in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', a player has to use one of the many portals in the collection of areas known as [[Fan Nickname|sky]]. Small problem: The portal in question ''also'' transports players to a room full of Magic Pots, and despite [[Urban Legend of Zelda|rumors]], it really does seem to be random.

* ''[[Angband]]'' has Rings of Teleportation, which teleports you randomly every once in a while. Some of its variants have other sources of random teleportation, including mutations and weapon properties. Additionally, the Teleport and Phase Door spells teleport you to a random empty space within a given radius.

** There's also a cursed pair of boots that teleports you to a random ''enemy'' every few seconds.

* A noted use of ''[[Halo]]'''s Slipspace (for humans, anyway, before and after the Covenant) often has people either near their destination, or way off course. The Covenant don't suffer this effect, due to crystals that guide their systems.

* This can happen to ''the ball'' in ''[[Backyard Sports|Backyard Baseball]]''.

** Also, the archeology artifact, The Last Relic of Argus, is a highly sought after item, because it is a teleporter that you can use during combat, with no casting time. The downside, ''it picks your destination point at random.''

*** The Last Relic takes three seconds to activate, so it's not instant, but it's a whole lot faster than a hearthstone/Astral Recall exit. Also, the destination is selected at random from a large list but you'll always end up at one of the locations. The benefit is that all possible destinations are safe.

** Actually to a random spawnpoint (where you also respawn after death) on the map, so not totally random.

 

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' the whole premise behind Riff's Dimensional Flux Agitator is that it teleports people into [[Another Dimension|random dimensions]]. They're sometimes able to teleport themselves back or reopen old portals, but the mostly the device is just one giant crapshoot.

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Megas XLR]]'' "Coop D'Etat" Coop accidentally sends Megas into a teleportation loop, causing them to transport to random place all over the universe one after another.

* When [[Johnny Test]] uses his [[Mad Scientist]] sisters' lab to get the ability to teleport, they use it to send him to random places as punishment.

* At the end of the ''[[Futurama]]'' Story Arc / TV Movie, ''Into the Wild Green Yonder'', the heroes enter a wormhole, which could send them anywhere in the entire universe. At the start of the following season, {{spoiler|they end up back at the Planet Express building.}}

 

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Teleportation Tropes]]