Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 3 - "Ghosts of Illyria"

The Starship Enterprise's transporters received another change in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode 3, but it's also one that shows mercy to a previously unknown passenger. In Strange New Worlds, Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) is leading the USS Enterprise on a new five-year mission of galactic exploration. The Enterprise itself has been upgraded after the battle against the rogue A.I. Control at the end of Star Trek: Discovery season 2. This means the flagship of Starfleet has new transporters, which are able to accomplish surprising new feats.

The Enterprise's transporters already showed off heretofore unheard-of capabilities in Strange New Worlds' series premiere. Chief Kyle (Andre Dae Kim) was able to load clothing appropriate to the planet Kiley 279 into the transporter so that Captain Pike, Lt. Spock (Ethan Peck), and Lt. La'an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong), who were surgically altered to look like aliens by Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), were able to step onto the transporter pad wearing their Starfleet uniforms and emerge on the planet wearing new outfits. Even more astounding, when Spock began to revert back to his Vulcan self, Kyle was somehow able to transport more of Chapel's formula directly into Spock's bloodstream, which restored his Kiley outward appearance.

Related: Strange New Worlds Proves Pike Is Better Than Picard In 2 Ways

The Strange New Worlds premiere unveiled that Dr. M'Benga's (Babs Osulanmokun) Sickbay has its own medical transporter, something Dr. Leonard McCoy's (DeForrest Kelley) medical area somehow lacked when he joins the Enterprise years later. Further, Strange New Worlds episode 3, "Ghosts of Illyria," revealed a shocking secret Dr. M'Benga has been hiding from everyone on the Enterprise: he has been storing his young daughter, Rukiya (Sage Arrindell), in the medical transporter's pattern buffer. But M'Benga has a good reason for risking his Starfleet career and a tragic transporter mistake by storing Rukiya in the pattern buffer: she has a terminal illness and M'Benga hopes to find a cure during the Enterprise's five-year mission.

Dr M'Benga in Strange New Worlds

Number One AKA Lt. Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) discovered M'Benga's secret after the Enterprise was infected with a contagion that made members of the crew go mad with attraction to light. The contagion spread because M'Benga didn't upgrade the medical transporters in order to keep his daughter a secret. Dr. M'Benga also announced that a person can be stored indefinitely in the 23rd-century transporters' pattern buffer as long as they are regularly materialized, and they don't age in the buffer. By the 24th century, the transporters' pattern buffer no longer require occasional materialization; Captain Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) and Thomas Riker (Jonathan Frakes) each spent multiple years stored in the pattern buffer to save their lives on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Strange New Worlds' use of the transporters to keep Dr. M'Benga's daughter alive is the latest instance of the technology's life-saving benefits. Star Trek has made ample use of the pattern buffer to preserve its heroes' lives, such as in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Our Man Bashir" when Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and his crew were kept alive by the pattern buffer before they were stored in the holodeck during Dr. Julian Bashir's (Alexander Siddig) 1960s secret agent fantasy. In Star Trek: Discovery season 4, the 32nd-century pattern buffer's technology was capable of storing the entire crew of the USS Discovery, saving their lives as Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) led her starship out of a dangerous subspace rift. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds keeps giving its transporters new abilities but saving the life of Dr. M'Benga's young daughter is a noble (albeit technically illegal) use of the pattern buffer.

Next: Strange New Worlds Adapts TOS' Real-Life Uhura/MLK Story Into Canon

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams Thursdays on Paramount+.