best and worst of Treknobabble
- Thread starter Temis the Vorta
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somehow, the technobabble used in "Rejoined" is of a different kind to most VOY technobabble.
The dialogue in "shattered" makes a frightening amount of sense in context.
The stuff in "Rejoined" is mostly nonsense and we're not supposed to "get" the details at all. It seems the main purpose here is to make stuff sound cool and to show those are future scientists doing and talking crazy tech.
Dunno what's better
The dialogue in "shattered" makes a frightening amount of sense in context.
The stuff in "Rejoined" is mostly nonsense and we're not supposed to "get" the details at all. It seems the main purpose here is to make stuff sound cool and to show those are future scientists doing and talking crazy tech.
Dunno what's better
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Makes you wonder what they were paying Andre Bormanis for.
When we do a big project here at work, a table called a "compliance matrix" is made, listing everyone's responsibilities. It sounded technobabbly to me, so I borrowed it for a fanfic, and had the engineer tell the captain he had to "tune the port nacelle's warp compliance matrix". The captain then stared blankly at him, having no idea what he just said, and told him to just go do it and stop bothering her. 
The big shiny error in your example is that that the words were recognisable between the two correspondents, even if the meanings have changed.
I've always thought that when they do a new Trek series, they should have fun with the technobabble. Have a chief engineer who hates using technobabble, but his assistant is constantly using it. Something like this:
Assistant: "Sir, we've been attempting to re-allign the quantum isotroic stabilizers, but we're getting interferance from the tachyon field generator preventing a stable warp matrix."
Chief: "So the warp core is shot to hell?"
Assistant: "Yes sir, I believe that's what I just said."
Or during a battle:
XO: "Engineering, report!"
Chief: "You, give the XO a report!"
Assistant: "You want me to report to the XO, sir? Isn't that your job?"
Chief: "He wants to hear terms I have no intention of using."
Assistant: "Yes, sir. Commander, warp core is offline, auxilary power at 47%. Coolant leak flooding th engine room with plasma and fusing the magnetic injectors into a quantum protonic state."
XO: "What are you doing about this?"
Assistant: "First we're purging 10000 terrabytes out of the main computer for the pruposes of developing a hyper-chaotic verteron field and then channel it through the main deflector and the nacelles of creating a cascading warp field intermix bubble which should-"
Chief: "We're fixing it."
And yes, I'm aware none of that makes sense.
Assistant: "Sir, we've been attempting to re-allign the quantum isotroic stabilizers, but we're getting interferance from the tachyon field generator preventing a stable warp matrix."
Chief: "So the warp core is shot to hell?"
Assistant: "Yes sir, I believe that's what I just said."
Or during a battle:
XO: "Engineering, report!"
Chief: "You, give the XO a report!"
Assistant: "You want me to report to the XO, sir? Isn't that your job?"
Chief: "He wants to hear terms I have no intention of using."
Assistant: "Yes, sir. Commander, warp core is offline, auxilary power at 47%. Coolant leak flooding th engine room with plasma and fusing the magnetic injectors into a quantum protonic state."
XO: "What are you doing about this?"
Assistant: "First we're purging 10000 terrabytes out of the main computer for the pruposes of developing a hyper-chaotic verteron field and then channel it through the main deflector and the nacelles of creating a cascading warp field intermix bubble which should-"
Chief: "We're fixing it."
And yes, I'm aware none of that makes sense.
Personally, I like that there is some technobabble however, one of the biggest turn offs for me trying to watch TNG and a very small smattering of the later series is when there is way too much of it. Not everyone who watches Trek has a degree in Engineering or Physics. It's helpful to be married to a physicist but I feel like I need a technobabble translator button on my remote to understand what's going on. I think my science knowledge is a little above the average public and while I like to be challenged intelluctually, technobabble is a bit much and distracts me from the plot.
Someone must have mentioned this, but when Riker explains the specifics of the computer to the Ferengi? Sorry, can't remember the ep name...
"Rascals" and I was under the impression he was just making stuff up to confuse the Ferengi. Now granted, that's not a huge accomplishment but that spew of technobabble really felt forced and made up.
That's what I was thinking and if true, it's not a half bad breaking the fourth wall joke.
It's not just you, Jonathan Frakes has pretty good comic timing.
The Nth Degree- an all time high in technobabble:
And in the same episode:
This is one of the things you have to love about TNG...no other Trek show comes close
And in the same episode:
This is one of the things you have to love about TNG...no other Trek show comes close
I get the feeling that all the ridiculous technobable was a result of the writers getting bored with it. So they intentionally made it as ridiculous as possible.
RIKER
(quickly)
Okay, Morta. The Enterprise
computer system is controlled by
three primary main processing
cores cross linked with a
redundant melacortz ramistat and
fourteen kiloquad interface
modules. The core elements are
based on FTL nanoprocessor units
arranged into twenty-five
bilateral kelilactirals with
twenty of those units being slaved
to the central heisenfram
terminal.
(beat)
You do know what a bilateral
kelilactiral is, don't you?
Morta is lost, but unwilling to admit it.
MORTA
Of course I do, human. I am not
stupid.
RIKER
No, of course not.
(points to something
on console)
Now this is the isopalavial
interface which controls the main
firomactal drive unit.
(slaps Morta's hand
away)
Don't touch that, you'll blow up
the entire firomactal drive.
(quickly)
Okay, Morta. The Enterprise
computer system is controlled by
three primary main processing
cores cross linked with a
redundant melacortz ramistat and
fourteen kiloquad interface
modules. The core elements are
based on FTL nanoprocessor units
arranged into twenty-five
bilateral kelilactirals with
twenty of those units being slaved
to the central heisenfram
terminal.
(beat)
You do know what a bilateral
kelilactiral is, don't you?
Morta is lost, but unwilling to admit it.
MORTA
Of course I do, human. I am not
stupid.
RIKER
No, of course not.
(points to something
on console)
Now this is the isopalavial
interface which controls the main
firomactal drive unit.
(slaps Morta's hand
away)
Don't touch that, you'll blow up
the entire firomactal drive.
If that isn't a shot at how inane technobabble had become I don't know what else it could be. Also, while I imagine that dialogue had to be difficult, I have to believe that Jonathan Frakes had a lot of fun delivering it.
It was intended to be a bit over the top, as the character was making most of it up to confuse the Ferengi. It was also intended behind the scenes as an "Ode to Technobabble" and the writers let go of their usual restraint and purposefully wrote the most insane technobabble ever
Even "browsing" and "surfing" would throw them. "Browse" is what a deer does when it eats shrubs and trees, and they might know what "surf" is, but how can you "ing" it, even in the literal sense? "Surfing the web" makes no sense because spider webs would dissolve if they got wet. And does an "iPod" have something to do with peas? How can you hear music through a vegetable?
That's what's missing in Treknobabble, the way we take ordinary words and give them new meanings that are metaphors for the old meanings, sometimes two or three steps removed. Deer browsing > library browsing > browsing web pages > who knows what. Browsing could be what starships do when they visit several planets in one journey. To boldly browse where no man has gone before.
23rd C language would be incomprehensible even if no technical language were included.
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